No black man in America is safe - because of me

The amount of overblown, wingnut-like hyperbole flying around in the so-called "progressive" American blogosphere over the arrest of Henry Gates has risen to such hysterical levels that it isn't even possible to discuss the facts in a rational manner.

Take this exchange:

Amen (13+ / 0-)

seems to me that this idea of not placing all the blame on the officer sounds alot like the attitude back in the 70's of women who were raped or beaten that perhaps they were to blame

by Bluerall on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 08:34:05 AM MDT



*
that's asinine (0+ / 0-)

The comparison doesn't even compute.


by catnip on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:03:36 AM MDT


o
* [new] no you are assine (0+ / 0-)

the safety of people in their own homes and black men especially in their own homes should be inviolate.

gates should have been able to say anything he damn well pleased in his own home at any decibel level that did not disturb neighbors who, by definition, cannot be disturbed by noise at high noon.

gates has a documented upper respiratory infection which prevented him from making undue noise.

no black man in america is safe because of attitudes like yours.

and if you think i am calling you a racist, go ahead.

racist is as racist does.

i am not backing down on this one. not. one. inch.


by fernan47 on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:09:09 AM MDT


get off your pulpit (0+ / 0-)

Comparing what happened to Gates to what happens to rape victims is asinine. Period.

no black man in america is safe because of attitudes like yours.

Pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic.


by catnip on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:14:46 AM MDT


#
* you are pathetic (1+ / 0-)


and apparently structurally a racist.

as a women of color.

as a women aware of sexual victimization to the max.

you are the asshole in this scenario.

what makes you think what you think of my pulpit of the least importance to anyone, anywhere?

by fernan47 on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:21:08 AM MDT

Oh, I'm used to being called a racist. You couldn't criticize Obama during his campaign at sites like Daily Kos without expecting that someone would throw that at you. But let's get serious here - if people want to hold up Gates as the poster boy for racial discrimination they have to look at his behaviour and how it contributed to the situation. Thus, the comparison to what happens to rape victims who aren't believed definitely is asinine and it's an insult to those rape victims.

Tale a look at this quote and tell me that Gates doesn't need a reality check and that his victimization allows him to be blameless:

My driver is a large black man. But from afar you and I would not have seen he was black. He has black hair and was dressed in a two-piece black suit, and I was dressed in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers and, you know, my shoes. And I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. Now that is the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life. (Laughs.) I’m not exactly a big black man. I thought that was hilarious when I found that out, which was yesterday.

It looked like someone’s footprint was there. So it’s possible that the door had been jimmied, that someone had tried to get in while I was in China. But for whatever reason, the lock was damaged. My driver hit the door with his shoulder and the door popped open.

The bottom line - based on the facts - is that everyone overreacted here: Gates, the police officer and Obama. And if people really want to have a discussion about racial discrimination in America, I can think of so many other examples that could suffice as a jumping-off point. Placing Gates up on some pedestal as an example is hardly the best place to start. And if you want some real insight into village behaviour, look no further than the torches and pitchforks being carried at some so-called "progressive" sites against people like me who believe that facts, not emotions, should be driving this discussion. After all, it was the emotions of both men involved - Gates and Crowley - that escalated this story in the first place.
 

Quote du Jour: Tease

Is Obama taking the tease too far?

That was CNN's Wolf Blitzer today, commenting on the Big Wait for Obama's VP announcement.

The "tease"?

What is this to you, Blitzer? Foreplay?

Update: It's Joe Biden or "Obama Picks Older White Male Washington Insider" to be his changeyness VP. (At least he's clean and articulate.)



Wolfie must be orgasmic.

Bonus flashback to an old post of mine: Why Joe Biden Should Never Be President

Bonus humiliating moment: Poor Markos. Here he was, all excited that Obama was going to get those new-fangled text messages about his VP pick out to the masses before the MSM, so he decided to mock the "old media". (I guess that's like "old Europe".)

And is there a better example than this that old media is getting left out in the cold?

Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room begging viewers to stay tuned so CNN can bring them coverage of a text message.

Brilliant! We've got a lot of campaign a head [sic] of us, but this has been the Obama campaign's finest operation thus far.

But...ooops! As it turns out, that "old media" channel CNN got the breaking news about Biden Friday nite while Obamakins will just have to wait til the morning for those text messages. Yes kos, "Brilliant". You showed 'em!

