Why Kucinich Voted "No"

Dennis Kucinich [D-MI] on the Ed Schultz Show, Monday (following George Miller [D-CA] who's also included in this segment).

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The response by one so-called progressive American blogger: Bite me.

The health insurance bill that passed in the house on Saturday nite was a watered-down, corporate-sponsored farce that included an amendment meant to set back womens' rights 30 years.

Kucinich was right to vote against it. And so-called progressive bloggers who have a problem with a politician actually standing up for his constituents and voting on principle need to ask themselves where their loyalties really lie - with Big Insurance and Big Religion or with the greater good of America.
 

The Kucinich Impeachment Resolution: Justice Delayed

I feel a long-awaited sigh of relief tonite as I listen live to the speaker of the US house of representatives read into the congressional record the resolution detailing the numerous articles of impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich (D-MI) and seconded by Robert Wexler (D-FL).

Regardless of the eventual disposition of this motion, one cannot deny the historical importance of this moment.

On this evening, 2 democrats have defied speaker Nancy Pelosi's spring, pre-election 2006 pronouncement that "impeachment is off the table".

On this evening, 2 Democrats have refused to continue to be complicit in the marching orders of their party elders to enable George W Bush's war crimes by refusing to hold him accountable.

On this evening Robert Wexler, who has been a staunch Obama supporter and adviser, refused to tow Obama's line on impeachment that he made clear almost one year ago:

Obama, a Harvard law school graduate and former lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said impeachment should not be used as a standard political tool.

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority," he said.

"I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction," he added. "We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus."

Illegal war fueled by manufactured propaganda.
Torture.
Illegal wiretapping.
Torture flights.
Secret prisons.
etc etc etc

Just what exactly is a "grave breach", Senator Obama? Could anything be more grave than killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and sending almost 4,000 US troops to their deaths? Torture isn't a "grave breach"?

You call the proper response to that - your duty as a US senator to defend and uphold the constitution - a "circus"?

How dare you?

Very few Democrats have raised their voices over the years to support impeachment as a result of their party putting the politics of convenience and avoidance above principles, basic human rights, and justice.

The Democratic party has failed to take up the responsibility, on behalf of the American people and all of the victims of the Bush administration's war crimes, to ensure that no one is above the law and that those who place themselves there through the creation of a unitary executive theory which holds that the administration is accountable to no one be punished severely.

Similarly, online Democratic party shills like Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos who proclaimed in December, 2006 that any talk of impeachment was "impeachment porn", whose bullying followers did everything they could to drive off impeachment supporters from that site and whose enlightened and so-called "progressive" political commentary about Kucinich's presidential bid amounted to an insultingly grunting "ugh" are also complicit in willfully allowing this administration to get away with what seems like an endless list of criminal activities while imploring salivating fans to send more money now! to a completely useless Democratic party.

And don't even get me started on how the mainstream media has utterly failed the American people on the impeachment issue as well. Dog forbid they should tell the truth and risk losing precious access to their government sources shills.

Integrity is a rare commodity. Too many people have been bludgeoned into complacency.

So, here we all are.

And I say "we" on behalf of citizens in all countries affected by the inaction of the Democratic party to do its job. We Canadians have had to live through and continue to be outraged by the incredible injustices the Bush administration has perpetrated on Maher Arar and Omar Khadr. We continue to lose soldiers in the other forgotten and mismanaged Bush war - Afghanistan. And we have yet to discover just how many of our citizens have really suffered as the result of the policies of this criminal gang and its so-called "war on terror". The impact will be felt for years, if not decades.

History will not be kind to Bush and it won't be kind to the Democratic party which chose to look the other way.

Which side of justice and history will you be on?

And now I'm off to watch the movie "Recount" - the story of the ridiculous 2000 election fiasco that brought all of us the George W Bush dictatorship in the first place. That seems like a ironic end to this nite, n'est-ce pas?
 

Dennis Kucinich: Good News/Bad News

First, the bad news (for those of us who appreciated the wider dialogue Dennis contributed to the Democratic presidential race): Dennis will be dropping out of the race on Friday.

But, here's the Good News™: He announced on the floor of the house today that he "plans to introduce Articles of Impeachment against President Bush on Jan. 28 — the day of Mr. Bush’s State of the Union speech."

Accusing the administration of lying about the need for the war in Iraq, Mr. Kucinich said he did not need to hear the president’s assessment. “We know the State of the Union,” he declared. “It’s a lie.”

He also fired a volley at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California who has maintained that impeaching Mr. Bush is not on the table for Congressional Democrats. “If impeachment is off the table,” Mr. Kucinich said, “truth is off the table. If truth is off the table then this body is living a lie.”

Amen. And that's exactly what it's been doing by refusing to pursue justice for the American people through impeaching the president of 935 lies.

Dennis' announcement:


Ever since the Democrats regained their dominance of congress, we've heard excuse after excuse about why they won't impeach these war criminals. Enough is enough.
 

