On Kingdoms

I watch a lot of political TV. I watch Hardball , Maher, Countdown, Jon Stewart, Colbert, all of it religiously. I read blogs, newspapers, magazines all day long, I am constantly on YouTube, Crooks and Liars, etc. And I can't remember the last time I read or saw a segment like this, so brutally honest and so incredibly alone in its place among its peers. It comes from Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! and details just what America lost today. The rest of the media should take a cue from Ms. Goodman and cover this, but I guess burning the Constitution isn't all that "sexy."

Thank God for Patrick Leahy and shame on the twelve Democrats who joined with the Republicans; Tom Carper of Delaware, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, as well as Senator Menendez of New Jersey, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Pryor of Arkansas, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. They, along with all but one of the Republicans, helped to eliminate basic human rights held since the Magna Carta. They are an embarassment to America and to the Democratic Party. They are the personification of the charge that the Democrats are spineless dogs. They should be ashamed and I hope they are haunted by the screams of defenseless, forgotten prisoners in their sleep. Those Democrats along with all Republicans except Chafee are guilty of crimes against humanity and ushering a nightmareish Orwellian reality of absolute power.

This is as much of an embarassment in the history of our nation as the internment of the Japanese. We are literally watching a democracy turn into a Kingdom right before our eyes. Hopefully sanity will return someday and this will be seen as a black mark on the Congress like the Red Scare is seen today. But as these maniacs go forward and the opposition lays down time and time again, the light at the end of that tunnel is getting fainter and fainter.

Here's a snippet:

Senator Patrick Leahy: ... Of course, in the Hamdan decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it very clear that it is available in somebody captured. In a case like what he was talking about, if somebody had been captured there and held in prison, and they said, “You have the wrong person,” they could at least raise it.

And you also have, of course, under the Constitution, that habeas can be suspended if there is an invasion, if there is an insurrection. We have neither case here. Even the most conservative Republican legal thinkers have said this is not a case to suspend habeas corpus.

You know, they can set up all the straw men they want, but the fact is this allows the Bush administration to act totally arbitrarily with no court or anybody else to raise any questions about it. It allows them to cover up any mistakes they make. And this goes beyond just marking everything “secret,” as they do now. Every mistake they make, they just mark it “secret.” But this is even worse. This means somebody could be locked up for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. They have the wrong person, and they have no rights to be able to say, “Hey guys, you’ve got the wrong person.” It goes against everything that we’ve done as Americans.

You know, when things like this were done during the Cold War in some of the Iron Curtain countries, I remember all the speeches on the Senate floor, Democrats and Republicans alike saying, “How horrible this is! Thank God we don’t do things like this in America.” I wish they’d go back and listen to some of their speeches at that time.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center For Constitutional Rights: ... The President can decide tomorrow that you, Amy, or me, or particularly a non-citizen, can be picked up, put in jail forever, essentially, and if you're a non-citizen in Guantanamo or anywhere else in the world, you never get a chance to go to court to test your detention. It’s an incredible thing, and any senator who voted for this, in my view, is essentially guilty, guilty, guilty of undermining basic fundamental rights and may well be guilty of war crimes, as well.


All I ask is that you watch the segment and ask yourself if you still recognize your country.

To Catch A Predator

Did I say predator, I meant GOP Congressman in charge of Missing and Exploited Children.

Hi-fucking-larry-ass! God, I love the morals and values crowd.

more here.

They're gonna steal another one...

RFK Jr. shines the light on the private companies that install thier own hackable machines and then count the votes without supervision. Woo-Hoo! Freedom is on the march!

Thank God for these three Senators and their emergency legislation:

The proposed federal bill would provide 75 cents for each backup paper ballot that local officials print. If ballots are printed for half the 27 million voters expected to use touch-screen machines, Ms. Boxer said, her bill would cost Washington no more than $10.1 million.

$10 million for a fair election. Who cares? Fix the whole system before they steal another one.

Wow, real news out of Faux News! That's Newsworthy!

Bravo Bill.

Think Progress actually checked out Clinton's 'double standard' claims, and it seems Wallace has been a wee bit easier on the Bushies. And, guess what, Fox News still has an agenda. Whudathunkit?

