Welcome to 201k.com - A Commonwealth Perspective.

Stephen Colbert is the greatest American alive.

Make sure to watch all three parts.

Obviously we haven't been able to post regularly for the past few weeks. Real life again, sadly. So 201k is putting the call out for any contributors who have something to say -- long or short -- for posting here.

C'mon, folks -- step up to bat at 201k.

The papers are buzzing today with the news that President Bush's senior political adviser Karl Rove has lost the position of "senior policy coordinator" (how, exactly, did he qualify for that job?) but here at 201k our interest was more peaked by the secondary story: that Scott McClellan had resigned his post as the president's chief spokesman.

It has always been our suspicion that presidential spokesmen resign when they know something is in the works that will cast doubt on the veracity or integrity of their earlier remarks. They get out before things hit the fire, so to speak, which not only spares them the glaring spotlight of the ugly truth, but protects the holder of the office they serve by creating a revolving cast of spokes-dissemblers, increasing both distance and bodies between the President and the very professional lies that are told on his behalf.

In fact, McClellan himself came to his position in just this way, taking over after former spokesman Ari Fleischer -- having done his job to promote the war in Iraq with a spiderweb of half-truths, disinformation, and double-talk -- bailed before his chickens came home to roost.

So, you heard it here first: something is coming, some piece of news that is very bad for the White House -- something that McClellan either lied about openly, or dissembled about in a way that can not be defended, even to the canaries in the White House press corps. Bet on it.

From Chicago:

From: JT
To: Editor - 201k
Subject: Your fully-literate president at work!
Date: April 18, 2006 12:16:26 PM EDT

The big, glaring CNN headline this morning:

Bush: "I'm The Decider."

Not: "....he decision-maker"
Not: "...in charge here"
Not: "... the Walrus"

Nope. "I'm the decider."

No Child (of the 60's) Left Behind, indeed

JT

We were dismayed -- though not surprised -- to read this in a NY Times editorial:

A former AT&T employee has come forward with documents suggesting that there may be a lot more domestic spying going on than President Bush has admitted. The AT&T documents suggest that telephone companies may be helping the government engage in wholesale interception of telephone calls, e-mail messages and Web surfing. If AT&T is violating its customers' privacy rights, it should come clean, and stop immediately.

According to Mark Klein, a longtime AT&T technician who is now retired, AT&T maintained a room at its San Francisco Internet and telephone hub where its customers' data could be mined by keywords, e-mail addresses and other attributes. Mr. Klein says the National Security Agency was given access to the room and the data. He says other technicians have reported to him that similar rooms exist at other AT&T sites.

Though we have yet to see Klein's statements reported elsewhere.

Much is being made of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's assertion that he was authorized to leak classified information by no less than the President and Vice President.

This is bad, but hardly a surprise. We all know it's not lying, cheating, or stealing when Republicans do it -- it's "Creative Patriotism".

No, what caught our eye is what happened next. Authorized to leak classified information in order to defend one of the key Bush Administration rationales for going to war in Iraq, what did Libby do?

He called the New York Times.

Specifically, Judith Miller:

The presidential authorization was provided, the court papers said, in advance of a meeting on July 8, 2003 between Mr. Libby and Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times. Mr. Libby brought a brief abstract of the N.I.E.'s key judgments to the meeting with Ms. Miller in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel about two blocks from the White House.

Mr. Libby testified, the prosecutors said, that he was "specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified N.I.E. to Miller on that occasion..."

The court filing said that Mr. Libby said "he understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Mr. Libby, the prosecutors, said, testified that the meeting with Ms. Miller was the "only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the president's authorization that it be disclosed."

Libby was "specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified N.I.E. to Miller..."

Joseph Wilson told the world that the Bush Administration's claim that Iraq was trying to procure uranium was false. In retaliation the President and Vice President of the United States ordered the Vice President's Chief of Staff to leak classified information...

...to Judith Miller, and the New York Times. Specifically.

