July 29, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FRESNO'S AGGRESSIVE DRIVERS
It may not be specifically politically related, but I wanted to comment briefly on the aggressive, moronic drivers I see in Fresno now. It's becoming difficult to drive in Fresno without at least one moron, usually driving a huge SUV or pickup, riding my car's rear bumper. I've had occasions when the driver behind me has moved within inches of my car, deliberately and provocatively, committing an act of aggression. I'm driving the speed limit. I haven't done anything to these people. But they are playing a form of Russian roulette that puts my life in danger. I know I'm not the only one because I've seen recent letters to the editor in The Fresno Bee from other people dealing with these creeps. Maybe penalties for rear end collisions due to aggressive tailgating should be increased. Maybe it should be classified as attempted murder because it's the use of a big machine to endanger the life of another person. A few years in prison would get these creeps off the streets for a while.
BUSH FOLLOWING GRANDPA'S FOOTSTEPS
You don't get taught in history class that there were plans for a right wing coup to overthrow the United States government in 1933. Many big businessmen, including George Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush, wanted to use World War I veterans to establish a fascist government in the United States. FDR cut a deal with the plotters not to prosecute them for treason in return for their support of the New Deal. As this article points out, George W. Bush has done his grandpappy proud in his transfer of wealth to the very rich, the prosecution of an immoral war, and assault on the Constitution and civil liberties. The article by David Swanson is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.
Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
July 26, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
POLITICS ON A GUT LEVEL
Republicans have achieved electoral success down through the years by appealing to emotional issues. In the 1950's they raised the specter of Communist domination. Richard Nixon crafted the "Southern strategy" that was designed to siphon off voters from Democrats because of the integration issue. In recent years there has been the abortion debate, school prayer, guns, gay rights, and terrorism. Republicans have had no ethnical standards in their attacks as we saw in the "Swift boating" of John Kerry in 2004. But it is possible to appeal on a gut level and be truthful and ethical. That's the subject of this column by Dick Polman is at www.projo.com:
One of the NIE summaries was entitled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West.” And 11 days ago, a counterterrorism official familiar with the NIE document told the Associated Press that al-Qaida is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001.”
Yet, in response, Democrats have barely registered a pulse. None of the ’08 candidates, or national party leaders, or the congressional leaders, have gone for the gut GOP-style, with something like this:
Grainy slow-motion footage of Osama bin Laden and activity at his training camps. Cue ominous music.
“Six years after Sept. 11, this man still roams free — thanks to George W. Bush and his Republican allies. They promised they would be tough. They promised to protect us here at home. But instead they took their eye off the ball, spending $2 billion a week in a futile war half a world away from our real enemy, imperiling our brave servicemen and women, and emboldening those who would come here to kill us. America can no longer afford the party of weakness. Vote Democratic, as if your life depended on it.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
POLITICS ON A GUT LEVEL
Republicans have achieved electoral success down through the years by appealing to emotional issues. In the 1950's they raised the specter of Communist domination. Richard Nixon crafted the "Southern strategy" that was designed to siphon off voters from Democrats because of the integration issue. In recent years there has been the abortion debate, school prayer, guns, gay rights, and terrorism. Republicans have had no ethnical standards in their attacks as we saw in the "Swift boating" of John Kerry in 2004. But it is possible to appeal on a gut level and be truthful and ethical. That's the subject of this column by Dick Polman is at www.projo.com:
One of the NIE summaries was entitled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West.” And 11 days ago, a counterterrorism official familiar with the NIE document told the Associated Press that al-Qaida is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001.”
Yet, in response, Democrats have barely registered a pulse. None of the ’08 candidates, or national party leaders, or the congressional leaders, have gone for the gut GOP-style, with something like this:
Grainy slow-motion footage of Osama bin Laden and activity at his training camps. Cue ominous music.
“Six years after Sept. 11, this man still roams free — thanks to George W. Bush and his Republican allies. They promised they would be tough. They promised to protect us here at home. But instead they took their eye off the ball, spending $2 billion a week in a futile war half a world away from our real enemy, imperiling our brave servicemen and women, and emboldening those who would come here to kill us. America can no longer afford the party of weakness. Vote Democratic, as if your life depended on it.”
Friday, July 27, 2007
July 27, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUILDING A DICTATORSHIP
When you look at the whole pattern of behavior by the Bush administration you have to conclude the groundwork has been laid to create a military dictatorship within the United States. For starters, Bush considers the United States to be a "battlefield" in the "war on terror." That means he could declare martial law. There has been a massive effort to spy on Americans and to build detention centers that could hold as many as 400,000 people. Attempts to subvert the Constitution have been unending, everything from invalidating habeas corpus to disregarding Posse Comitatus. It's not only Bush we have to worry about because the framework will there for the next president. This article by Dave Lindorff is at www.commondreams.org:
The first step, or course, was the first Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used to claim‹improperly, but so what? ‹that the whole world, including the US, is a battlefield in a so-called ³War² on Terror, and that he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress. As constitutional scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes, that one claim, that the US is itself a battlefield, is enough to allow this or some future president to declare martial law, ³since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All he¹d need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside the U.S.²
The 2001 AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the Bill of Rights. Around the same time, the president began a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was and remains a program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and at the administration¹s political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would never have raised no objections to spying on potential terrorists. (And it, and other government spying programs, have resulted in the government¹s having a list now of some 325,000 ³suspected terrorists²!)
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUILDING A DICTATORSHIP
When you look at the whole pattern of behavior by the Bush administration you have to conclude the groundwork has been laid to create a military dictatorship within the United States. For starters, Bush considers the United States to be a "battlefield" in the "war on terror." That means he could declare martial law. There has been a massive effort to spy on Americans and to build detention centers that could hold as many as 400,000 people. Attempts to subvert the Constitution have been unending, everything from invalidating habeas corpus to disregarding Posse Comitatus. It's not only Bush we have to worry about because the framework will there for the next president. This article by Dave Lindorff is at www.commondreams.org:
The first step, or course, was the first Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used to claim‹improperly, but so what? ‹that the whole world, including the US, is a battlefield in a so-called ³War² on Terror, and that he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress. As constitutional scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes, that one claim, that the US is itself a battlefield, is enough to allow this or some future president to declare martial law, ³since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All he¹d need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside the U.S.²
The 2001 AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the Bill of Rights. Around the same time, the president began a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was and remains a program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and at the administration¹s political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would never have raised no objections to spying on potential terrorists. (And it, and other government spying programs, have resulted in the government¹s having a list now of some 325,000 ³suspected terrorists²!)
Thursday, July 26, 2007
July 26, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE AWFUL REPUBLICAN PARTY
Sometimes you can be defined by you do. You can also be defined by what you don't do. The Republican party, as we know, is in favor of destroying the middle class, doesn't care about the environment, has no regard for the Constitution, is racist to its core, homophobic, anti-woman, religiously hypocritical, warmongering, and indifferent to the needs of ordinary Americans. They've shown a side of their party in what they don't do in the failure to support investigating a thug like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. This article by R. J. Eskow is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Impeachment of the entire GOP may sound like a partisan suggestion meant to protect the Democrats. Actually, rebuilding the Republican Party from the ground up may be the only way to save the two-party system (though many of us feel that it's in need of serious overhaul.) Unless the Republican Party is restructured, our only options may be one-party rule or permanent political paralysis.
How does a President with 25% approval ratings continue a war that has 30% approval ratings? How does a deceptive Attorney General keep his job? We've learned lately that some things are surprisingly easy, if people are shameless and utterly cynical -- and if their own party isn't willing to confront them.
Our political system favors the two leading parties. In return, each should show that system its allegiance, and should uphold and obey its laws. If it does not, it should lose its privileged position in our electoral process.
I don't say this out of hostility toward the GOP as it once was. As a Democrat, I was happy to work for the Republican Administration of Bush I as a contractor. I represented the country, and by inference the Administration, in a number of international delegations. I was proud to do so.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE AWFUL REPUBLICAN PARTY
Sometimes you can be defined by you do. You can also be defined by what you don't do. The Republican party, as we know, is in favor of destroying the middle class, doesn't care about the environment, has no regard for the Constitution, is racist to its core, homophobic, anti-woman, religiously hypocritical, warmongering, and indifferent to the needs of ordinary Americans. They've shown a side of their party in what they don't do in the failure to support investigating a thug like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. This article by R. J. Eskow is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Impeachment of the entire GOP may sound like a partisan suggestion meant to protect the Democrats. Actually, rebuilding the Republican Party from the ground up may be the only way to save the two-party system (though many of us feel that it's in need of serious overhaul.) Unless the Republican Party is restructured, our only options may be one-party rule or permanent political paralysis.
How does a President with 25% approval ratings continue a war that has 30% approval ratings? How does a deceptive Attorney General keep his job? We've learned lately that some things are surprisingly easy, if people are shameless and utterly cynical -- and if their own party isn't willing to confront them.
Our political system favors the two leading parties. In return, each should show that system its allegiance, and should uphold and obey its laws. If it does not, it should lose its privileged position in our electoral process.
I don't say this out of hostility toward the GOP as it once was. As a Democrat, I was happy to work for the Republican Administration of Bush I as a contractor. I represented the country, and by inference the Administration, in a number of international delegations. I was proud to do so.
Monday, July 23, 2007
July 23, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
OVER 3,000 IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES
I miss Jimmy Breslin's columns since he went into semi-retirement. His passion and his sense of justice are important. In this column he talks about the death of a young soldier. He enlisted at age 17 1/2 and went to war in Iraq. Now he's dead like over 3,000 other Americans in a war that Bush lied us into. Every one of those unnecessary deaths should be an impeachable offense. The column by Jimmy Breslin is at www.commondreams.org:
As I am walking in Rosedale, on these streets sparkling with sun, I remember the places I have been in the cold rain for the deaths of our young in this war. Rosedale now, Washington Heights before, and the South Bronx, and Bay Shore and Hauppauge and too many other places around here.
And in Washington we had this Bush, and it is implausible to have anyone who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He sure doesn’t mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the other night, Bill Moyers said he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the White House staff saying that she didn’t have to talk to a congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. “I took an oath to uphold the president,” she said.