(Maybe one of these days he'll figure out that, since Obama didn't make one appearance on his site throughout this entire campaign, all of this "netroots" hoopla the Obama campaign was pushing was just an effort to max out campaign contributions from so-called progressives who gathered round the Daily Obama watercooler ATM.)
 

About last nite...

I made a simple (and admittedly easy) prediction last nite: cranky Obama supporters will continue to be cranky Obama supporters when he wins the nomination. And I was right, of course.

Anyone who's followed blogs like Daily Kos Obama the past few months has seen a level of ugly vitriol and kool-aid drunkenness that they ironically used to blast in neocons, their supporters, freepers, and wingnuts. Mass hysteria is not party-specific.

And then there are the cable news show talking heads egos who have been whining for Hillary to shut up and get out, as if they're covering their ears so they don't have to put up with the stereotypical nagging wife while they and the mainstream, so-called progressive bloggers have been screaming "Sexism?? What sexism??" And some people wonder why Hillary supporters are angry.

When I watched MSNBC's Tuesday nite coverage of the candidates' speeches, I couldn't help but notice the absolutely ridiculous "Waah! Hillary's making us talk about her again!! Tell her to STOP it!" whining. And then, right on cue, they'd go on talking about her anyway as if they had no control whatsoever. And the same thing is going on throughout the blogosphere today. It all reminds me of a teevee commercial I saw during the 60s. A guy walks into his workplace and complains about his lunch, "Chicken sandwiches, chicken sandwiches. Every day it's chicken sandwiches." Then one of his co-workers says, "Why don't you ask your wife to make something else?" to which the guy responds, "I'm not married."

[insert "d'oh" here]

You would think last nite and today would have been a cause for major celebrations among Obama supporters (and let's not pretend that the MSNBC crew hasn't been in the tank for months on end so that they would have to pretend to be unbiased at this point). But, no. That bad Hillary woman is still making them talk about her and they just can't seen to make her automagically disappear.

Call the wahmbulance.

Sore winners. That's what they are. And it's quite the pathetic display. It's as if they have no idea how to be happy - if even for a moment. (I'll give Chris Matthews props for admitting last night that he had "the giggles" and that, for him, it felt like New Year's Eve. At least he didn't admit to his leg "tingling" again, which was just creepy.)

As for me, I don't support the status quo Democratic party anyway so it really didn't matter to me who won and it won't make much difference whether a Democrat or Republican wins the WH in November. Surely I jest, you insist. Well, no. Especially after knowing full well that Obama's foreign policy is just a stone's throw away from McSurge's. Just read the transcript of Obama's speech to AIPAC on Wednesday. If you still think I'm wrong, go ahead and point out where the differences lie. I'll wait.

Imperialist America. Rah rah rah.

Let's not forget that Obama's all for "remaking the world" in America's image. Save the rest of us from that, please.

Clinton wanted to "obliterate" Iran. Obama wants to "eliminate" the "grave" threat. Does that sound familiar?

Maybe that's why some Obama supporters aren't celebrating today. Even antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo, who admitted earlier this year that he had a crush on Obama, has suddenly changed his tune. But why now? Surely he read last year's speech that Obama gave to AIPAC? Or the recent yay, Zionism! speech he gave in a Jewish synagogue in Florida? And he must know that Obama is only opposed to "dumb" wars - not all wars. If someone like Raimondo, who has been writing about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the military-industrial complex for years was fooled, is there hope for other Obama supporters? Or more, importantly, do they even care?

I don't think so. So, where are the party hats and noisemakers, you cranky Obama supporters?

As for all of the speculation about whether she'll be chosen as his VP
(which mean Hillary forced everybody to talk about by apparently casting some sort of witch's spell on all of you poor, helpless people) - get real. It's not going to happen. So quit the bedwetting and get on with the general election race - which promises to be about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Is November here yet? Let's get on with it already. The American Empire awaits.

(h/t about Raimondo's buyer's remorse to marisacat)

Related:

If Obama thought he was having problems wooing pro-Zionist Jewish voters before, surely Jimmy Carter's endorsement of him on Tuesday won't help matters. And Carter was quite blunt on Wednesday about what bad news it would be if Obama chose Hillary as his VP, stating that it would bring out the negative vulnerabilities in both of them. I've thought all along that if Obama won, he would choose a VP running mate who would basically be invisibly compliant - someone who won't make waves or steal the spotlight. Milquetoast, here we come. Sebelius fits that bill. She's like the anti-Hillary in many respects - although some female Hillary supporters have already said that she'd just be a female-faced spokesmodel for the ticket, so they'd cry foul.

