What can we say? FEAR is now the DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC of the Democrats who ostensibly "REPRESENT" the millions of voters who voted them into office.
- Democrats DID NOTHING to back the Black Congressional demands for a Congressional investigation into massive Florida voter disenfranchisement in 2000...
- the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate stood - useless and mute on the sidelines - as Karl Rove and the Republican smear machine tarred departing Clinton-Gore White House staffers as "TRASHING the White House" - WITHOUT ONE SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF EVIDENCE.
- Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman SMOTHERED an aggressive investigation into ENRON fraud in 2002, robbing Democratic candidates of their best issue that mid-term election (the opportunity to tie George W. Bush to Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and systematic Enron fraud) - thereby handing the Senate majority back over to the Republicans, despite Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords courageously handing the Senate Majority BACK to an underserving Daschle a few short months before. (Daschle, the Senate Majority Leader from a small state, went down to ignominous defeat, his photo juxtaposed with those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in Republican smear-campaign TV ads.)
- In 2004, John Kerry REFUSED to make the scandal of the criminal "OUTING" of an entire CIA operation (Brewster-Jennings co.) from WITHIN the Bush White House into a campaign issue, among other egregious Kerry campaign failures that left Democratic voters, donors, and activists feeling as if their candidate had "taken a fall."
- Despite the CIA refering the illegal "Outing" of its CIA covert operations officer and entire operation to the FBI, and despite Independent Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald winning a laborious and thorough conviction against Senior Presidential Advisor Lewis "Scooter" Libby (who was concurrently the Vice President's Chief of Staff), the Democrats REFUSED to follow through on the CRIMINAL PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE convictions, demanding the White House answer to that scandal, and the role that White House Political Advisor Karl Rove played in the criminal scandal.
- When a tide of scandals and corruption circling the White House finally drove American voters to vote, by default, for the (Democratic) opposition, the Bush White House enacted its long-planned PURGE of US Attorneys, in an effort to intimidate minority and Democratic voters with accusations and prosecutions aimed at Democratic vote registration activists. The Democrats response has been tepid, indeed, it is REPUBLICAN senators who are more vocally calling for Attorney General Gonzales resignation...
... AND DEMOCRATS are AFRAID to even MENTION the name of the mastermind of "Purge-gate" - their old nemisis, KARL ROVE.
- and, as well, the Democrats are marked by THEIR FEAR to TIE Vice President Cheney to his HALLIUBURTON STOCK OPTIONS
HALLIBURTON...
CIA-outing scandal, perjury, obstruction of justice...
Jack Abramoff's close ties to the White House...
Katrina disaster incompetence and fraud reconstrucion contracts....
Karl Rove's role in the CIA outing scandal and PURGE-gate US Attorneys scandal...
ON EACH OF THE ABOVE ISSUES, FEAR of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Karl Rove IS THE cowering Democrat's DEFINING characteristic.
The Democratic leadership would rather court their industry and wealthy donors, and take orders from the Washington DC punditocracy "Conventional Wisdom," THAN STAND UP FOR THE RULE OF LAW and the rights of their own, Democratic voters.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Purge-gate: Karl Rove & George Bush's effort to use Justice Department as a VOTE STEALING, VOTER INTIMIDATION machine....
In our previous post, we wrote that over the past decade-and-half (basically since the end of the Cold War robbed Right-Wing intellectuals and political leaders of their "evil empire" enemy), Republicans have MASTERED the black art of MAKING DEMOCRATS LOOK LIKE EFFIMINATE, wimpy caricatures.
But on the issue of SYSTEMATIC VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT, there is more than a grain of truth to Republican accusations and caricatures, for the Repubs know that all they have to do is shout "LAW AND ORDER!" and "MORAL VALUES!" and "VOTER FRAUD!" and their Democratic adversaries will RUN FOR THE HILLS - leaving their own voters, and even their own candidates - hanging out to rot in the breeze.
In 2000 Al Gore bought into the Republican cries of "MORAL VALUES!" not only in nominating "moral values" hypocrite Joe Lieberman to be his running mate - but in REFUSING TO CO-SIGN the Black Congressional Caucus DEMANDS for an investigation into massive Republican election fraud in the Florida 20000 vote (non-) recount.
Senator John Kerry went Gore's campaign ONE WORSE, presidential candidate kerry abjectly REFUSING to counter President Bush's charges of "FLIP FLOPPER!" by replying that it was Mr. Bush who had RENEGED on his "I'll get Osama bin Laden DEAD OR ALIVE!" pledge, in a video photo-op at ground zero, then less than a year later (when the US mission in Afghanistan was being sold short in order to shift US troops to the pending invasion of Iraq) the same Mr. Bush declared "Osama bin Laden DOESN'T CONCERN ME THAT MUCH ANYMORE.
Mr. Kerry's refusal to aggressively CONFRONT Bush's record was a betrayal of all the activists, donors, and Democratic voters who put their hearts into his campaign - hoping to have a FIGHTER represent their hopes and convictions, and instead getting a stuffed-shirt punching bag.
And in 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and Senate Govt. Affairs Committee Chairman Senator Joe Lieberman - SOLD THOUSANDS of Enron workers, pensioners, investors, and customers DOWN THE RIVER by REFUSING to hold thorough and aggressive investigations into Enron fraud. (Such an investigation would ultimately be held in the trial of Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and others who were convicted of fraud for overstating that company's profits and setting up shell subsidiaries to siphon off what profits there were.)
Thus, in at least the past two presidential elections, and the 2002 midterm election, Democrats are DEFINED as - selling their own constituents down the river. And even in the 2006 mid-term election, there is compelling evidence that 18,000 voters were ROBBED OF THEIR VOTES in Florida District 13 voting (The seat Katherine Harris gave up in her senate campaign.) Karl Rove Republicans are already working on similar tactics for the NEXT election, while Democratic leadership PRETENDS NOT TO NOTICE this egregious THEFT of thousands of votes in the past election!
In his most recent editorial, exiled investigative reporter Greg Pallast makes the charge that Democratic leadership CONCIOUSLY sells minority voters down the river, in a "belly-of-the-beast" alliance with neo-segregationist Bush-GOP leadership. That charge may or may not be overstated - but just as President Bush claimed that "OSAMA BIN LADEN NO LONGER CONCERNS ME", the Democratic leadership has an APPALLING record of not being concerned by massive Republican VOTE-STEALING and VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT techniques. ==================================================
Efforts to stop `voter fraud' may have curbed legitimate voting
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
May 20, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17256012.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation
WASHINGTON - During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.
Writing as "Publius," von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was "no evidence" that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.
Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.
"Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration's pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote," charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.
He and other former career department lawyers say that von Spakovsky steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots.
In interviews, current and former federal officials and civil rights leaders told McClatchy Newspapers that von Spakovsky:
-Sped approval of tougher voter ID laws in Georgia and Arizona in 2005, joining decisions to override career lawyers who believed that Georgia's law would restrict voting by poor blacks and who felt that more analysis was needed on the Arizona law's impact on Native Americans and Latinos.
-Tried to influence the federal Election Assistance Commission's research into the dimensions of voter fraud nationally and the impact of restrictive voter ID laws - research that could undermine a vote-suppression agenda.
-Allegedly engineered the ouster of the commission's chairman, Paul DiGregorio, whom von Spakovsky considered insufficiently partisan.
Von Spakovsky, who declined to comment on these allegations, is among more than a dozen present and former Justice Department officials drawing congressional scrutiny over the administration's alleged use of the nation's chief law enforcement agency for partisan purposes.
Congressional committees investigating the firing last year of nine U.S. attorneys are looking into allegations that prosecutors nationwide were urged to pursue voter fraud to build a basis for tougher ID laws.
Von Spakovsky, who had been a longtime voting rights activist and elections official in Georgia before serving at Justice, accepted a presidential recess appointment to a Republican slot on the Federal Election Commission in December 2005. He is scheduled to appear at a June 13 confirmation hearing before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.
The House Administration Committee is also inquiring into von Spakovsky's communications with the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that implemented a 2002 election reform law and serves as a national election information clearinghouse.
The bipartisan, four-member commission stirred a political tempest last year when it delayed the release of voter fraud and voter ID law studies, saying that more research was needed. A House panel revealed last month that the fraud study's central finding - that there was little evidence of widespread voter fraud - had been toned down to say that "a great deal of debate" surrounded the subject.
Commissioners rejected as flawed the second study's finding that voter ID laws tend to suppress turnout, especially among Latinos, and ordered more research.
Rich said that von Spakovsky usurped his seat on a commission advisory panel in 2004, although the law creating the panel allocated that spot for the Voting Rights Section chief "or his designee." Rich said he was not consulted.
After the commission hired both liberal and conservative consultants to work on the studies in 2005, e-mails show that von Spakovsky tried to persuade panel members that the research was flawed.
In an Aug. 18, 2005, e-mail to Chairman DiGregorio, he objected strenuously to a contract award for the ID study to researchers at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, who were teaming with a group at Rutgers University. Von Spakovsky wrote that Daniel Tokaji, the associate director of Moritz' election program, was "an outspoken opponent of voter identification requirements" and that those "pre-existing notions" should disqualify him from federal funding for impartial research.
The criticism was ironic coming from von Spakovsky, who a few months earlier had written the anonymous article for the Texas Review of Law and Politics, in which he called voter fraud a problem of importance equal to racial discrimination at the polls. Von Spakovsky acknowledged writing the article after joining the FEC.
Months after its publication, he participated in the department's review of Georgia's photo ID law, as required under the 1965 Voting Rights Act for election laws passed in 16 Southern states. After the department approved it, a federal judge struck it down as akin to a Jim Crow-era poll tax on minority voters.
Rich called von Spakovsky's failure to withdraw from the case "especially disturbing, given the clear ethical concerns" over his prior work as a Georgia elections official and the bias in his article.
Von Spakovsky's tone toward DiGregorio grew increasingly harsh in 2005 as the chairman refused to take partisan stands, said two people close to the commission who declined to be identified because of the matter's sensitivity.
Their differences seemed to come to a head last year over two issues raised by Arizona's Republican secretary of state, Janice Brewer, who was implementing the toughest state voter identification law in the nation. In April 2005, the Justice Department erroneously advised her that Arizona did not need to offer a provisional ballot to those lacking proof of citizenship.
E-mails suggest that von Spakovsky contacted an aide to Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond, who inquired of DiGregorio whether the commission was "seriously considering taking a position against" the department on the provisional ballot question.
DiGregorio sent a testy message asking von Spakovsky if the note from Capitol Hill was "an attempt by you to put pressure on me."
"If so, I do not appreciate it," he wrote.
The next day, von Spakovsky wrote DiGregorio that he thought they "had a deal" under which the department would reconsider its position on provisional ballots if the commission would allow Arizona to modify the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.
"I do not agree to `deals,' especially when it comes to interpretation of the law," DiGregorio replied.
Last September, the White House replaced DiGregorio with Caroline Hunter, a former deputy counsel to the Republican National Committee. DiGregorio confided to associates that he was told that von Spakovsky influenced the White House's decision not to reappoint him, said the two people close to the panel.
Asked about his ouster, DiGregorio said only that he "was aware that Mr. von Spakovsky was not pleased with the bipartisan approaches that I took."
But on the issue of SYSTEMATIC VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT, there is more than a grain of truth to Republican accusations and caricatures, for the Repubs know that all they have to do is shout "LAW AND ORDER!" and "MORAL VALUES!" and "VOTER FRAUD!" and their Democratic adversaries will RUN FOR THE HILLS - leaving their own voters, and even their own candidates - hanging out to rot in the breeze.
In 2000 Al Gore bought into the Republican cries of "MORAL VALUES!" not only in nominating "moral values" hypocrite Joe Lieberman to be his running mate - but in REFUSING TO CO-SIGN the Black Congressional Caucus DEMANDS for an investigation into massive Republican election fraud in the Florida 20000 vote (non-) recount.
Senator John Kerry went Gore's campaign ONE WORSE, presidential candidate kerry abjectly REFUSING to counter President Bush's charges of "FLIP FLOPPER!" by replying that it was Mr. Bush who had RENEGED on his "I'll get Osama bin Laden DEAD OR ALIVE!" pledge, in a video photo-op at ground zero, then less than a year later (when the US mission in Afghanistan was being sold short in order to shift US troops to the pending invasion of Iraq) the same Mr. Bush declared "Osama bin Laden DOESN'T CONCERN ME THAT MUCH ANYMORE.
Mr. Kerry's refusal to aggressively CONFRONT Bush's record was a betrayal of all the activists, donors, and Democratic voters who put their hearts into his campaign - hoping to have a FIGHTER represent their hopes and convictions, and instead getting a stuffed-shirt punching bag.
And in 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and Senate Govt. Affairs Committee Chairman Senator Joe Lieberman - SOLD THOUSANDS of Enron workers, pensioners, investors, and customers DOWN THE RIVER by REFUSING to hold thorough and aggressive investigations into Enron fraud. (Such an investigation would ultimately be held in the trial of Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and others who were convicted of fraud for overstating that company's profits and setting up shell subsidiaries to siphon off what profits there were.)
Thus, in at least the past two presidential elections, and the 2002 midterm election, Democrats are DEFINED as - selling their own constituents down the river. And even in the 2006 mid-term election, there is compelling evidence that 18,000 voters were ROBBED OF THEIR VOTES in Florida District 13 voting (The seat Katherine Harris gave up in her senate campaign.) Karl Rove Republicans are already working on similar tactics for the NEXT election, while Democratic leadership PRETENDS NOT TO NOTICE this egregious THEFT of thousands of votes in the past election!
In his most recent editorial, exiled investigative reporter Greg Pallast makes the charge that Democratic leadership CONCIOUSLY sells minority voters down the river, in a "belly-of-the-beast" alliance with neo-segregationist Bush-GOP leadership. That charge may or may not be overstated - but just as President Bush claimed that "OSAMA BIN LADEN NO LONGER CONCERNS ME", the Democratic leadership has an APPALLING record of not being concerned by massive Republican VOTE-STEALING and VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT techniques. ==================================================
Efforts to stop `voter fraud' may have curbed legitimate voting
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
May 20, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17256012.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation
WASHINGTON - During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.
Writing as "Publius," von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was "no evidence" that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.
Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.
"Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration's pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote," charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.
He and other former career department lawyers say that von Spakovsky steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots.
In interviews, current and former federal officials and civil rights leaders told McClatchy Newspapers that von Spakovsky:
-Sped approval of tougher voter ID laws in Georgia and Arizona in 2005, joining decisions to override career lawyers who believed that Georgia's law would restrict voting by poor blacks and who felt that more analysis was needed on the Arizona law's impact on Native Americans and Latinos.
-Tried to influence the federal Election Assistance Commission's research into the dimensions of voter fraud nationally and the impact of restrictive voter ID laws - research that could undermine a vote-suppression agenda.
-Allegedly engineered the ouster of the commission's chairman, Paul DiGregorio, whom von Spakovsky considered insufficiently partisan.
Von Spakovsky, who declined to comment on these allegations, is among more than a dozen present and former Justice Department officials drawing congressional scrutiny over the administration's alleged use of the nation's chief law enforcement agency for partisan purposes.
Congressional committees investigating the firing last year of nine U.S. attorneys are looking into allegations that prosecutors nationwide were urged to pursue voter fraud to build a basis for tougher ID laws.
Von Spakovsky, who had been a longtime voting rights activist and elections official in Georgia before serving at Justice, accepted a presidential recess appointment to a Republican slot on the Federal Election Commission in December 2005. He is scheduled to appear at a June 13 confirmation hearing before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.
The House Administration Committee is also inquiring into von Spakovsky's communications with the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that implemented a 2002 election reform law and serves as a national election information clearinghouse.
The bipartisan, four-member commission stirred a political tempest last year when it delayed the release of voter fraud and voter ID law studies, saying that more research was needed. A House panel revealed last month that the fraud study's central finding - that there was little evidence of widespread voter fraud - had been toned down to say that "a great deal of debate" surrounded the subject.
Commissioners rejected as flawed the second study's finding that voter ID laws tend to suppress turnout, especially among Latinos, and ordered more research.
Rich said that von Spakovsky usurped his seat on a commission advisory panel in 2004, although the law creating the panel allocated that spot for the Voting Rights Section chief "or his designee." Rich said he was not consulted.
After the commission hired both liberal and conservative consultants to work on the studies in 2005, e-mails show that von Spakovsky tried to persuade panel members that the research was flawed.
In an Aug. 18, 2005, e-mail to Chairman DiGregorio, he objected strenuously to a contract award for the ID study to researchers at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, who were teaming with a group at Rutgers University. Von Spakovsky wrote that Daniel Tokaji, the associate director of Moritz' election program, was "an outspoken opponent of voter identification requirements" and that those "pre-existing notions" should disqualify him from federal funding for impartial research.
The criticism was ironic coming from von Spakovsky, who a few months earlier had written the anonymous article for the Texas Review of Law and Politics, in which he called voter fraud a problem of importance equal to racial discrimination at the polls. Von Spakovsky acknowledged writing the article after joining the FEC.
Months after its publication, he participated in the department's review of Georgia's photo ID law, as required under the 1965 Voting Rights Act for election laws passed in 16 Southern states. After the department approved it, a federal judge struck it down as akin to a Jim Crow-era poll tax on minority voters.
