On this date ...

August 9, 1974:





Those were the days.





h/t to Mustang Bobby at Shakesville

Impeach Cheney Movement Growing

Both Bush and Cheney need to go, but it certainly makes sense to impeach Cheney first. Who would want even a second of an "official" Cheney presidency. It's bad enough that he's been calling all the shots behind the scenes.

Liberals have been frustrated over the apparent lack of interest by anyone in Congress to take action. Well, it seems there is interest -- you're just not hearing about in from the main stream media.

Crooks and Liars has an official "Thank You" from Rep. Robert Wexler. Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) -- one of my favorites! -- and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) co-authored an op-ed calling for impeachment hearings for the Vice President.

The tremendous response to my call for impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney confirms that the Bush Administration and Vice President Cheney must be held accountable. I have been overwhelmed by the netroots support for my call for impeachment hearings and for my website - WexlerWantsHearings.com. As of Monday afternoon - after only four days - over 80,000 people have signed up to show their support for impeachment hearings.

Wexler was "shocked when no newspaper would publish" it. Wexler went on to say:

It is not every day that three members of the House Judiciary Committee set out a substantive case for impeachment hearings against the sitting Vice President. Yet, the national media yawned.

Wexler, Baldwin and Gutierrez recognize that it's "the constitutional duty of Congress to investigate the serious charges that have been leveled against Vice President Cheney."

Originally, my goal was to gain 50,000 online signatures on behalf of impeachment hearings. Today, our goal is 250,000 supporters.
The charges against Vice President Cheney are too serious dismiss without hearings. If we band together, we can make focus the nation’s attention on this critical issue. Let’s continue to make our voices heard.

More than 86,600 had signed on at WexlerWantsHearings.com when I last checked. Do what you can to spread the word. Encourage everyone to visit the web site and sign on!

Bush friends dropping like flies

When you see a headline that says "Bush friends dropping like flies ..." the next logical question is "when will he?"

The latest pol to take a plunge is Australia's prime minister, John Howard. Howard suffered a major defeat on Saturday, losing his reelection bid to Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd.

Howard's defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, and political setbacks that lead to Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair's resignation. And what to all these former-leaders have in common? They were staunch allies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The world "gets it." Even the electorate in this country gets it, sending Republicans packing in the last election. So when is the United States Congress going to "get it" and start formal impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney and then President Bush.

The citizen of this country deserve to see these two war-profiteers forced out of office in disgrace.

Why do you think campaigning began last summer for the 2008 presidential election? Because the American public can't wait for this administration's term to end.

Congress will be back in session soon. Email your Representative to tell them you are thankful to live in a democracy that includes an impeachment process to protect its citizens against fascist leaders -- and urge them to use it!

Bush: Listening to the American People is a "Waste of Time"

In a recent WaPo article, Bush was complaining about Congress and threatening to implement new policy by executive order.

The White House plans to try implementing as much new policy as it can by administrative order while stepping up its confrontational rhetoric with Congress after concluding that President Bush cannot do much business with the Democratic leadership, administration officials said.

According to those officials, Bush and his advisers blame Democrats for the holdup of Judge Michael B. Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general, the failure to pass any of the 12 annual spending bills, and what they see as their refusal to involve the White House in any meaningful negotiations over the stalemated children's health-care legislation.

So let's take a look at this. Congress won't rubber stamp a nominee who wants to use torture, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, or denying children needed health care coverage.

Bush claims Congress hasn't done much.

"Congress is not getting its work done," Bush said. "We're near the end of the year, and there really isn't much to show for it."

Congress has increased the minimum wage, strengthened America's competitiveness by expanding educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school, passed ethics and lobbying reform legislation, implemented the 9/11 Commission recommendations, passed the largest increase for veterans affairs funding in history, upgraded the military health care and passed a 3.5% pay raise for our troops, passed a pay-as-you-go resolution committing to no new deficit spending, and passed legislation expanding stem cell research (which the president vetoed).

Yeah, what a bunch of slackers!

House Democratic leaders fired back at Bush with strong rhetoric of their own. "The president wants the same complacent, complicit Congress that was a co-conspirator in a coverup of what was going on in this country," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.).

What Democrats have NOT been able to do, despite strong public support, is end the war-for-profit in Iraq and bring the troops home. (Bush vetoed an Iraq war-spending bill that included a date for withdrawing American troops.)

In a post on Think Progress, Ali Frick sums up the situation well.

Bush is the one who's "wasted valuable time." He continues to bury his head in the sand and back a failed policy in Iraq.

President Bush met exclusively with Republican congressional leaders to discuss the SCHIP bill. Afterward, he held a press conference slamming the Democratic leadership for "not getting its work done" in Congress, stating that the Senate had "wasted valuable time" trying to end the war in Iraq:

BUSH: Congress is not getting its work done. Near -- we're near the end of the year and there really isn't much to show for it.

The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq. And yet there's important work to be done on behalf of the American people.

Yeah, Bush ... listening to the American people certainly is a "waste of time.

According to Bush, the Senate has wasted time listening to the wishes of the American public. Sixty-eight percent of Americans want U.S. forces in Iraq reduced or withdrawn entirely, according to a September CBS poll. An October Washington Post/ABC poll also found that a majority of Americans "do not believe Congress has gone far enough in opposing the war."

