"House Democrats on Tuesday narrowly managed to avert a bruising debate on a proposal to impeach Dick Cheney after Republicans, in a surprise maneuver, voted in favor of taking up the measure," Jim Abrams of the AP writes (November 6).
Before you even think about arguing against the obviously true statement contained in the title of this blog, keep in mind that by doing so you will be DEFENDING Iranian President however you spell his name.
And that is always wrong and will put you in the same category as those fools who five years ago said that Saddam Hussein did not fly a plane into Ford Theatre in order to kill Abraham Lincoln.
Last night’s moveon.org in Iraq sponsored candlelight vigil was beyond pathetic.
Several dozen Democrats in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, attended this vigil outside of Capitol Building. They were calling for Senate Republicans to stop a filibuster of a resolution calling for reduced U.S. military involvement in Iraq (Molly Hooper, Fox News, July 18).
Candlelight vigils are the type of thing done by peace and justice groups after an hour-long meeting in the basement of the Unitarian church that serves the needs of the local mid-tier directional university. These groups hold vigils because they are unable to do anything productive, like pass laws, and so they might as well do something pretty. When both heads of a bicameral legislature are attending your vigil, something is clearly wrong.
One thing candle light vigils usually do have going for them is that if they call for something, they call for something absolute, which can be expressed in a slogan. Some examples are “Free Health Care for All,” “The Legal Fiction Involved in Statutory Rape Cases Should be Revised” and even “End the War Now.”
moveon.org had less ambitious goals. Their vigil was for the Levin-Reid amendment, which does call for most U.S. troops to leave Iraq by spring of next year but no more than it gives the president the ability to waive the withdrawals so long as legislators get a nice letter from the White House with an explanation. (“They are staying,” the president would write. “I want them to do so.”)
One might think the out clause for the president is something sponsors of the amendment would not want to talk about. However, according to a May 14 statement on the matter, Senator, Benjamin Franklin impersonator and titular sponsor of the legislation in question Carl Levin thinks this is a selling point.
All of this should be kept in mind when considering what I like to call Impeachment Fever. Many liberals seem to have gotten the idea recently that there is actually a possibility the U.S. House of Representatives will impeach President George W. Bush and/or Vice President Dick Cheney.
Impeachment was the topic of the July 13 edition of Bill Moyer’s Journal and Rep. Dennis Kucinich has actually introduced in a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Cheney. After Downing Street, a group dedicated to encouraging investigation about any impeachable offenses members of the Bush Administration may be guilty of, runs a regularly updated website where you can read about how it is important that the city council of West Hollywood, California recently voted in support of impeaching Bush and Cheney (Lisa Moscatiello, July 16.)
Members of the Bush Administration do deserve to be impeached. They should be kicked out of office and put in little cages where schoolchildren can poke them with sharp sticks. (I think that this punishment is one that our criminal justice system does not use nearly enough. If nothing else, it would teach youngsters that even social studies can be fun.)
Nevertheless, impeachment, removal from office and the torture of Bush by grade-schoolers are all simply not going to happen. Democrats have been in control of both the House and Senate for over six months. During this time, they have defunded zero military actions, rescinded no use of force authorizations and repealed not a single patriot act. People with this record are not going to be impeaching members of the Bush Administration anytime soon.
This is of no real concern, however, according to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive. In a July 16 piece he authored, impeachment is a “train” that is “leaving the station” so congressional Democrats, especially those running for president, had better hop on while they still can.
Rothschild probably did not mean to put forward a specific scenario, but if he did, it would have to be that Democrats are about to storm the gates and impeach Bush and Cheney. This is not how you conduct a decent revolution and anybody who would consider doing something so lame is not going to bother with doing much of anything. It might hurt the party’s chances in 08 or whatever the excuse is.
This sad state of affairs is not in the least bit disappointing or surprising as the Democratic Party’s course of action is entirely predictable. They may like people to think they are less bellicose than Republicans are, but there is little reason to think this. Back in 2002, for instance, they didn’t stop a green light to invade and occupy Iraq in the Senate when they had more seats than the GOP has now. Democrats mostly supported this measure, in fact. And, in case you were wondering, this did not lead to serious internal rifts amongst the donkeys.
I could give many more examples that show the Democrats’ support for military action and lack of much effort to end even the wars they claim to be against, but there is no point in doing so. It is hard to imagine that any member of the party is going to hear it and say, “I’m going to have verify the things you are telling me, but if you are right, I feel terrible for not voting for Nader.” The two solid anti-war candidates amongst the major candidates for the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, Mike Gravel (a former U.S. Senator who was a fine opponent of the the Vietnam War during his tenure in that body) and the previously mentioned Dennis Kucinich, do not appear to have considerable support. What explanation do the Democrats who want to believe their party is anti-war have for this? The hokum that’s often directed against anti-war candidates about how they cannot win because they are not running on the ticket of one the two legitimate political parties of the U.S. of A. does not apply here for obvious reasons and yet there still is little support for either of them. Democrats apparently have the party they want and are not particularly bothered by the military interventions of their country.
So I guess the real joke is people like me who try, or at least have tried, to reason with Democrats.
If Scooter Libby serves a day in prison, my distrust of the U.S. government will be fundamentally shaken.
Or is there another way to interpret his May 16 comment "My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo." I mean, I suppose he might merely being saying that he wants to increase the number of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp so that the super evil terrorist murdering scum terrorists will live in closer quarters and thus be able to better compare notes on their evil terrorist plans.
Romney might want to clarify this as I will have a hard time getting behind any presidential candidate that does not tell me he, or even she, is going to invade another country. I certainly won't believe they have a chance at winning.