I should add that I congratulate the Democratic party on its first African-American nominee but, on the other hand, what took you so bloody long?

Oh - that reminds me of something Tweety has been saying the past couple of days - that you wouldn't see an African-American being nominated in Europe or some South American countries. Gee, Matthews - do you think maybe the "American" part of that is a clue??
 

NAFTAgate: Harper Clears Clinton

Via the CBC:

Hillary Clinton's campaign team has never told any Canadian officials that their candidate's anti-NAFTA statements are just political posturing, the Prime Minister's Office said Friday.

In the midst of the so-called NAFTA-gate affair, the PMO clarified — two days after it was first asked a question about the matter — that Canadian officials never requested, nor received, a private briefing from Clinton's aides on her position on the continental trade treaty.

"The answer is no, they did not," Sandra Buckler, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said Friday.

So, can we get past this assumption that's making the rounds on the American blogosphere now that Clinton's staff talked to them? The cognitive dissonance about this story has been unbelievable, especially over at sites like Daily Kos that favour Obama, where the truth (on many fronts) has taken a back seat to known facts. So much for the "reality-based" community.
 

Warning: Daily Kos is Under Attack

If you visit Daily Kos, you should be aware it has come under attack.

This news has not appeared on the Daily Kos front page. Instead, Hunter (one of the admins) has written a diary on the side titled "Malicious Link Warning (IMPORTANT)" in which he states:

So yes indeed, there was a malicious diary placed on Daily Kos very early in the morning: people who clicked a link provided by the diarist were directed to a site with a malicious script on it designed to steal your dKos cookies. The "script kiddie" was then able to log in as those users and write comments or diaries under their names, change their signatures, etc.

This isn't the first time a script kiddie has tried to target Daily Kos, and it won't be the last. We delete the attacks, alert the service provider, and take other actions as necessary.

Note that this isn't a "hacking" attempt. Nobody succeeded in actually getting a malicious script on Daily Kos itself (though lord knows, people try on a regular basis.) Nope, this was a "script kiddie" using well-known XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks -- the sort of "trojan horse" attacks that have been common to email spammers and virus writers for years -- and which other sites have unfortunately also had to deal with in their own comments. Since it can't perform a malicious action directly, it relies on tricking you into going to some other site where a malicious script can be run, virus uploaded, etc.

There is an absolute defense against such scripts, though: don't click the link. Don't click ANY link leading away from the site unless you are reasonably certain that it goes to a safe place. This counts for URL shortening services, too: if you see a "shortened" link and you don't know where it goes, DO NOT CLICK.

According to various reports from Daily Kos members today, many have been scrambling to understand exactly what happened since this behaviour was noticed last nite. The delay of an "official" response from a site administrator caused widespread confusion and concern as users were left to their own devices to figure out how to deal with the problem. The "malicious script" apparently set off a loop of porn ads on some affected users' computers as well.

Along with the above advice and some internal housekeeping tips, Hunter also offers this:

...if you're using firefox [sic] and want hardcore protection against scripted attacks, try the noscript plugin. It will prevent scripts from running unless you explicitly allow them on a site-by-site basis. Perhaps folks in comments can suggest similar measures for other browsers.

(Oh, and general internet advice -- no matter where you are, never click anything hosted on php0h.com, which has hosted nearly every one of these "script kiddie" attacks over the last year.)

We'll be forcibly logging out all users every once in a while in an effort to wipe the affected cookies. If you get logged out, just log back in. And for pete's sake, be careful what you click.

No official word yet on how many computers have been affected or how this attack has affected the site's traffic overall.
 

'LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats'

Flashback, 2002: The Perils of LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats, Tom Stephens

A plague has seized the Nation. It emanates from Washington, D.C., and is spreading wherever People try to come to grips with the abuse of power there by the most dangerous government corporate money can buy. Symptoms (particularly among People committed to real democracy, social justice, and non-violence in our relations with others) include barely controllable rage, enormous frustration, organization of third parties, and ultimately a sense of total scorn for mainstream electoral politics as anything other than a personal career. The name of this malady is Lame, Spineless Democrats (LSD). Friends don't let friends enter the hallucinatory, pseudo-powerful world of LSD and its pushers in the Democratic Leadership [sic] Council without strong mutual support.