That president had been in charge of a government that kidnapped, tortured, lied, intercepted mail and calls, all in the name of opposing people who are willing to kill themselves right in front of you. You have to get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave speaks out that this is an impeachable offense.
A LOOK AT "RICHISTAN"
We've had more than 20 years of trickle down economics and it's abundantly clear that nothing trickles down except misery and inequality. We have a record number of billionaires and millionaires in the United States while the middle class withers away. The attitude of right-wingers is very much like the quote attributed to Marie Antionette about the poor "eating cake." The kind of designed and inexcusable inequality we see now will tear our society apart. This article by Paul Harris is at observer.guardian.co.uk:
America's super-rich have returned to the days of the Roaring Twenties. As the rest of the country struggles to get by, a huge bubble of multi-millionaires lives almost in a parallel world. The rich now live in their own world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and their own banks. They even travel apart - creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts. Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it 'Richistan'. There every dream can come true. But for the American Dream itself - which promises everyone can join the elite - the emergence of Richistan is a mixed blessing. 'We in America are heading towards 'developing nation' levels of inequality. We would become like Brazil. What does that say about us? What does that say about America?' Frank said.
In 1985 there were just 13 US billionaires. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005 the US saw 227,000 new millionaires being created. One survey showed that the wealth of all US millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the GDPs of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the EU combined.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
OVER 3,000 IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES
I miss Jimmy Breslin's columns since he went into semi-retirement. His passion and his sense of justice are important. In this column he talks about the death of a young soldier. He enlisted at age 17 1/2 and went to war in Iraq. Now he's dead like over 3,000 other Americans in a war that Bush lied us into. Every one of those unnecessary deaths should be an impeachable offense. The column by Jimmy Breslin is at www.commondreams.org:
As I am walking in Rosedale, on these streets sparkling with sun, I remember the places I have been in the cold rain for the deaths of our young in this war. Rosedale now, Washington Heights before, and the South Bronx, and Bay Shore and Hauppauge and too many other places around here.
And in Washington we had this Bush, and it is implausible to have anyone who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He sure doesn’t mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the other night, Bill Moyers said he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the White House staff saying that she didn’t have to talk to a congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. “I took an oath to uphold the president,” she said.
That president had been in charge of a government that kidnapped, tortured, lied, intercepted mail and calls, all in the name of opposing people who are willing to kill themselves right in front of you. You have to get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave speaks out that this is an impeachable offense.
A LOOK AT "RICHISTAN"
We've had more than 20 years of trickle down economics and it's abundantly clear that nothing trickles down except misery and inequality. We have a record number of billionaires and millionaires in the United States while the middle class withers away. The attitude of right-wingers is very much like the quote attributed to Marie Antionette about the poor "eating cake." The kind of designed and inexcusable inequality we see now will tear our society apart. This article by Paul Harris is at observer.guardian.co.uk:
America's super-rich have returned to the days of the Roaring Twenties. As the rest of the country struggles to get by, a huge bubble of multi-millionaires lives almost in a parallel world. The rich now live in their own world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and their own banks. They even travel apart - creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts. Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it 'Richistan'. There every dream can come true. But for the American Dream itself - which promises everyone can join the elite - the emergence of Richistan is a mixed blessing. 'We in America are heading towards 'developing nation' levels of inequality. We would become like Brazil. What does that say about us? What does that say about America?' Frank said.
In 1985 there were just 13 US billionaires. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005 the US saw 227,000 new millionaires being created. One survey showed that the wealth of all US millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the GDPs of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the EU combined.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
July 22, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BOSTON GLOBE: BUSH FOREIGN POLICY A DISASTER
Lord, it took a while, but the major media are finally acknowledging what many of us knew years ago: that George W. Bush has been a disaster on the international stage. It's not only that he has squandered U. S. lives and U. S. resources, or that he has made generations of enemies; he has committed war crimes. When you look at the record of torture, the massaged intelligence and outright lies, and the horrendous loss of innocent life in Iraq I don't think you can reach any other conclusion. Bush and Cheney are war criminals. This editorial is at www.boston.com:
Bush called for a humble foreign policy as a candidate. But he and his advisers -- especially Vice President Dick Cheney -- believed from the start that America was so much stronger than all possible competitors that it need not be constrained from acting unilaterally whenever it saw the need. Bush has broken with predecessors of both parties, who sought security in strong alliances, support for the United Nations, diplomatic engagement with dangerous rivals, and respect for international treaties. And when deciding on fateful policies, Bush has often disdained to take into account the cultural and historical conditions specific to key countries.
In practice, that attitude has resulted in one calamity after another: the breakout of Iranian influence, unnecessary tensions with Russia, Bush's refusal to demand a quick halt to last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah, US disavowal of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto protocol, and six years of declining to stem the tide of extremism by actively seeking to broker a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians.
Clearly Iraq is Bush's greatest failure. Whether the many-sided conflicts raging there are the inevitable consequence of the US invasion or whether they stem from incoherent post-invasion policies, the result is the same: Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites are slaughtering each other. Al Qaeda in Iraq, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden's gang, is sending suicide bombers to blow up mosques and markets, police stations, and US vehicles. With jihadist partners, the group has declared an Islamic State of Iraq in the west of the country. Disparate Shi'ite militias, each with its own source of Iranian backing, are killing Sunnis and Americans and fighting each other for local dominance.
IRAQ IS BUSH'S FAULT
We had the extraordinary spectacle of an undersecretary of defense criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, suggesting the Senator's criticisms of the Iraq war were aiding the enemy. I have little doubt the attack on Senator Clinton emanated from the White House or from Dick Cheney. The greatest enabler of the enemy has been the Bush administration, who started this unnecessary war, and who have bungled everything since. Of course, the defense profiteers are happy. This commentary from Keith Olbermann is at www.truthout.org:
The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place - the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process - that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The criminal lack of planning for the war - the total "jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly" tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein - that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The utter, blinkered idiocy of "staying the course," of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed - the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake - that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total "Alice Through the Looking Glass" quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida - it isn't Mr. Bush's fault!
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BOSTON GLOBE: BUSH FOREIGN POLICY A DISASTER
Lord, it took a while, but the major media are finally acknowledging what many of us knew years ago: that George W. Bush has been a disaster on the international stage. It's not only that he has squandered U. S. lives and U. S. resources, or that he has made generations of enemies; he has committed war crimes. When you look at the record of torture, the massaged intelligence and outright lies, and the horrendous loss of innocent life in Iraq I don't think you can reach any other conclusion. Bush and Cheney are war criminals. This editorial is at www.boston.com:
Bush called for a humble foreign policy as a candidate. But he and his advisers -- especially Vice President Dick Cheney -- believed from the start that America was so much stronger than all possible competitors that it need not be constrained from acting unilaterally whenever it saw the need. Bush has broken with predecessors of both parties, who sought security in strong alliances, support for the United Nations, diplomatic engagement with dangerous rivals, and respect for international treaties. And when deciding on fateful policies, Bush has often disdained to take into account the cultural and historical conditions specific to key countries.
In practice, that attitude has resulted in one calamity after another: the breakout of Iranian influence, unnecessary tensions with Russia, Bush's refusal to demand a quick halt to last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah, US disavowal of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto protocol, and six years of declining to stem the tide of extremism by actively seeking to broker a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians.
Clearly Iraq is Bush's greatest failure. Whether the many-sided conflicts raging there are the inevitable consequence of the US invasion or whether they stem from incoherent post-invasion policies, the result is the same: Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites are slaughtering each other. Al Qaeda in Iraq, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden's gang, is sending suicide bombers to blow up mosques and markets, police stations, and US vehicles. With jihadist partners, the group has declared an Islamic State of Iraq in the west of the country. Disparate Shi'ite militias, each with its own source of Iranian backing, are killing Sunnis and Americans and fighting each other for local dominance.
IRAQ IS BUSH'S FAULT
We had the extraordinary spectacle of an undersecretary of defense criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, suggesting the Senator's criticisms of the Iraq war were aiding the enemy. I have little doubt the attack on Senator Clinton emanated from the White House or from Dick Cheney. The greatest enabler of the enemy has been the Bush administration, who started this unnecessary war, and who have bungled everything since. Of course, the defense profiteers are happy. This commentary from Keith Olbermann is at www.truthout.org:
The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place - the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process - that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The criminal lack of planning for the war - the total "jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly" tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein - that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The utter, blinkered idiocy of "staying the course," of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed - the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake - that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.
The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total "Alice Through the Looking Glass" quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida - it isn't Mr. Bush's fault!
Saturday, July 21, 2007
July 21, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THINGS ARE CRUMBLING EVERYWHERE
I try to be an optimist. I really do. But it's getting very difficult. Everywhere you look now you see rot and decay. Our government is a snakepit of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. This is at a time when we need government to be at its best. We're mired in a war in Iraq that will be a disaster whether we stay or whether we go. The global climate is changing despite denials from the crowd that supports our corrupt government. Even our infrastructure, things like roads, bridges, water systems, and sewer systems is decrepit. This article by David B. Caruso is at www.guardian.co.uk:
The steam conduit that exploded beneath a Manhattan street at the height of rush hour Wednesday, just a block from Grand Central Terminal, was laid when Calvin Coolidge was president, and was part of a system that began providing energy to city buildings in 1882.
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the explosion, but some experts said the age of the city's infrastructure was a possible factor. Pipes don't last forever.
``This may be a warning sign for this very old network of pipe that we have,'' said Anil Agrawal, a professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. ``We should not be looking at this incident as an isolated one.''
From Boston to Los Angeles, a number of American cities are entering a middle age of sorts, and the infrastructure propping them up is showing signs of strain.
FRESNO BEE OUTSOURCES JOBS
The Fresno Bee is sending jobs to India. Globalization comes home for seven workers, who will lose their jobs. Again I have to ask why global capitalism is such a good thing. The consequences are outsourced jobs and a lower standard of living for American workers. It's ultimately a form of cannibalizing our economy. When the majority of us don't have money to buy goods and services because we don't make any money, what then? This article is at www.fresnobee.com:
The Fresno Bee will outsource some advertising production work to India, the newspaper said Tuesday.
