Fun with Cartoons

Screw the Constitution!

The Fear of Fear Itself

The Democrats should read this op-ed from the NY Times today...

It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at play was their job security.

There was plenty of bad behavior. Republicans marched in mindless lockstep with the president. There was double-dealing by the White House. The director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, crossed the line from being a steward of this nation’s security to acting as a White House political operative.

But mostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats — especially their feckless Senate leaders — plan to do with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president.

-snip-

The House handled this mess somewhat better than the Senate, moving to the floor a far more sensible bill. Mr. McConnell certified that the House bill would address the problem raised by the court. That is, until the White House made clear that it wanted to use the court’s ruling to grab a lot more power. Mr. McConnell then reversed his position and demanded that Congress pass the far more expansive bill.

-snip-

But the problem with Congress last week was that Democrats were afraid to explain to Americans why the White House bill was so bad and so unnecessary — despite what the White House was claiming. There are good answers, if Democrats are willing to address voters as adults. To start, they should explain that — even if it were a good idea, and it’s not — the government does not have the capability to sort through billions of bits of electronic communication. And the larger question: why, six years after 9/11, is this sort of fishing expedition the supposed first line of defense in the war on terrorism?

While serving little purpose, the new law has real dangers. It would allow the government to intercept, without a warrant, every communication into or out of any country, including the United States. Instead of explaining all this to American voters — the minimal benefits and the enormous risks — the Democrats have allowed Mr. Bush and his fear-mongering to dominate all discussions on terrorism and national security.

Mr. Bush claims that he has kept America safe since 9/11. But that claim ignores the country’s very real and present vulnerabilities. Six years after the 9/11 attacks the administration has still failed to secure American ports, railroads and airports from terrorist attack, and has put the profits of the chemical and nuclear-power industries ahead of safeguarding their plants.

Hmmm... sounds pretty close to what I was saying last night. Hopefully being in the NY Times, the Democrats will get this and read it. It's one of the few papers the beltway crowd reads after all, because lord knows something has to burst this ridiculous bubble that these people live in insulating them from the outside world.

-Rp

Cowards.

As you can tell I haven't written anything this week. You'll notice a similar pattern back around the time when Democrats caved on the Iraq funding bill.

I come on here and talk about Democratic values. Values the mass majority of the party shares. The problem is that there are always some beltway Democrats that prefer to keep the status quo in place. Their constituents don't matter as much to them as the lobbyists that fill their coffers come election time and ultimately that money makes it impossible for real Democrats to pose a real primary challenge. When someone does, the other beltway Democrats get the all stars out and bring in the big donors and their clout clouds the media to believe this is the only Democrat running. The majority of voters, even in the Democratic party, rely on the media (foolishly I might add) to help them learn about the candidates.

Only the hardcore politicos get to know the candidates not on TV or in the news frequently and thus that lobbying money that buys ads and those other big name beltway Democrats (see: Sen. Chuck Schumer & Rep. Rahm Emanuel) buy clout with the media. The uninformed are told from the beginning that this candidate is the only one with a real chance to win because of that financial support and not wanting to lose the seat to a Republican, Dems go out and vote for the total loser who will just capitulate to the Washington way of life.

Case in point: Freshman Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar. She wasn't the best candidate. Many would say Ford Bell won the debates and was certainly the most progressive. Remember that word, progressive. Because that scared the hell out of the beltway Dems. So Schumer and his DSCC backed her before the primary had even begun. Before they had really begun they forced Patty Wetterling, a strong children's advocate whose son had been abducted, out of the race and had her endorse Klobuchar. In return the beltway crowd would support her House run against nutcase Michele Bachmann.

Then when Bell showed promise in the debates and made Klobuchar look like the clueless talking point-memorized putz she was, Schumer called in the "rock star", Barack Obama to do a fundraiser for Klobuchar. How can you compete with the biggest star of the party?

So she went on to the Democratic nomination, the win in the Senate race and so it shouldn't have been surprising when she voted with many other Democrats to give Bush expanded wiretapping powers that he didn't even ask for.

This is what we get with the beltway crowd. They are so insulated from the American people they refuse to listen to them.

Now as stated above, Klobuchar was not the only Democrat that voted for this. Many beltway Democrats felt some sort of incredible urgency to give Bush exactly what he wanted on this electronic surveillance bill.

What they should have been doing is investigating and bringing charges in the illegal actions performed previously on this issue. Bushco knew they were breaking the law and a secret court ruling leaked illegally by Rep. John Boehner told them the FISA courts could not give them authority to do what they wanted to do.