Thanks to leading Democrats who misplaced their spines, their passion, their intelligence, and their guts, the Republican Party seized total power over all three branches of the United States Government in the 2002 mid-term elections. With Republican control of the Senate we face federal courts packed with ultra-right wing ideologue judges (enjoying lifetime appointments) for at least a generation. It has been said that for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good People do nothing. The national leaders of the Democratic Party, the Tom Daschles, Dick Gepharts and Joe Liebermans who have been trying to win elections for 20 years now by beating the Fat Cat Republicans at their own corporate bribery game, let America and the world down. These uncertain trumpeters failed to grasp one very simple and fundamental fact about the type of electoral "democracy" that prevails today in America. If you let your political opponents define the key issues and control the timing of which issues will dominate the agenda, while you avoid providing any clear answers to their inflammatory and flagrantly misleading rhetoric about "freedom," "security," and "evil," you will get your ass kicked. Duh.

Some of the names have changed - today it's the Harry Reids, the Nancy Pelosis and, still, the Joe Liebermans - but the results are the same: lame, spineless Democrats caving to Bush's agenda just as they've done again this weekend.

LSD, circa 2007:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The boy king had a tantrum and the Democrats let him have his new toy. It's only a 6 month temporary measure, they said, as they gave more power to the most corrupt AG in US history - Alberto Gonzales.

The poor house Democrats can't stand the pressure either, but it's the politics of the situation - not the civil rights - that they're concerned about.

With time running out before a scheduled monthlong break and the Senate already in recess, House Democrats confronted the choice of accepting the administration’s bill or letting it die. If it died, that would leave Democratic lawmakers, who have long been anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August fending off charges from Mr. Bush and Republicans that they left Americans exposed to terror threats.

They look weak on security because they keep buying into Republican talking points that portray them as being just that. If they had any actual courage, they would have told Bush to screw himself and would have all gone home.

There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet. They also appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering. But the disputes were significant enough that they were likely to resurface before the end of the year.

Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.

“They have got us in a vise,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said as she left a Saturday afternoon meeting where senior Democrats were debating how to handle the issue in the final hours before recess.

No, Louise - you put yourselves in that vise. And make no mistake, you've given the Bush administration carte blanche again to illegally spy on your countrymen - a crime Bush had previously admitted to that should have spurred his impeachment (along with the many other criminal activities he and his administration have been up to) but your party has conveniently, for this war criminal president, taken impeachment off the table. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you?

Just what does the Bush administration have on these Democrats? Some of us out here would seriously like to know because there just isn't any other way to reconcile this continual pandering to a megalomaniac of a president who would would prefer to be a dictator - which you are enabling him to be.

Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the Bush administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues. Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the administration-supported bill would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, he said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” Al Qaeda.

Are you an American thinking of e-mailing me, a Canadian? Well all Gonzales has to do is claim your e-mail somehow "concerns" al Qaeda and bingo - your communications will be under surveillance - as will mine. Think that's far-fetched? Just look at what they did to Maher Arar. You can't trust these Republican bastards with any power.

Just what will it take for the Democrats to realize that? An illegal war? No. Torture? No. Bush burning that "god damned piece of paper" (as he refers to the constitution)? No.

And just when will the majority of Democratic party fans - too many of whom believe that "winning" actually solves anything - actually wake the fuck up and realize that their party is nothing but Republican-Lite?

Have they even seen the latest poll numbers outside of the little orange bubble that they live in as they all hail their Democratic leadership at their YearlyKos convention this weekend? (It's true: willfully ignorant partisanship kills brain cells.) Democrats OUT: Apply directly to the forehead.

You really might need to read this twice to believe it if you're once of those brainwashed partisan hacks:

Oh this is hilarious. I thought Bush’s approval at 34%, Democratic Congress 14% was funny, but the new numbers from the Zogby poll are ridiculously low.

Nelson Muntz said it best.

The survey said:

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President

Bush’s Iraq policy has 8 times the support the anti-Bush policy of Pelosi-Murtha-Clyburn-Reid-Byrd.

And it gets worse: 94% of Democrats polled absolutely detest, loathe and hate how the Democratic-led Congress is handling the war in Iraq.

Yet the Democrats think the way they can increase their poll numbers is to roll over and play dead whenever Bush puts pressure on them?

3%??

Does it get any more insane than this?