Seven of 31 workers in The Bee's advertising design department will lose their jobs, said Ken Hatfield, The Bee's vice president of communications and public affairs.
Workers who cannot be placed in other jobs will be offered severance pay, extended health insurance and outplacement help.
"This is a difficult decision for the newspaper to make, but The Fresno Bee needs to operate more efficiently," Hatfield said.
Beginning in September, Indian workers for San Jose-based Express KCS will take over the work of affected employees.
Ray Steele, publisher and president of The Fresno Bee, said in a statement that the move is meant to "serve our advertising customers more effectively, efficiently and economically while focusing on our core business: producing relevant and compelling news and advertising information in our newspaper and on our Web sites."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THINGS ARE CRUMBLING EVERYWHERE
I try to be an optimist. I really do. But it's getting very difficult. Everywhere you look now you see rot and decay. Our government is a snakepit of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. This is at a time when we need government to be at its best. We're mired in a war in Iraq that will be a disaster whether we stay or whether we go. The global climate is changing despite denials from the crowd that supports our corrupt government. Even our infrastructure, things like roads, bridges, water systems, and sewer systems is decrepit. This article by David B. Caruso is at www.guardian.co.uk:
The steam conduit that exploded beneath a Manhattan street at the height of rush hour Wednesday, just a block from Grand Central Terminal, was laid when Calvin Coolidge was president, and was part of a system that began providing energy to city buildings in 1882.
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the explosion, but some experts said the age of the city's infrastructure was a possible factor. Pipes don't last forever.
``This may be a warning sign for this very old network of pipe that we have,'' said Anil Agrawal, a professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. ``We should not be looking at this incident as an isolated one.''
From Boston to Los Angeles, a number of American cities are entering a middle age of sorts, and the infrastructure propping them up is showing signs of strain.
FRESNO BEE OUTSOURCES JOBS
The Fresno Bee is sending jobs to India. Globalization comes home for seven workers, who will lose their jobs. Again I have to ask why global capitalism is such a good thing. The consequences are outsourced jobs and a lower standard of living for American workers. It's ultimately a form of cannibalizing our economy. When the majority of us don't have money to buy goods and services because we don't make any money, what then? This article is at www.fresnobee.com:
The Fresno Bee will outsource some advertising production work to India, the newspaper said Tuesday.
Seven of 31 workers in The Bee's advertising design department will lose their jobs, said Ken Hatfield, The Bee's vice president of communications and public affairs.
Workers who cannot be placed in other jobs will be offered severance pay, extended health insurance and outplacement help.
"This is a difficult decision for the newspaper to make, but The Fresno Bee needs to operate more efficiently," Hatfield said.
Beginning in September, Indian workers for San Jose-based Express KCS will take over the work of affected employees.
Ray Steele, publisher and president of The Fresno Bee, said in a statement that the move is meant to "serve our advertising customers more effectively, efficiently and economically while focusing on our core business: producing relevant and compelling news and advertising information in our newspaper and on our Web sites."
Thursday, July 19, 2007
July 19, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LESSONS FROM BARBARA TUCHMAN
The late Barbara Tuchman was a preeminent historian. JFK greatly respected her book The Guns of August that detailed the misadventures and failed policies that got the world into World War I. She also wrote a book talking about the mistakes that got us into Vietnam. What she wrote would apply just as well to the folly in Iraq. This column by Ray McGovern is at www.consortiumnews.com:
In her book, Tuchman emphasized that courtiers can reinforce the ruler’s certitude, as was the case with Philip, and is the now the case with George.
And if the courtiers are really good at it, they are awarded the Medal of Freedom—as was the case with former CIA director George Tenet, former Army General Tommy Franks, and former U.S. proconsul in Baghdad Paul Bremer—each of whom richly deserved a Heck of a job, Brownie-type salute.
As Tuchman pointed out: “Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity becomes an effort to justify it...Adjustment is painful. For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered the policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better...not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information ‘cognitive dissonance,’ an academic disguise for ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts.’”
Bush’s genius is that he knows this instinctively—without having to take Tuchman’s book to read in Crawford. And, by all signs, he likes it that way. That is why he has assembled a truly amazing array of sycophants around him, whose only pedigree is loyalty to George W. Bush.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LESSONS FROM BARBARA TUCHMAN
The late Barbara Tuchman was a preeminent historian. JFK greatly respected her book The Guns of August that detailed the misadventures and failed policies that got the world into World War I. She also wrote a book talking about the mistakes that got us into Vietnam. What she wrote would apply just as well to the folly in Iraq. This column by Ray McGovern is at www.consortiumnews.com:
In her book, Tuchman emphasized that courtiers can reinforce the ruler’s certitude, as was the case with Philip, and is the now the case with George.
And if the courtiers are really good at it, they are awarded the Medal of Freedom—as was the case with former CIA director George Tenet, former Army General Tommy Franks, and former U.S. proconsul in Baghdad Paul Bremer—each of whom richly deserved a Heck of a job, Brownie-type salute.
As Tuchman pointed out: “Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity becomes an effort to justify it...Adjustment is painful. For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered the policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better...not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information ‘cognitive dissonance,’ an academic disguise for ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts.’”
Bush’s genius is that he knows this instinctively—without having to take Tuchman’s book to read in Crawford. And, by all signs, he likes it that way. That is why he has assembled a truly amazing array of sycophants around him, whose only pedigree is loyalty to George W. Bush.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
July 18, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
TWO FOR THEM, ONE FOR ME . . . .
We hear a lot about the robust stock market. Things have got to be great in the U. S. economy if the stock market is booming, right? On the other hand, right-wingers bemoan the "entitlement crisis." We baby boomers will be retiring in a few years and the apocalypse is upon us with the payouts in social security and medicare--or so we're told. We know that right-wingers are challenged when it comes to the truth. This article by Heather Boushey and Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
What reconciles these two themes is absent from our mainstream economic discourse: we "can't afford" all sorts of programs that are clearly in the common good because most of the benefits of our growing economy have gone to a very small group of Americans, who have, in turn, seen their taxes slashed again and again in the past six years. It's a story that isn't told as often as it should in the commercial press because it's a supposedly "liberal" narrative -- never mind that über-conservative former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that there is a "really serious problem here, as I've mentioned many times … in the consequent concentration of income that is rising."
Saying that the majority of the country's economic gains in recent years have gone to the top one percent of the income ladder understates the trend. You have to cut the pie into even smaller slices to get the full picture. Because while the bottom half of the top one percent of the income distribution have done far better than the average wage slaves, it is a smaller slice still -- the top .01 percent -- that has grabbed most of the gains--seeing an impressive 250 percent increase in income between 1973 and 2005 -- from an economy that's grown by 160 percent.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
TWO FOR THEM, ONE FOR ME . . . .
We hear a lot about the robust stock market. Things have got to be great in the U. S. economy if the stock market is booming, right? On the other hand, right-wingers bemoan the "entitlement crisis." We baby boomers will be retiring in a few years and the apocalypse is upon us with the payouts in social security and medicare--or so we're told. We know that right-wingers are challenged when it comes to the truth. This article by Heather Boushey and Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
What reconciles these two themes is absent from our mainstream economic discourse: we "can't afford" all sorts of programs that are clearly in the common good because most of the benefits of our growing economy have gone to a very small group of Americans, who have, in turn, seen their taxes slashed again and again in the past six years. It's a story that isn't told as often as it should in the commercial press because it's a supposedly "liberal" narrative -- never mind that über-conservative former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that there is a "really serious problem here, as I've mentioned many times … in the consequent concentration of income that is rising."
Saying that the majority of the country's economic gains in recent years have gone to the top one percent of the income ladder understates the trend. You have to cut the pie into even smaller slices to get the full picture. Because while the bottom half of the top one percent of the income distribution have done far better than the average wage slaves, it is a smaller slice still -- the top .01 percent -- that has grabbed most of the gains--seeing an impressive 250 percent increase in income between 1973 and 2005 -- from an economy that's grown by 160 percent.
Monday, July 16, 2007
July 16, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CALLOUS AND CLUELESS
George W. Bush says the health care system in the United States is fine. If you get sick, you just go to the emergency room. Life in Bush's world is so simple, isn't it? It's the same kind of "logic" that says if you're poor it's your own fault. Or if you're unemployed you just have to look at the classified ads in the newspaper. Before morons like Bush make these kind of summary pronouncements I wish they actually had to live like ordinary people for a while. Let them do an experiment like working for minimum wage without health insurance and see how well they survive. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.commondreams.org:
Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
This is what you might call callousness with consequences. The White House has announced that Mr. Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children. After all, it’s not as if those kids really need insurance - they can just go to emergency rooms, right?
O.K., it’s not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and large, opponents of universal health care paint a glowing portrait of the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.
The claim that the uninsured can get all the care they need in emergency rooms is just the beginning. Beyond that is the myth that Americans who are lucky enough to have insurance never face long waits for medical care.
Actually, the persistence of that myth puzzles me. I can understand how people like Mr. Bush or Fred Thompson, who declared recently that “the poorest Americans are getting far better service” than Canadians or the British, can wave away the desperation of uninsured Americans, who are often poor and voiceless. But how can they get away with pretending that insured Americans always get prompt care, when most of us can testify otherwise?
MEDIA FLUFF
In what is supposed to pass for serious political commentary people like Chris Matthews gush over the appearance of Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Never mind their positions on the issues or their leadership ability--it's "looking presidential" that counts. It's the same kind of nonsense the media have used since the days of Reagan. Ronnie "looked presidential" and read his lines well. In 1988 we got lots of stuff about the flag salute and Willie Horton, but nothing seriously involving the presidency. In 2000 we heard about Al Gore's earth tones and that Bush was the kind of guy you'd have a beer with. People in the media who promote this stuff are a disgrace. This article by J. Goodrich is at www.prospect.org:
What is new, of course, is the entry of a female candidate into the presidential race. This may be the reason why Greenwald notes that the attacks against the Democratic party have become more explicit and upfront. The battles are more urgent, and not only for Chris Matthews, who recently ran a poll about whether the next First Lady should resemble Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton. Doing this when the race includes a female candidate smelled a little panicky to me, but Matthews topped that in a later program when he delved into the question of women's ability to be war leaders. When a discussant noted that Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir had both performed in that role, Matthews stated: "But we've got Patton and John Wayne on our side." Our side? Perhaps Chris Matthews should be treated as a separate category in this evaluation of pundit opinions.
