Video: Olbermann - Is Gonzo gonzo?

Let's hope so.



Related:
Cheney Hails His Pal Al

And what does Nancy Pelosi think about impeaching Gonzales?

In the first question of the morning, Pelosi was asked if she supported a proposal by Washington Rep. Jay Inslee to impeach beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The Speaker looked down and rubbed her temples wearily. "I would like us to stay focused on our agenda this week," she said. Today the entails finalizing ethics and lobbying reform. Tomorrow it will mean expanding children's health care and boosting Medicare benefits. By the end of the week the House will likely pass an energy bill and legislation will be brought to the floor that reins in the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Pelosi's no fan of Gonzales or his bosses. "The Administration wants the Attorney General to sign off on what can be collected," she says of the wiretapping proposal. "Absolutely not."

She is greatly disturbed by the lawlessness of this Administration and its contempt for checks and balances. "I take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, so it is a top priority for me and my colleagues to uphold that." [not when it comes to impeachment though. -catnip] She notes the vigorous oversight hearings held by committee chairman like John Conyers and Henry Waxman.

But Pelosi sees impeaching Gonzales and his superiors as a distraction from the ambitious agenda she has crafted for the House. "If I can just hold my caucus together," she says, "I can take them to this progressive place."

Oh just go home, Nancy.
 

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.
 

Quote du Jour: Pelosi - Bush Not Worth Impeaching

Nancy Pelosi explains why she won't move to impeach Bush, via Mike Stark's diary at Daily Kos:

I made a decision a few years ago, or at least one year ago, that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their short-comings, and the President is... ya know what I say? The President isn’t worth it... he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do... If he were at the beginning of his term, people may think of it differently, but he’s at the end of his terms. The first two years of his term, if we came in as the majority, there might be time to do it all...

You, Mrs Pelosi, have no greater duty than to uphold the constitution. If you don't think impeaching Bush for his crimes is "important" enough for you to deal with, you should resign.
 

Gitmo: The Dems Write a Letter

Lobbing yet another softball from their bottomless satchel of cushy weapons, the Democrats sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to close Gitmo - because we all know that when Bush gets a letter, he cringes in his faux cowboy boots.

Right.

I'm sure he'll be extremely bothered by that bit of prose as he BBQs ribs on July the 4th while wishing the noise of the fireworks would end so he could hear himself think his ever-so-deep thoughts about humanity. Because that's just the kind of "compassionate conservative" guy he is - except when he's busy being this heartless bastard.

Anyway, someone else has written a letter about Gitmo too - a child whose father is a detainee there who her family fears is close to dying and who, unlike the Democrats, has absolutely no power or visibility to actually do something serious about closing that gulag so she can hug her father again. All she could do was to write a letter, but: "The children decided not to post it in case it prejudiced their father's case".

...it was Shaker's idea to leave their London home in the summer of 2001 because he felt frustrated at not having a proper home to bring up his family.

"The council couldn't find us a flat or house in London so we decided to leave. Shaker was always helping people in England and he wanted to help the children of Afghanistan, but wasn't sure whether he should be teaching or help build a hospital."

For a few weeks, the family shared a house with Moazzam Begg, a Briton who was freed from Guantanamo in 2005, who had also gone to Kabul to help children in Afghanistan. But when the American invasion started, the country became a very dangerous place to be.

"The bombs were falling every night and we had to leave the city to stay in a village. The children were terrified and kept telling us to be quiet in case our noise made the bombs come.

"Shaker was frightened too and I can remember his face now, it was almost as pale as the colour of the cream suit he was wearing. Shaker left the village to find a safer place for us. But in the middle of the night the villagers told us we had to go with a group travelling to the safety of Pakistan."

Zin recalled: "I was pregnant with our fourth child and we were all scared. In the end, I just went. I didn't see Shaker again. Sometimes I regret that decision. What if I stayed - would we all be together now?" Shaker was captured in December 2001 by the Americans, who claim he was fighting with the Taliban. Reprieve, the human rights group with is representing him, maintains that he was sold by villagers to the Northern Alliance who in turn sold him on to the Americans.

From there he was taken to Bagram airbase and later flown on to Guantanamo Bay. He has never seen his youngest son.