With these Democrats, you can count on it.

Related: ACLU Condemns Senate for Passing Spy Law Changes

“We are deeply disappointed that the president’s tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “That a Democratically-controlled Senate would be strong-armed by the Bush administration is astonishing. This Congress may prove to be as spineless in standing up to the Bush Administration as the one that enacted the Patriot Act or the Military Commissions Act.”

The legislation that passed would allow for the intelligence agencies to intercept – without a court order – the calls and emails of Americans who are communicating with people abroad, and puts authority for doing so in the hands of the attorney general. No protections exist for Americans whose calls or emails are vacuumed up, leaving it to the executive branch to collect, sort, and use this information as it sees fit.

“It seems that political cover is more important to our senators than the rights and privacy of those they represent,” added Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The administration is on the verge of reviving a warrantless wiretapping program even broader than the illegal one it conducted before.

Sheehan and 45 Other Protesters Arrested in DC

Cindy Sheehan announced a few weeks ago that she would give house speaker Nancy Pelosi until July 23rd to put impeachment back on the table or Sheehan would run against her as an independent. During protests at Jonn Conyer's (D-MI) senate office today, Sheehan formally announced her candidacy.

She and 45 other protesters were also arrested (pics here). You'll see that outspoken Bush administration critic and former CIA officer Ray McGovern was arrested as well along with Colonel Ann Wright and Cindy Sheehan's sister, Dede.

Sheehan was taken into custody inside Rep. John Conyers' office, where she had spent an hour imploring him to launch impeachment proceedings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment effort would have to begin.

"The Democrats will not hold this administration accountable, so we have to hold the Democrats accountable," Sheehan said outside of Conyers' office after the meeting. "And I for one am going to step up to the plate and run against Nancy Pelosi."

Sheehan and about 200 other protesters had walked to Conyers' office from Arlington National Cemetery. She said Conyers told her there weren't enough votes for impeachment to move forward on the issue.

Forty-five of Sheehan's fellow protesters also were arrested. Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said that after they are processed, the arrested activists could each pay a $50 fine to be released.

"Impeachment is not a fringe movement, it is mandated in our Constitution. Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table," Sheehan told her group of orange-clad activists before they began their march from the national cemetery.

That "we don't have the votes" canard has angered many online Democrats who have reminded their party leaders that when impeachment investigations began against Nixon, the Democrats didn't have the votes either. It's an empty response to a hugely important concern of the majority of Democrats (and millions of Americans) who want hearings to begin now to investigate the wrongdoing crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration.

Sheehan has been completely marginalized at Daily Kos (as she was again on Monday during the protest) and no longer posts at that large Democratic (party comes first!) blog hub (which has become an unbearably thuggish snake pit), but she obviously doesn't need their support to keep up her fight anyway. She's doing just fine.

She relentlessly continues (in spite of all of the venomous criticism she's received) to be the public voice of outrage against the Iraq war and this criminal administration. She gets out there and puts herself in peril in order to act on behalf of all ordinary American citizens who have been so gravely affected by Bushco's policies and many are thankful for the face she's given to the right to dissent.

She and all who protested with her today did their duty as citizens - refusing to sit back and wait for the Democrats to take action - any action - to hold Bushco responsible for at least something...one thing...is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Their refusal to do so is shameful.

Cindy now blogs at ImpeachBush.org. Please support her efforts.

(By the way, some Democratic party members are so desperate to believe that their leaders will do the right thing that they just make shit up about their "brilliant", "genius" leaders and try to sell it to others who, apparently, are quite willing to buy it. That's quite pathetic to watch. They ought to do much more than to tell each other fairy tales so they can actually crack that dangerous state of denial. It's bad enough that Bush lives in that world. It really is something to see members of the so-called "reality-based" community falling for that kind of self-deception too.)
 

Impeachment: The responsibility of the citizens

Via Bill Moyer's Journal, July 13, 2007:

JOHN NICHOLS: --back in 1974, after Nixon had resigned, and said, "We must continue the impeachment process." It's-- it is under the Constitution certainly appropriate to do so. And we must continue it because we have to close the circle on presidential power. And the leaders in Congress, the Democratic leaders in Congress at the time said, "No, the-- country has suffered too much." Well, this is the problem. Our leaders treat us as children. They think that we cannot handle a serious dialogue about the future of our republic, about what it will be and how it will operate. And so, you know, to an extent, we begin to act like children. We, you know, follow other interests. We decide to be entertained rather than to be citizens.