Rich called von Spakovsky's failure to withdraw from the case "especially disturbing, given the clear ethical concerns" over his prior work as a Georgia elections official and the bias in his article.
Von Spakovsky's tone toward DiGregorio grew increasingly harsh in 2005 as the chairman refused to take partisan stands, said two people close to the commission who declined to be identified because of the matter's sensitivity.
Their differences seemed to come to a head last year over two issues raised by Arizona's Republican secretary of state, Janice Brewer, who was implementing the toughest state voter identification law in the nation. In April 2005, the Justice Department erroneously advised her that Arizona did not need to offer a provisional ballot to those lacking proof of citizenship.
E-mails suggest that von Spakovsky contacted an aide to Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond, who inquired of DiGregorio whether the commission was "seriously considering taking a position against" the department on the provisional ballot question.
DiGregorio sent a testy message asking von Spakovsky if the note from Capitol Hill was "an attempt by you to put pressure on me."
"If so, I do not appreciate it," he wrote.
The next day, von Spakovsky wrote DiGregorio that he thought they "had a deal" under which the department would reconsider its position on provisional ballots if the commission would allow Arizona to modify the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.
"I do not agree to `deals,' especially when it comes to interpretation of the law," DiGregorio replied.
Last September, the White House replaced DiGregorio with Caroline Hunter, a former deputy counsel to the Republican National Committee. DiGregorio confided to associates that he was told that von Spakovsky influenced the White House's decision not to reappoint him, said the two people close to the panel.
Asked about his ouster, DiGregorio said only that he "was aware that Mr. von Spakovsky was not pleased with the bipartisan approaches that I took."
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Repubs have "Mastered the art of making Democrats look like EFFIMINATE CARICATURES."
In a perceptive if not OBVIOUS commentary, Arianna Huffington writes:
<< Republicans have also mastered the dark art of REDUCING THEIR OPPONENTS to EFFIMINATE CARICATURES. They have regularly succeeded in EMASCULATING Democratic candidates. And not just any Democrats but Democrats who were actually decorated war heroes with Silver Stars and Purple Hearts. >>
<< Of course, THE DEMOCRATS have often MADE IT ALL TOO EASY for the GOP to fit them into this EMASCULATED narrative. Jimmy Carter, with his sweaters and his malaise and the in-need-of-Viagra visual of those helicopters crashing in the Iranian desert. And Michael Dukakis, well, what kind of man was he if he wouldn't want the death penalty even for the guy who theoretically raped and murdered his wife? He couldn't handle Bernie Shaw, how was he going to deal with the Soviet Union? >>
In 2000, Al Gore REFUSED to point out that Texas Governor George W. Bush's entire record as governor was one of SLASHING funding for programs like pre-school, after-school, and health-care programs for Texas schoolchildren who most needed those programs (which would of course allow their parents to work), while giving huge, BUDGET-BUSTING TAX CUTS to Texas' wealthiest corporations and billionaires.
In 2002, then Senate MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle (and Senate Govt. Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman) REFUSED to TIE ENRON corporation and Ken Lay to Bush - even though Enron and Lay were George W. Bush's biggest contributors in Bush's 2 gubernatorial races, his 2000 Republican primary race, his 2000 presidential race, AND his Florida (non-) recount legal battle. Daschle went down to ignominious re-election defeat (his photo placed side-by-side with those of Saddam Hussein and Osam bin Laden in Republican "soft on terror" TV ads) despite the advantages of a tiny state (population) having Daschle as the Senate Majority Leader.
In 2003, California Governor Gray Davis REFUSED to PROSECUTE for criminal conspiracy those Enron traders and others in the electric industry who were CREATING POWER OUTAGES and shortages by COORDINATED PLANT SHUTDOWNS and deliberate power grid overloads.
And, in 2004, clueless (if not treacherous) Senator John Kerry REPEATED Al Gore's anemic strategy of "HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL, _SPEAK NO EVIL_ of George W. Bush's mal-administration," Kerry, too, going down to ignominious defeat, almost certainly Kerry was robbed of his winning Ohio electoral votes, and as well (quite probably) what should have been his popular vote majority in some western states like New Mexico, Nevada, and even Iowa.
Today, in the spring of 2007, the leading Democratic candidates are WELL ON THE WAY to REPEATING the disastrous campaigns of Gore, Daschle, and Kerry, REFUSING to talk about the elephant in the room - the criminal activities swirling around Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Cheney, and from within the White House itself. (i.e. Karl Rove's role in CIA-outing scandal, the obstruction of justice that pushed that scandal past the somnolent Kerry campaign in 2004, and the Rove "double-dipping in criminal conduct" PURGING of US Attorneys to OBSTRUCT prosecutions of senior Republican officials, including cases that were then on-going in relation to the Congressman ('Duke') Cunningham bribery conviction - cases which have since been DROPPED or faded from the news.
====================================
Bill Maher, Frank Luntz, and the Limitations of Reframing Reality
Arianna Huffington
05.13.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bill-maher-frank-luntz-_b_48378.html
At the moment, everyone is giving advice to the Democrats about how to beat the Republican spinmeisters. Even Republican spinmeisters. On the latest Real Time with Bill Maher, it was GOP language guru Frank Luntz dishing out advice to me, Paula Poundstone, and anyone else who would listen.
Frank is the supreme reality reframer who took the estate tax and turned it into the "death tax," turned school vouchers into "opportunity scholarships," and turned drilling for oil in a wildlife preserve into "responsible energy exploration."
It is Frank's contention that the reason Democrats keep losing presidential races they should win is that they are too critical, too negative, and too angry. Really? Anyone remember the '04 Democratic convention where the Kerry campaign had put the kibosh on all expressions of anger and Bush-bashing?
But is it surprising that watching your country led into a disastrous war with all the attendant damage to national security provokes anger in sentient beings?
Frank also insisted that Democrats keep losing because they only talk about what they are against, never what they are for.
"Bring the troops home, and end the war... How is that not knowing what we are for?" asked Paula.
Bill framed the question as a mystery: How can the Republicans keep electing what he evocatively called 'You fucking kidding me?' candidates:
Richard Nixon? You fucking kidding me? Ronald Reagan? You fucking kidding me? George W. Bush? You fucking kidding me?!
I don't think it's a mystery at all. I've written extensively about how the Republicans have used fear to scare their way to victory (see here, here, and here). Fear is their go-to play. Mushroom clouds as smoking guns! Terror alerts any time the poll numbers take a dip! And isn't it interesting how we have the Fort Dix arrest of the gang that couldn't jihad straight just as Bush's approval rating hits a record low? When the president warned that if we didn't fight them over there, we'd have to fight them over here, I never imagined that ground zero would be Circuit City.
Republicans have also mastered the dark art of reducing their opponents to effeminate caricatures. They have regularly succeeded in emasculating Democratic candidates. And not just any Democrats but Democrats who were actually decorated war heroes with Silver Stars and Purple Hearts.
Just imagine: George McGovern was a World War II fighter bomber pilot who flew 35 missions and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. And the Republicans successfully painted him as a yellow-bellied, panty-waisted pacifist-coward.
And John Kerry was transformed from a decorated Vietnam War hero who volunteered for duty into a Chablis-sipping, windsurfing, French-loving, croissant-eating wuss, while Bush, Cheney and all the rest of the Deferment Gang got to pretend they were take-no-guff-from-terrorists bad-asses.
Of course, the Democrats have often made it all too easy for the GOP to fit them into this emasculated narrative. Jimmy Carter, with his sweaters and his malaise and the in-need-of-Viagra visual of those helicopters crashing in the Iranian desert. And Michael Dukakis, well, what kind of man was he if he wouldn't want the death penalty even for the guy who theoretically raped and murdered his wife? He couldn't handle Bernie Shaw, how was he going to deal with the Soviet Union?
Since the political use -- and abuse -- of language was the recurring theme of our whole Real Time discussion, I had to bring up my favorite linguistic moment of the week: After Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' claimed that the response to the Greensburg tornado was hampered because so many National Guardsmen and their equipment are in Iraq, Tony Snow took umbrage, saying: "There's a lot of stuff available."
Stuff? Was he suggesting his brother-in-law had a tractor he was willing to loan the governor? Or maybe Snow got two power saws last Christmas, so Kansas could have one that had never been used and was still in the box.
The truth is that no matter how often the White House attempts to spin the domestic collateral damage from the war by attacking the messengers (remember how they did the same thing to Louisiana's governor after Katrina?), the facts don't lie: the Kansas National Guard is operating with only 40 to 50 percent of its equipment. And there are similar problems all over the country.
Indeed, the Government Accountability Office released a report in January concluding that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have "significantly decreased" the amount of National Guard equipment available here at home, while stateside units face an increasing number of threats.
There are currently over 25,000 National Guardsmen in Iraq, with another 13,000 slated to be deployed as part of the surge. And every guardsman who is in Iraq is one less guardsman who can help out in Kansas or with the California fires or the Missouri flooding or whatever other disasters -- or terrorist attacks -- might be coming our way.
After years of successful spinning, Frank Luntz and the Republican Party are suddenly coming face to face with the limits of reframing: Our safety and security have been severely undermined by the war in Iraq (Tony Snow's "stuff" not withstanding); and it's getting harder and harder to reframe Democrats as ineffectual eunuchs when a ballsy woman is leading the charge in Congress.
Angry? You bet. Bush and company have turned America into a collection of Howard Beales: we're mad as hell and we're not going to allow reality to be reframed anymore.
Watch the exchanges with Frank, Bill and Paula here.
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<< Republicans have also mastered the dark art of REDUCING THEIR OPPONENTS to EFFIMINATE CARICATURES. They have regularly succeeded in EMASCULATING Democratic candidates. And not just any Democrats but Democrats who were actually decorated war heroes with Silver Stars and Purple Hearts. >>
<< Of course, THE DEMOCRATS have often MADE IT ALL TOO EASY for the GOP to fit them into this EMASCULATED narrative. Jimmy Carter, with his sweaters and his malaise and the in-need-of-Viagra visual of those helicopters crashing in the Iranian desert. And Michael Dukakis, well, what kind of man was he if he wouldn't want the death penalty even for the guy who theoretically raped and murdered his wife? He couldn't handle Bernie Shaw, how was he going to deal with the Soviet Union? >>
In 2000, Al Gore REFUSED to point out that Texas Governor George W. Bush's entire record as governor was one of SLASHING funding for programs like pre-school, after-school, and health-care programs for Texas schoolchildren who most needed those programs (which would of course allow their parents to work), while giving huge, BUDGET-BUSTING TAX CUTS to Texas' wealthiest corporations and billionaires.
In 2002, then Senate MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle (and Senate Govt. Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman) REFUSED to TIE ENRON corporation and Ken Lay to Bush - even though Enron and Lay were George W. Bush's biggest contributors in Bush's 2 gubernatorial races, his 2000 Republican primary race, his 2000 presidential race, AND his Florida (non-) recount legal battle. Daschle went down to ignominious re-election defeat (his photo placed side-by-side with those of Saddam Hussein and Osam bin Laden in Republican "soft on terror" TV ads) despite the advantages of a tiny state (population) having Daschle as the Senate Majority Leader.
In 2003, California Governor Gray Davis REFUSED to PROSECUTE for criminal conspiracy those Enron traders and others in the electric industry who were CREATING POWER OUTAGES and shortages by COORDINATED PLANT SHUTDOWNS and deliberate power grid overloads.
And, in 2004, clueless (if not treacherous) Senator John Kerry REPEATED Al Gore's anemic strategy of "HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL, _SPEAK NO EVIL_ of George W. Bush's mal-administration," Kerry, too, going down to ignominious defeat, almost certainly Kerry was robbed of his winning Ohio electoral votes, and as well (quite probably) what should have been his popular vote majority in some western states like New Mexico, Nevada, and even Iowa.
Today, in the spring of 2007, the leading Democratic candidates are WELL ON THE WAY to REPEATING the disastrous campaigns of Gore, Daschle, and Kerry, REFUSING to talk about the elephant in the room - the criminal activities swirling around Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Cheney, and from within the White House itself. (i.e. Karl Rove's role in CIA-outing scandal, the obstruction of justice that pushed that scandal past the somnolent Kerry campaign in 2004, and the Rove "double-dipping in criminal conduct" PURGING of US Attorneys to OBSTRUCT prosecutions of senior Republican officials, including cases that were then on-going in relation to the Congressman ('Duke') Cunningham bribery conviction - cases which have since been DROPPED or faded from the news.
====================================
Bill Maher, Frank Luntz, and the Limitations of Reframing Reality
Arianna Huffington
05.13.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bill-maher-frank-luntz-_b_48378.html
At the moment, everyone is giving advice to the Democrats about how to beat the Republican spinmeisters. Even Republican spinmeisters. On the latest Real Time with Bill Maher, it was GOP language guru Frank Luntz dishing out advice to me, Paula Poundstone, and anyone else who would listen.
Frank is the supreme reality reframer who took the estate tax and turned it into the "death tax," turned school vouchers into "opportunity scholarships," and turned drilling for oil in a wildlife preserve into "responsible energy exploration."
It is Frank's contention that the reason Democrats keep losing presidential races they should win is that they are too critical, too negative, and too angry. Really? Anyone remember the '04 Democratic convention where the Kerry campaign had put the kibosh on all expressions of anger and Bush-bashing?
But is it surprising that watching your country led into a disastrous war with all the attendant damage to national security provokes anger in sentient beings?
Frank also insisted that Democrats keep losing because they only talk about what they are against, never what they are for.
"Bring the troops home, and end the war... How is that not knowing what we are for?" asked Paula.
Bill framed the question as a mystery: How can the Republicans keep electing what he evocatively called 'You fucking kidding me?' candidates:
Richard Nixon? You fucking kidding me? Ronald Reagan? You fucking kidding me? George W. Bush? You fucking kidding me?!
I don't think it's a mystery at all. I've written extensively about how the Republicans have used fear to scare their way to victory (see here, here, and here). Fear is their go-to play. Mushroom clouds as smoking guns! Terror alerts any time the poll numbers take a dip! And isn't it interesting how we have the Fort Dix arrest of the gang that couldn't jihad straight just as Bush's approval rating hits a record low? When the president warned that if we didn't fight them over there, we'd have to fight them over here, I never imagined that ground zero would be Circuit City.
Republicans have also mastered the dark art of reducing their opponents to effeminate caricatures. They have regularly succeeded in emasculating Democratic candidates. And not just any Democrats but Democrats who were actually decorated war heroes with Silver Stars and Purple Hearts.
Just imagine: George McGovern was a World War II fighter bomber pilot who flew 35 missions and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. And the Republicans successfully painted him as a yellow-bellied, panty-waisted pacifist-coward.
And John Kerry was transformed from a decorated Vietnam War hero who volunteered for duty into a Chablis-sipping, windsurfing, French-loving, croissant-eating wuss, while Bush, Cheney and all the rest of the Deferment Gang got to pretend they were take-no-guff-from-terrorists bad-asses.
Of course, the Democrats have often made it all too easy for the GOP to fit them into this emasculated narrative. Jimmy Carter, with his sweaters and his malaise and the in-need-of-Viagra visual of those helicopters crashing in the Iranian desert. And Michael Dukakis, well, what kind of man was he if he wouldn't want the death penalty even for the guy who theoretically raped and murdered his wife? He couldn't handle Bernie Shaw, how was he going to deal with the Soviet Union?
Since the political use -- and abuse -- of language was the recurring theme of our whole Real Time discussion, I had to bring up my favorite linguistic moment of the week: After Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' claimed that the response to the Greensburg tornado was hampered because so many National Guardsmen and their equipment are in Iraq, Tony Snow took umbrage, saying: "There's a lot of stuff available."
Stuff? Was he suggesting his brother-in-law had a tractor he was willing to loan the governor? Or maybe Snow got two power saws last Christmas, so Kansas could have one that had never been used and was still in the box.
The truth is that no matter how often the White House attempts to spin the domestic collateral damage from the war by attacking the messengers (remember how they did the same thing to Louisiana's governor after Katrina?), the facts don't lie: the Kansas National Guard is operating with only 40 to 50 percent of its equipment. And there are similar problems all over the country.
Indeed, the Government Accountability Office released a report in January concluding that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have "significantly decreased" the amount of National Guard equipment available here at home, while stateside units face an increasing number of threats.
There are currently over 25,000 National Guardsmen in Iraq, with another 13,000 slated to be deployed as part of the surge. And every guardsman who is in Iraq is one less guardsman who can help out in Kansas or with the California fires or the Missouri flooding or whatever other disasters -- or terrorist attacks -- might be coming our way.
After years of successful spinning, Frank Luntz and the Republican Party are suddenly coming face to face with the limits of reframing: Our safety and security have been severely undermined by the war in Iraq (Tony Snow's "stuff" not withstanding); and it's getting harder and harder to reframe Democrats as ineffectual eunuchs when a ballsy woman is leading the charge in Congress.
Angry? You bet. Bush and company have turned America into a collection of Howard Beales: we're mad as hell and we're not going to allow reality to be reframed anymore.
Watch the exchanges with Frank, Bill and Paula here.
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
Gonzales LIED UNDER OATH: Democrats have an ability AND AN OBLIGATION to remove the PERJUROUS Attorney General....
