What laws CAN'T President Bush break in the name of national security, then? Can he ban peaceful dissent and protest in public? Invalidate Court rulings by fiat? Shut down "opposition" newspapers, in the event that a meaningful one actually existed? Can he send a hit squad to my house, or disappear me to a secret prison if he thinks I'm aiding terrorists by not agreeing with him?
By extension, does every executive-branch officer or employee then have these powers, based on his say-so?
And if I'm "with him or against him," and obviously not with him, as you my dear reader and friend can plainly see, should I be packing my toothbrush for Guantanamo, or worse?
What shall we wake to tomorrow, America? Marshall law? Mandatory shopping? Nuking Iran?
If we managed to preserve civil liberties in the face of ideological battle with the U.S.S.R. - a formidable enemy, to be sure - with the possibility of all-out nuclear war looming over our heads(remember when we had leaders who could actually correctly pronounce this word?), then why does the paranoid party think we can't do so now?
No, this isn't about national safety and security. This is sheer opportunism and a grab for power by a party historically known for such power-lust, sprinkled with salt for the wounds of Liberals by that beacon of integrity, Karl Rove.
It is small consolation that history will not look kindly on this administration.
If wartime powers include the right to supercede any and all laws, then we'd better make damn sure the person doing the superceding is of high moral character, has never been arrested, censured by the S.E.C., dumped stock based on insider information, evaded military service, relied on nepotism and insider connections to prop up a fundamentally incompetent track record in business, used his powers as governor and president to line his pockets, driven drunk, sniffed cocaine... um...
Uh oh.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Fighting the Blue Funk (for God and Country)
Sorry no posts in a while, my friends.
Sometimes I have difficulty finding the will to blog (never mind the time) as the national political news is so often bleak and hope for the future so tenuous. The idea that young people in the US military are dying overseas, having taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, while their commander in chief back home treats that very document with utter contempt, as if it were “just a piece of paper,” is frankly enough to send me into a powerful deep blue funk.
What’s more galling is the large number of Americans who are willing to carry the President’s water for him, so to speak, to sling accusations at John Murtha, let’s say, and who are all too willing to allow the very institutions which have created this great country to be subverted and destroyed.
These people will tell you they hate and fear terrorists, but that is not the truth; their leaders have created thousands upon thousands of new terrorists all over the world, and they seem to like it just fine.
Given that each new revelation of official misconduct (dare I say “crime”?) only serves to anger them – but not at a president who spies on citizens in direct defiance of the law, nor at right-wing congressional leaders who cynically bargain away their constituents’ health and security for twenty pieces of silver, or a nice golfing trip - but at the same old bugaboos on the ever-disappearing Left: Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda. John Murtha; the only conclusion a sane man can reach is this:
They don’t hate terrorists. They like terrorists because terrorists give them a place to attach their paranoia and fear. Who DO they hate then?
Liberals. While the blood and money flow out of our nation in rivers, they could care less. They are still fighting the War of the Blue Dress, as if they can bring the thousands of dead back to life by re-impeaching Bill Clinton.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sick.
Of course, one must fight the blue funk tooth and nail, as I’m doing now, because the enemies of freedom (real freedom, not Bush-brand Freedom ™) never rest and are counting on our collective ennui to continue to run roughshod over our freedoms of thought and action and the concepts of human rights, accountability, and democracy.
Al Gore gave an excellent speech the other day, not carried in the major media, and I found it both chilling – literally, as I was trembling all over after reading it - and rousing. Then again, what it roused me to do was to take a long hot bath and a glass of whiskey to calm down. So maybe it was a little TOO powerful.
The implications for the future are dire and we are most definitely in a state of constitutional crisis. The president has asserted his right to go above the law in times of war. But this war, you may remember, will never end and, in the president’s own admission, can never be “won.” So what is he actually claiming?
Quite simply, he is trying to re-make America in his own authoritarian image, and is claiming to be above the law, permanently, for ever and ever. That U.S. citizens no longer have rights, or recourse to the law, forever.
He and his close advisors are the very embodiment of audacity, calmly telling the courts, especially the Supreme Court, that they no longer have jurisdiction over cases involving suspected terrorists, and that cases from Guantanamo, Abu Graib, or any of the far worse secret prisons our tax dollars are now supporting, may no longer be heard. Telling Congress that they will not provide information on a whole host of secret programs that you and I are paying for. I hope that the Judiciary in particular sees beyond partisan politics and realizes that the president is a dangerous man, and that he is attempting to neuter them for all time. He is about to install Samuel Alito, a man who seems ready to geld himself and the Supreme Court in one fell swoop, so you be the judge.
One FISA judge apparently saw the future clearly, this writing on the wall, and has resigned.
The rest of us can’t be so resigned.
Fight for your country.
Fight the power.
Fight the blue funk.
Sometimes I have difficulty finding the will to blog (never mind the time) as the national political news is so often bleak and hope for the future so tenuous. The idea that young people in the US military are dying overseas, having taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, while their commander in chief back home treats that very document with utter contempt, as if it were “just a piece of paper,” is frankly enough to send me into a powerful deep blue funk.