This was after it was let out by Mike McConnell the director of national intelligence, that wiretaps and e-mails were not the full scope of Bush's directive to spy on Americans. That's a pretty huge admission and yet Democrats not only caved on this bill and gave Bush everything he wanted, they actually made the person solely in charge of making these judgment calls....



Alberto Gonzales.

Yes... the guy they want an Independent Counsel appointed to prosecute for perjury in his testimony to Capitol Hill, the guy whom House members are putting impeachment resolutions in for. The most distrustful member of the Cabinet.

That guy.

You could make a case for the Democrats over the cave on Iraq War funding. After all they were between a rock and a hard place there. They didn't have enough votes to override Bush's veto and the media, as slanted to the right as they are, tried to blame them for not funding the troops even if it was Bush who vetoed their funding and even if Democrats gave the troops more than Bush ever wanted them to have. There was not much politically the Democrats could do then.

This time, there is not question that they were cowards. Afraid to look weak on terror, they gave this President carte blanche to spy on any American he chose. In fact considering the expanded powers he has already claimed, all this basically did was legalized the actions of this criminal cabal.

As if that were not enough, many Democrats seem eager to cave to Bush on Iraq again based on Gen. Petraeus' September report. As mentioned on this blog before, Petraeus is a Bush propagandist for the war. He's been spouting Administration talking points for the war dating back to 2004. Of course the Democrats would blindly trust another Bush hack. Are we really surprised?

It's time to stand up and vote the beltway, centrist Democrats who clearly have no spine, out of office. Whether it's giving Bush everything he wants on spying, the Iraq War, torture, the bankruptcy law, the medicare prescription bill... check all those votes that were WRONG and look at the names.. they should repeatedly look the same.

They hurt our cause as much as any crazy right wing Republican does, in fact more so. Because every time we come out and speak the truth about this Administration and try to call them to justice, the media points to those beltway jackasses and calls us the "Extreme Left" as if we're some sort of Communist/Socialist propaganda group.

We are the mainstream. Those in power would lose it if the media reported it that way or the Congress voted that way. That needs to change... and fast.

September 15th there is a march in Washington D.C. Unfortunately I can't make it but all of you that want real change, I ask you to attend. March to Capitol Hill and chant "SHAME!" at all the Congress. When House Republicans did it as a publicity stunt on a vote they lost (they were upset about the confusion but more so because they actually did lose the vote), the media but mostly those beltway Democrats came out and tried to appease them.

If only 100 right wing racists could get that kind of reaction from those who lay in fear of losing re-election of their cushy beltway jobs, imagine the kind of fear millions of Americans, pissed off, would create if they stared down the Congress and gave them the hell they deserve for handing our civil liberties to a criminal.

Finally I leave with a quote from a REAL patriot and ask the Congress to do something it doesn't appear it has ever done. READ THE CONSTITUTION. Yes, that paper below!



It is the foundation of this country, it is what our forefathers and generations afterwards that faced REAL threats to our society and Democracy relied upon and protected as YOUR OATHS OF OFFICE requires you do. Read it and weep, for you have failed America and failed what our country's real patriots made real sacrifice of life, limb, wealth and reputation for. You are cowards with no shame and for that may you be chased from office and replaced by true keepers of the Constitution.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Franklin's Contributions to the Conference, Friday Feb 17, 1775

-Rp

Impeachment! Finally! Well... sort of.

And it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well the Democrats in their efforts to set the record straight about what 'baby steps' actually are, have moved forward to begin impeachment investigations on one member of the Bush Administration. I thought the picture on the left was appropriate since it looks like a downward spiral in which metaphorically the entire Administration has been in since they stole re-election in 2004 (make no mistake about it they stole it and here's some new voter suppression details that have made their way out of the RNC from that election).

Anyway, MSNBC reported that House Democrats will introduce a bill tomorrow that requires the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment investigations against Gonzo.

From Crooks and Liars:



Windows Media Video: Play | Quicktime Video: Play

It's about time but still not enough. The only way to get these criminals out of office is full impeachment.

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Now some quick takes on other stuff from this past weekend...

At the CNN/Youtube debates the buzz afterwards surrounded on a riff Hillary Clinton gave towards Barack Obama based on his take on diplomacy. The question was whether the candidates would meet with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Kim Jong-Il of North Korea or Mahmoud Ahmenijhad of Iran in the first year of their Presidency. Obama said that he would and pointed to the Bush Administration's dismal record in meeting with countries that we have disagreements with and in essence using diplomacy as a reward only to those that agree with us.