<< James B. Comey, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush ADMINSTRATION LAWLESSNESS SO SHOCKING it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. >>
IF "SHOCKING LAWLESSNESS" by the Attorney General does not warrant IMPEACHMENT, then we are no longer a nation of laws.
Having, finally, NOTICED this "shocking LAWLESSNESS" on the part of the Bush administration, the lying Washington Post also has an OBLIGATION - to report, TRUTHFULLY and HONESTLY - of ALL THE OTHER CASES of LAWLESSNESS by the Bush-Rove-Cheney presidency.
And the Democrats, too, have a duty and an obligation to RESTORE AMERICA to the RULE OF LAW.
======================================
Mr. Comey's Tale
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html
JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.
Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.
As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.
The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.
Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.
IF "SHOCKING LAWLESSNESS" by the Attorney General does not warrant IMPEACHMENT, then we are no longer a nation of laws.
Having, finally, NOTICED this "shocking LAWLESSNESS" on the part of the Bush administration, the lying Washington Post also has an OBLIGATION - to report, TRUTHFULLY and HONESTLY - of ALL THE OTHER CASES of LAWLESSNESS by the Bush-Rove-Cheney presidency.
And the Democrats, too, have a duty and an obligation to RESTORE AMERICA to the RULE OF LAW.
======================================
Mr. Comey's Tale
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html
JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.
Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.
As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.
The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.
Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Democrats were on "Auto-capitulation" as Republicans used corruption, 9-11 fear, as engine for one-party dictatorship....
<< During this time, it seemed that the dream of establishing a One-Party-Rule in the USA was happening. That it was already a permanent reality. Democrats were weak and disorganized. Most of those who remained in Congress after 2002 seemed to be on AUTO-CAPITULATION to Bush and the Republicans. >>
All through the 1980s and 1990s, with an explosion leading up to and after the 2000 election, the Republican Party used CORRUPTION as an engine to power their drive for one-party rule. Daily Kos (www.DailyKos.com) contributor Dengre has set out to compile an on-going list of Republican corruption and criminality, and this web post is peppered with words like "criminality" and "crime wave" and "corruption," but sad to say, with the CONVICTIONS of Abramoff, Ney, Skilling, Lay, Cunningham, and others, it looks like the Republican Party of 2007 truly does resemble the slave-owners of the ante-bellum South, who thought that they were entitled to engage in the massive chattel slave trade, and to whip or beat slaves to death, in the pursuit of wealth and their own "private property rights."
WILL the Democrats contine the sad (if not sordid) record of the past - the "AUTO-CAPITULATION" to the rampant corruption and gross criminality of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/14/13220/6198
All through the 1980s and 1990s, with an explosion leading up to and after the 2000 election, the Republican Party used CORRUPTION as an engine to power their drive for one-party rule. Daily Kos (www.DailyKos.com) contributor Dengre has set out to compile an on-going list of Republican corruption and criminality, and this web post is peppered with words like "criminality" and "crime wave" and "corruption," but sad to say, with the CONVICTIONS of Abramoff, Ney, Skilling, Lay, Cunningham, and others, it looks like the Republican Party of 2007 truly does resemble the slave-owners of the ante-bellum South, who thought that they were entitled to engage in the massive chattel slave trade, and to whip or beat slaves to death, in the pursuit of wealth and their own "private property rights."
WILL the Democrats contine the sad (if not sordid) record of the past - the "AUTO-CAPITULATION" to the rampant corruption and gross criminality of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/14/13220/6198
Big Business (DLC) Democrats get House leadership - to support Union-busting, enviro-gutting, consumer ripoff "Free Trade Pact"?
David Sirota does yeoman's work, trying to unravel the SECRETIVE "Free Trade Pact" being written by industry lobbyists, and pushed by the Bush administration, Republican Party, and DLC (corporate) Democrats - who have apparently won the support of the House Leadership in trying to ram this union-busting, enviro-gutting, consumer trashing deal past a somnlent public and cravenly complicit press/media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/journalism-becomes-stenog_b_48333.html
Here is the lying money-quote from the New York Times' furious pushing of the "Free Trade Pact" in Steven R. Weisman's NY Times article:
<< Democrats said the accord would be a major victory in their campaign to ensure that trade deals provided for the rights of workers to organize and that trading partner countries banned child labor and slave labor. >>
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/10/business/trade.php
As Sirota points out - THE PACT DOES NOTHING OF THE KIND!
Which is why it is OPPOSED by unions, environmental groups, consumer protection groups, and other PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS across the country.
It is long past time that the Democratic leadership divorce itself from the sellout "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" of the DC & NY punditocracy class - which is to say the professional liars whose job it is is to put a polished spin on Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh's talking points.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/journalism-becomes-stenog_b_48333.html
Here is the lying money-quote from the New York Times' furious pushing of the "Free Trade Pact" in Steven R. Weisman's NY Times article:
<< Democrats said the accord would be a major victory in their campaign to ensure that trade deals provided for the rights of workers to organize and that trading partner countries banned child labor and slave labor. >>
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/10/business/trade.php
As Sirota points out - THE PACT DOES NOTHING OF THE KIND!
Which is why it is OPPOSED by unions, environmental groups, consumer protection groups, and other PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS across the country.
It is long past time that the Democratic leadership divorce itself from the sellout "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" of the DC & NY punditocracy class - which is to say the professional liars whose job it is is to put a polished spin on Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh's talking points.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Louisiana Democrats setting themselves up for CA-style INFAMY: IF you DON'T GO AFTER BUSH/Halliburton CORRUPTION, the Republicans WILL BLAME YOU!
STUPID, COWERING Democrats REPEAT the ignomious stupidity of California Governor Gray Davis: TOO STUPID, COWARDLY, and IMPOTENT to GO AFTER Enron's MASSIVE FRAUD vs. California electricity consumers, Davis went down to pathetic DEFEAT in the recall election that seated Republican Arnold Schwarzennegger in the California governor's mansion.
IF Democratic 'leaders' ARE TOO STUPID, COWARDLY, and INCOMPETENT to CONFRONT Bush/HALLIBURTON or Bush/ENRON CORRUPTION, that robs and devastates their constituents and citizens - THEY DESERVE IGNOMY and INFAMY.
In this case, before our eyes, President George W. Bush is USING a natuaral disaster (Hurricane Katrina), and USING the federal treasury (Halliburton and Blackwater billion-dollar no-bid, no-oversight contracts) to DISENFRANCHISE thousands of Louisiana voters - by seeing to it that New Orleans has NO master environmental plan to coordinate reconstruction in that city, thereby driving residents away.
AND STILL the cowering Democrats CAN NOT MAKE THAT OBVIOUS ARGUMENT FORCEFULLY - thereby SELLING citizens, constituents, and voters DOWN THE RIVER to Republican, big-business, and media CORRUPTION.
========================================
Fed Up in Louisiana
By Jonathan Capehart
Saturday, May 12, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051101984.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) went off. Not in a girls fighting, "Hold my earrings!" kind of way. But in a blunt manner befitting a chief executive who endured the worst natural and engineering disaster in U.S. history, who continues to battle Washington for federal assistance, and who is not running for reelection.
We met in Blanco's imposing office on the fourth floor of the state Capitol in Baton Rouge on Wednesday. After watching her testify pleasantly before state legislative committees on behalf of her insurance reform package and for an expansion of Louisiana's Child Health Plus program, I was floored by her "bring it on" forthrightness as she talked about her dealings with Washington after Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (By Bill Haber -- Associated Press)
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"I feel like in the last 3 1/2 years I have put in eight years' worth of work," Blanco said with an exasperated laugh. Her performance during Katrina was roundly criticized and her approval ratings in Louisiana, which rival those of President Bush nationally, never recovered. Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Louisiana Republican who wants to replace Blanco, had a 24-point lead over her in a January poll. Blanco denies that her weak standing played a role in her March announcement that she would not seek a second term.
When I asked the governor if she were as baffled as I by the level of resistance in Congress and in the White House to helping Louisiana with post-Hurricane Katrina recovery (the continuing refusal to waive the onerous 10 percent match required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency comes to mind), Blanco let 'er rip.
"It's all political," she began. "You know, this country's run on politics. But when a disaster comes that is not what you expect, you expect a human reaction, not a political reaction. And I will tell you, there's a void," Blanco drawled, "a total void of human response. And it's extremely discouraging as an American citizen. It makes me angry and extremely disappointed."
That's not to say the Bush administration hasn't ponied up for the Pelican State. So far, $42 billion, not including flood insurance payments, has flowed to Louisiana. Blanco acknowledged this, and then added, "But I would just have to say it's not good enough."
The experience of securing that funding and trying to get access to it has not been pleasant. "I absolutely hated the idea of having to go to Washington, D.C., to deal with the last Congress, because their attitude was brutal," she said. "The old Congress made us feel like we were pretty stupid for standing in the way of the hurricane and that we were asking for far too much assistance.
"They ignored the fact that it wasn't the hurricane, per se, that caused our damage," Blanco explained in a forceful, yet measured, tone. "It was the failure, an engineering failure, of the federal levees that caused our enormous grief. If we had not had levee failures, people would have walked home, and today we would not even be sitting here talking about it." She did say the new Congress was "definitely more interested in trying to help us."
Blanco would not take the bait and say that New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole have been abandoned by Washington, but she was not shy about denouncing the bureaucratic roadblocks and the duplicative and sometimes contradictory rules and regulations of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and FEMA for spending the money allocated, that have slowed the pace of recovery. "It feels like the federal government is choking us to death," Blanco said. "And they will not; they are totally resistant to releasing the bonds that hold us. It's like living in a torture chamber."
And what about Louisiana's history of corruption? Might that not have played a role in the bad attitudes on Capitol Hill? "In my book, that's the biggest crock of excuses that I've ever heard," Blanco thundered. "Louisiana has had its own negative experiences, but we don't hold the corner on corruption." She went on to say, "We've not been accused of wasting a single nickel. We have extraordinary review practices embedded in everything that we do. And now we're being accused of being overly attentive to fraud avoidance and holding back the recovery."
Blanco had a message for the hundreds of members of Congress who have come through Louisiana since Katrina. "They have seen with their own eyes," she said. "They need to look in their own hearts to decide what they would want to happen in their own states if something of this magnitude did as much damage. Where would their people be?"
The writer is a member of the
IF Democratic 'leaders' ARE TOO STUPID, COWARDLY, and INCOMPETENT to CONFRONT Bush/HALLIBURTON or Bush/ENRON CORRUPTION, that robs and devastates their constituents and citizens - THEY DESERVE IGNOMY and INFAMY.
In this case, before our eyes, President George W. Bush is USING a natuaral disaster (Hurricane Katrina), and USING the federal treasury (Halliburton and Blackwater billion-dollar no-bid, no-oversight contracts) to DISENFRANCHISE thousands of Louisiana voters - by seeing to it that New Orleans has NO master environmental plan to coordinate reconstruction in that city, thereby driving residents away.
AND STILL the cowering Democrats CAN NOT MAKE THAT OBVIOUS ARGUMENT FORCEFULLY - thereby SELLING citizens, constituents, and voters DOWN THE RIVER to Republican, big-business, and media CORRUPTION.
========================================
Fed Up in Louisiana
By Jonathan Capehart
Saturday, May 12, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051101984.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) went off. Not in a girls fighting, "Hold my earrings!" kind of way. But in a blunt manner befitting a chief executive who endured the worst natural and engineering disaster in U.S. history, who continues to battle Washington for federal assistance, and who is not running for reelection.
We met in Blanco's imposing office on the fourth floor of the state Capitol in Baton Rouge on Wednesday. After watching her testify pleasantly before state legislative committees on behalf of her insurance reform package and for an expansion of Louisiana's Child Health Plus program, I was floored by her "bring it on" forthrightness as she talked about her dealings with Washington after Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (By Bill Haber -- Associated Press)
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
ravings of a semi-sane madwoman
African American Political Pundit
African American Political Pundit
Full List of Blogs (7 links) »
Most Blogged About Articles
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Save & Share Article What's This?
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"I feel like in the last 3 1/2 years I have put in eight years' worth of work," Blanco said with an exasperated laugh. Her performance during Katrina was roundly criticized and her approval ratings in Louisiana, which rival those of President Bush nationally, never recovered. Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Louisiana Republican who wants to replace Blanco, had a 24-point lead over her in a January poll. Blanco denies that her weak standing played a role in her March announcement that she would not seek a second term.
When I asked the governor if she were as baffled as I by the level of resistance in Congress and in the White House to helping Louisiana with post-Hurricane Katrina recovery (the continuing refusal to waive the onerous 10 percent match required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency comes to mind), Blanco let 'er rip.
"It's all political," she began. "You know, this country's run on politics. But when a disaster comes that is not what you expect, you expect a human reaction, not a political reaction. And I will tell you, there's a void," Blanco drawled, "a total void of human response. And it's extremely discouraging as an American citizen. It makes me angry and extremely disappointed."
That's not to say the Bush administration hasn't ponied up for the Pelican State. So far, $42 billion, not including flood insurance payments, has flowed to Louisiana. Blanco acknowledged this, and then added, "But I would just have to say it's not good enough."
The experience of securing that funding and trying to get access to it has not been pleasant. "I absolutely hated the idea of having to go to Washington, D.C., to deal with the last Congress, because their attitude was brutal," she said. "The old Congress made us feel like we were pretty stupid for standing in the way of the hurricane and that we were asking for far too much assistance.
"They ignored the fact that it wasn't the hurricane, per se, that caused our damage," Blanco explained in a forceful, yet measured, tone. "It was the failure, an engineering failure, of the federal levees that caused our enormous grief. If we had not had levee failures, people would have walked home, and today we would not even be sitting here talking about it." She did say the new Congress was "definitely more interested in trying to help us."
Blanco would not take the bait and say that New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole have been abandoned by Washington, but she was not shy about denouncing the bureaucratic roadblocks and the duplicative and sometimes contradictory rules and regulations of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and FEMA for spending the money allocated, that have slowed the pace of recovery. "It feels like the federal government is choking us to death," Blanco said. "And they will not; they are totally resistant to releasing the bonds that hold us. It's like living in a torture chamber."
And what about Louisiana's history of corruption? Might that not have played a role in the bad attitudes on Capitol Hill? "In my book, that's the biggest crock of excuses that I've ever heard," Blanco thundered. "Louisiana has had its own negative experiences, but we don't hold the corner on corruption." She went on to say, "We've not been accused of wasting a single nickel. We have extraordinary review practices embedded in everything that we do. And now we're being accused of being overly attentive to fraud avoidance and holding back the recovery."
Blanco had a message for the hundreds of members of Congress who have come through Louisiana since Katrina. "They have seen with their own eyes," she said. "They need to look in their own hearts to decide what they would want to happen in their own states if something of this magnitude did as much damage. Where would their people be?"
The writer is a member of the
Friday, May 11, 2007
Congressmen GET IN SHOUTING MATCH - with Karl Rove! Unfortunately, it is REPUBLICAN Representatives.... but can Dems be far behind?
<< Regardless, [Republican Congressmen] LaHood and Meyer GOT INTO A SHOUTING MATCH [with Bush Political Affairs Chief KARL ROVE and WH Congressional Liason Dan Meyer] as emotions ran high and VOICES WERE RAISED yesterday morning in the White House while lawmakers were waiting to meet with first lady Laura Bush, according to two legislators who witnessed the exchange. >>
--------------------------------------
Bush Aides [KARL ROVE!] Berate [SHOUT AT!] 2 GOP Congressmen
By Jonathan E. Kaplan
May 11, 2007
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-aides-berate-gop-members-2007-05-10.html
Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.
The CONFRONTATIONS are the latest indications of an INTENSIFYING RIFT between Bush and congressional Republicans.
Reps. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) attracted the ire of White House officials for allegedly speaking to reporters about a Tuesday meeting between Bush and centrist Republicans on the Iraq war. Details of the contentious meeting first emerged Wednesday evening and attracted Page 1 headlines yesterday.
Sources said that Dan Meyer, Bush’s liaison to the House, confronted LaHood while White House political strategist KARL ROVE REBUKED [Congressman] Kirk. It is unclear if LaHood or Kirk were the originial sources for the stories, but LaHood was quoted in one of the articles
--------------------------------------
Bush Aides [KARL ROVE!] Berate [SHOUT AT!] 2 GOP Congressmen
By Jonathan E. Kaplan
May 11, 2007
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-aides-berate-gop-members-2007-05-10.html
Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.
The CONFRONTATIONS are the latest indications of an INTENSIFYING RIFT between Bush and congressional Republicans.
Reps. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) attracted the ire of White House officials for allegedly speaking to reporters about a Tuesday meeting between Bush and centrist Republicans on the Iraq war. Details of the contentious meeting first emerged Wednesday evening and attracted Page 1 headlines yesterday.
Sources said that Dan Meyer, Bush’s liaison to the House, confronted LaHood while White House political strategist KARL ROVE REBUKED [Congressman] Kirk. It is unclear if LaHood or Kirk were the originial sources for the stories, but LaHood was quoted in one of the articles
"TOOTHLESS Democrats" ENABLE Bush's scorn of American citizens
Richard A. Stitt: When Will The Democrats Catch Up With The Dixie Chicks?