Why?

From: scott
Subject: franken
Date: April 5, 2006 4:42:49 PM EDT
To: editor@201k.com

don't know if you've seen this, a really good read.

http://midwestvaluespac.org/blog/156/an-evening-with-ann-coulter-with-full-speech

i'm curious to hear ann's side of the debate, although i'm pretty sure i know how it went.

It's funny when Market Theory collides uncomfortably with Market Reality.

April 5, 2006

Big Gain for Rich Seen in Tax Cuts for Investments

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

The first data to document the effect of President Bush's tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.

An analysis of Internal Revenue Service data by The New York Times found that the benefit of the lower taxes on investments was far more concentrated on the very wealthiest Americans than the benefits of Mr. Bush's two previous tax cuts: on wages and other noninvestment income.

...The Times showed the new numbers to people on various sides of the debate over tax cuts. Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, a Washington organization, and other supporters of the cuts said they did not go far enough because the more money the wealthiest had to invest, the more would go to investments that produce jobs.

Did Mr. Entin say where these jobs might be produced? Because we were under the impression that businesses were obligated to lower their costs -- including labor costs -- as much as possible. Which, presumably, means that any jobs that are "produced" by tax cuts to the richest Americans will be in places where labor costs are low, like China or India.

We ask only because it strikes us as odd that America's richest citizens would defend their lowered tax burden by claiming they'll create jobs for non-Americans.

Is that, in fact, what they're claiming?

Ireland, a country in which divorce was illegal until 1995, will move to recognize gay unions:

Ireland to Legalize Gay Partnerships

April 03,2006 | DUBLIN, Ireland -- Ireland will legalize civil partnerships for gay couples, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern pledged Monday as he opened new offices for the country's main homosexual rights pressure group.

Civil partnerships allow gay couples the same rights to inheritance, state benefits and other financial rights as held by married heterosexual couples.

"Sexual orientation cannot, and must not, be the basis of a second-class citizenship. Our laws have changed, and will continue to change, to reflect this principle," Ahern told an audience at Ireland's Gay and Lesbian Equality Network.

Ok, America: Ireland, the best place to live in the world (the U.S. ranks 13th) has now zoomed past most U.S. states in granting legal equality to gay couples.

Iraq is beginning to descend into something that looks a lot like civil war.

Civilians in Iraq Flee Mixed Areas as Attacks Shift

By EDWARD WONG and KIRK SEMPLE
Published: April 2, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 -- The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with the killings of Iraqi civilians rising tremendously in daily sectarian violence while American casualties have steadily declined, spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas.

The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics from the past six months and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines -- an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years.

And as we predicted, the Bush administration is blaming -- who else? -- the media.

Talk about irony: the mainstream media put their hearts and souls, literally, into promoting this war, and now that it's gone south the Bush Administration and its lackeys are blaming THEM for it.

Even when the media stalls "six months" to report it, as the Times has here.

Guess you can't trust anyone these days.

Damn media. If only they'd shown pictures of Iraqis throwing flowers and chocolates at our soldiers. We're sure Donald Rumsfeld could have provided the footage. Starring "Curveball".

Anyway, much as we enjoy watching the pointing finger shift over to the Generals of the Press who did so much to march other people's kids off to war in Iraq, we can't help noticing that the core competency of the Bush administration seems to begin and end with the ability to, well, point fingers.

If you were against the war because it was a really bad idea, you were the problem. You were "encouraging the enemy".

If you were for the war, but despite your best efforts can't help reporting that it's gone the way those who were against it predicted -- you're the problem. You're "encouraging the enemy".

A word of warning to those in the military who continue to intellectually defend the incompetent, lying clowns of the Bush Administration: they'll turn on you, too:

Asked whether he had adequately prepared to manage post-war Iraq, Mr. Bush said:

"I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, 'Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?' " Mr. Bush said. "I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops, as a last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, 'Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?' " Mr. Bush said. "And they looked me in the eye and said, 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.' "