Well, you know, and Bruce makes frequent references to the fall of the Roman Empire. You know, that's the point at where the fall comes. It doesn't come because of a bad leader. It doesn't come because of a dysfunctional Congress. It comes when the people accept that-- role of the child or of the subject and are no longer citizens. And so I think this moment becomes so very, very important because we know the high crimes and misdemeanors.

The people themselves have said, if the polls are correct, that, you know, something ought to be done. If nothing is done, if we do not step forward at this point, if we do not step up to this point, then we have, frankly, told the people, you know, you can even recognize that the king has no clothes, but we're not gonna put any clothes on him. And at that point, the country is in very, very dire circumstances.

According to the latest American Research Group poll on impeachment, only ~46% support beginning impeachment proceedings against George Bush: 69% of Democrats; 13% of Republicans and 50% of independents.

Only ~46%.

“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.”
- Adlai Stevenson

There is no doubt that the paternalistic aura of the American presidency, in which the president is viewed not as someone elected to serve the needs of the country's citizens but to forward his own agenda on behalf of his party with a "father knows best" approach, has continually relegated the citizenry to the role of subservient children. And, as has been seen with every power grab, every law the Bush administration has flagrantly and so brazenly broken, too many citizens accept what they seem to believe is their ultimate fate.

The fact that the new pseudo-mother of the Democratic party, Nancy Pelosi, and her senate mate, the kindly, soft-spoken Harry Reid have refused to initiate impeachment proceedings on behalf of party members who clearly wish otherwise also illustrates the parent/child dynamic that so pervades politicians in leadership positions. Although it's not as if Democratic party voters weren't warned when Pelosi made it blisteringly clear prior to the election that impeachment was "off the table". The moment she made that assertion was the moment there should have been a huge, public revolt against the Democratic leadership, but the idea of finally reclaiming congress (as if that meant much of anything, as we've seen with the Democrats' absolutely dismal performance since that happened) was more important than standing up as citizens to reclaim their country.

When your leaders tell you they will not work on your behalf or when they have the power and refuse to use it, the job of a citizen is to hold them accountable. That applies to all leaders. That has not happened in a very public way amongst the American citizenry and it's doubtful that it will in any meaningful way.

If the Democratic leaders had actually done their job and started impeachment proceedings when they gained subpoena power, perhaps the evidence they could have brought forth to this point would have convinced more than that 46% of citizens overall who are now in favour of impeachment. One would think, as I certainly do, that Bush's own statements about how he knowingly broke the law in the case of the secret CIA prisons and the illegal wiretappings of American citizens (not to mention the illegal Iraq war) would have been enough for a massive groundswell of support for impeachment. Apparently not.

Of those citizens who do favour impeachment, their voices are simply being ignored - especially the 69% of Democrats in that poll who favour the proceedings. But, at the same time, perhaps the citizenry isn't making enough of an effort to be heard. One only has to look at the amazing protests held in other countries when a leader goes astray. It's as if, and is likely the case as Nichols pointed out, that they have foregone using the power they have after being treated like and acting like unruly children who are just a nuisance to democracy. After a while, you believe that any effort is just futile when you're subjected to authoritarianism.

Add to that the fact that at the largest so-called "progressive" site on the internet which exists to get Democrats elected - Daily Kos - kos, the owner, stated last December that talk of impeachment was "impeachment porn" and that those who have supported impeachment there have continually been bullied into toeing the Pelosi/Reid party line that impeachment would just take time away from the other "important work" the congress has to do (which, as we've seen with their failure to force an end to the Iraq war with anything resembling strength, has been a lost cause) and it's no surprise that Republican/conservative-style authoritarianism has been accepted as being the norm by far too many citizens - across the political spectrum. The "children" must be controlled. Barring that, they must be silenced.

The Impeach Bush site is planning a September 15th protest in Washington as a follow up to their protest earlier this year in March. But two protests in an entire year are just not enough either to rally more widespread support among a citizenry that Nichols characterized as preferring to be "entertained".

It is very likely that the Bush administration members who should be investigated for impeachment: Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and anyone else suspected of deserving such punishment - will walk away scott free in the end. That failure will rest on the shoulders of all Americans: that the most blatantly criminal administration in America's history was never held to account for the crimes it perpetrated on its own citizens who chose to enable it rather than to confront it - and that the failure to demand justice on behalf of the citizens of other countries who have also been the victims of those crimes will certainly not be forgotten.