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 05/10/2007 - 3:17pm. Reader Contribution
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1002
Leaving no doubt that the war in Iraq has no end, Bush has instructed his toady generals to proclaim that the surge of troops must continue through at least the beginning of next year. By then of course, we most likely will have gone through several charades where Democrats send forth funding bills with accountability restrictions while Bush continues to veto anything and everything that might have to do with compromises to end the fiasco and sectarian civil war in Iraq.
A toothless Democratic Party controlled U.S. Congress is as much a gift to Bush and as fortuitous an event as was the horror of 9/11 when his approval poll numbers were hovering near 50% and falling.
After 9/11, even though G.W. Bush was AWOL for three days following that catastrophe, he emerged in full Karl-Rove-scripted photo op propaganda mode as he stood on the pile of rubble that was once the site of the World Trade Center, one arm around a firefighter and bullhorn in the other screeching that we would get even with those who caused this catastrophe.
His poll numbers soared to over 90% approval and remained at stratospheric levels for a period not seen by any preceding president. War, as it turned out, became Bush's elixir and his entire raison d'être.
Nobody should expect the inflexible, sclerotic G. W. Bush to waver one bit on ending the most defining event in his 6 years of occupancy of the White House. Bush and his Republican thralls, with the exception of a handful of renegade apostates, will ride this war horse right through the end of 2008, claiming that to do otherwise will result in al Qaeda following us home where Americans will have to fight them off in the aisles of Wal-Mart.
The majority of Americans want an end to this senseless slaughter of U.S. military and innocent Iraqi citizens in a country that was never a threat to our interests or security. But in truth, the majority of Republicans love this war and apparently cheer on the daily body count. The daily body count, at least as interpreted by the Bush loyalists, is "proof that the surge is working." They proclaim that anyone who dares to oppose the "commander guy" who has said "War is on my mind," "I'm the war president," and "I'm the decider" is unpatriotic, un-American and a traitor to our country. The latest polls say that 75% of the Republican base support Bush and his war with no end.
All the Bush Bootlicking Republicans will soon be on the trading block and Bush's CEO suits-in-waiting, the toady generals, once again must answer to the American people on November 2008. Then the sheep-minded minority party Republicans will be diminished to being nothing but an entourage of Bush dead-enders, scratching their vacant heads, wondering why War Forever didn't register with the American voters at the polls.
Clearly, the mainstream media have aided this administration from the get-go. One only needs to read the feel-good media minder stories written by the likes of The New York Times' Judith Miller and the ubiquitous pro-war New Republic to understand the euphoria that celebrated the preemptive war and dismissed the war's critics as traitors who, as Bush's Press Secretary Ari Fleischer proclaimed, "You better watch what you say and watch what you do."
The mainstream media, however, issued their belated mea culpas and self-recriminations much in the same vein as CIA director George Tenet, whining that somehow their words and statements (such as Tenet's "slam dunk" on WMD) had been taken out of context. Now they admit they should have held the warmongering Bush administration to account for the carnage that has ensued as a result of the lies, deceit, and incompetence in waging a preemptive war under false pretexts, steamrollered by neo-cons such as Paul Wolfowitz (now under investigation at the World Bank), Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Dick Cheney, and other policymakers whose ignorance of the Middle East countries led them to believe they could convert the entire region to democracy at the end of a gun barrel.
It is a war that even as late as last summer when Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stood with his entire parliament and denounced Israel in the Lebanon-Israeli conflict, while they simultaneously gave their support to the terrorist group Hezbollah, where the mainstream media have remained inexplicably mute. Where is the outrage from the mainstream media over this horrific fact? Where is the "beacon of truth" once ascribed to the Fourth Estate to be the watchdogs of freedom and liberty?
The Republicans' message to the U.S. military fighting to perpetuate Bush's anti-Semitic Shiite Islamic Iraq regime of Nouri al-Maliki in the meantime is, "Keep on fighting and dying, GI!" They have learned nothing since November 2006 nor will they learn anything in 2008 because they never understood a thing about democracy to begin with. The people, not the "commander guy" and his corrupt, rubber stamp Neanderthal Republicans, are in charge.
We know the American voters finally caught up with the Dixie Chicks on November 7, 2006 when Bush's gutless, rubber stamp Republican congress was toppled from power. One of the looming questions that the majority of Americans are still asking is: "When will the Democrats catch up with the voters and the Dixie Chicks?"
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 05/10/2007 - 3:17pm. Reader Contribution
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1002
Leaving no doubt that the war in Iraq has no end, Bush has instructed his toady generals to proclaim that the surge of troops must continue through at least the beginning of next year. By then of course, we most likely will have gone through several charades where Democrats send forth funding bills with accountability restrictions while Bush continues to veto anything and everything that might have to do with compromises to end the fiasco and sectarian civil war in Iraq.
A toothless Democratic Party controlled U.S. Congress is as much a gift to Bush and as fortuitous an event as was the horror of 9/11 when his approval poll numbers were hovering near 50% and falling.
After 9/11, even though G.W. Bush was AWOL for three days following that catastrophe, he emerged in full Karl-Rove-scripted photo op propaganda mode as he stood on the pile of rubble that was once the site of the World Trade Center, one arm around a firefighter and bullhorn in the other screeching that we would get even with those who caused this catastrophe.
His poll numbers soared to over 90% approval and remained at stratospheric levels for a period not seen by any preceding president. War, as it turned out, became Bush's elixir and his entire raison d'être.
Nobody should expect the inflexible, sclerotic G. W. Bush to waver one bit on ending the most defining event in his 6 years of occupancy of the White House. Bush and his Republican thralls, with the exception of a handful of renegade apostates, will ride this war horse right through the end of 2008, claiming that to do otherwise will result in al Qaeda following us home where Americans will have to fight them off in the aisles of Wal-Mart.
The majority of Americans want an end to this senseless slaughter of U.S. military and innocent Iraqi citizens in a country that was never a threat to our interests or security. But in truth, the majority of Republicans love this war and apparently cheer on the daily body count. The daily body count, at least as interpreted by the Bush loyalists, is "proof that the surge is working." They proclaim that anyone who dares to oppose the "commander guy" who has said "War is on my mind," "I'm the war president," and "I'm the decider" is unpatriotic, un-American and a traitor to our country. The latest polls say that 75% of the Republican base support Bush and his war with no end.
All the Bush Bootlicking Republicans will soon be on the trading block and Bush's CEO suits-in-waiting, the toady generals, once again must answer to the American people on November 2008. Then the sheep-minded minority party Republicans will be diminished to being nothing but an entourage of Bush dead-enders, scratching their vacant heads, wondering why War Forever didn't register with the American voters at the polls.
Clearly, the mainstream media have aided this administration from the get-go. One only needs to read the feel-good media minder stories written by the likes of The New York Times' Judith Miller and the ubiquitous pro-war New Republic to understand the euphoria that celebrated the preemptive war and dismissed the war's critics as traitors who, as Bush's Press Secretary Ari Fleischer proclaimed, "You better watch what you say and watch what you do."
The mainstream media, however, issued their belated mea culpas and self-recriminations much in the same vein as CIA director George Tenet, whining that somehow their words and statements (such as Tenet's "slam dunk" on WMD) had been taken out of context. Now they admit they should have held the warmongering Bush administration to account for the carnage that has ensued as a result of the lies, deceit, and incompetence in waging a preemptive war under false pretexts, steamrollered by neo-cons such as Paul Wolfowitz (now under investigation at the World Bank), Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Dick Cheney, and other policymakers whose ignorance of the Middle East countries led them to believe they could convert the entire region to democracy at the end of a gun barrel.
It is a war that even as late as last summer when Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stood with his entire parliament and denounced Israel in the Lebanon-Israeli conflict, while they simultaneously gave their support to the terrorist group Hezbollah, where the mainstream media have remained inexplicably mute. Where is the outrage from the mainstream media over this horrific fact? Where is the "beacon of truth" once ascribed to the Fourth Estate to be the watchdogs of freedom and liberty?
The Republicans' message to the U.S. military fighting to perpetuate Bush's anti-Semitic Shiite Islamic Iraq regime of Nouri al-Maliki in the meantime is, "Keep on fighting and dying, GI!" They have learned nothing since November 2006 nor will they learn anything in 2008 because they never understood a thing about democracy to begin with. The people, not the "commander guy" and his corrupt, rubber stamp Neanderthal Republicans, are in charge.
We know the American voters finally caught up with the Dixie Chicks on November 7, 2006 when Bush's gutless, rubber stamp Republican congress was toppled from power. One of the looming questions that the majority of Americans are still asking is: "When will the Democrats catch up with the voters and the Dixie Chicks?"
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Democrats bear responsibility for restoring habeas corpus, ending dictatorial presidential powers...
Democrats bear responsibility for restoring habeas corpus
Wednesday May 9, 2007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/09/habeas_corpus/index.html
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is, without question, the single worst law enacted during the Bush presidency, and is one of the most destructive laws passed in the last several decades. It is not merely a bad law. It vests in the President the power to detain people indefinitely with no meaningful opportunity to contest the government's accusations. That is the very power the Founders sought first and foremost to prohibit.
More significantly, whether a country permits its political leaders to imprison people arbitrarily and with no process is one of the few defining attributes dividing free and civilized countries from lawless tyrannies. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." To vest the President with the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges is fundamentally to transform the type of country we are.
House Democrats are apparently now debating whether to vote on a bill to restore habeas corpus. Matt Stoller provides some of the legislative details and information needed to pressure them to do so, and he explains why quick action is required. This morning, The New York Times and even The Washington Post editorialized in favor of habeas restoration. It would be a profound -- and truly inexcusable -- abdication of Democrats' responsibilities for them to do anything other then devote full-scale efforts to restoring habeas corpus.
It is worthwhile to review briefly the history of how this legislative atrocity came to be. When the White House proposed this bill, Democrats were as meek and as silent as could be. They literally disappeared from the debate, allowing the illusion of "negotiations" between the White House on the one hand, and a handful of allegedly principled and independent Republican Senators (McCain, Warner and Graham) on the other.
When -- as was both painfully predictable and predicted -- those Republican Senators capitulated almost in full to the White House, "winning" only the most meaninglessly symbolic linguistic changes to the bill while acquiescing to its most Draconian provisions, the fate of the bill was sealed because Democrats had ceded their authority to those "rebel" GOP Senators.
On the most important bill of the Bush presidency, Congressional Democrats chose to remain absent from the debate -- and allow the fate of habeas corpus to rest on the obvious delusion that Congressional Republicans would protect it -- because they were petrified that Karl Rove, in the imminent midterm elections, would call them "pro-terrorist" if they protected habeas corpus. Of course, just as Rove insinuated that they were "pro-Saddam" in 2002 despite half of them voting to wage war against Iraq, Rove suggested they were "pro-terrorist" in 2006 despite Democrats allowing the MCA to pass.
It is true that most Democrats in both the House and Senate ultimately voted against this law (though 12 Democratic Senators out of 44 voted in favor). But even among the Senate Democrats who did vote against its enactment, many of them did not even reveal how they would vote until -- literally -- the very day before the vote occurred, and many such Democratic Senators announced their opposition only once it became clear that it would pass.
Just to remind ourselves of the behavior of the Democrats during the "debate," here are a few illustrative paragraphs from The New York Times article reporting on the "negotiations" over the bill that continued even after the grand McCain-Warner-Graham "compromise" was reached, whereby the "rebel GOP Senators" continued to make concessions to the White House which broadened even further the new powers vested in the President:
But Republicans were optimistic about eliminating last-minute concerns over a separate measure laying out rules for interrogating terrorism suspects and trying them before military tribunals. They said they were hoping to send the bill to Mr. Bush by the end of the week for a signing ceremony that could help them kick off the home stretch of the campaign with a message that Republicans were taking strong steps to protect the nation from terror attacks.
"I think we are good to go," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of three Republican senators who last week forced the administration into negotiations over the detainee measure.
Democrats, while being careful to say that they had made no decision to block the detainee bill, expressed rising concerns about changes to the proposal that they said went beyond what Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, had described Monday as merely "technical changes" . . . .
"These are significant changes, not technical changes," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, where the original bill backed by Senators Warner, McCain and Graham was approved. "It's hard to know how to vote on a bill that's this much in motion."
It's hard to know how to vote on a bill that's this much in motion. Outside of a handful of Democratic lawmakers, that whiny procedural complaint was the sum total of the Democrats' "opposition" to the MCA until the day before, when its fate was sealed.
Far worse, many Democrats -- led by Harry Reid (who at the last minute announced his opposition) -- even spoke favorably of the MCA in the days immediately preceding the vote:
Democrats, who have found themselves on the losing end of the national security debate the past two national elections, said the changes to the bill had not yet reached a level that would cause them to try to block it altogether.
"We want to do this," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "And we want to do it in compliance with the direction from the Supreme Court. We want to do it in compliance with the Constitution."
Full-scale (and consciously chosen) Democratic capitulation -- along with, in some cases, actual support for this bill -- is what placed them in that predicament, as the Times article from several days earlier made clear:
Democrats have allowed three Republican senators with strong military credentials -- John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- to take the lead in resisting the president on the issue. Democratic leaders were largely positive about the agreement reached Thursday, signaling that they would continue to cooperate, rather than risk looking obstructionist heading into the midterms.
"A handful of principled Republican Senators have forced the White House to back down from the worst elements of its extreme proposal for new interrogation rules," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.
It was a disgraceful performance by Democratic Congressional leaders all the way around -- driven by all of the worst elements plaguing our Beltway system -- and it resulted in the abolition of one of the most defining and long-standing American liberties: the right not to be imprisoned without charges, due process, and a determination of guilt in a real judicial proceeding.
As but one of the countless heinous examples of what this law authorizes, review the plight of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who, in 2001, was living with his wife and five children in the U.S. legally -- as a computer science graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois -- when he was detained and then charged with making false statements when he was questioned as part of the 9/11 investigation.
Al-Marri vehemently denied the accusations, and his criminal trial was scheduled for July, 2003. But the trial never happened, because President Bush, one month before it was to begin, declared him an "enemy combatant," leading to the dismissal of the charges in court and his transfer to a military prison, where he has remained ever since -- indefinitely -- with no opportunity to contest the charges or to prove his innocence.
That is what the MCA has legalized. That is the system of American justice which the 2006 Congress imposed -- people swept off the streets of America and imprisoned indefinitely, with no charges and no venue to prove one's innocence. And while it was the Bush White House which initiated this practice and it was Republicans in Congress who voted for it, Democrats -- who calculated that meaningfully opposing this bill would be too politically costly and would jeopardize their election victory -- bear significant culpability for its enactment. And that means that they now bear principal responsibility for its repeal.
Needless to say, fear of appearing "soft on terrorism" is the primary impediment to habeas restoration. That fear is absurd. The Republicans' principal weapon in 2006 was the fear-mongering claim that Democrats were weak on terrorism because they oppose warrantless eavesdropping, "coercive interrogations," and lawless detentions. And yet Republicans were crushed in that election. It's not 2002 any more; the country has tuned out those sorts of scare tactics and that manipulative weapon has been overused and is impotent.
Moreover, this is not a hard argument to make, but in order for it to be understood, the argument needs to be made. Americans understand instinctively that to allow someone to contest accusations against them is not tantamount to allowing them to go free. It is easily conveyed that a critical aspect for punishing terrorists is to ensure that we only punish actual terrorists but provide a process whereby innocent people are not wrongfully imprisoned for life. If Democrats engage that debate, rather than run from it again, it is not difficult to make that case.
But none of that even matters. The right to be free of arbitrary executive imprisonment is -- and, since the founding of America, always has been -- a defining and distinguishing attribute of our country (notwithstanding shameful instances in our past where that right has been denied). All citizens -- including, actually especially, those sent to represent the people in Congress -- have an obligation to protect that right from government officials who seek to abolish it.
Having disgracefully abdicated that responsibility back in September because they wanted to win the midterm elections, Democrats -- now that they have won -- can cleanse their historic sin only by committing themselves, not symbolically but in actuality, to the restoration of habeas corpus. Whether they are willing to do so will speak volumes about their true character and about whether their November victory will result in anything other than some televised hearings. If Democrats are too afraid even to take a stand against the Bush administration in defense of this centuries-old core American liberty, it is impossible to imagine any even minimally risky stands they are willing to take.
UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt at Talk Left has printed an e-mail from a reader which reports the following:
FYI-- Congresswoman, Rep. Kathy Castor, (D-FL-11th) who serves on both the Armed Services Comm. AND is the only freshman on the powerful Rules Committee which makes decisions about moving bills forward, met with Armed Services Chair Ike Skelton early this morning and they have decided to file a stand alone bill to restore habeas corpus rather than put it in the Defense Authorization Bill.
I spoke to her Chief of Staff personally, and he said she promises to work to move the bill along, so everyone will have to vote up or down on restoring habeas, and we'll all know by their vote where exactly everyone in Congress stands on restoring habeas.
I don't know enough about the legislative mechanics involved to know all of the implications, but I would think -- though it is purely speculative absent more knowledge -- that this is a good development, and a clean vote on whether to restore habeas corpus should be able to pass both houses (though not with a veto-proof majority).
UPDATE II: I'm hearing anecdotally that an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill would have been the easiest and quickest way to ensure a vote on habeas corpus, and that a stand-alone bill is a much lengthier and more difficult process, which would make the development reported by Talk Left bad news.