Even ignoring Matthews, many pundits do seem to equate "presidential" with "masculine." How would this explain the recent focus on the good looks and fatherly demeanor of the three Republican candidates most often praised by the pundits? Are the approving comments aimed at the female voters in the audience, intended to draw their gaze to the attractive features of Giuliani, Romney or Thompson? Or are the pundits expressing their own emotional satisfaction with these candidates' manly aspects?
I'm not sure. But I found it curious that the Republican columnist Peggy Noonan chose to enter the debate by telling us that Hillary Clinton does not have to prove her manly attributes but her womanly ones. Funny how "masculine" qualities are deemed absolutely necessary to be president -- until the candidate is a woman. Then those same qualities are a liability.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CALLOUS AND CLUELESS
George W. Bush says the health care system in the United States is fine. If you get sick, you just go to the emergency room. Life in Bush's world is so simple, isn't it? It's the same kind of "logic" that says if you're poor it's your own fault. Or if you're unemployed you just have to look at the classified ads in the newspaper. Before morons like Bush make these kind of summary pronouncements I wish they actually had to live like ordinary people for a while. Let them do an experiment like working for minimum wage without health insurance and see how well they survive. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.commondreams.org:
Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
This is what you might call callousness with consequences. The White House has announced that Mr. Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children. After all, it’s not as if those kids really need insurance - they can just go to emergency rooms, right?
O.K., it’s not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and large, opponents of universal health care paint a glowing portrait of the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.
The claim that the uninsured can get all the care they need in emergency rooms is just the beginning. Beyond that is the myth that Americans who are lucky enough to have insurance never face long waits for medical care.
Actually, the persistence of that myth puzzles me. I can understand how people like Mr. Bush or Fred Thompson, who declared recently that “the poorest Americans are getting far better service” than Canadians or the British, can wave away the desperation of uninsured Americans, who are often poor and voiceless. But how can they get away with pretending that insured Americans always get prompt care, when most of us can testify otherwise?
MEDIA FLUFF
In what is supposed to pass for serious political commentary people like Chris Matthews gush over the appearance of Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Never mind their positions on the issues or their leadership ability--it's "looking presidential" that counts. It's the same kind of nonsense the media have used since the days of Reagan. Ronnie "looked presidential" and read his lines well. In 1988 we got lots of stuff about the flag salute and Willie Horton, but nothing seriously involving the presidency. In 2000 we heard about Al Gore's earth tones and that Bush was the kind of guy you'd have a beer with. People in the media who promote this stuff are a disgrace. This article by J. Goodrich is at www.prospect.org:
What is new, of course, is the entry of a female candidate into the presidential race. This may be the reason why Greenwald notes that the attacks against the Democratic party have become more explicit and upfront. The battles are more urgent, and not only for Chris Matthews, who recently ran a poll about whether the next First Lady should resemble Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton. Doing this when the race includes a female candidate smelled a little panicky to me, but Matthews topped that in a later program when he delved into the question of women's ability to be war leaders. When a discussant noted that Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir had both performed in that role, Matthews stated: "But we've got Patton and John Wayne on our side." Our side? Perhaps Chris Matthews should be treated as a separate category in this evaluation of pundit opinions.
Even ignoring Matthews, many pundits do seem to equate "presidential" with "masculine." How would this explain the recent focus on the good looks and fatherly demeanor of the three Republican candidates most often praised by the pundits? Are the approving comments aimed at the female voters in the audience, intended to draw their gaze to the attractive features of Giuliani, Romney or Thompson? Or are the pundits expressing their own emotional satisfaction with these candidates' manly aspects?
I'm not sure. But I found it curious that the Republican columnist Peggy Noonan chose to enter the debate by telling us that Hillary Clinton does not have to prove her manly attributes but her womanly ones. Funny how "masculine" qualities are deemed absolutely necessary to be president -- until the candidate is a woman. Then those same qualities are a liability.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
July 15, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE GROPER IS NO ACTION HERO
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is showing his Republican colors again these days. The Groper was sounding more progressive for a while, talking about doing something serious about global climate change and other issues, but now he's more into Republican fund raisers. This article by Evan Halper is at www.latimes.com:
The state budget is overdue. California's crisis-plagued prison system is on the brink of a federal takeover. The agency charged with putting tough new global warming regulations into effect is in turmoil.
Nonetheless, last week closed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attention thousands of miles east as he ventured to Florida for a turn before the cameras and a $25,000-per-table Republican party fundraiser.
To Capitol insiders, the trip was the latest troubling evidence that despite the many big issues before him, the governor's interest in the nuts and bolts of governing has ebbed. Splashy announcements remain his trademark, but after the cameras pack up, Schwarzenegger has often not followed through. As a result, key parts of his agenda are foundering.
T. E. LAWRENCE ON THE MIDDLE EAST
T. E. Lawrence, hero of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, lived, worked, and fought with Arabs against the Turks early in the twentieth century. Lawrence was an astute observer of Arab culture and his observations ring true today. This article by Robert Fisk is at www.commondreams.org:
Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for “Guerrilla” in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE’s remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.
Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): “… suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour…”
How typical of Lawrence to use the horror of gas warfare as a metaphor for insurgency. To control the land they occupied, he continued, the Turks “would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE GROPER IS NO ACTION HERO
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is showing his Republican colors again these days. The Groper was sounding more progressive for a while, talking about doing something serious about global climate change and other issues, but now he's more into Republican fund raisers. This article by Evan Halper is at www.latimes.com:
The state budget is overdue. California's crisis-plagued prison system is on the brink of a federal takeover. The agency charged with putting tough new global warming regulations into effect is in turmoil.
Nonetheless, last week closed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attention thousands of miles east as he ventured to Florida for a turn before the cameras and a $25,000-per-table Republican party fundraiser.
To Capitol insiders, the trip was the latest troubling evidence that despite the many big issues before him, the governor's interest in the nuts and bolts of governing has ebbed. Splashy announcements remain his trademark, but after the cameras pack up, Schwarzenegger has often not followed through. As a result, key parts of his agenda are foundering.
T. E. LAWRENCE ON THE MIDDLE EAST
T. E. Lawrence, hero of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, lived, worked, and fought with Arabs against the Turks early in the twentieth century. Lawrence was an astute observer of Arab culture and his observations ring true today. This article by Robert Fisk is at www.commondreams.org:
Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for “Guerrilla” in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE’s remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.
Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): “… suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour…”
How typical of Lawrence to use the horror of gas warfare as a metaphor for insurgency. To control the land they occupied, he continued, the Turks “would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available.”
Friday, July 13, 2007
July 13, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PEGGY NOONAN'S TAKE ON BUSH
Pundit Peggy Noonan, who once wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, is a champion of all that is right-wing. But even Noonan has problems with George W. Bush. This item comes from www.motherjones.com:
Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities.
With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird.
THE DAMAGE OF THE FEW AGAINST THE MANY
As Paul Craig Roberts points out in this article, a few people have had a major impact in creating the debacle in Iraq and the Middle East. Massive power in the hands of a few unprincipled power mongers has rained death and destruction on hundreds of thousands of innocent people and weakened the national security of the United States. This commentary is at www.informationclearinghouse.com:
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the “Rapture Evangelicals,” from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military- industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive “war against terrorism.”
When the American people caught on that the “war on terror” was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime’s warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PEGGY NOONAN'S TAKE ON BUSH
Pundit Peggy Noonan, who once wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, is a champion of all that is right-wing. But even Noonan has problems with George W. Bush. This item comes from www.motherjones.com:
Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities.
With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird.
THE DAMAGE OF THE FEW AGAINST THE MANY
As Paul Craig Roberts points out in this article, a few people have had a major impact in creating the debacle in Iraq and the Middle East. Massive power in the hands of a few unprincipled power mongers has rained death and destruction on hundreds of thousands of innocent people and weakened the national security of the United States. This commentary is at www.informationclearinghouse.com:
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the “Rapture Evangelicals,” from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military- industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive “war against terrorism.”
When the American people caught on that the “war on terror” was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime’s warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
July 12, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE REALITY IN IRAQ
If you wish hard enough for something, it still doesn't necessarily happen. And so it is with the situation in Iraq. Despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration insists that things are getting better. In the meantime, our soldiers continue to get killed and maimed, Iraqi civilians continue to get killed and maimed, and our treasury gets bled dry. A new assessment from all sixteen U. S. intelligence agencies merely states what most of us can see, that it's time for the United States to get out of Iraq. This article by Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef is at www.mcclatchydc.com:
The Shiite Muslim-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has made only "halting efforts" to end the power struggle fueling the war between Iraq's religious and ethnic communities, a new U.S. intelligence report said Wednesday.
Even if the bloodletting can be contained, Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders will be "hard pressed" to reach lasting political reconciliation, the report stated.
The report, reflecting the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, cast new uncertainty about the chances of success for President Bush's plan to contain the war through the deployment of an additional 28,000 U.S. troops, mostly in and around Baghdad.
The conclusions also appeared to be bleaker than a White House assessment produced by the top U.S. officials in Baghdad, which found that Iraqi politicians have made satisfactory progress on some of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May.
The new intelligence findings were contained in a 23-page Global Security Assessment presented to the House Armed Services Committee by Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's top analytical body.
BUSH IS NO JFK
In the years since he was murdered in Dallas, there has been a lot written about President John F. Kennedy. There were initial adulatory accounts. Then there were vicious revisionist histories talking about JFK's sex life, his health, and his role as a cold warrior. A balanced recent book is David Talbot's Brothers, which shows that JFK had to contend with a hard-core right-wing establishment within the United States. Generals such as Curtis LeMay were calling for first nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. The "wisdom" of right-wingers back then might well have set events in motion to exterminate the human race. I can't imagine JFK launching a debacle like Iraq with total callousness toward the military, toward the Iraqis themselves, and toward the good of the country. This article by Andrew Greeley is at www.suntimes.com:
The warrior culture, which can make a lot of pseudo-patriotic noise, tends to be male, Southern, and never to have seen combat. In 1963 they were the ones who were denouncing President John F. Kennedy because he did not nuke them and "get it over with." He also had to fend off his own military leaders who almost started a war without his consent.