Of course the media will crucify him for losing his cool, but I thought he was too restrained. And I don't think he was sandbagged, I thnk he knew what he was doing, especially in wake of the ABC 'movie.'

But, even if they rip him all day long, at least he won the media cycle. They are talking about a Democrat fiercly defending himself instead of one of Bush's War In Iraq = War On Terror speeches.

Gary Hart On War With Iran

Bush + November 2? + Neocon fantasies = Iran.

We've seen the drumbeat before. But this time it happens in October... go figure... And, sure, the media will love it and the Republicans will say "He's tough... He's strong... They were a threat..." while trying to keep a straight face... and the Democrats will lose the House because they just never could quite keep the media or their own party focused on Iraq... and then another war with "embeds" and a post war world unimaginable. But hell, fredom is on the march, so, we got that going for us.

But, seriously. what are the consequences of another war of choice, against Iran?

Gary Hart:
The consequences? The sunny neoconservatives whose goal has been to become the neo-imperial Middle Eastern power all along will forcast few. But prudent leaders calculate all the risks, and they are historic.

These include: violent reaction throughout the Islamic world; a dramatic increase in jihadist attacks in European capitals and the U.S.; radicalization of Islamic youth behind a new generation of jihadist leaders; consolidation of support for Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and a rapidly spreading malignant network; escalating expansion of anti-American sentiment throughout the world, including the democratic world; and the formation of WWIII battle lines between the U.S. and the Arab and Islamic worlds.

In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad. But those qualities do not characterize our current leadership.

For a divinely guided president who imagines himself to be a latter day Winston Churchill (albeit lacking the ability to formulate intelligent sentences), and who professedly does not care about public opinion at home or abroad, anything is possible, and dwindling days in power may be seen as making the most apocalyptic actions necessary.

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amen.

Iran

We're already there? It seems right out of the Bush-Rove-Satan-Cheney playbook to ready the forces with our election so close. This way Dubya can make a big splash right before the election and scare the living shit out of enough voters. Maybe Bin Laden will "release" another tape two days before this election too. In any event, war with Iran is a disasterous idea, but I wouldn't put it past this sick bastard to try (with a new war, yeah!!!) to give himself the bounce the press has been searching for for years.

Freedom Is On The March!

Awesome! I love it when the foreign press exposes our completely flawed election process!
(from Altercation)

More on the moron...

So, I was furious with Bush yesterday. I wasn't really ready for it at all. I had no really heavy heart nor an empty indifference leading up until the fifth anniversary of 9/11. That is to say my usual 'Bush Meter' reading remained at level- "I hate this fucking moron and his complete destruction of the world" but did not slip to level- "I moving to Canada" or even rise to the occasional, laughter inducing level- "Jesus, this guy is retarded, did he just massage a female world leader and bark and swear at another world leader with his mouth full of food in the same weekend? Does he think they were secretly filming 'Porky's at the G8?'" But for some reason, after replaying that day over in my head, I began thinking about how much Bush blew it after 9/11. I was not really obsessing over 9/11, just coming to grips with it all over again. Then I watched Bush's primetime speech and just lost it.

Every thought ran into the next... Just bafflement at looking at the pictures of Bush choking when it mattered most for over 7 minutes, then dividing a united world with his crusaders rhetoric, then to demonizing opposing viewpoints, then the administration's resisting the investigations that the widows wanted, than Iraq, then the swiftboats, then stealing another election, and still no UBL, still no 9/11 commission recommendations in place but hey, we're fighting them in Iraq so they can't fight us here but don't you fucking dare take any Poland Springs on the plane, and lets still do next to nothing to really protect our ports or our borders. Let's not build up schools but lets masquerade under a slogan, a slogan that like the Clean Skies or the Healthy Forests programs, competes for the title of "Most Opposite Name For What A Program Actually Does" in some Orwellian Olympics. Fuck feeding poor, starving kids, Jesus would have almost certainly handed out tax cuts. Soon they'll be using the story of Lazarus to justify eliminating the 'Death Tax.' You can almost see the commercial.