But without knowing the real legislative details (and I don't), it is hard to say, and there is clearly some confusion about what House Democrats are willing to do (see here, for instance). It sounds as though the House leadership is attempting to block efforts that would ensure a quick and certain vote, though I'm going to refrain from speculating further on that until there is clearer information and until people with a real knowledge of the process write about this.
Wednesday May 9, 2007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/09/habeas_corpus/index.html
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is, without question, the single worst law enacted during the Bush presidency, and is one of the most destructive laws passed in the last several decades. It is not merely a bad law. It vests in the President the power to detain people indefinitely with no meaningful opportunity to contest the government's accusations. That is the very power the Founders sought first and foremost to prohibit.
More significantly, whether a country permits its political leaders to imprison people arbitrarily and with no process is one of the few defining attributes dividing free and civilized countries from lawless tyrannies. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." To vest the President with the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges is fundamentally to transform the type of country we are.
House Democrats are apparently now debating whether to vote on a bill to restore habeas corpus. Matt Stoller provides some of the legislative details and information needed to pressure them to do so, and he explains why quick action is required. This morning, The New York Times and even The Washington Post editorialized in favor of habeas restoration. It would be a profound -- and truly inexcusable -- abdication of Democrats' responsibilities for them to do anything other then devote full-scale efforts to restoring habeas corpus.
It is worthwhile to review briefly the history of how this legislative atrocity came to be. When the White House proposed this bill, Democrats were as meek and as silent as could be. They literally disappeared from the debate, allowing the illusion of "negotiations" between the White House on the one hand, and a handful of allegedly principled and independent Republican Senators (McCain, Warner and Graham) on the other.
When -- as was both painfully predictable and predicted -- those Republican Senators capitulated almost in full to the White House, "winning" only the most meaninglessly symbolic linguistic changes to the bill while acquiescing to its most Draconian provisions, the fate of the bill was sealed because Democrats had ceded their authority to those "rebel" GOP Senators.
On the most important bill of the Bush presidency, Congressional Democrats chose to remain absent from the debate -- and allow the fate of habeas corpus to rest on the obvious delusion that Congressional Republicans would protect it -- because they were petrified that Karl Rove, in the imminent midterm elections, would call them "pro-terrorist" if they protected habeas corpus. Of course, just as Rove insinuated that they were "pro-Saddam" in 2002 despite half of them voting to wage war against Iraq, Rove suggested they were "pro-terrorist" in 2006 despite Democrats allowing the MCA to pass.
It is true that most Democrats in both the House and Senate ultimately voted against this law (though 12 Democratic Senators out of 44 voted in favor). But even among the Senate Democrats who did vote against its enactment, many of them did not even reveal how they would vote until -- literally -- the very day before the vote occurred, and many such Democratic Senators announced their opposition only once it became clear that it would pass.
Just to remind ourselves of the behavior of the Democrats during the "debate," here are a few illustrative paragraphs from The New York Times article reporting on the "negotiations" over the bill that continued even after the grand McCain-Warner-Graham "compromise" was reached, whereby the "rebel GOP Senators" continued to make concessions to the White House which broadened even further the new powers vested in the President:
But Republicans were optimistic about eliminating last-minute concerns over a separate measure laying out rules for interrogating terrorism suspects and trying them before military tribunals. They said they were hoping to send the bill to Mr. Bush by the end of the week for a signing ceremony that could help them kick off the home stretch of the campaign with a message that Republicans were taking strong steps to protect the nation from terror attacks.
"I think we are good to go," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of three Republican senators who last week forced the administration into negotiations over the detainee measure.
Democrats, while being careful to say that they had made no decision to block the detainee bill, expressed rising concerns about changes to the proposal that they said went beyond what Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, had described Monday as merely "technical changes" . . . .
"These are significant changes, not technical changes," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, where the original bill backed by Senators Warner, McCain and Graham was approved. "It's hard to know how to vote on a bill that's this much in motion."
It's hard to know how to vote on a bill that's this much in motion. Outside of a handful of Democratic lawmakers, that whiny procedural complaint was the sum total of the Democrats' "opposition" to the MCA until the day before, when its fate was sealed.
Far worse, many Democrats -- led by Harry Reid (who at the last minute announced his opposition) -- even spoke favorably of the MCA in the days immediately preceding the vote:
Democrats, who have found themselves on the losing end of the national security debate the past two national elections, said the changes to the bill had not yet reached a level that would cause them to try to block it altogether.
"We want to do this," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "And we want to do it in compliance with the direction from the Supreme Court. We want to do it in compliance with the Constitution."
Full-scale (and consciously chosen) Democratic capitulation -- along with, in some cases, actual support for this bill -- is what placed them in that predicament, as the Times article from several days earlier made clear:
Democrats have allowed three Republican senators with strong military credentials -- John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- to take the lead in resisting the president on the issue. Democratic leaders were largely positive about the agreement reached Thursday, signaling that they would continue to cooperate, rather than risk looking obstructionist heading into the midterms.
"A handful of principled Republican Senators have forced the White House to back down from the worst elements of its extreme proposal for new interrogation rules," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.
It was a disgraceful performance by Democratic Congressional leaders all the way around -- driven by all of the worst elements plaguing our Beltway system -- and it resulted in the abolition of one of the most defining and long-standing American liberties: the right not to be imprisoned without charges, due process, and a determination of guilt in a real judicial proceeding.
As but one of the countless heinous examples of what this law authorizes, review the plight of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who, in 2001, was living with his wife and five children in the U.S. legally -- as a computer science graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois -- when he was detained and then charged with making false statements when he was questioned as part of the 9/11 investigation.
Al-Marri vehemently denied the accusations, and his criminal trial was scheduled for July, 2003. But the trial never happened, because President Bush, one month before it was to begin, declared him an "enemy combatant," leading to the dismissal of the charges in court and his transfer to a military prison, where he has remained ever since -- indefinitely -- with no opportunity to contest the charges or to prove his innocence.
That is what the MCA has legalized. That is the system of American justice which the 2006 Congress imposed -- people swept off the streets of America and imprisoned indefinitely, with no charges and no venue to prove one's innocence. And while it was the Bush White House which initiated this practice and it was Republicans in Congress who voted for it, Democrats -- who calculated that meaningfully opposing this bill would be too politically costly and would jeopardize their election victory -- bear significant culpability for its enactment. And that means that they now bear principal responsibility for its repeal.
Needless to say, fear of appearing "soft on terrorism" is the primary impediment to habeas restoration. That fear is absurd. The Republicans' principal weapon in 2006 was the fear-mongering claim that Democrats were weak on terrorism because they oppose warrantless eavesdropping, "coercive interrogations," and lawless detentions. And yet Republicans were crushed in that election. It's not 2002 any more; the country has tuned out those sorts of scare tactics and that manipulative weapon has been overused and is impotent.
Moreover, this is not a hard argument to make, but in order for it to be understood, the argument needs to be made. Americans understand instinctively that to allow someone to contest accusations against them is not tantamount to allowing them to go free. It is easily conveyed that a critical aspect for punishing terrorists is to ensure that we only punish actual terrorists but provide a process whereby innocent people are not wrongfully imprisoned for life. If Democrats engage that debate, rather than run from it again, it is not difficult to make that case.
But none of that even matters. The right to be free of arbitrary executive imprisonment is -- and, since the founding of America, always has been -- a defining and distinguishing attribute of our country (notwithstanding shameful instances in our past where that right has been denied). All citizens -- including, actually especially, those sent to represent the people in Congress -- have an obligation to protect that right from government officials who seek to abolish it.
Having disgracefully abdicated that responsibility back in September because they wanted to win the midterm elections, Democrats -- now that they have won -- can cleanse their historic sin only by committing themselves, not symbolically but in actuality, to the restoration of habeas corpus. Whether they are willing to do so will speak volumes about their true character and about whether their November victory will result in anything other than some televised hearings. If Democrats are too afraid even to take a stand against the Bush administration in defense of this centuries-old core American liberty, it is impossible to imagine any even minimally risky stands they are willing to take.
UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt at Talk Left has printed an e-mail from a reader which reports the following:
FYI-- Congresswoman, Rep. Kathy Castor, (D-FL-11th) who serves on both the Armed Services Comm. AND is the only freshman on the powerful Rules Committee which makes decisions about moving bills forward, met with Armed Services Chair Ike Skelton early this morning and they have decided to file a stand alone bill to restore habeas corpus rather than put it in the Defense Authorization Bill.
I spoke to her Chief of Staff personally, and he said she promises to work to move the bill along, so everyone will have to vote up or down on restoring habeas, and we'll all know by their vote where exactly everyone in Congress stands on restoring habeas.
I don't know enough about the legislative mechanics involved to know all of the implications, but I would think -- though it is purely speculative absent more knowledge -- that this is a good development, and a clean vote on whether to restore habeas corpus should be able to pass both houses (though not with a veto-proof majority).
UPDATE II: I'm hearing anecdotally that an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill would have been the easiest and quickest way to ensure a vote on habeas corpus, and that a stand-alone bill is a much lengthier and more difficult process, which would make the development reported by Talk Left bad news.
But without knowing the real legislative details (and I don't), it is hard to say, and there is clearly some confusion about what House Democrats are willing to do (see here, for instance). It sounds as though the House leadership is attempting to block efforts that would ensure a quick and certain vote, though I'm going to refrain from speculating further on that until there is clearer information and until people with a real knowledge of the process write about this.
Gonzales continuing as Attorney General illustrates that Dems are TOOTHLESS at confronting Bush-Cheney corruption, criminality....
The Democratic Leadership needs to watch the opening segway of George C. Scott playing PATTON! in the award-winning movie. Scott, as WWII General Patton, intones "Americans LOVE A WINNER, and WILL NOT TOLERATE A LOSER."
Yet the Democratic leadership CONTINUES to DODGE these main issues, in their continuing "nibble around the edges" strategy of appeasement and conforming to the "Conventional Wisdom." Patton's advice may be an important lesson for Democrats - with Bush in the 28% approval ratings, Americans may expect SOMEONE to show some LEADERSHIP against the serial flaws and shortcomings of the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House.
Newt Gingrich is out there talking about Democrats "UNDERMINNING THE MORAL OF US TROOPS" - and the Democrats RESPOND WITH SILENCE, REFUSING to make the case that it is the AWFUL, ATROCIOUS, INCOMPETENT, and CORRUPT (bordering on treasonous) BUSH-CHENEY-ROVE White House that is not only "underminning" the US military - but DRIVING the entire US military INTO A DITCH, as the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration drove the entire US defense/intel/national-security establishment INTO A DITCH in the long summer before 9-11, when even the ITALIAN POLICE took steps to protect the G-8 presidents at the Genoa summit from a hijacked airliner being used as a bomb, by stationing surface-to-air missiles around that city in July of 2001.
WHERE is the Democratic answer to NEWT GINGRICH?
WHERE isthe Democratic media machine to confront RUSH LIMBAUGH?
WHERE is the Democratic rebuttal of FOX 'news' talking points?
WHERE are the Democrats to PROTECT American voters FROM Alberto Gonzales PURGE-GATE corruption of the US Justice department?
WHERE is the Democratic OUTRAGE - are they doing NOTHING to protect their own constituents and American voters from Mr. Gonzales' perjurous administration?
Are the Democrats STILL SO AFRAID of the Bush-Rove-Republican media machine, that they will SELL THEIR OWN VOTERS DOWN THE RIVER, rather than CONFRONT the lies of Mr. Gonzales and demand his resignation?
As George C. Scott's Patton said, "AMERICANS LOVE A WINNER, and WILL NOT TOLERATE losers."
=================================================
Gonzales Is a Survivor as Bush Seeks to Minimize Political Risk
By Robert Schmidt
May 10 (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aK5zU.km7YoY&refer=us
- By most accounts, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be ``Dead Man Walking'' -- not the winner of a high-stakes political game of ``Survivor.''
Defying conventional wisdom, Gonzales has kept his job as lawmakers in both parties, commentators and former Justice Department officials clamor for his resignation for mishandling the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. There are greater risks for President George W. Bush in cutting Gonzales loose than keeping him, say some Washington insiders and political strategists.
``He's still around because they wouldn't dream of having a confirmation hearing or appointing someone very independent of the White House,'' said Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who is now a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ``And those would be the conditions for having anybody new.''
Heymann and others predict Gonzales will leave office in January 2009 at the end of Bush's term unless evidence of criminal wrongdoing emerges. That could include firing a prosecutor to block a corruption investigation of Republicans or removing a prosecutor who refused to bring a groundless case against Democrats.
In a confirmation battle over Gonzales's successor, the Democratic-controlled Senate would gain new leverage to obtain confidential memos from the Republican administration. That could mean more embarrassment for Bush and possibly more serious jeopardy for such aides as Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
Further Risk
A further risk for Bush would be finding an acting attorney general with unquestioned loyalty and not someone who might cooperate in congressional investigations.
Gonzales's deputy, Paul McNulty, and the current associate attorney general, William Mercer, played important roles in the U.S. attorney firings. That means Solicitor General Paul Clement could be placed in charge of running the department. His current job -- representing the administration before the Supreme Court -- is supposed to transcend politics.
Republicans agree about the risks for Bush in ousting Gonzales, though for different reasons.
``They've made a political judgment that it is much better for him to stay than go,'' said Noel Francisco, a partner at the Jones Day law firm in Washington who worked for Gonzales in the White House counsel's office. ``If you give the Democrats a scalp, it's not going to appease them. It's going to embolden them.''
`Circus'
``If Al Gonzales were to leave,'' Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said recently, Bush ``would have to nominate someone else to serve for a year and a half and they would have to go through a confirmation process. And this circus would never end.''
The U.S. attorney firings last year sparked congressional probes into whether the prosecutors were removed for political reasons. Gonzales's truthfulness and competence were challenged by senators of both parties during more than six hours of testimony last month before the Judiciary Committee.
Gonzales, appearing today before the House Judiciary Committee, in prepared testimony apologizes again for not properly supervising the firings and says he hopes a ``clearing of the air'' will settle the matter.
Bush has been steadfast in supporting his attorney general. The president said Gonzales's Senate testimony ``increased my confidence in his ability to do his job.'' Last week, in what sounded like a Freudian slip, Bush referred to Gonzales, 51, as the ``eternal general.''
While Bush has praised other cabinet members before they were shown the door, notably Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Gonzales case may be different.
No Alternative
``The reason why Gonzales is still there has more to do with the lack of an alternative than the president's loyalty,'' said Representative Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the firings. ``The most comfortable thing'' for Bush ``is the status quo,'' she said.
Sanchez said an attorney general without close ties to the president may also be more cooperative in other congressional investigations.
Democrats have said the administration is stonewalling their probes into wiretapping of suspected American terrorists without court orders, possible politicization of the Justice Department's civil rights division and FBI abuses in administering the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act.
`Can't Get Much Worse'
Administration officials are ``saying to themselves: `Well, it can't get much worse than this, so why should we cave in,''' said Joseph diGenova, a U.S. attorney in Washington under President Ronald Reagan.
Congressional investigators are demanding that Rove and ex- White House Counsel Harriet Miers give sworn testimony about their roles in the dismissals. The administration will only agree to unsworn testimony behind closed doors without a transcript.
The administration has made numerous Justice Department officials available for private interviews and also gave Congress 6,000 pages of internal e-mails and other documents.
Democrats still aren't satisfied and say they would delay confirming a replacement for Gonzales. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, has said he might not hold a hearing for a new attorney general until the Democrats get answers to all their questions.
``Until we have enough of the investigation done, there is no need going forward with a confirmation,'' Leahy said. Meanwhile, he said he suspects Bush is supporting Gonzales ``because they're allowing Karl Rove and others to run the department.''
In a reversal from a month ago, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is now more likely to resign than Gonzales, according to contracts traded on Intrade, an online electronic exchange based in Dublin. The chances of Wolfowitz quitting by June 30 were 79 percent as of 5:30 p.m. yesterday in New York and the odds Gonzales will leave were 45 percent.
To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net .
Yet the Democratic leadership CONTINUES to DODGE these main issues, in their continuing "nibble around the edges" strategy of appeasement and conforming to the "Conventional Wisdom." Patton's advice may be an important lesson for Democrats - with Bush in the 28% approval ratings, Americans may expect SOMEONE to show some LEADERSHIP against the serial flaws and shortcomings of the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House.
Newt Gingrich is out there talking about Democrats "UNDERMINNING THE MORAL OF US TROOPS" - and the Democrats RESPOND WITH SILENCE, REFUSING to make the case that it is the AWFUL, ATROCIOUS, INCOMPETENT, and CORRUPT (bordering on treasonous) BUSH-CHENEY-ROVE White House that is not only "underminning" the US military - but DRIVING the entire US military INTO A DITCH, as the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration drove the entire US defense/intel/national-security establishment INTO A DITCH in the long summer before 9-11, when even the ITALIAN POLICE took steps to protect the G-8 presidents at the Genoa summit from a hijacked airliner being used as a bomb, by stationing surface-to-air missiles around that city in July of 2001.
WHERE is the Democratic answer to NEWT GINGRICH?
WHERE isthe Democratic media machine to confront RUSH LIMBAUGH?
WHERE is the Democratic rebuttal of FOX 'news' talking points?
WHERE are the Democrats to PROTECT American voters FROM Alberto Gonzales PURGE-GATE corruption of the US Justice department?