Nancy Pelosi, who likes sports analogies too, assured Americans on Friday that when it comes to dealing with the Iraq war: "We have many arrows in our quiver, and we are sharpening them". The only quivers I see from the Dems are the shakes they get when they think about strongly opposing Bush on anything.

Why are they sharpening arrows while pitching out softballs? And just how long does it take to sharpen arrows anyway?
 

Friday Fun

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi has decided to support increased funding for Canadian troops. (h/t Wonkette)

From her website:


The Dems seem to really like our troops, as this old pic from their party's site shows as well:



And, in the spirit of Free Stock Photo Trade™, the Canadian government has returned the favour by having a pic of the infamous American "Everywhere Girl" on its website:


(She's the one in the purple hat on the right. Who knows where the rest of those people are from?)

No doubt this is all just another sign that North American Integration is upon us. (But we'll always have better maple syrup and bacon than those yanks.)

Related (in my mind, anyway): Speaking of bacon, the Calgary Stampede breakfasts are back. Free food. All over the city. Check out the listings here and go stuff yourselves! [Insert obligatory "Yeehaw!" here.]
 

Today is brought to you by the word "cave"

Because that's exactly what the Democrats did on their Iraq bill:

Democrats gave up their demand for troop-withdrawal deadlines in an Iraq war spending package yesterday, abandoning their top goal of bringing U.S. troops home and handing President Bush a victory in a debate that has roiled Congress for months.
[...]
The spending package, expected to total $120 billion when the final version is released today, would require Bush to surrender virtually none of his war authority. Democrats were working to secure two other priorities that the president had previously resisted -- an increase in the minimum wage and funding for domestic programs, including veterans' benefits, Hurricane Katrina relief and agricultural aid.

Instead of sticking with troop-withdrawal dates, Democrats accepted a GOP plan to establish 18 political and legislative benchmarks for the Iraqi government, with periodic reports from Bush on its progress, starting in late July. If the Iraqis fall short, they could forfeit U.S. reconstruction aid.

And lordy, lordy:

Reid called the benchmark language "extremely weak," but he noted that Bush had initially demanded a bill with no strings attached on Iraq. "For heaven's sake, look where we've come," Reid said. "It's a lot more than the president ever expected he'd have to agree to."

Yes, for heaven's sake, it's not like there's a totally fucked up war going on or anything. Lighten up, people!

Meanwhile, Pelosi is singing Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll end the war tomorrow...

"This is another stage in the sequencing of ending this war," said Pelosi, who added that September would be "the moment of truth."

Riiight...see you in September, Nancy.

The NYT reports:

But even so, many Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, indicated that they would not support the war money, meaning that a significant number of Republicans would have to sign on to ensure the plan’s approval.

Ms. Pelosi made clear that if money for the war was going to be provided without a timeline for withdrawal, it would be without her personal support. “I would never vote for such a thing,” Ms. Pelosi said as she entered the office of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, to put the final touches on the $120 billion proposal.

So, what was the point of all of this?

That's what Russ Feingold would like to know:

“There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action,” said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who was unsuccessful last week in his push for a withdrawal of combat troops by spring. “Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq.”

Just wait til September, Russ...September...only a few more thousand people will have died by then...and hey, maybe Buscho will have strong-armed the supposedly democratically-elected Iraqi government to sign that oil law (because that's what this waiting game is really all about - getting the oil profits into the hands of private US war profiteers.)
 

Specter Gives Lieberman A Lesson On Foreign Policy

Someone needs to throw Joe off the bus already. At least he's not wearing that "D" behind his name anymore.

And...via Think Progress (watch the video):

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), who traveled last week with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as part of her delegation to the Middle East, said this morning on C-Span that Pelosi told Bush of the trip to Syria a day before they left, and Bush did not object.

Rahall said, “The Speaker had met with President Bush in the halls of the U.S. Capitol just the day before we left and mentioned to him that we were going to Syria. No response at all from the President.”

Despite the White House’s public rhetoric that the trip was a “bad idea,” President Bush “did not tell her not to go, nor did the State Department tell us not to go,” Rahall said. “The State Department was certainly aware of our traveling to Syria and our full itinerary. And there were State Department officials in every meeting that we had on this codel. So that is all hogwash as far as I’m concerned.”

So, that was all much ado about nothing, obviously.