Last week's Time magazine praised Kennedy's restraint in those terrible days, for which conservatives and Republicans have always condemned him. Without perhaps knowing it explicitly, he was following the Catholic teaching on war -- only when there is absolutely no other choice. It was this long tradition of restraint, of which the missile crisis was the high point, that eventually won the Cold War, and not President Ronald Reagan's grandstanding at the Brandenburg Gate.
It was a great good fortune for this country that a man of restraint who thought war was stupid was in the Oval Office in those anxious days. It would turn out later that the Russian commanders in Cuba had been ordered to return fire if they were attacked. One shudders at the image of what the current incumbent of the Oval Office would have done if he were the "decider" then. Many Americans would have died, and many more would never have been born.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE REALITY IN IRAQ
If you wish hard enough for something, it still doesn't necessarily happen. And so it is with the situation in Iraq. Despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration insists that things are getting better. In the meantime, our soldiers continue to get killed and maimed, Iraqi civilians continue to get killed and maimed, and our treasury gets bled dry. A new assessment from all sixteen U. S. intelligence agencies merely states what most of us can see, that it's time for the United States to get out of Iraq. This article by Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef is at www.mcclatchydc.com:
The Shiite Muslim-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has made only "halting efforts" to end the power struggle fueling the war between Iraq's religious and ethnic communities, a new U.S. intelligence report said Wednesday.
Even if the bloodletting can be contained, Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders will be "hard pressed" to reach lasting political reconciliation, the report stated.
The report, reflecting the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, cast new uncertainty about the chances of success for President Bush's plan to contain the war through the deployment of an additional 28,000 U.S. troops, mostly in and around Baghdad.
The conclusions also appeared to be bleaker than a White House assessment produced by the top U.S. officials in Baghdad, which found that Iraqi politicians have made satisfactory progress on some of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May.
The new intelligence findings were contained in a 23-page Global Security Assessment presented to the House Armed Services Committee by Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's top analytical body.
BUSH IS NO JFK
In the years since he was murdered in Dallas, there has been a lot written about President John F. Kennedy. There were initial adulatory accounts. Then there were vicious revisionist histories talking about JFK's sex life, his health, and his role as a cold warrior. A balanced recent book is David Talbot's Brothers, which shows that JFK had to contend with a hard-core right-wing establishment within the United States. Generals such as Curtis LeMay were calling for first nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. The "wisdom" of right-wingers back then might well have set events in motion to exterminate the human race. I can't imagine JFK launching a debacle like Iraq with total callousness toward the military, toward the Iraqis themselves, and toward the good of the country. This article by Andrew Greeley is at www.suntimes.com:
The warrior culture, which can make a lot of pseudo-patriotic noise, tends to be male, Southern, and never to have seen combat. In 1963 they were the ones who were denouncing President John F. Kennedy because he did not nuke them and "get it over with." He also had to fend off his own military leaders who almost started a war without his consent.
Last week's Time magazine praised Kennedy's restraint in those terrible days, for which conservatives and Republicans have always condemned him. Without perhaps knowing it explicitly, he was following the Catholic teaching on war -- only when there is absolutely no other choice. It was this long tradition of restraint, of which the missile crisis was the high point, that eventually won the Cold War, and not President Ronald Reagan's grandstanding at the Brandenburg Gate.
It was a great good fortune for this country that a man of restraint who thought war was stupid was in the Oval Office in those anxious days. It would turn out later that the Russian commanders in Cuba had been ordered to return fire if they were attacked. One shudders at the image of what the current incumbent of the Oval Office would have done if he were the "decider" then. Many Americans would have died, and many more would never have been born.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
July 11, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A WELCOME CHANGE AT THE SUN-TIMES
The Chicago Sun-Times had a long history as a liberal working class paper. During the Reagan administration the paper moved to the right. Now the Sun-Times is going back to its progressive roots. It's a welcome change to have any media that represent the majority of us who aren't wealthy, who aren't part of the big business establishment, and who don't support the Bush administration. This article is from www.editorandpublisher.com:
CHICAGO The Chicago Sun-Times is turning left.
The tabloid that shifted toward political conservatism under the brief ownership of Rupert Murdoch more than two decades ago now says that it is "rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
Under marching orders from Publisher John Cruickshank and Editor in Chief Michael Cooke, new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed introduced a new Commentary section Tuesday with a promise to turn the tabloid back into the liberal-leaning paper it was for decades before the Reagan administration.
"We are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune -- that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue," Reed wrote. "We're rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
CREDIT CARD PREDATORS
Many of us are way too much in hock to credit card vultures. The legal system, especially since the passage of the new bankruptcy law, gives credit card companies a totally one-sided advantage in taking advantage of consumers. Nowadays credit card "disclosures" commonly say that the company can change the interest rate any time for any reason. If you don't read the fine print, you're in for a shock. There are a whole assortment of fees that entrap you. And the offers keep coming. This article by James Ridgeway is at www.motherjones.com:
As it stands, approximately 40 percent of American households spend more than they make each year, and the average household debt to credit cards is about $10,000. According to the Federal Reserve, consumer credit card debt in the United States totals $880 billion; this figure, adjusted to current dollars, has increased a hundred-fold in the last 40 years. These numbers, huge by any standard, represent a growing factor in the nation's questionable economic future.
Those carrying credit card debt are not limited to self-indulgent spenders: "The Plastic Safety Net," a 2005 survey of low and middle income households conducted by Demos and the Center for Responsible Lending, found that declines in public and private benefit programs—health coverage, pensions, and unemployment insurance among them—have contributed to the growth in credit card debt. For example, 29 percent of households surveyed reported that medical expenses made up a portion of their current balances.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A WELCOME CHANGE AT THE SUN-TIMES
The Chicago Sun-Times had a long history as a liberal working class paper. During the Reagan administration the paper moved to the right. Now the Sun-Times is going back to its progressive roots. It's a welcome change to have any media that represent the majority of us who aren't wealthy, who aren't part of the big business establishment, and who don't support the Bush administration. This article is from www.editorandpublisher.com:
CHICAGO The Chicago Sun-Times is turning left.
The tabloid that shifted toward political conservatism under the brief ownership of Rupert Murdoch more than two decades ago now says that it is "rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
Under marching orders from Publisher John Cruickshank and Editor in Chief Michael Cooke, new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed introduced a new Commentary section Tuesday with a promise to turn the tabloid back into the liberal-leaning paper it was for decades before the Reagan administration.
"We are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune -- that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue," Reed wrote. "We're rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
CREDIT CARD PREDATORS
Many of us are way too much in hock to credit card vultures. The legal system, especially since the passage of the new bankruptcy law, gives credit card companies a totally one-sided advantage in taking advantage of consumers. Nowadays credit card "disclosures" commonly say that the company can change the interest rate any time for any reason. If you don't read the fine print, you're in for a shock. There are a whole assortment of fees that entrap you. And the offers keep coming. This article by James Ridgeway is at www.motherjones.com:
As it stands, approximately 40 percent of American households spend more than they make each year, and the average household debt to credit cards is about $10,000. According to the Federal Reserve, consumer credit card debt in the United States totals $880 billion; this figure, adjusted to current dollars, has increased a hundred-fold in the last 40 years. These numbers, huge by any standard, represent a growing factor in the nation's questionable economic future.
Those carrying credit card debt are not limited to self-indulgent spenders: "The Plastic Safety Net," a 2005 survey of low and middle income households conducted by Demos and the Center for Responsible Lending, found that declines in public and private benefit programs—health coverage, pensions, and unemployment insurance among them—have contributed to the growth in credit card debt. For example, 29 percent of households surveyed reported that medical expenses made up a portion of their current balances.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
July 10, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FEARING FEAR ITSELF
To hear right-wing pundits tell it, there's just nothing scarier than terrorism. Since nineteen guys took some box cutters, hijacked some airplanes, and crashed into some buildings we're supposed to live in abject fear. Even more, we're supposed to accept "preemptive" war, torture, and trashing of our civil liberties. There are lots of things in the world to be a afraid of, but terrorism is pretty far down the list. This is a good commentary by Paul Campos is at www.commondreams.org:
Nothing better illustrates this than Ignatius’ claim that the British car bombing plots “remind us of our vulnerability to terrorist attack.” What they remind anyone not already in thrall to the cultural hysteria Ignatius promotes is that all the “terrorists” discovered in America over the past few years were, like the British would-be bombers, thoroughly pathetic figures, who collectively proved themselves incapable of blowing up a phone booth.
In the two hours or so I’m guessing it took Ignatius to crank out yet another 800 words of substance-free alarmism festooned with platitudes about the need for “unity,” about 350 Americans died. Since Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 14 million Americans have died.
Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn’t have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning.
In theory, most of these deaths were preventable. In practice, only some of them were preventable at anything like a reasonable cost. Here’s a question: What would be the optimal number of deaths per year in the United States caused by less-than-ideal medical care, or car crashes, or gunshot wounds, or alcohol poisoning?
I’m sure Ignatius understands why anyone who answers “zero” is saying something nonsensical. So why does he continue to write similar nonsense about terrorism?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FEARING FEAR ITSELF
To hear right-wing pundits tell it, there's just nothing scarier than terrorism. Since nineteen guys took some box cutters, hijacked some airplanes, and crashed into some buildings we're supposed to live in abject fear. Even more, we're supposed to accept "preemptive" war, torture, and trashing of our civil liberties. There are lots of things in the world to be a afraid of, but terrorism is pretty far down the list. This is a good commentary by Paul Campos is at www.commondreams.org:
Nothing better illustrates this than Ignatius’ claim that the British car bombing plots “remind us of our vulnerability to terrorist attack.” What they remind anyone not already in thrall to the cultural hysteria Ignatius promotes is that all the “terrorists” discovered in America over the past few years were, like the British would-be bombers, thoroughly pathetic figures, who collectively proved themselves incapable of blowing up a phone booth.