Hillary countered that she didn't want a meeting in the first year without some sort of preconditions and essentially pawned the concept off to her subordinates to handle as she felt they would get too much PR out of a meeting with the President of the United States.

I see Hillary's point, but it's wrong. Now let me clarify. I am undecided for 2008. Unlike the 2004 race when I knew John Kerry was my guy by February 2003, nobody stands out to me as someone I can fully support. I have heard Obama be wrong on a variety of topics as well (see: aggression towards Iran) so this is not me picking a side in the overall race.

I believe that the President is someone who for the good of our nation, needs to meet with leaders even if they disagree with us or would publicize the meeting to the rest of the world. If we're concerned about going to meet with Kim Jong-Il in North Korea or Ahmenijhad in Iran, don't. Meet in a neutral location and have a summit with countries from the region.

One of the most spiteful things the Bush Administration has done is to shelf diplomacy and push it off on other countries in the region. With North Korea he put the pressure on Russia, China, Japan and South Korea to carry the water for American policies. Some of those countries are not in full agreement with our policies. But it's just like Bush to outsource work that Americans should be doing.

While they did that, idiot boy ran his mouth about an 'axis of evil' and scared North Korea and Iran into speeding up their nuclear programs.

Now I'm not saying Hillary would do that but it's clear that we need to meet with other leaders and hear them out. We may not agree with them on every issue but we don't have to.

When Russia was at the height of the cold war standoff with us we couldn't find much of anything to agree about with them and they were far more dangerous than Chavez, Jong-Il, Ahmenijhad and Castro combined. Yet we met with them in summits and when that didn't work we communicated with them. President John F. Kennedy had Tommy Thompson (no not the moronic former Governor of Wisconsin)as an ambassador there and he spoke with members of Nikita Khrushchev's regime frequently.

By staying in contact Kennedy had an idea of how to address him and empathize with what our enemy ultimately wanted. Did he want nuclear war? No. And I highly doubt North Korea or Iran do either. Khrushchev wanted to look good in the standoff with the U.S. to his own people and because we were smart enough to talk to him and see his side we were able to get them to stand down and a nuclear weapon was never launched in over 40 years of conflict.

Here meeting with our enemies may give them political clout at home but it also gives them piece of mind that we're not looking to attack them for their oil or to overthrow their governments. In turn we can offer Iran and North Korea light water reactors to help with their energy needs and then receive concessions in return in the human rights and diplomatic fields.

It's to everyone's benefit that Americans stand up and converse with everybody. It prevents conflict, gives the people of those countries less of a reason to hate us and ultimately attack us and it provides us with more respect and better standing in the world. Which at this point, is desparately needed. Point goes to Obama.

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-The Republican Presidential Candidates are refusing to do the Youtube debates. And with good reason. After all if you were an insensitive racist warmonger, wouldn't you be afraid to take questions from the public? Besides if these guys learned anything from Bush it's that Republicans only look good when they pre-screen audiences, have them sign loyalty oaths and then broadcast the ones where people fawn over them. Otherwise you could end up with another "Macaca" incident.

Funniest thing about it is the RNC asked their supporters to send in as many slanted questions as they could to play gotcha with Democrats. I suppose that's how they got this idiot's question in there. Of course Biden's response to it was hilarious.

-Rp

Balls over Brains

Well today was a banner day for Bush.

First he tells us that every email Karl Rove sent from 2001-2005 was missing. That over 5,000,000 emails in all are missing(from as many as 50 staffers).

Then they followed that up with some amazing audacity. Incredible display of balls if there ever was one.

The House and Senate Judiciary Committees issued subpoenas for the emails and for testimony from key aides.

Bush's response? Piss off! He had Fred Fielding, Bush's White House counsel who should know better than to play this game since he was an assistant to John Dean while working for Richard Nixon during Watergate, send a refusal in return.

They asserted executive privilege, which is supposed to be used only in cases of National Security and have now forced Congress into issuing a Contempt of Congress which will bring this matter to the Supreme Court. Even with nutcase Antonin Scalia on that court, Bush faces long odds that he can win this.

This to me opens the floodgates. Win the court challenge and you have access under the Presidential Records Act to see every email from 2001 to the present. Most should be preserved just because there's no way they were able to completely wipe the servers, workstations, multiple accounts of every single person that ever received these emails. It would be damn near impossible.