A little noticed aspect of President Bush’s big January 10 sending more troops to Iraq speech is that God did not come up. Bush did not order Him to bless anybody or even mentioning conversing with The Man Upstairs.
Sources inside the White House tell micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links that this is because Bush fired God on December 31. (Please note that God’s name does not appear on any whitehouse.gov site from that date till now, January 18.)
Some would call sacking the Almighty a daring move, but God's record of advice hasn’t been the best and our sources indicate that even Bush was becoming frustrated with His recommendations. As Bob Woodward recounts in his 2004 book Plan of Attack, Bush prayed to God after ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Insiders says that God was angry at not being consulted earlier and was especially critical of the administrations lack of planning for tensions between the various groups in Iraq that God frequently says in the Bible are "inevitable when you get a bunch of heathens together."
Still God agreed to serve as an advisor and was a valued liaison to Bush's 2004 presidential campaign and is widely credited with coming up with the strategy of demanding that Democratic candidate John Kerry answer whether or not, he would have supported the invasion of Iraq based on his current knowledge.
In recent months, however, the relationship between Bush and God was anything but cordial. The universe’s creator was especially upset when he found out that Bush was considering admitting mistakes in Iraq. Several sources say that the two were once heard loudly arguing in the Oval Office along the lines of:
God: Don't you realize how this will make Me look to Allah? I do not want to face this guy and have to say I was wrong.
Bush: Cool down there Big Boy. Maybe if you didn't always reject Cheney's great plan to just kill every Iraqi asshole, we wouldn't be in this mess.
The person who answers the White House’s phone line refused to answer any questions about this matter. micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links was unable to inquire with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, because other reporters, from more respected news organizations, had to ask all of their stupid questions first and, according to the 48th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the press secretary is forbidden to answer every question that reporters want to ask him.
Our sources that wish to remain anonymous did stress that God retains His American citizenship and remains a big supporter of the home of the brave. And Bush’s comment in the January 10 speech about how America is "blessed" to have soldiers may have been the president's way of mending fences.
It is unclear if the lessening of restrictions on what U.S. troops can do to defeat Iraqis before finishing the liberation of Iraqis that Bush mentioned on January 10 has anything to do with God's departure, although a popular joke amongst those who use the White House email system is a chain mail message featuring a poem entitled "Thou Now Shall Kill Lots Of Iraqis."
The three hundred millionth American will be a male named King and a giraffe. King will serve proudly in the U.S. Armed Forces and will use his legs to torture many hundreds upon many hundreds of terrorists in ticking time bomb situations, which allows the U.S. of A. to defuse bombs and foil terrorist attacks that would otherwise have killed every living organism on planet Earth.
Because of a civil war between practitioners of terror, however, this unfortunately means that the terrorists who will eventually drop several hundred nuclear bombs on the world, in an effort to kill every American, will not be killed and will live on to do their dirty deed of destiny. All but 37 Americans, one of whom is King, will be killed in these attacks. The 36 remaining patriots will correctly decide to hang King. This takes a bit of effort, but they get the job done and peace, love and understanding fill the secret prison in Chad where these defenders of God and freedom are located.
Three days after the hanging, a nuclear bomb kills the executioners of King and turns the once great giraffe’s body to soot.
In one of the funniest moments ever, Bush changed U.S. policy dramatically during his September 15, 2006 press conference. "Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan," Bush said.
These are the words of someone trying to get caught. The president wants us all to figure out he is full of shit or maybe he just wants to be removed from office. Perhaps he wants to die. Why doesn't he just do these things? you might ask. My guess is that there is some sort of Skull and Bones deal where if he resigns or commits suicide, oh I don't know, John Kerry gets to have sex with Laura.
I really don't care what the reason is and, so long as there is going to be no change in policy, I don't even want to help Bush. I look forward to the day when he just cracks and screams, "what do I have to do?"
There's a lot I could say about Bush's big September 11, 2006 address to the nation, but mostly I would just be repeating myself about how he is a dishonest, demagogic and manipulative guy who in a decent society people would have great debates about how tough to get with the guys who roughed him up.
"Yeah I hate him too, but even George W. Bush deserves to not have his skull broken."
"I don't know. I mean I just think people should know that there is a price to pay for the type of things he did."
"Isn't what we've done enough."
"Well it seems like it should be, but maybe we could lock him in a little cage that warps his bones and school children could come by and poke him with a sharp stick as they learn their history lesson."
And so forth...
The painful fact, however, is that Bush fills his speeches with stuff that should be laughed at because it works. It certainly works better than trying to counter what he says on an obscure blog, especially if you aren't going to add "Vote Democratic."
I don't know the way out of this situation and I have almost given up trying.
All that said, there is one part of Bush's speech that I just cannot let pass without comment:
On 9/11, our nation saw the face of evil. Yet on that awful day, we also witnessed something distinctly American: ordinary citizens rising to the occasion, and responding with extraordinary acts of courage.
Bush sort of gets right here. It is indeed true that courage is not to be found amongst Asians, Europeans, Africans or any Australians except the late great Steve Irwin. And I think we all know how those penguins cut and run.
But Bush is wrong to imply that courage might reside in lands such as Canada, Cuba and Peru. Places like that are just all scaredy cats. Courage, you see, is truly distinctly United States of American.
BTW, this is why it is futile and obtuse to try to bring democracy to these people. So just ignore what Bush went on to say in the very same speech about how in "Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut, there are brave men and women risking their lives each day for the same freedoms that we enjoy." That obviously can't be true or, perhaps more precisely, one of the lessons of the five years since September the 11th is that pointing out stuff like this will get you nowhere.