If you want your country back, take it.
 

Damage Control

There's a sucker born every minute.

Over at GNN, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have co-authored a post titled 'Democratic Spin Won't End the War in Iraq'. No, it certainly won't, and the meltdown and continual attempts to control the damage done by Democratic sellouts who voted to fund the emergency war spending bill on Thursday is going to take much more than continual pep talks from the front pagers at places like Daily Kos and MyDD, where they really do believe they can spin gold from straw or victory from more dead bodies.

As Rampton and Stauber point out:

The bottom line, however, is that MoveOn until now has always been a big “D” Democratic Party organization. It began as an online campaign to oppose the impeachment of President Clinton, and its tactical alliances with Democratic politicians have made it part of the party’s current power base, which melds together millionaire funders such as George Soros and the Democracy Alliance, liberal unions like SEIU, and the ballyhooed Netroots bloggers like Matt Stoller, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos. At a personal level, we presume the members of this coalition genuinely want the war to end, but their true and primary priority is winning Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Now that the war in Iraq hangs like a rotting albatross around the neck of the Bush administration, it has become the Democrats’ best weapon to successfully campaign against Republicans. From a “shrewdly pragmatic” point of view, therefore, they have no reason to want the war to end soon.

That is echoed by the "just wait until September - we'll nail Bush then" meme that bloggers like kos are now pushing. And, to add insult to injury, he and Bowers have the audacity to continue to shill for donations to the Democratic party in the midst of a major meltdown in which several Dem party members have expressed that they've had enough and are finally ditching the party (despite the fact that poor kos finds that embarassing. It hurts his feelings, you see.)

If progressive grassroots activists are too demoralized to make small donations, the party becomes more reliant on large donors.

Thousands of Dem party supporters actually believed the party mouthpieces when they promised that a Dem majority would bring an end to the Iraq occupation so they opened their wallets, even if some couldn't afford to. Which "donors" do you think the party leadership listened to?

And, as if that wasn't insulting enough to the party's anti-Iraq war base (only a very small minority is actually anti-all war. See: war, Afghanistan - which no one has made a peep about there and which also received funding via that bill), kos (who along with his other front pagers have written an amazing flurry of posts the past couple of days to try to force his readers/members to still support the party) is dredging up 3 days old news about Lieberman threatening to leave the party (because, you know, if it weren't for Lieberman, somehow the Dems could have automagically ended the war yesterday) while making excuses for Jim Webb's 'yes' vote because Webb was one of kos's chosen people to win.

Webb, like most of his colleagues, bought into the b.s. right-wing frame that voting against this supplemental was voting against our troops.

He's talking about Jim Webb - Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan - as if he's some sort of political simpleton who was just fooled by right-wing talking points.

Does it get any clearer than that that kos et al are in absolute desparation mode? No wonder he titled his post 'Moving Forward'. He can't put this behind him soon enough.

This vote was a bloody trainwreck of massive proportions - but - it was no accident, that's for sure. The Democratic party is not an antiwar party. It's not even an anti-Iraq war party. It's amazing that so many people are only now awakening to that reality and those who have allowed themselves to be fooled should have paid more attention to history.

From that GNN article:

There is an organized anti-war movement in America that is not an adjunct of the Democratic Party. Up until now, it has been weak and divided and unable to organize itself into an effective national movement in its own right. In its place, therefore, MoveOn and its Netroots allies have become identified as the leadership of the anti-war movement. It is vitally important, however, that a genuinely independent anti-war movement organize itself with the ability to speak on its own behalf.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the civil rights movement was most definitely not an adjunct of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Far from it, it was a grassroots movement that eventually forced both parties to respond to its agenda. Likewise, the movement against the Vietnam War was not aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties, both of which claimed to have plans for peace while actually pursuing policies that expanded the war.

That’s the sort of movement we need again, if we wish to see peace in our lifetime.

That is exactly what Scott Ritter wrote about in 2006:

It's high time to recognize that we as a nation are engaged in a life-or-death struggle of competing ideologies with those who promote war as an American value and virtue.
[...]
Despite all of the well-meaning and patriotic work of the millions of activists and citizens who comprise the anti-war movement, America still remains very much a nation not only engaged in waging and planning wars of aggression, but has also become a nation which increasingly identifies itself through its military and the wars it fights. This is a sad manifestation of the fact that the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence, rather than the ideals of human rights, individual liberty, and freedom and justice for all that should define our nation.