Go after the servers and it's endgame. I have a feeling you'd find emails involving the intricate details of every major scandal. The lies of the Iraq War build up, details of the 2004 election scam, agreements to reward campaign contributors with government deals, all sorts of stuff. This becomes a huge can of worms and opens the door to every criminal activity and the details therein that will derail Bush and this cabal of crooks not only from their political lives but possibly from regular life when they face criminal charges.

The Administration thinks executive privilege is available to use anytime they don't want people to know how they were breaking the law. This is apparent because National Security is the only time asserting that privilege is considered acceptable. They even went to the lengths to redact (although very poorly) full emails that were released today to prevent people from knowing what they were up to in the US Attorney scandal. Redactions are supposed to only be used for classified information in intelligence memos that are released to the public.

See for yourself.

As if that wasn't enough they even went a step further today in their attempt to become a full blown dictatorship.

They already want the rights to read your mail, are checking your internet searches and they are illegally wiretapping calls. That wasn't enough apparently for Bush today.

They actually had the balls, especially after telling Congress that they will not submit to their oversight and pulling the lost email stunt and blaming them for the troops not being funded (even when it's Bush not signing the funding bill), to go out and ask Congress to revise the 1978 FISA act and allow them to expand their current surveillance capabilities.

Actually I find it quite ironic. Their current illegal wiretapping program allows the Bush Administration to read YOUR emails, yet they won't let Congress read theirs.

They have completely lost it. To think that Congress will give them an inch on this, let alone open up investigations on the current wiretapping crimes they are committing is foolish.

Of course thinking they can win a court battle with Congress over basic law and the Constitution's assertion that Congress and the White House are co-equal branches of Government, well apparently they don't mind taking up this suicide mission.

But maybe that will be Bush's defense when he faces criminal charges. Insanity. A straight jacket is a lot more apealing than a prison cell when you only pretend to be a tough cowboy and really are a cowardly wimp.

-Rp

Beating the Bush with the Co-Equal Branch

Well it sure has been one depressing week if you were on the Bush-as-almighty-god bandwagon hasn't it?

You have Alberto Gonzales screwing up a perfectly good plan to eliminate prosecutors that were either going after Republican corruption or not working quick enough for upcoming elections on cases where Democrats were targeted. And then you have the entire Department of Justice going cannibal on one another as they eat themselves alive trying to save their skins.

You also have Democrats thickening their skin and setting timelines and benchmarks on this President and his war before issuing him any more money to fight it. Frankly this should have happened from the beginning but since the sheep that was the Republicans in Congress felt they should give their king total and absolute power, they were just giving the guy blank checks.... which he was signing over to political contributors. Nice...

All the while humvees and soldiers weren't given proper armor, the VA and Walter Reed funding was cut and veterans were put in harm's way constantly. I mean really, how dare Democrats for wanting to get them out of those conditions! Traitors!

It's pretty humorous to the 70% of America who aren't with this President to even contemplate the arguments this guy is making.

He's arguing that calling members of the administration to testify under oath is somehow unprecedented and against executive privilege even though the Republicans called the entire Clinton Administration to the hill to do just that with 1,052 subpoenas to 141 Administration officials resulting in 568 hours of depositions.

He's arguing that putting strings on the troops prevents the commanders from doing their job and that it will somehow prevent success in Iraq.... as if all the blank checks provided a heaping dose of successes in the past.

Democrats are finally toughening up. Sure they aren't going full blown impeachment but they are taking progressively stronger stances to Bush and his Administration's imperial power grab.

Henry Waxman is now investigating ANOTHER LAW Bushco may have broken about White House Records, and he sent an incredibly biting letter to Condi about her ignoring his letters.

It's only a matter of time before the illegal wiretaps are on the investigation block.

I can only imagine how many Americans will be in shock when they hear what comes out of that. All those, "I don't care because I am not doing anything wrong" apologists are going to get a wakeup call when they realize what and who the White House has been wiretapping.

It's conjecture only at this point but I have a pretty strong suspicion that the White House has used this power in a way that made Nixon look like a confident, at peace with the world Saint. Watergate will look less like paranoia run amok as it will be like a jaywalking charge in comparison to vehicular manslaughter.

That's how much worse I anticipate Bushco's actions will end up looking. We can only wait and see. For now, open up the popcorn as it looks like two years of criminal hell for the most delusional bunch ever to seize power in Washington.

-Rp