Writing my recent blog posts reminded me of a few things, the kind of things that substantiate what I write about but that I don't often cite or repeat- trusting that you'll all have read basically the same things I have read and have an idea of how I'm getting my opinion. This makes my posts shorter and saves me time but I'd like to recount some of these things now to give a greater perspective on the kinds of personalities I've described in my last few posts.

First off, consider an anecdote you might have heard of from Hillary Clinton's Living History. In the book, Hillary Clinton talked about a guy who worked at the White House or in the executive branch during her husband's presidency who worked in a security capacity, or whose job involved security expertise. The guy was an ex-FBI agent or something like that. He didn't get along with any of the staffers in the Clinton White House and he went on to write a tell-all book about his experiences there, in which his biggest revelations and complaints consisted of stuff like not liking the manners of staffers serving themselves from the White House cafeteria. This is the kind of stuff we should all be used to by now from observing Republicans' behavior- all their deepest held beliefs are founded on irrational, arbitrary quibbles about liberals' personal behavior. When a Republican breaks little social rules, they consider it cool and cute and a demonstration of their knowing which lines can be crossed. When liberals do it, it's always wrong, and every nuance of behavior or miniscule screw-up you have is always goofy, dorky, and a symptom of something deeply wrong with you morally or psychologically. Hillary recounts a precious instance of first meeting this guy during which he gave her a stern stare and wouldn't part eyes from her. From a white guy's point of view, it really sounds like what happened is this guy wanted to stare Hillary Clinton down. Why would he do that? After having read it all, it really sounded to me like this guy just has a fantasy about himself being the ultimate man and the ultimate warrior, and in his fantasy world women can't be leaders, or can't be without somehow implicitly acknowledging his super-heroness and drawing her eyes aware from his world-tempered stare. My reaction to that kind of guy, is Oh, please. Guess what, buddy, women can be capable leaders too and just because you love yourself doesn't mean anything- it doesn't mean you're especially strong, and especially if your actions show you're actually a petty fool who cares most about what every single woman thinks about you- particularly, trying to dominate those women for no reason. And this is no matter whether she's your boss or whether the woman doesn't even have anything to do with you.

Here's another story about how great these guys who believe in a fantasy of their own manliness and righteousness are: according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, the “FBI engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority in illegally gathering telephone, e-mail and financial records of Americans and foreigners while hunting terrorists.” Glenn Fine, the internal watchdog who revealed the data-gathering abuses said “It really was unacceptable and inexcusable what happened here” (Hat tip to the Carpetbagger Report). What were they gathering those e-mails and telephone records for? Their own personal use? To make a list of people they don't like? Is the FBI their tool to pursue some kind of absurd hobby? Does every FBI agent who has this power use it to investigate the people he knows and the women he meets just for the hell of it? In short, who are these losers who did this?

Sometimes, one gets the impression that a lot of people in the FBI are fools from extremely boring towns in the midwest who have a distorted view of the cities as places that are completely vice ridden from the movies they watched growing up. But those are movies. There are plenty of good people in and near the cities and we all don't need these asses from the midwest who don't know anything about us illegally peeking into what we all do for their own absurd reasons.

Here's another one: the former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) (now an incarcerated convict), a month before pleading guilty to accepting bribes, criticized one of the purged U.S. Attorneys, Carol Lam, for “lax” handling of immigration crimes. Lam was pursuing Cunningham at the time. Cunningham worked with a CIA employee to illegally obtain government contracts. So what's this? This guy is especially interested in prosecuting brown people whose only crime is coming to this country to get jobs? That shows you what kind of people run in that Republican crowd.

Cunningham and his CIA friend were also involved with a whorehouse. Shows you that even people in the CIA have no claim over being right or wrong that the rest of us don't; this guy sounds just as corrupt as anybody involved with the Bush White House.

None of this was done for security, like all these Republicans say to our faces. It was done for bribes. They say we have to trust them for our security, and then these assholes use the power we gives them for their own little projects.

All this stuff may be old news, but seeing it all together really paints the picture of what these people are really like, doesn't it? Anyone can talk gallantly or self-righteously in front of a TV camera. But who are these guys really, Republicans and cops? Would we really be safe to assume that 90% of them are assholes no matter how they act?

The Oct. 24, 2005 issue of The American Conservative reports on all the money, your taxpayer money, that has been stolen by the Republicans who handled the contracting of reconstruction work to all their friends. Shows you why us liberals were so concerned about the war just being for profit, doesn't it? We know that this is what Republicans are like or to be suspicious of them. The American Conservative describes the scandal: "Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets."

According to sources cited by the Carpetbagger Report, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen’s office “opened 27 new criminal probes in the last quarter [of 2006], bringing the total number of active cases to 78. Twenty-three are awaiting prosecutorial action by the Justice Department, most of them centering on charges of bribery and kickbacks.”

When we put these Republicans in power, we got military operations, but we got them performed by the worst people to do them.