In short, the anti-war movement has come face to face with the reality that in the ongoing war of ideologies that is being waged in America today, their cause is not just losing, but is in fact on the verge of complete collapse.

And those competing ideologies cannot be described as simply being Republican v Democrat - as more people on the so-called left have now realized as a result of Thursday's vote. Take the case of the much-heralded Jack Murtha, who voted in favour of yesterday's bill - again to some Democrats' surprise. Ritter had him pegged:

Americans aren't against the war in Iraq because it is wrong; they are against it because we are losing.

Take the example of Congressman Jack Murtha. A vocal supporter of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, last fall Mr. Murtha went public with his dramatic change of position, suddenly rejecting the war as un-winnable, and demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While laudable, I have serious problems with Jack Murtha's thought process here. At what point did the American invasion of Iraq become a bad war? When we suffered 2,000 dead? After two years of fruitless struggle? Once we spent $100 billion?

While vocalizing his current opposition against the Iraq War, Congressman Murtha and others who voted for the war but now question its merits have never retracted their original pro-war stance.

The bottom line is this: the real antiwar movement is not to be found on the big box blog sites like Daily Kos or their various spinoffs. In fact, many antiwar activists have either been ridiculed to no end, bullied, labeled as "radicals" and/or banned from those sites for having the audacity to go against accepted Democratic war policy. Code Pink members and antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan have been repeatedly insulted (you know - the people who are actually out there doing something to end these wars). And kos has decried any talk of impeachment as "impeachment porn". That's what's insulting to democracy - not vocal antiwar activists who have better things to do than to sit around figuring out 50 ways to apologize for the blow their spineless elected representatives dealt to them this week, like kos is currently up to.

It's amazing that a well-coordinated antiwar movement hasn't emerged after all of these years in the US. Perhaps this will act as one of those many "wake up calls". That depends, of course, at how successful Dem apologists are at spinning this latest catastrophe so they can lull people back into complacency. That road, however, looks much more rocky than it has in decades but it's time they felt some of that real pain that families of the dead and injured - Iraqi, American and coalition forces - have had to deal with in the face of the Democrats' utter failure to stand on principles instead of worrying about whether or not they'll be re-elected in '08.

And always remember: War is a Racket. Again, which donors do you think the Democratic party is listening to?
 

Schwarzenegger: Democrat?

From the "You've got to be kidding!" file comes this:

Arnold Schwarzenegger (D-CA)
by kos
Mon May 21, 2007 at 09:38:05 AM PDT

Early this year, I found myself speaking to a California legislator high up on the leadership. Democrats had just lost a governors race that looked winnable six months before Election Day, but turned into an easy romp by the Terminator.

But rather than be upset, instead of gearing up for battle, this legislator was feeling quite optimistic and content. "We're going to be working with a Democratic governor," he told me.

And while not even a real Democratic governor is perfect, fact is that Schwarzenegger is for all intent purposes a Democrat to the consternation of Republicans and quiet glee of Democrats in the great Golden State.

kos has also dubbed Schwarzenegger with the "progressive" label on what is supposed to be a "progressive" Democrat site. Quick kos, define "progressive", because from what I've seen that term on your site equals "centrist" and it now appears that that applies not only to Dems, but to Republicans as well.

As this commenter and others point out, Arnold is hardly worthy of the label "progressive" or "Democrat" (unless you're referring to the Blue Dog Dem sellout bunch who might as well be Republicans).

We have a feisty Conservative premier here in Canada, Danny Williams of Newfoundland and Labrador, who fiercely opposes our Conservative prime minister, but none would ever slap the label "Liberal" beside his name, suddenly believing he'd undergone some political conversion on the road to Damascus. Williams sees the hard right turn Harper is taking but Williams is a Conservative. Period. And Schwarzenegger is a Republican, unless and until he quits the party or says otherwise.

The fact that the owner of what is (incorrectly) dubbed as the biggest "liberal" site in Amercian politics* would so heartily throw his support behind a Republican - any Republican - and shill for the party of death, destruction and torture speaks volumes.


*kos is currently working on a book that will define his new political label: "Libertarian Democrat" - whatever that is supposed to mean. See if you can figure it out.

(h/t to Marisacat's blog for this story.)