WHERE is the Democratic OUTRAGE - are they doing NOTHING to protect their own constituents and American voters from Mr. Gonzales' perjurous administration?
Are the Democrats STILL SO AFRAID of the Bush-Rove-Republican media machine, that they will SELL THEIR OWN VOTERS DOWN THE RIVER, rather than CONFRONT the lies of Mr. Gonzales and demand his resignation?
As George C. Scott's Patton said, "AMERICANS LOVE A WINNER, and WILL NOT TOLERATE losers."
=================================================
Gonzales Is a Survivor as Bush Seeks to Minimize Political Risk
By Robert Schmidt
May 10 (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aK5zU.km7YoY&refer=us
- By most accounts, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be ``Dead Man Walking'' -- not the winner of a high-stakes political game of ``Survivor.''
Defying conventional wisdom, Gonzales has kept his job as lawmakers in both parties, commentators and former Justice Department officials clamor for his resignation for mishandling the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. There are greater risks for President George W. Bush in cutting Gonzales loose than keeping him, say some Washington insiders and political strategists.
``He's still around because they wouldn't dream of having a confirmation hearing or appointing someone very independent of the White House,'' said Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who is now a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ``And those would be the conditions for having anybody new.''
Heymann and others predict Gonzales will leave office in January 2009 at the end of Bush's term unless evidence of criminal wrongdoing emerges. That could include firing a prosecutor to block a corruption investigation of Republicans or removing a prosecutor who refused to bring a groundless case against Democrats.
In a confirmation battle over Gonzales's successor, the Democratic-controlled Senate would gain new leverage to obtain confidential memos from the Republican administration. That could mean more embarrassment for Bush and possibly more serious jeopardy for such aides as Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
Further Risk
A further risk for Bush would be finding an acting attorney general with unquestioned loyalty and not someone who might cooperate in congressional investigations.
Gonzales's deputy, Paul McNulty, and the current associate attorney general, William Mercer, played important roles in the U.S. attorney firings. That means Solicitor General Paul Clement could be placed in charge of running the department. His current job -- representing the administration before the Supreme Court -- is supposed to transcend politics.
Republicans agree about the risks for Bush in ousting Gonzales, though for different reasons.
``They've made a political judgment that it is much better for him to stay than go,'' said Noel Francisco, a partner at the Jones Day law firm in Washington who worked for Gonzales in the White House counsel's office. ``If you give the Democrats a scalp, it's not going to appease them. It's going to embolden them.''
`Circus'
``If Al Gonzales were to leave,'' Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said recently, Bush ``would have to nominate someone else to serve for a year and a half and they would have to go through a confirmation process. And this circus would never end.''
The U.S. attorney firings last year sparked congressional probes into whether the prosecutors were removed for political reasons. Gonzales's truthfulness and competence were challenged by senators of both parties during more than six hours of testimony last month before the Judiciary Committee.
Gonzales, appearing today before the House Judiciary Committee, in prepared testimony apologizes again for not properly supervising the firings and says he hopes a ``clearing of the air'' will settle the matter.
Bush has been steadfast in supporting his attorney general. The president said Gonzales's Senate testimony ``increased my confidence in his ability to do his job.'' Last week, in what sounded like a Freudian slip, Bush referred to Gonzales, 51, as the ``eternal general.''
While Bush has praised other cabinet members before they were shown the door, notably Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Gonzales case may be different.
No Alternative
``The reason why Gonzales is still there has more to do with the lack of an alternative than the president's loyalty,'' said Representative Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the firings. ``The most comfortable thing'' for Bush ``is the status quo,'' she said.
Sanchez said an attorney general without close ties to the president may also be more cooperative in other congressional investigations.
Democrats have said the administration is stonewalling their probes into wiretapping of suspected American terrorists without court orders, possible politicization of the Justice Department's civil rights division and FBI abuses in administering the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act.
`Can't Get Much Worse'
Administration officials are ``saying to themselves: `Well, it can't get much worse than this, so why should we cave in,''' said Joseph diGenova, a U.S. attorney in Washington under President Ronald Reagan.
Congressional investigators are demanding that Rove and ex- White House Counsel Harriet Miers give sworn testimony about their roles in the dismissals. The administration will only agree to unsworn testimony behind closed doors without a transcript.
The administration has made numerous Justice Department officials available for private interviews and also gave Congress 6,000 pages of internal e-mails and other documents.
Democrats still aren't satisfied and say they would delay confirming a replacement for Gonzales. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, has said he might not hold a hearing for a new attorney general until the Democrats get answers to all their questions.
``Until we have enough of the investigation done, there is no need going forward with a confirmation,'' Leahy said. Meanwhile, he said he suspects Bush is supporting Gonzales ``because they're allowing Karl Rove and others to run the department.''
In a reversal from a month ago, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is now more likely to resign than Gonzales, according to contracts traded on Intrade, an online electronic exchange based in Dublin. The chances of Wolfowitz quitting by June 30 were 79 percent as of 5:30 p.m. yesterday in New York and the odds Gonzales will leave were 45 percent.
To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net .
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Purge-gate Investigations could well lead to CRIMINAL CHARGES against Bush White House advisors.....
Charges may result from firings, say two former U.S. attorneys
By David Bowermaster
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003699882_webmckayforum09m.html?syndication=rss
Former U.S. Attorney John McKay, right, accompanied by fellow former prosecutor David Iglesias, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 6, 2007, before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys.
Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.
John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also said they believe White House political operative Karl Rove and his aides instigated the dismissals and ultimately decided who among the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys should be fired. But the White House on Wednesday flatly denied the firings were instigated by the White House.
McKay and Iglesias, who were among those fired, made their assertions during a meeting this morning with Seattle Times editors and reporters. The two appeared this afternoon along with Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona, during a public-policy forum on the dismissals at Seattle University's School of Law.
"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."
McKay cited ongoing investigations into the dismissals by the Senate and House Judiciary committees, and inquiries now under way by the Justice Department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility.
McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations.
McKay said he believes the strongest evidence of obstruction is related to the dismissals of Iglesias and Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney in San Diego.
Last fall, Iglesias received calls from U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., inquiring whether public-corruption charges would be filed against prominent Democrats in the state prior to the November elections. Former New Mexico state Senate President Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and three others were eventually charged in April in what prosecutors say was a kickback scheme during construction of a new courthouse in Albuquerque.
Lam was investigating former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the former third-highest-ranking CIA official, when senior Justice Department officials targeted her for dismissal. Bribery charges were ultimately filed against both men.
Additionally, McKay and Iglesias said they believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty lied under oath when they testified before Congress that the eight prosecutors were fired for performance-related reasons and because of policy disputes with Justice Department headquarters.
Last week, a senior Justice Department official suggested to a House Judiciary Committee that McKay was fired because he had criticized the way superiors were handling the investigation into the slaying of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales, gunned down in his Seattle home on Oct. 11, 2001.
Democrats have suggested McKay was fired because Republican activists were upset that he did not convene a grand jury and file charges related to the 2004 Washington state governor's election, narrowly won by Democrat Christine Gregoire.
Responding to the charges by McKay and Iglesias, Department of Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse issued a statement this afternoon that read, in part: "After several hours of testimony by the Attorney General, over 6,000 pages of documents released to Congress and hours of interviews with other senior DOJ officials, it is clear that the Attorney General did not ask for the resignation of any individual in order to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain."
The statement added: "The Attorney General himself has stated that this process was not as rigorous as it should have been and he has since taken steps to institute better management practices with respect to U.S. Attorneys. He has taken full responsibility for his actions and in recent weeks has taken steps to leave the Department in a stronger and better place from the lessons learned from this matter."
McKay and Iglesias also have both concluded that the White House was behind the firings.
They based their conclusions on thousands of pages of documents released by the Justice Department in recent weeks, as well as hours of public testimony by senior Justice Department officials and press reports of private depositions those officials gave to congressional investigators.
"It seems that given that no one takes credit at the Justice Department, that it can only be coming from one place, and that very strongly means the White House," McKay said.
The White House has so far refused to turn over e-mails related to the firings, and has said it may no longer have access to millions of e-mails sent through Republican National Committee servers. Consequently, Iglesias said, "it's hard for us to know who in the White House said what, on what date."
"The people that would have a voice in this would be Karl Rove, [Rove aide] Scott Jennings, [former White House counsel] Harriet Miers, probably, yes," he said. "But it's hard for me to say 'yes,' [without] looking at those e-mails and memos that are probably out there and missing that this is what they said on this date about John and me and my colleagues.
"But that would explain why the wagons are so tightly circled," Iglesias added.
Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush, insisted Wednesday that the White House played no role in the firings and merely "signed off " on a list of attorneys to be dismissed provided by the Department of Justice.
"The Attorney General made the right decision," Bartlett said. "We support the Attorney General in his decision. "
In testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said McKay was fired because there were "serious concerns about his judgment." The chief complaint, he said, was the manner in which McKay pushed an information-sharing project.
McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.
"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "
McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."
He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."
Iglesias said the silver lining of the prosecutor firings is that they have triggered a public and congressional recognition of the need to reassert the Justice Department's independence.
"There was an attempt to inject the virus of partisan politics into the prosecutorial process," Iglesias said. "That's been stopped because of Congressional oversight and because of media scrutiny."
David Bowermaster: 206-464-2724 or dbowermaster@seattletimes.com
By David Bowermaster
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003699882_webmckayforum09m.html?syndication=rss
Former U.S. Attorney John McKay, right, accompanied by fellow former prosecutor David Iglesias, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 6, 2007, before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys.
Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.
John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also said they believe White House political operative Karl Rove and his aides instigated the dismissals and ultimately decided who among the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys should be fired. But the White House on Wednesday flatly denied the firings were instigated by the White House.
McKay and Iglesias, who were among those fired, made their assertions during a meeting this morning with Seattle Times editors and reporters. The two appeared this afternoon along with Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona, during a public-policy forum on the dismissals at Seattle University's School of Law.
"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."
McKay cited ongoing investigations into the dismissals by the Senate and House Judiciary committees, and inquiries now under way by the Justice Department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility.
McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations.
McKay said he believes the strongest evidence of obstruction is related to the dismissals of Iglesias and Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney in San Diego.
Last fall, Iglesias received calls from U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., inquiring whether public-corruption charges would be filed against prominent Democrats in the state prior to the November elections. Former New Mexico state Senate President Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and three others were eventually charged in April in what prosecutors say was a kickback scheme during construction of a new courthouse in Albuquerque.
Lam was investigating former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the former third-highest-ranking CIA official, when senior Justice Department officials targeted her for dismissal. Bribery charges were ultimately filed against both men.
Additionally, McKay and Iglesias said they believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty lied under oath when they testified before Congress that the eight prosecutors were fired for performance-related reasons and because of policy disputes with Justice Department headquarters.
Last week, a senior Justice Department official suggested to a House Judiciary Committee that McKay was fired because he had criticized the way superiors were handling the investigation into the slaying of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales, gunned down in his Seattle home on Oct. 11, 2001.
Democrats have suggested McKay was fired because Republican activists were upset that he did not convene a grand jury and file charges related to the 2004 Washington state governor's election, narrowly won by Democrat Christine Gregoire.
Responding to the charges by McKay and Iglesias, Department of Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse issued a statement this afternoon that read, in part: "After several hours of testimony by the Attorney General, over 6,000 pages of documents released to Congress and hours of interviews with other senior DOJ officials, it is clear that the Attorney General did not ask for the resignation of any individual in order to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain."
The statement added: "The Attorney General himself has stated that this process was not as rigorous as it should have been and he has since taken steps to institute better management practices with respect to U.S. Attorneys. He has taken full responsibility for his actions and in recent weeks has taken steps to leave the Department in a stronger and better place from the lessons learned from this matter."
McKay and Iglesias also have both concluded that the White House was behind the firings.
They based their conclusions on thousands of pages of documents released by the Justice Department in recent weeks, as well as hours of public testimony by senior Justice Department officials and press reports of private depositions those officials gave to congressional investigators.
"It seems that given that no one takes credit at the Justice Department, that it can only be coming from one place, and that very strongly means the White House," McKay said.
The White House has so far refused to turn over e-mails related to the firings, and has said it may no longer have access to millions of e-mails sent through Republican National Committee servers. Consequently, Iglesias said, "it's hard for us to know who in the White House said what, on what date."
"The people that would have a voice in this would be Karl Rove, [Rove aide] Scott Jennings, [former White House counsel] Harriet Miers, probably, yes," he said. "But it's hard for me to say 'yes,' [without] looking at those e-mails and memos that are probably out there and missing that this is what they said on this date about John and me and my colleagues.
"But that would explain why the wagons are so tightly circled," Iglesias added.
Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush, insisted Wednesday that the White House played no role in the firings and merely "signed off " on a list of attorneys to be dismissed provided by the Department of Justice.
"The Attorney General made the right decision," Bartlett said. "We support the Attorney General in his decision. "
In testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said McKay was fired because there were "serious concerns about his judgment." The chief complaint, he said, was the manner in which McKay pushed an information-sharing project.
McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.
"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "
McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."
He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."
Iglesias said the silver lining of the prosecutor firings is that they have triggered a public and congressional recognition of the need to reassert the Justice Department's independence.
"There was an attempt to inject the virus of partisan politics into the prosecutorial process," Iglesias said. "That's been stopped because of Congressional oversight and because of media scrutiny."
David Bowermaster: 206-464-2724 or dbowermaster@seattletimes.com
Saturday, May 5, 2007
An Open letter to Speaker Pelosi: "Defend America! Save the World! Protect your grandchildren! And have fun doing it...!"
Dear Speaker Pelosi: An Open Letter to the Speaker of the House of this 110th US Congress.
Dear Madam Speaker:
In the "may you live in interesting times" school of history and politics, we certainly live in interesting times. All across America an entire class of professional politicians, an entire party (the Democrats) that should represent well over one-half of the American public, find themselves MUTED by the coordinated and forceful PR spin - propaganda - that is the Republican Party under the control of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration.
Democrats, who should represent the BEST CHARACTERISTICS of our modern American society - the willingness of society to educate _all_ of our children; the desire to protect our environment and children from toxins such as lead which can overnight create lifetime mental and physical disabilities; the desire to embrace humanity's "wretched masses" and lead them, too, to economic self-sufficiency if not the "promised land" - all these impulses and many thousands more stem from the progressive, democratic, and freedom-loving desires that we Americans have come to regard as our birthright, and that we celebrate every July 4th: the RIGHT and ABILITY to CONFRONT any wrongful, injurious, or ABUSIVE use of authority, and to demand that OUR rights - "WE THE PEOPLE" - be heard over the coordinated efforts of those (the autocracy/aristocracy) that would seek to quell the voices of the public so as to further concentrate wealth and power, as barons and nobles once treated the populace as serfs and peasants during the feudal age.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG TODAY with the Democratic Party that some FORCEFUL PR would not correct.
And the good news is - Democrats COULD HAVE FUN doing so - if they just stop taking orders from the CW "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" of the DC press corps and corporate-owned press-media!
Quite simply, Republican arch-conservitives ("reactionaries" or "right-wingers") WANT TO TAKE AMERICA BACK to the days and society of THE GREAT DEPRESSION. Ten, even five years ago, it would have been impolitic - even daft - to say so, but almost seven years into the Bush administration, we know that the Bush Republicans have as much respect for American voters and taxpayers as they do for minimum-wage illegal immigrants - "You may provide cheap labor, but DON'T EVEN THINK of asserting your rights!"
Even before anyone in America (outside of Texas) had heard of Karl Rove, Right-Wing leaders, reporters, and think-tank writers, and above all HATE RADIO DJs had made the words "LIBERAL DEMOCRAT" into a pejorative.
i.e. "Tax and Spend Liberals!" with all the sneering contempt that a Right-Wing hate-radio DJ could muster. Karl Rove, using the wealth and influence of the Republican Party's alliance with corporate America (i.e. Bush Sr's rolodex, including such industry executives such as Halliburton Chairman and CEO Dick Cheney), merely took the "Librul Democrats!" pejorative to new levels - especially once 9-11 shocked America's sense of security, and allowed the GOP to bind their pejorative smears of "tax and spend libruls" to FEAR, to every American's very desire to survive in a dangerous world.
Madam Speaker, when George W. Bush talks of "DEFENDING AMERICA" and "PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE" - HE DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME, or millions of other fellow Americans who voted against him in two or three or four elections.
HE is the president who, when warned in person, "Al Qaida is DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA" did - EXACTLY NOTHING!
Nothing, that is, except to give his Attorney General the authority to stop flying on public airliners in July of 2001, leaving AIRLINE CREWS and PASSENGERS EXPOSED, like sitting ducks while the Attorney General flew in the security of a private chartered jet - two full months, 8 long weeks, before the 9-11 terrorists made good on their well known efforts to bring the Africa embassies- and USS Cole-style suicide-bomb attacks to America.
George W. Bush CLAIMS to want "to protect the American people" but his actions speak louder than his words. HE preferred STAYING ON VACATION as the most powerful hurricane in decades swirled ominously towards American towns and cities... (Katrina set the all-time meteorological low-pressure record for the Atlantic basin, before it stalled and weakened, then regained strength and resumed heading north towards the Mississippi-Louisiana coastline)- then he TOPPED that DISMAL, callous, GROSS NEGLECT - BY ATTENDING REPUBLICAN PHOTO-OP FUNDRAISERS as American citizens in New Orleans drowned - after the FEDERAL dikes and levees failed, as had BEEN PREDICTED THEY WOULD!