And I almost hope the hicks, farmers, and ignorant good ol' boys enjoy the fact that they are paying $4 a gallon gas and have no health care and their wages are going down and even though they voted for this feckless frat boy who has never worked a day in his life, I hope they also enjoy the fact that boys can still kiss and girls can still get abortions. And in the Right's constant attempt at rewriting of history and science and ignoring global warming while embracing creationism and all the while the lies. The lies that never stop. A non-stop faucet of deceit behind a drumbeat of religious demogaugery aided by an ill-informed, willfully ignorant, overly religious, authoritarian flock of brainwashed cowards.

Unbelievable.

Then I think, what about Gore? What about Kerry? What about Dean for Christ's sake? All would have been far superior to this gibbering ex-coke head. Would they have really taken more vacation days than any other president? Would they have sat there for seven minutes or a month earlier, would any one of those men responded to a CIA briefing that included the infamous 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the US' memo with, "OK, you covered your ass" as this President did? Would any of them expose a CIA agent's identity while we were at war while she was working in the very intelligence office that dealt with the central reason (what was it again, oh yeah W!M!D!) of why we were at war in the first place?

Arrrrggggghhhh!!!

Then I think of the Democrats and stopping this sociopath before another 9/11, fake war, or Katrina happens. And sadly, I don't see it. I don't see them fighting like they should be.

No election this year should be even close. The Democrats should win every single seat vs. someone who even remotely supports this reality-AWOL criminal. Every single day the Democrats should sing a chorus of Bush's lies, Rumsfeld's inneptitude, the press's inaccuracies, lies, and bias, they should boycott and sue Faux News and they should show pictures of Abu Ghraib, Mission Accomplished, Katrina, Bush-the-G8-massaging-national-embarrassment, the unprotected ports, Rove, Delay, Enron, Kenny Boy Lay and the letters of 'Thank yous' and 'well wishes' Bush wrote to him, show pictures of Abramoff, Valerie Plame, Usama, panoramic shots of American Corporations lining the streets of Beijing, drowning polar bears, Cheney in his hunting uniform, Cheney snarling, Cheney in front of Han Solo incased in carbonite at Jabba's palace, gas pumps, the national debt clock, and flag-draped coffins.

Every single day. Non-stop. I am sick and tired of this bullshit and you just know that anyone who A) runs a criminal organization like Bush's Crime Family and B) will almost certainly get indicted if the Democrats win subpoena power, will be playing hardball. But for some reason the Democrats won't strike back with viscously delivered, brutal honesty.

Basically, stop playing wiffle ball while the other guy is using aluminum and BALCO.

I think it is great that Ted Kennedy and others immediately blasted the Pres for his decision to abuse what should be a day above even his distortions, but it wasn't hard enough and it wasn't met with a united rage from every single Democrat today. Instead, the Democrats spoke out with the passion and tenacity of a skinny Nevadan reading a prepared statement with his head in his notes. By the end of the day the press was talking about the Republicans actually accusing the Democrats of politiczing the day. The knock out blow came from John "tanny Boy" Boner who said that he couldn't tell why the Democrats wanted to help Al Queda more than the American people.

You see, that's hardball. That's the money quote, and the guy almost certainly wasn't reading that line off a prepared statement. The Democrats need to point out Bush's shallowness and complete disregard for the memory of the 9/11 victims and keep reminding the public that this guy is a liar with no morals and abosolutly no plan. Take it to him hard and bang the drum all day every day. No more of the guy from the tanning salon calling calling anyone else a nancybitch.

Look, if we have to live in a world where Fox News can be "shocked" that James Frey wrote a fake memoir, than we should also live in a world where the Democrats can actually call President Flight Suit and his Republican Codpieces of Congress what they really are: servants of Satan destroying the world through lies, manipulation, corruption, cronyism, stealing and war.

And that brings me back toward why I got so pissed off yesterday. It was not the images of 9/11. It was not rethinking my own 9/11 experience and reliving all the feelings of that day and letting rage get the best of me. Instead, I got those feelings after watching Bush piss on the memory of 9/11 by using his primetime speech to the nation to discuss how important his bogus war in Iraq is.

