04 November 2006

VP: "Up yours, America."

"Cheney said that even with pollsters predicting that Democrats would likely make gains in both houses of Congress Tuesday, voter sentiment would not influence Bush's Iraq policy.

"'It may not be popular with the public — it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing," Cheney said. "We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right.'"

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, Nov. 3, 2006
ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos

It doesn’t matter? Holygods. Those words are utterly contemptuous of the American people – the people who voted him into office, along with his sock puppet, George.

He’s as serious as a Baghdad morgue, too.

“We’re not running for office.” Cheney thinks that because he and George W. Bush aren’t running for office in 2008, they can do any damn thing they want, regardless of the will of the people they serve. They can continue to shred the Constitution and set fire to the Bill of Rights, they can continue to get our soldiers killed in Iraq for no good reason they can give us and they can nuke Iran until it glows. They can continue to get richer and richer and richer off the idiot rabble (that’s us, gang) and we can’t do a damned thing about it.

Why, he might as well have just said “fuck you, America!” Come on, Dick. Tell us what you're really thinking. We all know that’s what you meant.

This is dangerous territory. After Tuesday, the Bush administration may no longer have a rubber-stamp Congress to do its bidding. The system of checks and balances the Founders built into our great democracy may finally start clicking into place, and unless we’ve all been fed a huge load by the Democrats as well, it may put the brakes on this tyrannical presidency, as it was supposed to.

And then what? Will Cheney and Bush act on the laws they’ve so carefully enacted (or written and added signing statements to) over the last six years and simply ignore the People, the Judiciary and Congress?

Will they have those U.S. representatives and senators who have the cojones to oppose them locked up indefinitely along with members of the press and anyone else they feel like locking up, including you and me? Will they claim that with America “at war,” the president has the right to impose martial law? Will we see our reservists and national guardsmen, our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives – those not being blown up in Iraq, that is – on our own streets, carrying their M16s and breaking up the pavement in tracked vehicles? Will the Humvees of the rich be replaced by the HMVs of this nation’s own military, complete with grim-faced gunners? Will our local police officers, charged with protecting us, become part of a new police state?

Maybe not. But conjecturing on it sure isn’t much of a leap from “it doesn’t matter.”

Dick Cheney has been giving the American people the bird from the moment he took office in 2000, notoriously starting with his refusal to disclose who participated in the meetings on the president’s energy policy with him. He’s lied over and over again about Saddam’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks and has grimly painted pictures of mushroom clouds and dirty bombs, terrorists on America's Main Streets and sneered at anyone who dared to question him, even going so far as to imply that Democrats are terrorist appeasers and traitors.

Sometimes I think all George W. Bush really wants to do is go mountain biking, then have his cookies and milk and a nice nap. The real power behind this unitary presidency is Dick Cheney.

And he has no soul.

If Congress won’t start impeachment proceedings against Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Gonzalez, whatever happens after Nov. 7? What hope does America have? Would it take a military coup to stop them? Can you imagine a military coup in the United States of America? I can’t. I just ... can’t.

I sent in my absentee mail-in ballot the other day. I urge all of you to vote like it counts. Because oh, my. It does.

NOTE: I'd posted the following earlier today, but Blogger seems to have eaten it. Here it is again, in its entirety:

Rogues and blaggards

Can someone tell me why this president and his administration -- these rogues and blaggards* -- cannot be removed from office for the good of the country and its democracy?

We can impeach a president for being zipper-challenged and lying about it, but we cannot – or will not? – impeach a president for lying to his country in order to gull it into a devastating war (and in so doing, causing the deaths and maiming of thousands on both sides of the conflict), for corruption, and for what now appears to be insanity?

To impeach a president is to accuse him of misconduct in office before an appropriate tribunal. Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned his presidency. Clinton was impeached by the House, but later acquitted by the Senate.

Yes, I know that impeachment is a serious undertaking, Bill Clinton notwithstanding. But as far as I know, it’s the only method our democracy has to hobble a president who’s out of control and acting, not for the good of our country, as he’s sworn to do under the Constitution, but for his own selfish and nefarious reasons.

This is an honest question, folks. I simply don’t understand why the Democratic Party, poised to win the majority in the House and perhaps even the Senate, won’t give the impeachment of President Bush serious consideration.

Yes, there will be “investigations.” Meanwhile, Bush and his administration will go on raping the country and destroying our democracy.

What prompts me to ask this question are a couple of breaking stories.

The first, from this morning’s Washington Post Online, tells us that the Bush administration has told a federal judge that detainees who were held at secret CIA “black sites” and transferred to Guantanamo in September should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that were used to make them talk, since that information could compromise national security.

The second story is that Bush and Cheney have made it clear that do not intend to change their strategy in Iraq during the next two years. In an interview with ABC News this morning, Cheney said it’s “full speed ahead” in spite of the fact that Iraq has dissolved into civil war, violent sectarianism and is in a state of total, anarchic chaos.

For reasons only they know for sure, this administration is condemning U.S. soldiers to violent injury and death, stuck as they are in the middle of it all, helpless to do anything to stop it.

The first revelation – restraining detainees from telling anyone, even their lawyers, what methods of torture were used on them while they were held in those black sites – is stunning. Yes, when those methods see the light of day, they may well be proven illegal by both U.S. and international legal standards, putting the interrogators and their enablers at risk of prosecution.

Well? Those methods are illegal, not to mention immoral in most civilized countries, including the U.S.A. The Bush administration knows they are, but that isn’t stopping them, since they do what they please and the law be damned. When they rammed the Military Commissions Act through Congress in September, our balls-less Congress approved it and Bush signed it into law, they effectively made it impossible for the law to apply to them.

But the MCA has been challenged as unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will probably strike it down, eventually. There's the rub: That won’t happen for months or even years, given the slowness of the legal system. And meanwhile, the Bush administration will continue to get away with gleefully breaking the law of the land – and doing all they can to suppress the evidence until it’s far too late.

The second – “full speed ahead” in Iraq – appears to be madness, but as in all things the Bush administration does, there’s plenty of dark method to it. We’ll stay in Iraq until all the players get all the loot, which includes every last drop of black gold and every last taxpayer dollar they can swipe from the pockets of the American and Iraqi people.

This president and his administration are amoral. They care nothing for the lives of the people they’ve destroyed and nothing for the infrastructure in Iraq they’ve turned to junk and rubble. Note, however, that the Iraqi oil fields still function and the gigantic new U.S. bases continue to be constructed on schedule. Those, “War is untidy” Rumsfeld made sure there was a sound plan for.

There are many, many other compelling, urgent reasons that President George W. Bush and his administration should be impeached and removed from office. These are just two huge ones; the third is Katrina. And now, with two years left to go and with no reason to worry about being reelected, Bush feels free to do whatever he wants, his country and the world be damned.

The United States of America is in deadly serious crisis. This is a national emergency of proportions the like of which we've never dreamed before. This rogue president and his rogue administration may well hurtle America into a nuclear war as they strip away the rights of the people at home and steal the country’s coffers bare.

Is there no way in this great democracy of ours to stop this terrorist president and his administration?

*Irish slang for "black guards."


Posted by Wren

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Bush and Cheney either don't care that they aren't up for reelection in 2008 - or that they are planning keep republicans in power without another election, period.

Arrogance only works when you're right...otherwise it's just disguised stupidity.

4/11/06
Anonymous said...

I've been too busy to give your recent posts the attention they deserve, but you've really been hitting your stride lately. You're turning out quality, in the Robert Pirsig sense of the word.

5/11/06

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