Mr. Bush looked at beleaguered citizens of New Orleans in the same way that a military commander orders the relocation and deportation of enemy civilians after a victorious military conquest - with SCORN and CONTEMPT!
It is scarcely possible to compile all of President Bush's "war on terror" failures and instance of gross incompetence in a single book, much less in a single letter, but any such compilation would have to include SELLING US PORTS (and port security) to DUBAI firms owned by dictators who answer to no one - in a region that was the nexus of the BCCI "bank of terrorists international" money-laundering and fraud (and possibly 9-11 funding as well)! To top THAT gross, in-your-face contempt of the American people, the President and Vice President have clearly approved of Halliburton corporation's desire to move its headquarters from - Houston, USA, to Dubai, UAE, presumably taking its billion-dollar US government contracts and military secrets with it!
And finally, how can any discussion of the Bush-Cheney administration's 'leadership' fail to mention that the conservative Republicans have had, for at least a decade since the 'end of the Cold War,' a JIHAD against - nuclear non-proliferation talks and treaties! The 'conservatives' of the Right-Wing of the Republican party have been ENCOURAGING nuclear proliferation! (Including a $5 billion deal to sell India GE's latest nuclear technology, with the "understanding" that India's SEVENTEEN 'secret' military reactors will be able to produce more weapons-grade material - unsupervised and with the blessings of the US government!)
In a word, the Republican Party agenda, as exhibited by the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House, is one of unadulterated GREED and CORRUPTION - greed and corruption that puts American citizens, even our very American way of life, at great risk!
HOW can such transparent 'leaders,' and such a grossly corrupt agenda, fail to provoke more OUTRAGE from more of the American citizenry?
The answer is - control of the media and PR spin machine. As Leslie Stahl explained in a Bill Moyers documentary from the Reagan administration days, President Reagan was able to SLASH funding for health-care facilities for senior programs - but merely by attending the grand-opening of one of the last such facilities to survive his budget cuts, he garnered public approval for "being compassionate" in a skillfully executed photo-op!
The Republican agenda under the Bush Republicans is quite simple - to take America, and Americans, as closely back to the days of the Great Depressionas politically possible. Before the Bush administration came to power, it would have been quite impossible for Democratic leaders and commentators to make this bold assertion - but today we have the wreckage of New Orleans to point to, much less the carnage in Iraq that the Bush administration points to as "PROGRESS"!
Without even going into whether Bush administration zealots sees open-ended, on-going, never ending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere as "progress" (they most certainly do, and only need another major terror "incident" to justify the draft and even more draconian police-state powers), just here in America, and exclusive of the war-on-terror, they have openly signaled their desire to subordinate American law and jurisprudence to "fundamental religious values" - the same values that Bible-thumping preachers in the slave-states once used to justify slavery! The Bush-Republicans seek to destroy (and many have said so) ALL the layers of the social safety net built up since the New Deal administration. They have openly sought to destroy Social Security, and indeed want to keep the mandatory "WITHHOLDING" in place, but instead of having a GUARANTEED retirment account at the end of one's working life, want to turn those withholdings into a gian ponzi scheme at the mercy of brokers and fund-managers - in effect turning what is a form of SAVINGS into a form of TAXATION. (IF Social Security returns MORE money to retired workers than they put in, then it has become A FORM OF SAVINGS. Righties ignore this point, Democrats seem to be oblivious of it, and economist rarely credit Social Security with being a FORM OF SAVINGS.)
Across the board, Right-Wing Republicans are unapologetic (if not proud) about their dsire to DISMANTLE the New Deal - which is to say, TO TAKE AMERICA BACK TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION ERA!
WHY can not Democrats come out and forcefully make this assertion? That "LIBRUL" policies have brought America almost all the things that we take for granted about our America since the Great Depression - protections of our civil rights and property rights and voting rights and our right to breath clean air and consume food untainted by corporate production of toxins and poisons?
These points should be, to steal an recently abused notion, "A SLAM DUNK" of Demoratic PR, spin, and media savy!
WHENEVER a Republican is caught in public talking about DISMANTLING Social Security or other New Deal programs, the Democrats should FORCEFULLY, ENERGETICALLY, and HAPPILY counter "SO - you Republicans want to take us back to the Depression era?"!!
Madam Speaker, whether you realize it or not, you are matched in a high-stakes battle of wits with Karl Rove. He still controls the DC press corps (and thereby the NY/Chicago/LA national press-media). IF he is still the president's Chief Political Counsel by the end of this presidential term, that will mean Republicans will have WON the battle to portray the War in Iraq as a _DEMOCRATIC_ FAILURE, and the Democrats as being weak and unable to PROTECT American citizens.
And, quite honestly, Madam Speaker, IF the Democrats CAN NOT PROTECT THEIR CONSTITUENTS (from Mr. Rove's blatant voter suppression and voter intimidation schemes and outright computerized vote-THEFT ballot rigging)... IF the Democrats can NOT PROTECT American taxpayers from Mr. Cheney's wholesale HALLIBURTON billion-dollar FRAUDS.... IF the Democrats can not PROTECT American citizens from wholesale corporate corruption, of the kind that such as ENRON used to DEFRAUD workers, investors, and pensioners, that Mr. Bush used to ride to power (1) in the first place -
- IF the Democrats CAN NOT PROTECT American citizens from such clear and present CORRUPTION, FRAUD, ABUSE, and outright criminal conduct (2) from the highest levels of this government - then they DESERVE the caulumny that Mr. Rove is so ardently hoping and planning to heap on them starting in January 2009.
(1) - (Enron was Mr. Bush's NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN DONOR in TWO Texas gubernatorial campaigns, the 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign, the 2000 presidential campaign, the 2000 Florida recount battle, and the 2001 inauguration balls)
(2) - (Lewis "Scooter" Libby was concurrently a SENIOR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR - at the SAME TIME that he was the Vice President's CHIEF OF STAFF - during the time for which he was CONVICTED of FELONY PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE that put the "CIA outing scandal" safely past the 2004 election)
The good news is, IT SHOULD BE FUN AND EASY to portray the Republican Party, and Bush-Rove-Cheney administration, in this light!
Just imagine poor Karl Rove - having to CREATE the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL" out of THIN AIR! - so as to smear and disgrace the departing Clinton-Gore White House staffers, and drive popular vote-winner of the 2000 presidential race (Vice President) Al Gore out of town, tarred-and-feathered in abject DISGRACE by Mr. Rove's "they VANDALIZED sacred White House property" SMEAR.
Poor Mr. Rove- having to CREATE SCANDALS out of thin air, while, were he working for the Democrats, he would have to compile an entire encyclopedia of Republican GENUINE SCANDALS of the first order, just to decide which atrocious frauds and derelictions-of-duty he would select and focus on to raise public outrage to "IMPEACH YESTERDAY!" levels!
Madam Speaker, DON'T be an Al Gore or John Kerry, to have victory and your good name SNATCHED from you because you were afraid of that very possibility, and thereby (they) were to afraid to confront the GOP smear machine! DON'T be a Tom Daschle or Joe Lieberman, SITTING IDLY as ENRON- with the BLESSINGS of the Bush-Cheney White House, DEFRAUDS American investors and pensioners, and extorts California ratepayers. DONT pretend ignorance, as the DC press corps does, as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush turn New Orleans into Blackwater and Halliburton's Happy Hunting Grounds, at the expense of American citizens.
HAVE SOME FUN! DEMAND that your party stay ON MESSAGE, to DEFINE the Bush-Cheney administration, and Republican Party, as the party of those frauds and abuses and outrages!
IF Karl Rove can SMEAR Max Cleland, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, (all three Vietnam combat veterans)and popular-vote winner VICE PRESIDENT Al Gore - he can certainly SMEAR YOU.
DON'T go down without a good fight! Defend America, protect your grandchildren, AND HAVE FUN DOING IT!
-----------------------------------------
(PS: In the recent televised Democratic Presidential debate, the swarmy NBC anchor Brian Williams aked to one of the candidates "A recent letter-to-editor in the USA Today newspaper said that Senate Majority Leader HARRY REID is guilty of "TREASON" for saying that the war in Iraq is lost, and that he should be exiled from the Senate, if not punished. First thing, would the swarmy Mr. Williams ask of a Jewish candidate, or African-American candidate, a racist letter written by a Skin-head reader? Let's give Mr. Williams "a pass" for using a HATE-RADIO TALKING POINT as a question in the primary debate (for, indeed, that portrayal is the essence of Campaign 2008) - his choice of question merely points out that indeed Senate Majority Leader Read and Speaker of the House Pelosi ARE BEING ACCUSED of TREASON by the Righty talkers of Hate-Radio, which just demonstrates the urgency of Democrats WORKING OVERTIME to DEFINE the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration as the creator of all these massive failures, corruptions, and fundamentalist terrorist recruiter fantasies in the first place.)
================================
Pelosi calls out Bush for 1999 statement on timetable.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/01/pelosi-calls-out-bush-for-1999-statement-on-timetable/
Reacting to President Bush’s veto of the Iraq supplemental bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted this evening that Bush once believed it was important for a president to lay out a timetable (TRANSCRIPT follows):
<< The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him. The president said, in his comments, he did not believe in timelines, and he spoke out very forcefully against them. Yet in 1999, on June 5th, then-Governor Bush said, about President Clinton, “I think it’s important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they would be withdrawn.” Despite his past statements, President Bush refuses to apply the same standard to his own activities. Standards — that’s the issue.
If the president thinks that what is happening on the ground in Iraq now is progress, as he said in his comments tonight, then it’s clear to see why we have a disagreement on policy with him. I agree with Leader Reid. We look forward to working with the president to find common ground, but there is great distance between us right now. >>
Dear Madam Speaker:
In the "may you live in interesting times" school of history and politics, we certainly live in interesting times. All across America an entire class of professional politicians, an entire party (the Democrats) that should represent well over one-half of the American public, find themselves MUTED by the coordinated and forceful PR spin - propaganda - that is the Republican Party under the control of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration.
Democrats, who should represent the BEST CHARACTERISTICS of our modern American society - the willingness of society to educate _all_ of our children; the desire to protect our environment and children from toxins such as lead which can overnight create lifetime mental and physical disabilities; the desire to embrace humanity's "wretched masses" and lead them, too, to economic self-sufficiency if not the "promised land" - all these impulses and many thousands more stem from the progressive, democratic, and freedom-loving desires that we Americans have come to regard as our birthright, and that we celebrate every July 4th: the RIGHT and ABILITY to CONFRONT any wrongful, injurious, or ABUSIVE use of authority, and to demand that OUR rights - "WE THE PEOPLE" - be heard over the coordinated efforts of those (the autocracy/aristocracy) that would seek to quell the voices of the public so as to further concentrate wealth and power, as barons and nobles once treated the populace as serfs and peasants during the feudal age.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG TODAY with the Democratic Party that some FORCEFUL PR would not correct.
And the good news is - Democrats COULD HAVE FUN doing so - if they just stop taking orders from the CW "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" of the DC press corps and corporate-owned press-media!
Quite simply, Republican arch-conservitives ("reactionaries" or "right-wingers") WANT TO TAKE AMERICA BACK to the days and society of THE GREAT DEPRESSION. Ten, even five years ago, it would have been impolitic - even daft - to say so, but almost seven years into the Bush administration, we know that the Bush Republicans have as much respect for American voters and taxpayers as they do for minimum-wage illegal immigrants - "You may provide cheap labor, but DON'T EVEN THINK of asserting your rights!"
Even before anyone in America (outside of Texas) had heard of Karl Rove, Right-Wing leaders, reporters, and think-tank writers, and above all HATE RADIO DJs had made the words "LIBERAL DEMOCRAT" into a pejorative.
i.e. "Tax and Spend Liberals!" with all the sneering contempt that a Right-Wing hate-radio DJ could muster. Karl Rove, using the wealth and influence of the Republican Party's alliance with corporate America (i.e. Bush Sr's rolodex, including such industry executives such as Halliburton Chairman and CEO Dick Cheney), merely took the "Librul Democrats!" pejorative to new levels - especially once 9-11 shocked America's sense of security, and allowed the GOP to bind their pejorative smears of "tax and spend libruls" to FEAR, to every American's very desire to survive in a dangerous world.
Madam Speaker, when George W. Bush talks of "DEFENDING AMERICA" and "PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE" - HE DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME, or millions of other fellow Americans who voted against him in two or three or four elections.
HE is the president who, when warned in person, "Al Qaida is DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA" did - EXACTLY NOTHING!
Nothing, that is, except to give his Attorney General the authority to stop flying on public airliners in July of 2001, leaving AIRLINE CREWS and PASSENGERS EXPOSED, like sitting ducks while the Attorney General flew in the security of a private chartered jet - two full months, 8 long weeks, before the 9-11 terrorists made good on their well known efforts to bring the Africa embassies- and USS Cole-style suicide-bomb attacks to America.
George W. Bush CLAIMS to want "to protect the American people" but his actions speak louder than his words. HE preferred STAYING ON VACATION as the most powerful hurricane in decades swirled ominously towards American towns and cities... (Katrina set the all-time meteorological low-pressure record for the Atlantic basin, before it stalled and weakened, then regained strength and resumed heading north towards the Mississippi-Louisiana coastline)- then he TOPPED that DISMAL, callous, GROSS NEGLECT - BY ATTENDING REPUBLICAN PHOTO-OP FUNDRAISERS as American citizens in New Orleans drowned - after the FEDERAL dikes and levees failed, as had BEEN PREDICTED THEY WOULD!
Mr. Bush looked at beleaguered citizens of New Orleans in the same way that a military commander orders the relocation and deportation of enemy civilians after a victorious military conquest - with SCORN and CONTEMPT!
It is scarcely possible to compile all of President Bush's "war on terror" failures and instance of gross incompetence in a single book, much less in a single letter, but any such compilation would have to include SELLING US PORTS (and port security) to DUBAI firms owned by dictators who answer to no one - in a region that was the nexus of the BCCI "bank of terrorists international" money-laundering and fraud (and possibly 9-11 funding as well)! To top THAT gross, in-your-face contempt of the American people, the President and Vice President have clearly approved of Halliburton corporation's desire to move its headquarters from - Houston, USA, to Dubai, UAE, presumably taking its billion-dollar US government contracts and military secrets with it!
And finally, how can any discussion of the Bush-Cheney administration's 'leadership' fail to mention that the conservative Republicans have had, for at least a decade since the 'end of the Cold War,' a JIHAD against - nuclear non-proliferation talks and treaties! The 'conservatives' of the Right-Wing of the Republican party have been ENCOURAGING nuclear proliferation! (Including a $5 billion deal to sell India GE's latest nuclear technology, with the "understanding" that India's SEVENTEEN 'secret' military reactors will be able to produce more weapons-grade material - unsupervised and with the blessings of the US government!)
In a word, the Republican Party agenda, as exhibited by the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House, is one of unadulterated GREED and CORRUPTION - greed and corruption that puts American citizens, even our very American way of life, at great risk!
HOW can such transparent 'leaders,' and such a grossly corrupt agenda, fail to provoke more OUTRAGE from more of the American citizenry?
The answer is - control of the media and PR spin machine. As Leslie Stahl explained in a Bill Moyers documentary from the Reagan administration days, President Reagan was able to SLASH funding for health-care facilities for senior programs - but merely by attending the grand-opening of one of the last such facilities to survive his budget cuts, he garnered public approval for "being compassionate" in a skillfully executed photo-op!
The Republican agenda under the Bush Republicans is quite simple - to take America, and Americans, as closely back to the days of the Great Depressionas politically possible. Before the Bush administration came to power, it would have been quite impossible for Democratic leaders and commentators to make this bold assertion - but today we have the wreckage of New Orleans to point to, much less the carnage in Iraq that the Bush administration points to as "PROGRESS"!
Without even going into whether Bush administration zealots sees open-ended, on-going, never ending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere as "progress" (they most certainly do, and only need another major terror "incident" to justify the draft and even more draconian police-state powers), just here in America, and exclusive of the war-on-terror, they have openly signaled their desire to subordinate American law and jurisprudence to "fundamental religious values" - the same values that Bible-thumping preachers in the slave-states once used to justify slavery! The Bush-Republicans seek to destroy (and many have said so) ALL the layers of the social safety net built up since the New Deal administration. They have openly sought to destroy Social Security, and indeed want to keep the mandatory "WITHHOLDING" in place, but instead of having a GUARANTEED retirment account at the end of one's working life, want to turn those withholdings into a gian ponzi scheme at the mercy of brokers and fund-managers - in effect turning what is a form of SAVINGS into a form of TAXATION. (IF Social Security returns MORE money to retired workers than they put in, then it has become A FORM OF SAVINGS. Righties ignore this point, Democrats seem to be oblivious of it, and economist rarely credit Social Security with being a FORM OF SAVINGS.)
Across the board, Right-Wing Republicans are unapologetic (if not proud) about their dsire to DISMANTLE the New Deal - which is to say, TO TAKE AMERICA BACK TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION ERA!