Congressional Democrats have faced stiff conservative opposition in their efforts to end the war. In May, Congress approved a bill stipulating troop withdrawals from Iraq -- which Bush promptly vetoed. Two months later, Democrats pushed the issue in all-night Senate session, but Republicans again blocked the legislation.

The only person who has "wasted valuable time" is Bush, who continues to bury his head in the sand and back a failed policy in Iraq. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in April, Congress's actions have been "helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited."

Repeating what my friend Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors would say ... Impeach the mutha already!

Bush and Rice share blame for Blackwater

Dan Froomkin, in a special column to washingtonpost.com, writes:

In the wake of last month's shooting of 17 civilians by Blackwater gunmen in Baghdad, the Bush administration is finally acknowledging -- more than four years late -- that private security contractors in Iraq should operate under the law.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted to Congress that the State Department had inadequately supervised those contractors. As Karen DeYoung wrote in Friday's Washington Post, "Pressed to express regret for what Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called "the failures of your department, your failures," Rice said, "I certainly regret that we did not have the kind of oversight that I would have insisted upon."

Not the kind of oversight that she "would have insisted upon?" Would someone please remind me of her job description? Isn't she like in charge of these things, or am I missing something?

Rice agreed that "there is a hole" in U.S. law that has prevented prosecution of contractors.

But did we really need an apparent massacre to point out this giant loophole and its perils?

As it happens, President Bush has been aware of the hole for some time -- and deserves some of the blame for not fixing it earlier. Confronted about it in public more than a year ago, Bush literally laughed off the question -- and then, tellingly, described his response as a case study in how he does his job.

Here's the video, posted to YouTube on April 11, 2006:


As my good friend Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors would say ... Impeach the mutha already!

Bipartisan Support for Impeachment

Check this out on Crooks and Liars!

Bipartisan Impeachment Support As Bush Breaks Disapproval Records

It’s official: President Bush is the most unpopular President for the longest stretch of time in American history. Keith reports on the latest poll findings confirming this sad, sad fact, and conservative Republican & former Reagan Deputy AG Bruce Fein talks about why Bush must be impeached.

More on why isn't Bush in jail ...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here is yet another blogger voicing some of the same concerns I have. The blog post, written by Eric Alterman and circulated by Center for American Progress, points out the media's culpability in what is merely the latest Bush administration scandal.

The most important line in his piece follows, what Alterman calls "a mainstream media mea culpa that is both welcome and instructive":

This admission once again blames the Bush administration for “poorly executed acts” rather than its standard operating procedure, which is deliberate deception in the service of ideological obsession. (emphasis mine)

I understand why the broadcast and cable media behave the way they do -- greed. The five CEO's who profit when there is an administration like Bush & Company have no vested interest in serving the public interest. The tax breaks and other incentives given to them by this administration have made the CEO'S of these corporations very wealthy. Bush calls them his base.

And I'm certain this is exactly what Ronald Regan had in mind when he deregulated the broadcast industry back in the 1980's.

Whatever its final outcome, I suppose the Bushites should congratulate themselves for getting away with it this long, and the rest of us who care about the continued functioning of our democracy should be grateful that we still have newspapers and we now have blogs. Because if all we had were television stations, well—as the playwright Tom Stoppard has written, “No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press, everything is correctable. Without it, everything is concealable.” (emphasis mine)

But a free press only works if the press itself works. And altogether too often, broadcast and cable prefer to look the other way.

There is a protection mechanism written into our Constitution to protect "We the people" from this -- impeachment. I fear, however, that it will take more courage than our current leaders possess.

Why isn't George W. Bush in jail?

There certainly appears to be enough evidence to impeach George W. Bush, but the bigger question might be why isn't he in jail? The list of apparent crimes committed by Bush and company is seemingly endless. A quick Google check reveals list after list of offenses -- so what gives?

Here are just a few for your review:

100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

The Nation -- November 2004

The scandal sheet

Salon -- January 2005

Bush's Crimes

Friends of the Earth

TVNewsLIES.org LOOKS AT THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE OF BUSH CARTEL CRIMES - AS IGNORED BY THE MEDIA

TVNewsLIES.org -- 2007

We’re talking impeachable crimes, here. We’re talking high crimes and misdemeanors. We’re talking about conspiracy and murder. We’re talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity. We’re talking about deception and manipulation. We have the proof and we know whodunit. We even have public confessions but the American news media is so obviously complicit in the crimes and coverups that people don’t even worry about confessing in public any more! And there is nothing at all we can do about it.

Regarding the latest scandal to make the news, Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post refers to the administrations actions as "The Politics of Distraction."

As far as the White House public-relations machine is concerned, here is all you need to know about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year: The Justice Department made some mistakes in how it communicated that those prosecutors were let go for appropriate reasons. And, oh yes, there is no evidence that White House political guru Karl Rove ever advocated the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys previously appointed by President Bush.

But from the very beginning of this scandal, the central question has been and remains: Was there a plot hatched in the White House to purge prosecutors who were seen as demonstrating insufficient partisanship in their criminal investigations?

Everything else is deception or distraction.

How much longer is it going to take for Congress and the mainstream media to get on board?