In what should have been an act of national healing, our president showed us the hubris that probably earned him his first DUI, and only comes from a lifetime of living with an equally psychotic father and a woman souless and vapid enough to think American refugees were "better off" living in a football stadium.

In the emptiest gesture of American politics I have ever seen, President Bush tried, again, to rewrite one of histories greatest failures and tie it to one of our most sacred days.


What balls.


Weeks ago, when asked what Saddam had to do with 9/11, the President answered "Nothing." At the time he was challenged, he was smack dab in the middle of intertwining the two narratives, as he and everyone else at Castle Grayskull have been doing for years.

Since then he and members of his administration have muddied the water on that topic again and again and have compared the now-majority of Americans who have realized he's full of shit, as appeasers to the Nazi's, Fascists, and Al-Queda.

And last night, as always, when the choice comes down to basic human decency and the truth vs. fearmongering and complete bullshit, the president went with the ladder.

It wasn't the first time he politicized 9/11, but to me, it certainly was the most offensive.

I am surprised he didn't unnecessarily raise the terror alert and cut to shots of a Gay Wedding throughout the speech.

Anyway, this fraud has taken the gloves off too many times and the Democrats need to hit back, and don't let vocal supporters like Santorum and Saint McCain off the hook, no matter what the media does. Let America know that this disgraceful lunatic is supported with an absolute power granted to him by his Do-Nothing Congress. And they should do so like the Republicans always do, by going extremely negative, but unlike the GOP, they should do it with the truth.

But before running all of those other ads I mentioned, they should start with airing an ad showing clips from yesterday's despicable speech with a scrolling "How dare he disgrace 9/11 like this..." intertwined with clips of the Republican candidates who support him.

Take the gloves off. He politicized it, and now the Democrats should disgrace him for doing so.

Update: Atrios has a really good point here. If it's the biggest struggle in the history of the world, why are we fighting it without enough of a military force? Also, why tax cuts and not more of a homeland sacrifice?

Update Update: This is the kind of thing I am talking about.

Five Years Later...

Thank you Keith Olberman.


Democrats need to start sounding like that.

Facts are so boring...

God, the real 9-11 was so boring ABC had to create drama and 100% fiction to make it interesting to viewers. Thanks liberal media!

In related news, ABC plans to air a special on how the Earth is actually experiencing a global freezing at rapid rates due to Hillary Clinton's pure evil.

Wow, why can't reporters do this?

Interesting how the media still can't do as good as a media watchdog group can. Here's the Holy Shit part of your happy friday.

Tootles!

Back from vacation...

So, I went on vacation (basically to be in a wedding) and I caught a few things that I thought needed to be posted here. First there's Keith Olbermann who, thank God, still is the lone liberal voice in the mainstream media. His take on the new, new, new, new, new Rove/Bush/Rumsfeld line is priceless.

Then there's ABC's shameless 9-11 movie, The Path to 9/11, which has scenes in it that have been completely refuted by the 9-11 Commision report- a report which the filmmakers and ABC claim it is based. Actually the movie was written by a staunch conservative activist and friend of Rush Limbaugh. Think Progress has all the details and spend a minute to tell ABC what you think.

And while the GOP are out there proclaiming how they're the party of "super Christians," I found this article on the state of the poor striking.

E.J. Dionne:

After a week of remembering the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the most depressing realization is how easily our leaders forgot their fervent promises to lift up our nation's poorest citizens.

All manner of politicians and columnists said in Katrina's wake that this was the time to revisit the problems of the destitute. The anguish of the people of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward would have at least some redemptive power if the country took poverty seriously again.

It didn't happen. The innovative ideas that came from all sides were swept off the table. The poor became unfashionable once more. Congressional conservatives changed the conversation. A concern for the struggling gave way to debate over how to offset spending on Katrina with budget cuts -- directed in large part at programs for the needy.

Perhaps the release of the Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in this particular week is a sign that God and statisticians have a sense of humor. The report reinforces what we knew at the time of Katrina -- that the poor are still with us and that the middle class keeps losing ground.

Read the rest for some staggering statistics.