Impeach Bush

Even Barron's wants him impeached:

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.

Catching up on current events

There has been so much going on and I haven't had time to comment on any of it.

Dubya's approval ratings are at an all-time low.

The FTAA went down in flames. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Bolivian populist Evo Morales stole the show by leading a peaceful People's Summit of over 450,000 people in Arghentina. Chavez declared, "The FTAA does not exist; let's create a fair trade." But he warned that FTAA supporters will try again to revive it.

Bush continues to "restore honor and integrity" to the Oval Office. Secret prisons.

Bush is now even refusing to listen to his own God (speaking through Bush's own United Methodist Church) and withdraw from Iraq. God told him to invade, now God is telling him to stop the unjust war.

And, of course, the quote of the week that exemplifies the Bush administration:

"Please roll up the sleeves on your shirt -- all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this crisis and on TV you just need to look more hard-working ... ROLL UP THE SLEEVES."

-- Sharon Worthy, in email to FEMA Director Michael Brown during the Katrina disaster

There was a lot more that I missed in the past few weeks, but that's all I have time for right now.

Dubya Quote of the Day

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."
-- Governor George "Dubya" Bush to Doug Wead in 1998 or 1999

Random thoughts on a Sunday

• More people voted against George "Dubya" Bush in 2004 (57,695,898) and in 2000 (54,916,568) than voted for Reagan in 1984 (54,451,521).


• 51% is not a Decisive Victory or a Mandate!


• Bill Clinton has been out of office for more than four years yet Republicans are still bashing him.


• Some people claim to "follow the evidence", but even after almost two years of US occupation and NO evidence of WMD (the reason Dubya gave to the American people for starting a war) they still support the war and the man who has sent more than 1,500 American servicemen and women to their deaths.


• There is no Social Security Crisis.


• Why has Bush not been impeached for lying to Congress?


• Dubya does not care about the Iraqi people, all he cares about are US economic and strategic interests in the region.


• Congratulations to Dubya and Rummy on their recent awards.

Oh, Irony...

"We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law."
-- George "Dubya" Bush, 21 Februaray 2005

Does anyone else see any irony in that statement? The Bush Administration has been trying to be more like the Putin Government yet Bush went before the world and admonished him. Does Bush support a free press at home? Vital opposition? Sharing of power? Ha. And the rule of law has been flaunted by this administration over and over.

Bush advertorials

Another conservative columnist was exposed for taking money from the Bush Administration to promote one of its programs. This time it is Michael McManus, whose column "Ethics & Religion" appears in 50 newspapers.

This guy writes a column about ethics and he did not disclose that he was being paid to promote the program that he was lauding in his column.

see: Third columnist caught with hand in the Bush till at Salon.com

That bring the total to three so far.

• Michael McManus $10,000
• Maggie Gallagher $41,500
• Armstrong Williams $241,000
• 50.8% of the electorate duped into voting for a second term...Priceless

Apparently the Bush Administration knows how bad their programs are so they have to pay people in the media to promote them. They also paid a PR firm more than double what the Clinton Administration spent on PR in its second term.

Who will be next in this scandal? And has anyone in the Bush Administration lost his job because of this?

Quote du jour

What is the goal toward which we are heading? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws have been inscribed, not in marble and stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of the slave who forgets them and in that of the tyrant who denies them.
-- Robespierre, "On Political Morality", 5 February 1794

That is Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robspierre trying to justify "The Terror".

[W]e have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.
George "Dubya" Bush, Second Inaugural Address

Hmmmmm...*scartches chin*

That is George Walker Bush trying to justify...

Dubya: a modernday (albeit dumber) Robespierre?

President Bush's second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth.
-- Paul Craig Roberts

Isn't it treason to compare Dubya to anything French? Not yet.

Jacobin to the Core

by Paul Craig Roberts

After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist. The hubris-filled megalomaniac in the Oval Office has promised the world war without end.

Bush's crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bush's speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."

What is a Jacobin? Jacobins ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins saw themselves as virtuous champions of universalist principles that required them to impose "liberty, equality, fraternity" not merely on France by a reign of terror, but also on the rest of Europe by force of arms.

Unlike America's Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world

President Bush's second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth. As one of Bush's neocon puppetmasters, Robert Kagan, approvingly wrote in the Washington Post on Jan. 23, "The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism."
[more]

There's more good stuff there, go read the rest.

Tsunami, pt 2

It took nearly a week but some of the "christian" bloggers have chimed in on the tsunami. I guess they had to wait to get the official word from the Bush Administration before they could comment.

A big surprise, they are comparing aid to the the victims of this natural disaster to Iraq. Dumb Girl has a map of Asia with the words "worth humanitarian aid" across it and a map of Iraq with "not worth humanitarian aid" on it. Mr Dumb Girl writes in the comments section, "The US has 4% of the world's population and provides nearly half of the world's food relief/aid EVERY DAY..." I would also point out that the US has about half of the world's wealth. Also Japan has about half the population of the US and they led the world in foreign aid for most of the past twelve years. Mr Dumb Girl goes on to say, "The US also supports international stability with its global reach military capability and ALL nations benefit from the sacrifices of the US soldier and the taxpayer behind him....The world owes President Bush and the US taxpayer a hearty THANK YOU instead of criticism." Is he serious? That is just laughable. Ask the people of Nicaragua, Chile, Cuba, Iraq, Vietnam, etc. how grateful they are to US for intervening in their affairs.

...more later

More on political capital...

"My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade...if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
-- George Dubya Bush to Mickey Herskowitz (ghost for writer Dubya Bush and Poppy Bush) in 1999

*****

and Ted Rall on the election: GUILTY, DISGUSTED, AMERICAN