Kucinich: 'Attempt made to rig presidential elections'

Hillary and Edwards busted - caught on tape talking about narrowing the field of candidates during the debates:

According to the Associated Press, Fox News Channel microphones picked up Clinton and Edwards on stage discussing their desire to limit future joint appearances to exclude some rivals lower in the crowded field. "We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group," Edwards said into Clinton's ear following a Presidential Forum in Detroit hosted by the NAACP on Thursday.

Clinton agreed with Edwards, according to print reports and video footage of the exchange. "We've got to cut the number. ... They're not serious," she said. Clinton added that she thought representatives of her campaign and Edwards' had already tried to limit the debates, and "we've gotta get back to it," according to the AP.

"Candidates, no matter how important or influential they perceive themselves to be, do not have and should not have the power to determine who is allowed to speak to the American public and who is not," said Kucinich.

"Imperial candidates are as repugnant to the American people and to our Democracy as an imperial President."

Video: Sen. Mike Gravel - "These people frighten me."

Don't you just want to wipe the smirks off their faces? Seriously... they frighten me too.

You can see more of Gravel from Thursday's debate here and here. You'll find his site here.

Canadians take note: "Mike Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to French Canadian immigrants."

What's not to like?

During his first term in the Senate, Gravel authored a book titled Citizen Power. In it, he advocated the implementation of numerous populist ideas, including a guaranteed annual income (dubbed the "Citizen's Wage"), public financing of elections, a progressive tax with no deductions or exemptions, steps against the military-industrial complex (which he calls the "Warfare State"), a national law to do away with voter registration and other barriers to voting, abolition of the death penalty, universal health care, school vouchers, a drastic reduction in government secrecy, and an end to what he viewed as an imperialistic foreign policy. The book also contained the complete text of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the complete platform adopted by the Populist Party during the 1892 presidential election.

Of course, he's just too librul to ever actually win the US presidency. As much as many Americans favour liberal ideas, they seem to be too scared to actually place people in power who smack of anything left of being centrist. Must be those old, ingrained fears of communism and scary socialism that they've had pounded into their psyches for decades ("freedom fries", anyone?) and the Democrats are offering several centrists who'll fill the bill nicely to ensure that actual progressive policies, like those endorsed by Gravel and Kucinich (who the supposedly "left-wing media" treats like a joke), never see the light of day.

This is already shaping up to be a long, tedious and boring campaign. Wake me when it's over.

Plus ca change...

Related: Mike Gravel's Campaign for President - Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate
 

Random News & Views Roundup

- Wanker of the Day: John Derbyshire. Runner-up (in a close race): Nathaniel Blake.

- What is going on with N Korea's nuclear reactor?

- Obvious headline of the day: Stressed army makes U.S. vulnerable: retired general

- General Peter Pace (sockpuppet brigade) spouts talking points:

But Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military has the ability to take on a major new conflict, despite the strain of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I try to speak very precisely publicly about this because the worst thing you can do is you have some country sitting out there miscalculating the enormous residual capacity of the United States military and think that they can do something because we are currently tied up," Pace told reporters in Washington.

"We are focused on Iraq. We are focused on Afghanistan. We do have a lot of our assets there. But we do have enormous residual capacity that's available to the nation," he said.

Shorter Pace: Iran, here we come.

- Bush at the Va Tech convocation on Tuesday:

As the Scriptures tell us, "Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

"Good". Like war, for example.

- "No kidding!" headline of the day: 'Rampage may not influence '08 presidential race'. It's all lip-flapping anyway. Does anyone really think their gun laws will change?

- The tories are feeling the heat over their attempts to screw with Canada's gun registry in the meantime.

- A Canadian veteran comes to terms with his past. (All the best to you Dave and thank you for that courageous post.)

- Juan Cole: Iraq Has Two Virginia Techs Every Day

- Also, "about 70% of primary school students in a Baghdad neighborhood suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering, according to a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health." And with the constant barrage of violence they continue to witness, there will no doubt be many more long-lasting symptoms to come.

- Meanwhile, the UNHCR is calling on the west to help Iraq's 4 million refugees. As I wrote elsewhere yesterday, the refugee situation in Iraq is akin to the horrendous coverage we saw of stranded hurricane Katrina victims in NOLA - except that these refugees have been stuck in their virtual convention center begging for help for years. The BBC has 4 Iraq refugee stories.

- Dennis Kucinich intends to file articles of impeachment against Cheney. Go Dennis!

- It's the 25th anniversary of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Chretien shared his thoughts with CTV's Mike Duffy on Tuesday. Meanwhile, in a totally unsurprising move: "The current Conservative government has no plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Charter." Yes, that's Canada's "new" government for you. Rights? Freedoms? Eh?
 

Video: Sean Penn on How Democracy Should Work

"Let's show them we can fire this fucking president and put him in jail."

You go, Sean!