WHY can not Democrats come out and forcefully make this assertion? That "LIBRUL" policies have brought America almost all the things that we take for granted about our America since the Great Depression - protections of our civil rights and property rights and voting rights and our right to breath clean air and consume food untainted by corporate production of toxins and poisons?
These points should be, to steal an recently abused notion, "A SLAM DUNK" of Demoratic PR, spin, and media savy!
WHENEVER a Republican is caught in public talking about DISMANTLING Social Security or other New Deal programs, the Democrats should FORCEFULLY, ENERGETICALLY, and HAPPILY counter "SO - you Republicans want to take us back to the Depression era?"!!
Madam Speaker, whether you realize it or not, you are matched in a high-stakes battle of wits with Karl Rove. He still controls the DC press corps (and thereby the NY/Chicago/LA national press-media). IF he is still the president's Chief Political Counsel by the end of this presidential term, that will mean Republicans will have WON the battle to portray the War in Iraq as a _DEMOCRATIC_ FAILURE, and the Democrats as being weak and unable to PROTECT American citizens.
And, quite honestly, Madam Speaker, IF the Democrats CAN NOT PROTECT THEIR CONSTITUENTS (from Mr. Rove's blatant voter suppression and voter intimidation schemes and outright computerized vote-THEFT ballot rigging)... IF the Democrats can NOT PROTECT American taxpayers from Mr. Cheney's wholesale HALLIBURTON billion-dollar FRAUDS.... IF the Democrats can not PROTECT American citizens from wholesale corporate corruption, of the kind that such as ENRON used to DEFRAUD workers, investors, and pensioners, that Mr. Bush used to ride to power (1) in the first place -
- IF the Democrats CAN NOT PROTECT American citizens from such clear and present CORRUPTION, FRAUD, ABUSE, and outright criminal conduct (2) from the highest levels of this government - then they DESERVE the caulumny that Mr. Rove is so ardently hoping and planning to heap on them starting in January 2009.
(1) - (Enron was Mr. Bush's NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN DONOR in TWO Texas gubernatorial campaigns, the 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign, the 2000 presidential campaign, the 2000 Florida recount battle, and the 2001 inauguration balls)
(2) - (Lewis "Scooter" Libby was concurrently a SENIOR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR - at the SAME TIME that he was the Vice President's CHIEF OF STAFF - during the time for which he was CONVICTED of FELONY PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE that put the "CIA outing scandal" safely past the 2004 election)
The good news is, IT SHOULD BE FUN AND EASY to portray the Republican Party, and Bush-Rove-Cheney administration, in this light!
Just imagine poor Karl Rove - having to CREATE the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL" out of THIN AIR! - so as to smear and disgrace the departing Clinton-Gore White House staffers, and drive popular vote-winner of the 2000 presidential race (Vice President) Al Gore out of town, tarred-and-feathered in abject DISGRACE by Mr. Rove's "they VANDALIZED sacred White House property" SMEAR.
Poor Mr. Rove- having to CREATE SCANDALS out of thin air, while, were he working for the Democrats, he would have to compile an entire encyclopedia of Republican GENUINE SCANDALS of the first order, just to decide which atrocious frauds and derelictions-of-duty he would select and focus on to raise public outrage to "IMPEACH YESTERDAY!" levels!
Madam Speaker, DON'T be an Al Gore or John Kerry, to have victory and your good name SNATCHED from you because you were afraid of that very possibility, and thereby (they) were to afraid to confront the GOP smear machine! DON'T be a Tom Daschle or Joe Lieberman, SITTING IDLY as ENRON- with the BLESSINGS of the Bush-Cheney White House, DEFRAUDS American investors and pensioners, and extorts California ratepayers. DONT pretend ignorance, as the DC press corps does, as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush turn New Orleans into Blackwater and Halliburton's Happy Hunting Grounds, at the expense of American citizens.
HAVE SOME FUN! DEMAND that your party stay ON MESSAGE, to DEFINE the Bush-Cheney administration, and Republican Party, as the party of those frauds and abuses and outrages!
IF Karl Rove can SMEAR Max Cleland, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, (all three Vietnam combat veterans)and popular-vote winner VICE PRESIDENT Al Gore - he can certainly SMEAR YOU.
DON'T go down without a good fight! Defend America, protect your grandchildren, AND HAVE FUN DOING IT!
-----------------------------------------
(PS: In the recent televised Democratic Presidential debate, the swarmy NBC anchor Brian Williams aked to one of the candidates "A recent letter-to-editor in the USA Today newspaper said that Senate Majority Leader HARRY REID is guilty of "TREASON" for saying that the war in Iraq is lost, and that he should be exiled from the Senate, if not punished. First thing, would the swarmy Mr. Williams ask of a Jewish candidate, or African-American candidate, a racist letter written by a Skin-head reader? Let's give Mr. Williams "a pass" for using a HATE-RADIO TALKING POINT as a question in the primary debate (for, indeed, that portrayal is the essence of Campaign 2008) - his choice of question merely points out that indeed Senate Majority Leader Read and Speaker of the House Pelosi ARE BEING ACCUSED of TREASON by the Righty talkers of Hate-Radio, which just demonstrates the urgency of Democrats WORKING OVERTIME to DEFINE the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration as the creator of all these massive failures, corruptions, and fundamentalist terrorist recruiter fantasies in the first place.)
================================
Pelosi calls out Bush for 1999 statement on timetable.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/01/pelosi-calls-out-bush-for-1999-statement-on-timetable/
Reacting to President Bush’s veto of the Iraq supplemental bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted this evening that Bush once believed it was important for a president to lay out a timetable (TRANSCRIPT follows):
<< The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him. The president said, in his comments, he did not believe in timelines, and he spoke out very forcefully against them. Yet in 1999, on June 5th, then-Governor Bush said, about President Clinton, “I think it’s important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they would be withdrawn.” Despite his past statements, President Bush refuses to apply the same standard to his own activities. Standards — that’s the issue.
If the president thinks that what is happening on the ground in Iraq now is progress, as he said in his comments tonight, then it’s clear to see why we have a disagreement on policy with him. I agree with Leader Reid. We look forward to working with the president to find common ground, but there is great distance between us right now. >>
Thursday, May 3, 2007
An Open letter to (former) Senator John Edwards:
An Open letter to (former) Senator John Edwards:
Dear Senator Edwards: We applaud your career as a lawyer, and your winning the North Carolina senate race in 1998. However, we suspect that you and your staff were "taken under the wing" by the staff of the Senior Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, just as incoming freshman Senator Barak Obama was once 'taken under the wing' of Senator Joe Lieberman, who may have started his political career as a social liberal or progressive, but now votes reliably with Republican conservatives on all issues regarding big business (and the Bush-Cheney administration's war in Iraq).
That (being taken 'under the wing' by Senator Helm's staff) is the only explanation we can come up with to understand how such an articulate, passionate, and informed a leader as yourself was so entirely muted during your term as senator -and the fact is, you would not have won reelection in North Carolina for senate even if you had run. North Carolina had suffered a "triple-whammy" of economic woes since you became senator - they lost their textile & furniture industries at the same time that the Bush administration budget slashings were tearing down social welfare and job training programs - and you were nowhere to be found in speaking out for those affected by the JOB OUTSOURCING and budget slashings.
At least in 2004 you did not repeat Joe Lieberman's 2000 travesty, running for both Vice President AND senate races! I've always thought that Al Gore failed miserably in his selection of Mr. Lieberman to be his running mate - Not only was Lieberman so lacking in faith in the Gore-Lieberman campaign that he refused to drop his senate race, but the CLUELESS Al Gore REFUSED to DEMAND that he withdraw from the VP nomination. (Or, more to the point, Gore should have demanded the Lieberman drop his senate race BEFORE accepting the VP nomination.)
Which brings us to the present. I was heartened to see you on national news coverage last night (Lou Dobbs?) insisting that Democrats should in no way back down from the president's Iraq spending bill VETO. You took an issue that the president is trying to use as his strength - the veto - and trying to make it look like HE is the one OBSTRUCTING PROGRESS.
Which is exactly how it should be. We hope you will continue to push and shove and portray the Bush-Cheney White House in an honest light - that their oversight of the Iraq war and US economy is corruption bordering on CRIMINAL:
#1. Selecting Mike "Heckuva job, Brownie!" Brown to head FEMA - with ZERO disaster experience or management qualifications!)
#2. That not only did the Bush-Cheney administration DO NOTHING to prevent HALLIBURTON from looting stockholders and investors with their fraudulent accounting and "turn debt into assetts" subsidiary schemes, but the Bush-Cheney administration ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED Enron's EXTORTION of California rate-payers, by using coordinated power-plant shutdowns and other tactics to make electricity rates skyrocket.
#3. That Vice President Cheney CONTINUES TO BENEFIT FROM HIS HALLIBURTON STOCK-OPTIONS, which ratchet up in price with every billion dollars of NO BID, NO OVERSIGHT CONTRACTS that the Vice President and his administration ship to Halliburton in Iraq and in post-Katrina Louisiana and Mississippi.
#3. That the Bush-Cheney administration practically wallows in their ability to COUNT VOTES, with NO RECOUNT, AUDIT, or VERIFICATION mechanism - the Republicans gleefully ignorning President Reagan's dictim, "Trust - but VERIFY."
#4. And, in coordination with their ability to make massive amounts of Democratic votes DISAPPEAR into the electronic ether, the Republicans have sought to USE THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT - the law-enforcement arm of the entire US government - to INTIMIDATE and DISENFRANCHISE LEGAL VOTERS.
The above four items is only a partial list of Bush-Cheney-Republican CRIMINALITY - we haven't even included the federal felony CONVICTIONS of Abramoff, Cunningham, Libby, Ney and others in our list! - which means that Democrats are NOT DEFENDING THEIR VOTERS AND CONSTITUENTS from a rogue, criminal administration.
A few weeks ago, there was a tempest-in-a-teapot that KATIE COURIC had been "overly tough" on you and your wife regarding your wife's medical condition. This is just to say, Senator Edwards, that American voters DO NOT WANT a candidate who looks like they need help in - an interview with Katie Couric!
You need to ditch the "Conventional Wisdom" and go with the convictions of your upbringing and life. GO ON THE OFFENSE! Turn Katie Couric's aggressive questions into opportunities! "Katie, not everyone in America has excellent health-care coverage THAT YOU or I have. We are running this campaign to FIGHT for the right for all Americans who need it to get the same excellent care as Elizabeth is getting."
Senator Edwards, Americans are TIRED of having their jobs OUTSOURCED, having their pensions GUTTED, having their votes STOLEN, having their treasury LOOTED, having their media CONTROLLED by big-business and big-religion. We are looking for a leader who DOES NOT TAKE ORDERS, or badgering, from the Katie Courics and David Broders and George Wills and Rupert Murdochs of America. THEY all have their million-dollar penthouses and pension portfolios.
We Americans are looking for a leader who can FIGHT BACK against the conventional wisdom, someone who can take their asinine TALKING POINTS and skillfully, articulately, and forcefully TURN THEM BACK against "the establishment", against the media mavens who yucked it up at when President Bush did his comedy sketch of looking under the White House desk for weapons of mass destruction. (The video was shown, to hoots and laughter, at the White House correspondents dinner, the assembled media-press thinking it hilarious that a WAR had been started for reasons that had little to do with reality.)
Senator Edwards, RONALD REAGAN was the model for a politician being forceful and commanding in person, without being brutal or gruff. (Not counting his economic policies, which were brutal.)
We implore you to master the art of turning INANE media questions back on the questioner - tell the multi-millionaire media anchor that NOT ALL AMERICANS HAVE THE LUXURY OF GOOD HEALTH CARE, and that you are FIGHTING the Conventional Wisdom, because it is time that ordinary Americans have a voice in government, and not be drowned out my millionaire pundits and billionaire media owners.
Dear Senator Edwards: We applaud your career as a lawyer, and your winning the North Carolina senate race in 1998. However, we suspect that you and your staff were "taken under the wing" by the staff of the Senior Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, just as incoming freshman Senator Barak Obama was once 'taken under the wing' of Senator Joe Lieberman, who may have started his political career as a social liberal or progressive, but now votes reliably with Republican conservatives on all issues regarding big business (and the Bush-Cheney administration's war in Iraq).
That (being taken 'under the wing' by Senator Helm's staff) is the only explanation we can come up with to understand how such an articulate, passionate, and informed a leader as yourself was so entirely muted during your term as senator -and the fact is, you would not have won reelection in North Carolina for senate even if you had run. North Carolina had suffered a "triple-whammy" of economic woes since you became senator - they lost their textile & furniture industries at the same time that the Bush administration budget slashings were tearing down social welfare and job training programs - and you were nowhere to be found in speaking out for those affected by the JOB OUTSOURCING and budget slashings.
At least in 2004 you did not repeat Joe Lieberman's 2000 travesty, running for both Vice President AND senate races! I've always thought that Al Gore failed miserably in his selection of Mr. Lieberman to be his running mate - Not only was Lieberman so lacking in faith in the Gore-Lieberman campaign that he refused to drop his senate race, but the CLUELESS Al Gore REFUSED to DEMAND that he withdraw from the VP nomination. (Or, more to the point, Gore should have demanded the Lieberman drop his senate race BEFORE accepting the VP nomination.)
Which brings us to the present. I was heartened to see you on national news coverage last night (Lou Dobbs?) insisting that Democrats should in no way back down from the president's Iraq spending bill VETO. You took an issue that the president is trying to use as his strength - the veto - and trying to make it look like HE is the one OBSTRUCTING PROGRESS.
Which is exactly how it should be. We hope you will continue to push and shove and portray the Bush-Cheney White House in an honest light - that their oversight of the Iraq war and US economy is corruption bordering on CRIMINAL:
#1. Selecting Mike "Heckuva job, Brownie!" Brown to head FEMA - with ZERO disaster experience or management qualifications!)
#2. That not only did the Bush-Cheney administration DO NOTHING to prevent HALLIBURTON from looting stockholders and investors with their fraudulent accounting and "turn debt into assetts" subsidiary schemes, but the Bush-Cheney administration ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED Enron's EXTORTION of California rate-payers, by using coordinated power-plant shutdowns and other tactics to make electricity rates skyrocket.
#3. That Vice President Cheney CONTINUES TO BENEFIT FROM HIS HALLIBURTON STOCK-OPTIONS, which ratchet up in price with every billion dollars of NO BID, NO OVERSIGHT CONTRACTS that the Vice President and his administration ship to Halliburton in Iraq and in post-Katrina Louisiana and Mississippi.
#3. That the Bush-Cheney administration practically wallows in their ability to COUNT VOTES, with NO RECOUNT, AUDIT, or VERIFICATION mechanism - the Republicans gleefully ignorning President Reagan's dictim, "Trust - but VERIFY."
#4. And, in coordination with their ability to make massive amounts of Democratic votes DISAPPEAR into the electronic ether, the Republicans have sought to USE THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT - the law-enforcement arm of the entire US government - to INTIMIDATE and DISENFRANCHISE LEGAL VOTERS.
The above four items is only a partial list of Bush-Cheney-Republican CRIMINALITY - we haven't even included the federal felony CONVICTIONS of Abramoff, Cunningham, Libby, Ney and others in our list! - which means that Democrats are NOT DEFENDING THEIR VOTERS AND CONSTITUENTS from a rogue, criminal administration.
A few weeks ago, there was a tempest-in-a-teapot that KATIE COURIC had been "overly tough" on you and your wife regarding your wife's medical condition. This is just to say, Senator Edwards, that American voters DO NOT WANT a candidate who looks like they need help in - an interview with Katie Couric!
You need to ditch the "Conventional Wisdom" and go with the convictions of your upbringing and life. GO ON THE OFFENSE! Turn Katie Couric's aggressive questions into opportunities! "Katie, not everyone in America has excellent health-care coverage THAT YOU or I have. We are running this campaign to FIGHT for the right for all Americans who need it to get the same excellent care as Elizabeth is getting."
Senator Edwards, Americans are TIRED of having their jobs OUTSOURCED, having their pensions GUTTED, having their votes STOLEN, having their treasury LOOTED, having their media CONTROLLED by big-business and big-religion. We are looking for a leader who DOES NOT TAKE ORDERS, or badgering, from the Katie Courics and David Broders and George Wills and Rupert Murdochs of America. THEY all have their million-dollar penthouses and pension portfolios.
We Americans are looking for a leader who can FIGHT BACK against the conventional wisdom, someone who can take their asinine TALKING POINTS and skillfully, articulately, and forcefully TURN THEM BACK against "the establishment", against the media mavens who yucked it up at when President Bush did his comedy sketch of looking under the White House desk for weapons of mass destruction. (The video was shown, to hoots and laughter, at the White House correspondents dinner, the assembled media-press thinking it hilarious that a WAR had been started for reasons that had little to do with reality.)
Senator Edwards, RONALD REAGAN was the model for a politician being forceful and commanding in person, without being brutal or gruff. (Not counting his economic policies, which were brutal.)
We implore you to master the art of turning INANE media questions back on the questioner - tell the multi-millionaire media anchor that NOT ALL AMERICANS HAVE THE LUXURY OF GOOD HEALTH CARE, and that you are FIGHTING the Conventional Wisdom, because it is time that ordinary Americans have a voice in government, and not be drowned out my millionaire pundits and billionaire media owners.
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