While progressives focus on Attorney General Gonzales and hatch strategies for subpoenas to get him on the record, along with other Administration figures, including Karl Rove, it is time to look at the broader picture.

Alberto Gonzales represents a pattern.  Before him there was John Ashcroft just as, after Donald Rumsfeld finally stepped down as Defense Secretary, Thomas Gates, who is carrying out the same policies in a less confrontational way, replaced him.  The list of grievances never end.  

The focus is the same.  Contact progressives and rally them around the cause of the moment targeting that specific individual.  The questions that remain are:  Who is in charge?  Does anything change if targeted individuals leave?  

The forces of Cheney and Bush continue unleashing a tenacious, full court press. A reactionary neocon agenda adhering to the Project for the New American Century guidelines will remain in place.  The foot soldiers might change but the game plan remains the same.

I can't help it.  When I see a headline quoting Gates, I immediately assume they're quoting Bill Gates.  It's a reasonable mistake.  Bill Gates is a successful entrepreneur with a grand vision to change the world and improve the lives of future generations.  He's worth quoting.  When Gates talks, people listen.

Of course, I lose interest once I get past the headlines and it turns out they are quoting Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's replacement.  He is just the latest in a long line of sock puppets on TV since Shari Lewis first stuck her hand up Lambchop's ass and made her dance.

Now that anyone with any brains has tuned out everything this administration says in defense of Mr. Bush's War, I'm sure the bozo's left on the bus are constantly looking for new ways to catapault the propaganda.  After his recent press conference, it's clear the only thing Gates has going for him is his name.  It buys them a brief window of confusion to get people's attention one more time.  Trading on confusion to borrow credibility when you have none left is an old parlor trick, but it works.  Don't take my word for it.  Ask Frank Luntz...

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Typically, I believe in setting ambitious progressive goals and pursuing them with patient deliberation. There is an ebb and flow to public perception, debate and popular will. The ideal approach is to build coalitions and let policy ideas percolate through the prism of debate. We don't have that luxury now.

Iraq continues to burn, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and America is perceived as a rudderless giant. Under the Bush regime America is weak and immoral. That is a recipe for calamity. Triangulation and splitting hairs is not an option. Our national security is under the command and control of a sixty-year old adolescent (Bush), a feculent viceroy (Dick Cheney), an inept bureaucrat (Condi Rice) and a scandalous Washington retread (Robert Gates on December 18th).