In the two hours or so I’m guessing it took Ignatius to crank out yet another 800 words of substance-free alarmism festooned with platitudes about the need for “unity,” about 350 Americans died. Since Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 14 million Americans have died.
Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn’t have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning.
In theory, most of these deaths were preventable. In practice, only some of them were preventable at anything like a reasonable cost. Here’s a question: What would be the optimal number of deaths per year in the United States caused by less-than-ideal medical care, or car crashes, or gunshot wounds, or alcohol poisoning?
I’m sure Ignatius understands why anyone who answers “zero” is saying something nonsensical. So why does he continue to write similar nonsense about terrorism?
Monday, July 09, 2007
July 09, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REBUTTING THE RIGHT WING PLAME SPIN
I was reading some right wing drivel in posts at The Denver Post. Since right-wingers derive their talking points from Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity we can conclude that these posts are fairly representative of right-wing spin about Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame, and Ambassador Joseph Wilson. One of the most disgusting claims is that Valerie Plame was not covert, so no harm done, right? Wrong. Even if Plame had not been covert, how was it justified for the administration to ruin her career as an act of political revenge? We know for a certainty that Bush lied in the State of the Union address about Iraq trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. Just follow the bouncing lies: Bush wanted an excuse to attack Iraq, Saddam Hussein was allegedly trying to build nuclear weapons and that gave Bush an excuse, Joseph Wilson found out that Hussein was not building weapons, and Bush wanted to discredit Wilson. This article by Clarence Page is at www.chicagotribune.com:
Time to call in the truth squad: Contrary to the drumbeat of misinformation and dis-information that you may have heard on various talk shows, Valerie Plame was a covert agent under the relevant 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert intelligence officer. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald cleared up that dispute in a memorandum during the sentencing phase of Libby's trial. "It was clear from very early in the investigation," he wrote, "that Ms. Wilson qualified under [the 1982 law] as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press." Four days later, Fitzgerald filed an "unclassified summary" of Plame's CIA employment which described her work as including "at least seven" overseas trips as chief of a unit working on Iraq weapons issues.
And, yes, Armitage did leak Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, who was the first to report it to the public. But Armitage was not the first or the only leaker. Weeks before Novak reported Plame's name in his July 14, 2003, column, Libby revealed Plame's CIA job in meetings with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller on June 23 and July 8. Novak also received confirmation of Armitage's tip from Karl Rove, Bush's senior political adviser. Rove also discussed Plame, without mentioning her name or covert status, with Matt Cooper, then of Time magazine.
But Fitzgerald's critics wish he had ended his investigation immediately after learning that Armitage was the source of one leak, Novak's. To me, that's like telling police who have busted a teenager for marijuana that they need not bother to find out who the kid's suppliers are.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REBUTTING THE RIGHT WING PLAME SPIN
I was reading some right wing drivel in posts at The Denver Post. Since right-wingers derive their talking points from Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity we can conclude that these posts are fairly representative of right-wing spin about Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame, and Ambassador Joseph Wilson. One of the most disgusting claims is that Valerie Plame was not covert, so no harm done, right? Wrong. Even if Plame had not been covert, how was it justified for the administration to ruin her career as an act of political revenge? We know for a certainty that Bush lied in the State of the Union address about Iraq trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. Just follow the bouncing lies: Bush wanted an excuse to attack Iraq, Saddam Hussein was allegedly trying to build nuclear weapons and that gave Bush an excuse, Joseph Wilson found out that Hussein was not building weapons, and Bush wanted to discredit Wilson. This article by Clarence Page is at www.chicagotribune.com:
Time to call in the truth squad: Contrary to the drumbeat of misinformation and dis-information that you may have heard on various talk shows, Valerie Plame was a covert agent under the relevant 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert intelligence officer. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald cleared up that dispute in a memorandum during the sentencing phase of Libby's trial. "It was clear from very early in the investigation," he wrote, "that Ms. Wilson qualified under [the 1982 law] as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press." Four days later, Fitzgerald filed an "unclassified summary" of Plame's CIA employment which described her work as including "at least seven" overseas trips as chief of a unit working on Iraq weapons issues.
And, yes, Armitage did leak Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, who was the first to report it to the public. But Armitage was not the first or the only leaker. Weeks before Novak reported Plame's name in his July 14, 2003, column, Libby revealed Plame's CIA job in meetings with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller on June 23 and July 8. Novak also received confirmation of Armitage's tip from Karl Rove, Bush's senior political adviser. Rove also discussed Plame, without mentioning her name or covert status, with Matt Cooper, then of Time magazine.
But Fitzgerald's critics wish he had ended his investigation immediately after learning that Armitage was the source of one leak, Novak's. To me, that's like telling police who have busted a teenager for marijuana that they need not bother to find out who the kid's suppliers are.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
July 08, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE SAME OLD EXCUSE
Since George W. Bush transparently and egregiously covered his own backside in commuting the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, conservatives have--once again--been trying to deflect attention by chanting, "Clinton did it too." Presidents have pardon powers, so Clinton was only exercising the powers granted him by the Constitution. I don't know of any convincing evidence that any Clinton pardons were made to cover up major administration crimes. And how is the fact that Clinton pardoned people in any way relevant to this disgusting favorable treatment of Libby? Does it make the treatment of Libby any less disgusting? A right-winger in The Fresno Bee mentioned a link to the Internet about the Clinton pardons. If right-wingers are so exercised about Clinton's pardons, why aren't they equally upset about the treatment of Libby? Hypocrites! This commentary by Dan Froomkin is at www.washingtonpost.com:
And furthermore, there is an ethical chasm between Clinton's pardons -- unseemly as they were -- and Bush's decision to grant clemency to someone involved in an investigation of his own White House. (See my Tuesday column, Obstruction of Justice, Continued.)
As it happens, the previous granting of clemency that is most analogous to what Bush did dates back neither to the Clinton or even the Nixon era, but to Bush's father's presidency.
In 1992, on the eve of his last Christmas in the White House, George H.W. Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair, in which he himself was also loosely implicated.
REALITY VS. RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY
In the environs of right-wing fantasy land there is no bad tax cut for the wealthy, even if revenues needed for basic things like infrastructure aren't available. In the fantasy land trickle down economics is a good thing. In the real world it makes the already rich even more obscenely wealthy and deprives people not so fortunate of needed government services. In right-wing fantasy land big business is good and will police itself without the interference of government regulation. In the real world big business looks after itself and doesn't care in the least about the public good. This commentary by David Sirota looks at how the real world smacks right-wing ideologues in the face when they have to come back down to earth and deal with reality. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In 2005, I wrote a national op-ed for Knight Ridder newspapers that showed how when right-wing congressional politicians return home as governors from the fantasy land known as Washington, D.C., they often drop their conservative economic elitism in the face of reality. Last week, I wrote that the conservative movement in the Rocky Mountain West is seeing this same economic elitism decline as an effective political cudgel, and not surprisingly, many Rocky Mountain states are watching their Republican parties descend into disrepair (here in Colorado, for instance, the GOP has resorted to hiring as party chairman the same supposed "guru" who most recently helped commandeer his boss George Allen from leading presidential candidate to historical cautionary tale). Now, up in Idaho, we see the convergence of both of these phenomena, as Gov. Butch Otter (R) has become yet another conservative Washington-insider-turned-home-state-economic-realist and yet another Rocky Mountain Republican fleeing his own party's elite consensus.
The Idaho Statesman reports that during Otter's 35 years as a career politician and icon of Wingnuttia with little to no executive responsibilities, "he has created an almost unblemished record of small-government libertarianism." But now in a role that requires real-world decisions - not right-wing sloganeering - Otter is "tell[ing] Idahoans that he need[s] to raise taxes by some $200 million" because he knows that many Idaho roads are deadly dangerous [while] others are so congested they threaten
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE SAME OLD EXCUSE
Since George W. Bush transparently and egregiously covered his own backside in commuting the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, conservatives have--once again--been trying to deflect attention by chanting, "Clinton did it too." Presidents have pardon powers, so Clinton was only exercising the powers granted him by the Constitution. I don't know of any convincing evidence that any Clinton pardons were made to cover up major administration crimes. And how is the fact that Clinton pardoned people in any way relevant to this disgusting favorable treatment of Libby? Does it make the treatment of Libby any less disgusting? A right-winger in The Fresno Bee mentioned a link to the Internet about the Clinton pardons. If right-wingers are so exercised about Clinton's pardons, why aren't they equally upset about the treatment of Libby? Hypocrites! This commentary by Dan Froomkin is at www.washingtonpost.com:
And furthermore, there is an ethical chasm between Clinton's pardons -- unseemly as they were -- and Bush's decision to grant clemency to someone involved in an investigation of his own White House. (See my Tuesday column, Obstruction of Justice, Continued.)
As it happens, the previous granting of clemency that is most analogous to what Bush did dates back neither to the Clinton or even the Nixon era, but to Bush's father's presidency.
In 1992, on the eve of his last Christmas in the White House, George H.W. Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair, in which he himself was also loosely implicated.
REALITY VS. RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY
In the environs of right-wing fantasy land there is no bad tax cut for the wealthy, even if revenues needed for basic things like infrastructure aren't available. In the fantasy land trickle down economics is a good thing. In the real world it makes the already rich even more obscenely wealthy and deprives people not so fortunate of needed government services. In right-wing fantasy land big business is good and will police itself without the interference of government regulation. In the real world big business looks after itself and doesn't care in the least about the public good. This commentary by David Sirota looks at how the real world smacks right-wing ideologues in the face when they have to come back down to earth and deal with reality. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In 2005, I wrote a national op-ed for Knight Ridder newspapers that showed how when right-wing congressional politicians return home as governors from the fantasy land known as Washington, D.C., they often drop their conservative economic elitism in the face of reality. Last week, I wrote that the conservative movement in the Rocky Mountain West is seeing this same economic elitism decline as an effective political cudgel, and not surprisingly, many Rocky Mountain states are watching their Republican parties descend into disrepair (here in Colorado, for instance, the GOP has resorted to hiring as party chairman the same supposed "guru" who most recently helped commandeer his boss George Allen from leading presidential candidate to historical cautionary tale). Now, up in Idaho, we see the convergence of both of these phenomena, as Gov. Butch Otter (R) has become yet another conservative Washington-insider-turned-home-state-economic-realist and yet another Rocky Mountain Republican fleeing his own party's elite consensus.