What’s more galling is the large number of Americans who are willing to carry the President’s water for him, so to speak, to sling accusations at John Murtha, let’s say, and who are all too willing to allow the very institutions which have created this great country to be subverted and destroyed.
These people will tell you they hate and fear terrorists, but that is not the truth; their leaders have created thousands upon thousands of new terrorists all over the world, and they seem to like it just fine.
Given that each new revelation of official misconduct (dare I say “crime”?) only serves to anger them – but not at a president who spies on citizens in direct defiance of the law, nor at right-wing congressional leaders who cynically bargain away their constituents’ health and security for twenty pieces of silver, or a nice golfing trip - but at the same old bugaboos on the ever-disappearing Left: Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda. John Murtha; the only conclusion a sane man can reach is this:
They don’t hate terrorists. They like terrorists because terrorists give them a place to attach their paranoia and fear. Who DO they hate then?
Liberals. While the blood and money flow out of our nation in rivers, they could care less. They are still fighting the War of the Blue Dress, as if they can bring the thousands of dead back to life by re-impeaching Bill Clinton.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sick.
Of course, one must fight the blue funk tooth and nail, as I’m doing now, because the enemies of freedom (real freedom, not Bush-brand Freedom ™) never rest and are counting on our collective ennui to continue to run roughshod over our freedoms of thought and action and the concepts of human rights, accountability, and democracy.
Al Gore gave an excellent speech the other day, not carried in the major media, and I found it both chilling – literally, as I was trembling all over after reading it - and rousing. Then again, what it roused me to do was to take a long hot bath and a glass of whiskey to calm down. So maybe it was a little TOO powerful.
The implications for the future are dire and we are most definitely in a state of constitutional crisis. The president has asserted his right to go above the law in times of war. But this war, you may remember, will never end and, in the president’s own admission, can never be “won.” So what is he actually claiming?
Quite simply, he is trying to re-make America in his own authoritarian image, and is claiming to be above the law, permanently, for ever and ever. That U.S. citizens no longer have rights, or recourse to the law, forever.
He and his close advisors are the very embodiment of audacity, calmly telling the courts, especially the Supreme Court, that they no longer have jurisdiction over cases involving suspected terrorists, and that cases from Guantanamo, Abu Graib, or any of the far worse secret prisons our tax dollars are now supporting, may no longer be heard. Telling Congress that they will not provide information on a whole host of secret programs that you and I are paying for. I hope that the Judiciary in particular sees beyond partisan politics and realizes that the president is a dangerous man, and that he is attempting to neuter them for all time. He is about to install Samuel Alito, a man who seems ready to geld himself and the Supreme Court in one fell swoop, so you be the judge.
One FISA judge apparently saw the future clearly, this writing on the wall, and has resigned.
The rest of us can’t be so resigned.
Fight for your country.
Fight the power.
Fight the blue funk.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Pay, Pray, Play, and Obey: Will No One Defend Poor Tom DeLay?
Step right up, step right up!
Where, kind people, is the Right winger willing to come forward and fall on this grenade for a GOOD MAN, your spiritual leader and enforcer of all that is good in Congress…? Where is the good Christian ready to bust off a really delicious rationalization about why this man is not a common thief and hypocrite?
G’wan… I DARE YA!
Come on! The Gun-Toting Liberal dares ya!
(sound of crickets)
I can’t wait for the kool-aid to start flowing on this one. Anyone with a shred of objectivity and knowledge of Capitol Hill events over the past decade can see this man’s turpitude from a mile away. In fact, I hear that Tom Delay’s ego is the only man-made thing visible with the naked eye from space…
What’s the talking point going to be? That the weak, stupid, intellectually and morally bankrupt Liberals are also, simultaneously and incongruously, a well-oiled attack machine, an effective and powerful cohesive group with an overarching and unifying ideology against the Right?
For the “Liberal conspiracy” smear, should you choose to employ it, to have validity, the Libs would have to be everything the Right claims they are not.
Where, kind people, is the Right winger willing to come forward and fall on this grenade for a GOOD MAN, your spiritual leader and enforcer of all that is good in Congress…? Where is the good Christian ready to bust off a really delicious rationalization about why this man is not a common thief and hypocrite?
G’wan… I DARE YA!
Come on! The Gun-Toting Liberal dares ya!
(sound of crickets)
I can’t wait for the kool-aid to start flowing on this one. Anyone with a shred of objectivity and knowledge of Capitol Hill events over the past decade can see this man’s turpitude from a mile away. In fact, I hear that Tom Delay’s ego is the only man-made thing visible with the naked eye from space…
What’s the talking point going to be? That the weak, stupid, intellectually and morally bankrupt Liberals are also, simultaneously and incongruously, a well-oiled attack machine, an effective and powerful cohesive group with an overarching and unifying ideology against the Right?
For the “Liberal conspiracy” smear, should you choose to employ it, to have validity, the Libs would have to be everything the Right claims they are not.
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