The Idaho Statesman reports that during Otter's 35 years as a career politician and icon of Wingnuttia with little to no executive responsibilities, "he has created an almost unblemished record of small-government libertarianism." But now in a role that requires real-world decisions - not right-wing sloganeering - Otter is "tell[ing] Idahoans that he need[s] to raise taxes by some $200 million" because he knows that many Idaho roads are deadly dangerous [while] others are so congested they threaten
Saturday, July 07, 2007
July 07, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: SACRIFICE IS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE
Notorious tax evader Leona Helmsley once sniffed that, "taxes are for little people." In George W. Bush's world there's the great divide between people like him and "little people" like us. Bush, who started this bloody and unnecessary disaster in Iraq, has the audacity to talk about sacrifice, but neither he nor his friends have sacrificed anything. They managed to give themselves handsome tax cuts. And they've made major profits from the war. Paul Krugman comments in this column at www.welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com:
You see, the Iraq war, although Mr. Bush insists that it’s part of a Global War on Terror™, a fight to the death between good and evil, isn’t like America’s other great wars — wars in which the wealthy shared the financial burden through higher taxes and many members of the elite fought for their country.
This time around, Mr. Bush celebrated Mission Accomplished by cutting tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while handing out huge no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations. And in the four years since, as the insurgency Mr. Bush initially taunted with the cry of “Bring them on” has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and left thousands more grievously wounded, the children of the elite — especially the Republican elite — have been conspicuously absent from the battlefield.
The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost of those fights or bearing any of the risks. Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any personal or professional penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution.
FALSE COMPARISONS
The historical revisionism of George W. Bush's repugnant presidency has already begun. In the next few years we can count on the right-wing media apparatus to remake Bush into some grand and visionary leader, not the arrogant, sniveling, incompetent hack he really is. These days the right-wingers are trying to morph Bush into a latter-day Truman or Churchill. The late David Halberstam has an interesting article at www.truthout.org:
If Bush takes his cues from anyone in the Truman era, it is not Truman but the Republican far right. This can be seen clearly from one of his history lessons, a speech the president gave on a visit to Riga, Latvia, in May 2005, when, in order to justify the Iraq intervention, he cited Yalta, the 1945 summit at which Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met. Hailing Latvian freedom, Bush took a side shot at Roosevelt (and, whether he meant to or not, at Churchill, supposedly his great hero) and the Yalta accords, which effectively ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Yalta, he said, "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history."
This is some statement. Yalta is connected first to the Munich Agreement of 1938 (in which the Western democracies, at their most vulnerable and well behind the curve of military preparedness, ceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler), then, in the same breath, Bush blends in seamlessly (and sleazily) the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the temporary and cynical agreement between the Soviets and Nazis allowing the Germans to invade Poland and the Soviets to move into the Baltic nations. And from Molotov-Ribbentrop we jump ahead to Yalta itself, where, Bush implies, the two great leaders of the West casually sat by and gave away vast parts of Europe to the Soviet Union.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: SACRIFICE IS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE
Notorious tax evader Leona Helmsley once sniffed that, "taxes are for little people." In George W. Bush's world there's the great divide between people like him and "little people" like us. Bush, who started this bloody and unnecessary disaster in Iraq, has the audacity to talk about sacrifice, but neither he nor his friends have sacrificed anything. They managed to give themselves handsome tax cuts. And they've made major profits from the war. Paul Krugman comments in this column at www.welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com:
You see, the Iraq war, although Mr. Bush insists that it’s part of a Global War on Terror™, a fight to the death between good and evil, isn’t like America’s other great wars — wars in which the wealthy shared the financial burden through higher taxes and many members of the elite fought for their country.
This time around, Mr. Bush celebrated Mission Accomplished by cutting tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while handing out huge no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations. And in the four years since, as the insurgency Mr. Bush initially taunted with the cry of “Bring them on” has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and left thousands more grievously wounded, the children of the elite — especially the Republican elite — have been conspicuously absent from the battlefield.
The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost of those fights or bearing any of the risks. Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any personal or professional penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution.
FALSE COMPARISONS
The historical revisionism of George W. Bush's repugnant presidency has already begun. In the next few years we can count on the right-wing media apparatus to remake Bush into some grand and visionary leader, not the arrogant, sniveling, incompetent hack he really is. These days the right-wingers are trying to morph Bush into a latter-day Truman or Churchill. The late David Halberstam has an interesting article at www.truthout.org:
If Bush takes his cues from anyone in the Truman era, it is not Truman but the Republican far right. This can be seen clearly from one of his history lessons, a speech the president gave on a visit to Riga, Latvia, in May 2005, when, in order to justify the Iraq intervention, he cited Yalta, the 1945 summit at which Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met. Hailing Latvian freedom, Bush took a side shot at Roosevelt (and, whether he meant to or not, at Churchill, supposedly his great hero) and the Yalta accords, which effectively ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Yalta, he said, "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history."
This is some statement. Yalta is connected first to the Munich Agreement of 1938 (in which the Western democracies, at their most vulnerable and well behind the curve of military preparedness, ceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler), then, in the same breath, Bush blends in seamlessly (and sleazily) the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the temporary and cynical agreement between the Soviets and Nazis allowing the Germans to invade Poland and the Soviets to move into the Baltic nations. And from Molotov-Ribbentrop we jump ahead to Yalta itself, where, Bush implies, the two great leaders of the West casually sat by and gave away vast parts of Europe to the Soviet Union.
Friday, July 06, 2007
July 06, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: THE LIBERTIES DESTROYER
George W. Bush likes to represent himself as the Big Daddy protecting us all from evil terrorists. In fact, Bush has used terrorism as an excuse to destroy the fabric of civil liberties that has made the United States the great country it is. We aren't great because of an economy or because of a military; we're great because liberty counts for something. It counted, that is, until Bush and his cohorts started finding ways to subvert our rights. This editorial is from The Baltimore Sun at www.baltimoresun.com:
On this 231st anniversary of Jefferson's eloquent Declaration of Independence from British rule, the United States is desperately in need of restoring the rights and freedoms surrendered in a false bid for security that has perversely put the nation at greater risk.
Consider what has been lost.
Sweeping federal measures, most of them heavily cloaked in secrecy, have robbed Americans of privacy, due process of law, even freedom of movement. Warrantless wiretaps, e-mail surveillance, national security letters secretly demanding information on thousands of citizens and, soon to come, the equivalent of national ID cards - all would be abominations to Jefferson.
THE LIBBY COVERUP
The truth is not only alien to George W. Bush; it's something to be smeared. The classic case is Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. Wilson took a trip to Niger to verify whether or not Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium. He found out that Iraq wasn't buying uranium. That finding didn't suit Bush, who needed some excuse to attack Iraq. So, as an act of political revenge, Bush and company outed the name of Wilson's wife, who was a covert CIA operative. Doing so put her life in danger, probably got her contacts tortured or killed, and compromised sensitive intelligence. Scooter Libby was instrumental in outing the name of Ms. Wilson. He has acted as a fall guy for the administration and Bush rewarded him by commuting his well-deserved prison sentence. Robert Parry talks about this tawdry case at www.consortiumnews.com:
So, the evidence is that not only was there a high-level administration conspiracy to leak Plame’s identity but there was an equally high-level conspiracy to cover up the truth.
Libby got nailed because he failed to shift away from the cover stories when the investigation grew serious following the appointment of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor in December 2003.
But the cover-up never ended. Republican senators and the Republican National Committee issued harsh attacks on Wilson, making him out to be a liar when the reality was that his fact-finding trip had helped the U.S. intelligence community correctly raise pre-war doubts about Iraq’s supposed pursuit of uranium for nuclear weapons.
As Libby faced trial in early 2007, other right-wingers, such as attorney Victoria Toensing, released other red herrings to confuse the public. Toensing, for instance, began insisting that Plame was not a “covert” officer because she was “stationed” at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: THE LIBERTIES DESTROYER
George W. Bush likes to represent himself as the Big Daddy protecting us all from evil terrorists. In fact, Bush has used terrorism as an excuse to destroy the fabric of civil liberties that has made the United States the great country it is. We aren't great because of an economy or because of a military; we're great because liberty counts for something. It counted, that is, until Bush and his cohorts started finding ways to subvert our rights. This editorial is from The Baltimore Sun at www.baltimoresun.com:
On this 231st anniversary of Jefferson's eloquent Declaration of Independence from British rule, the United States is desperately in need of restoring the rights and freedoms surrendered in a false bid for security that has perversely put the nation at greater risk.
Consider what has been lost.
Sweeping federal measures, most of them heavily cloaked in secrecy, have robbed Americans of privacy, due process of law, even freedom of movement. Warrantless wiretaps, e-mail surveillance, national security letters secretly demanding information on thousands of citizens and, soon to come, the equivalent of national ID cards - all would be abominations to Jefferson.
THE LIBBY COVERUP
The truth is not only alien to George W. Bush; it's something to be smeared. The classic case is Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. Wilson took a trip to Niger to verify whether or not Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium. He found out that Iraq wasn't buying uranium. That finding didn't suit Bush, who needed some excuse to attack Iraq. So, as an act of political revenge, Bush and company outed the name of Wilson's wife, who was a covert CIA operative. Doing so put her life in danger, probably got her contacts tortured or killed, and compromised sensitive intelligence. Scooter Libby was instrumental in outing the name of Ms. Wilson. He has acted as a fall guy for the administration and Bush rewarded him by commuting his well-deserved prison sentence. Robert Parry talks about this tawdry case at www.consortiumnews.com:
So, the evidence is that not only was there a high-level administration conspiracy to leak Plame’s identity but there was an equally high-level conspiracy to cover up the truth.
Libby got nailed because he failed to shift away from the cover stories when the investigation grew serious following the appointment of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor in December 2003.
But the cover-up never ended. Republican senators and the Republican National Committee issued harsh attacks on Wilson, making him out to be a liar when the reality was that his fact-finding trip had helped the U.S. intelligence community correctly raise pre-war doubts about Iraq’s supposed pursuit of uranium for nuclear weapons.
As Libby faced trial in early 2007, other right-wingers, such as attorney Victoria Toensing, released other red herrings to confuse the public. Toensing, for instance, began insisting that Plame was not a “covert” officer because she was “stationed” at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
July 05, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KING GEORGE AND GEORGE W. BUSH
I suspect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney don't want the American people to read the Declaration of Independence too closely. Flags, fireworks, parades, and barbecues were all fine for the Fourth of July, but the real reason for the holiday is embedded in the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson talked about King George III of Britain, and King George bears some striking similarities to George W. Bush. Even though he was not even legitimately elected, Bush has continued to defy the will of the American people and the will of the world. The commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence was just the latest in a long line of abuses. Bob Geiger comments at bobgeiger.blogspot.com:
No matter how we the people want to be governed or how we decide we want our country to look, Bush sticks stubbornly to what he wants, to what he mandates and what he decides in his delusional world of absolute power and authority over all he surveys.
It's a bitter irony that what we celebrate today is deliverance from just such an absolute power and authority in the form of King George III, about whom the Founding Fathers railed in the majority of the Declaration of Independence and from whom they declared our freedom. We broke away from the colonial rule of a tyrant and, in the preamble to this sacred document, we stated that our leaders are ultimately governed by those for which government is created and that those elected president get "their just powers from the consent of the governed."
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We declared our break from a monarch, an absolute ruler, in 1776 when the 13 colonies risked it all to repudiate that form of government and to say that the leader of what would become the new United States of America should listen to the will of the people and not the other way around.
THE PUNDIT CLASS IS UPSET
We're not supposed to have any opinions of our own, you and I. We're supposed to listen to those august pundits perched high in their ivory towersfor what to believe. It's the people like George Will, Thomas Friedman, Cokie Roberts, and other defenders of the establishment who we are supposed to follow. Then there's David Broder, Pundit of Pundits, who's upset that we, the great unwashed, are exhibiting a "virulent populism." How dare we. This commentary by David Sirota is at www.huffingtonpost.com:
That's right, as his fellow pundits in Washington frantically buy milk, flashlights, dehydrated food and duct tape from their besieged wood-paneled offices, this inspirational man has found the courage - no, the Leadership - to say enough is enough. Like Thomas Paine himself, St. David Broder has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to declare that "a particularly virulent strain of populism" has emerged. And, says St. David, the consequences threaten America, and perhaps the entire Planet because this populism "has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion." He makes this powerful assertion with compelling fury - fearlessly ignoring the fact that Congress still refuses to create a universal health care system, expand environmental regulations, rescind the Bush tax cuts or end the war in Iraq - all things national opinion polls show the public is demanding.
St. David instead "proves" his manifesto by specifically attacking Congress's recent moves to respond to the 2006 election mandate and try to change America's lobbyist-written and pundit backed trade policies that have thrown millions of workers out of their jobs, driven wages down, torn apart health care and pension benefits - all while inflating profit margins on Wall Street and K Street. That the Secret Trade Deal of 2007 was delayed and that fast-track will be terminated with the strong support of millions of Americans but over the objections of the Washington pundit class - this, above all else, he says, is the most frightening form of "mob rule."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KING GEORGE AND GEORGE W. BUSH
I suspect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney don't want the American people to read the Declaration of Independence too closely. Flags, fireworks, parades, and barbecues were all fine for the Fourth of July, but the real reason for the holiday is embedded in the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson talked about King George III of Britain, and King George bears some striking similarities to George W. Bush. Even though he was not even legitimately elected, Bush has continued to defy the will of the American people and the will of the world. The commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence was just the latest in a long line of abuses. Bob Geiger comments at bobgeiger.blogspot.com:
No matter how we the people want to be governed or how we decide we want our country to look, Bush sticks stubbornly to what he wants, to what he mandates and what he decides in his delusional world of absolute power and authority over all he surveys.
It's a bitter irony that what we celebrate today is deliverance from just such an absolute power and authority in the form of King George III, about whom the Founding Fathers railed in the majority of the Declaration of Independence and from whom they declared our freedom. We broke away from the colonial rule of a tyrant and, in the preamble to this sacred document, we stated that our leaders are ultimately governed by those for which government is created and that those elected president get "their just powers from the consent of the governed."
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We declared our break from a monarch, an absolute ruler, in 1776 when the 13 colonies risked it all to repudiate that form of government and to say that the leader of what would become the new United States of America should listen to the will of the people and not the other way around.
THE PUNDIT CLASS IS UPSET
We're not supposed to have any opinions of our own, you and I. We're supposed to listen to those august pundits perched high in their ivory towersfor what to believe. It's the people like George Will, Thomas Friedman, Cokie Roberts, and other defenders of the establishment who we are supposed to follow. Then there's David Broder, Pundit of Pundits, who's upset that we, the great unwashed, are exhibiting a "virulent populism." How dare we. This commentary by David Sirota is at www.huffingtonpost.com:
That's right, as his fellow pundits in Washington frantically buy milk, flashlights, dehydrated food and duct tape from their besieged wood-paneled offices, this inspirational man has found the courage - no, the Leadership - to say enough is enough. Like Thomas Paine himself, St. David Broder has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to declare that "a particularly virulent strain of populism" has emerged. And, says St. David, the consequences threaten America, and perhaps the entire Planet because this populism "has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion." He makes this powerful assertion with compelling fury - fearlessly ignoring the fact that Congress still refuses to create a universal health care system, expand environmental regulations, rescind the Bush tax cuts or end the war in Iraq - all things national opinion polls show the public is demanding.
St. David instead "proves" his manifesto by specifically attacking Congress's recent moves to respond to the 2006 election mandate and try to change America's lobbyist-written and pundit backed trade policies that have thrown millions of workers out of their jobs, driven wages down, torn apart health care and pension benefits - all while inflating profit margins on Wall Street and K Street. That the Secret Trade Deal of 2007 was delayed and that fast-track will be terminated with the strong support of millions of Americans but over the objections of the Washington pundit class - this, above all else, he says, is the most frightening form of "mob rule."
Monday, July 02, 2007
July 02, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
Some people don't believe that impeachment is practical. After all, they'll point out this horrible administration is winding down. They have a year and a half left. But I would point out that murder has no statute of limitations. The multitude of crimes committed by this administration can not go unnoticed and unpunished. They have defiled the Constitution and the reputation of the United States. They have murdered and tortured in our names. They have desecrated the entire premise of civil liberties. Even if they can't be impeached before leaving office, I believe they should be held accountable after leaving office. Bush showed his contempt today for the law by commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby. It's one standard for Bush and his tribe and a different standard for the rest of us. This commentary by Timothy Gatto is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Some people might think that people who want Bush and Cheney impeached are “overreacting”. I don’t believe that is the case. Let us look at the facts here. Bush purposefully lied to the Congress and to the American people in the case for war against Iraq. He lied about Saddam possessing a nuclear capability or even an active chemical capability. From reports we are getting now from people that used to be in his “inner circle” such as George Tenet and others, Bush knew all along what capabilities Saddam did or didn’t have! So let me ask anyone that is reading this, is that not grounds for impeachment? Is the fact that he told outright lies to further his personal belief that we should be at war with Iraq not grounds for impeachment? Is this the kind of man that you want making decisions again regarding Iran or some other nations for the next 19 months?
The war and the lies leading up to it, while being more than enough to warrant impeachment, aren’t the only reasons Cheney and Bush need to go. In the time that they have been in power they have actively and maliciously subverted the Constitution of The United States of America. Some of it was done with the blessing of Congress, and some of it was done unilaterally by the President. Since this man has been in power, he has continued to write signing statements that excludes him from obeying laws he doesn’t want to obey by using what he calls the “Unitary Power of the Executive Branch”. Since Bush has been President he has put his name to more signing statements than all prior Presidents combined! Let’s face it, this man has demonstrated that he feels that because he is the President of the United States, that he is above the law! I believe that he is not and I also submit to you that these actions alone warrant impeachment and removal from office.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
Some people don't believe that impeachment is practical. After all, they'll point out this horrible administration is winding down. They have a year and a half left. But I would point out that murder has no statute of limitations. The multitude of crimes committed by this administration can not go unnoticed and unpunished. They have defiled the Constitution and the reputation of the United States. They have murdered and tortured in our names. They have desecrated the entire premise of civil liberties. Even if they can't be impeached before leaving office, I believe they should be held accountable after leaving office. Bush showed his contempt today for the law by commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby. It's one standard for Bush and his tribe and a different standard for the rest of us. This commentary by Timothy Gatto is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Some people might think that people who want Bush and Cheney impeached are “overreacting”. I don’t believe that is the case. Let us look at the facts here. Bush purposefully lied to the Congress and to the American people in the case for war against Iraq. He lied about Saddam possessing a nuclear capability or even an active chemical capability. From reports we are getting now from people that used to be in his “inner circle” such as George Tenet and others, Bush knew all along what capabilities Saddam did or didn’t have! So let me ask anyone that is reading this, is that not grounds for impeachment? Is the fact that he told outright lies to further his personal belief that we should be at war with Iraq not grounds for impeachment? Is this the kind of man that you want making decisions again regarding Iran or some other nations for the next 19 months?
The war and the lies leading up to it, while being more than enough to warrant impeachment, aren’t the only reasons Cheney and Bush need to go. In the time that they have been in power they have actively and maliciously subverted the Constitution of The United States of America. Some of it was done with the blessing of Congress, and some of it was done unilaterally by the President. Since this man has been in power, he has continued to write signing statements that excludes him from obeying laws he doesn’t want to obey by using what he calls the “Unitary Power of the Executive Branch”. Since Bush has been President he has put his name to more signing statements than all prior Presidents combined! Let’s face it, this man has demonstrated that he feels that because he is the President of the United States, that he is above the law! I believe that he is not and I also submit to you that these actions alone warrant impeachment and removal from office.
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