Cowardly Democrats.. do they Enable TREASON....?

This is going to be a difficult post to write, so it will probably be edited "live" while being posted.

The question is, "AT WHAT POINT DOES Democratic Party COWARDICE transgress the line of TREASON: ENABLING a party, faction, and regime in its systematic march to destroy America's constitutional government?

Already we have plenty of evidence and supporting documentation to support this charge:

#1. The ANTHRAX ATTACKS on the offices of Democratic members of Congress, then Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. The anthrax letters - envelopes with a fine powder in them containing "weaponized" lethal antrhax spores - were accompanied by crudely drawn threats supposedly written by Arab terrorists written against the "Zionist" tendencies of the US government. However, considering that Arab terrorist had, just over a week previously, attacked at least 4 US airliners with murderous intent with NO warnings or indication of their murderous intent, it strains credulity past the breaking point to imagine that such terrorists would target TOM DASCHLE and PATRICK LEAHY? when they could have instead sent dozens of such letters up and down the eastern seaboard to various critical targets, such as the Pentagon, other military bases, and more governmental offices, WITHOUT the attached "warning" threats.
In short, the ANTHRAX ATTACKS were almost certainly NOT the results of Arab terrorists, and were instead the products of a very skilled and very competent career - lifelong - expert in the bioweapons field. Speculation has centered on such bioweapons expert(s) WITHIN THE US MILITARY bioweapons community. According to such speculation, the intent of the Anthrax ATTACKS on Senator Daschle and Senator Leahy's office was to intimidate ('terrorize') what was perceived in 'right-wing' military circles as "OBSTRUCTION" to the radical right-wing agenda as espoused by President Bush and the Republican Party. A equal and complimentary purpose of such an attack would be to stimulate and create support for additional spending in the US bioweapons industry - by blaming "foreign terrorists" for the attack.

What is important here is the Democrat's response to this possibility, ney probability, that the ANTHRAX ATTACKS were NOT created by Arab terrorists. In a word, THERE HAS BEEN NO DEMOCRAT RESPONSE. Senator Daschle, Senator Kerry, Senator Lieberman, Senator Biden, and all the other Democrat "leaders" HAVE TAKEN THE ADMINISTRATION AT ITS WORD, that the attacks were by "foreign terrorists."

The other example that is well documented in supporting evidence, if not expounded on in commentary and "news" reporting, is Timmy McVeigh's BOMBING ATTACK ON THE US GOVERNMENT BUILDING in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. By all accounts Timmy McVeigh was an ardent listener to RIGHT WING HATE GOVERNMENT RADIO, as well as a member of right-wing "militia" paramilitary groups. America has a long and actually proud history of citizen, patriot volunteer "militia" organizations. The Battle of King's Mountain, South Carolina, during the American Revolution was entirely fought by citizen soldiers, the backwoods mountain men volunteer militia of the Carolina and Georgia hills, and their victory over the Royal Army (actually green-coated Royalist militia) was THE FIRST Patriot victory in the South in the dismal months after the devestating Patriot losses at Camden, Charleston. This battle, as small and remote (and relatively unknown to modern historians) as it was, reversed the string of Patriot losses in the South, and would in less than two years lead to the Patriot victory in the Revolution over the British army at Yorktown.

So whether citizen militias are "Patriots" or "traitors" depends on whose ox is being gored. What is important in our discussion of Timmy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah building is that McVeigh was a Gulf War 1 combat veteran, a veteran member of the US military, and one of THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Americans who listened to RIGHT WING HATE RADIO. Among the most infamous and prominent of HATE RADIO talkers - 'DJs' - was convicted Watergate burglar and former CIA operative G. GORDON LIDDY. In the wake of the infamous ATF raid on the Wacko "religious" compound of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians fundamentalist Christian sect (authorized by Clinton's Attorney General Janet Reno but planned, as the Somalia rescue operation had been, under the administration of George H.W. Bush (Sr)), G. GORDON LIDDY HAD ADVISED militia members and survivalist groups to "AIM FOR THE HEAD WHEN SHOOTING JACK-BOOTED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENTS."

The Democrats then, and Democrats now, have never formulated A RESPONSE to the close relations betwen "mainstream" right-wing politics and the radical right-wing, hate government, domestic terrorists cults, of which Tim McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols were but a small part.

Indeed, not only did Oklahomans proceed to elect hard-right Republicans in the 1996 election - not only did "HATE GOVERNMENT" radio get a FREE PASS from the Oklahoma federal building bombings - but today the DOMINATION OF the RIGHT-WING AGENDA in the press, 'news', media, cable and TV media is far greater than it ever was in 1995, by dint of the Democrat's (seemingly) permanent MINORITY STATUS, and the capture by the Republicans of MONOPOLY, ONE-PARTY RULE of the US governement: House, Senate, White House, Supreme Court, federal judiciary, federal government agencies (the CIA is currently being PURGED of non-Republican Party loyalists by President Bush's DCI pick, former Republican Rep. Porter Goss) - ALL products of Republican campaigns, governance, and legislation based to at least some degree on the fundamental "HATE GOVERNMENT" rhetoric espoused on HATE RADIO that motivated Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols (and potentially others) to attack a US government building.

The "HATE RADIO" and "HATE GOVERNMENT" rhetoric, in some degree or another allied with mainstream Republican goals and agenda, is only one component of the terrorist threat to America that the Democrats fail to appreciate, much less develop a coherent response to.

The other, equally insidious component of right-wing "HATE GOVERNMENT" rhetoric is actually a policy objective of some Republicans, namely the "STARVE GOVERNMENT" agenda as espoused by such Republicans as GROVER NORQUIST and his "Americans for Tax Reform" foundation.

For Mr. Norquist, the devastation, FEMA incompetence, and dragged out rebuilding of flood ravaged New Orleans is a DESIRABLE outcome of American affairs. Indeed, "Take government and shrink it to the size where it can be drowned in a bathtub", the infamous sound-bite of Mr. Norquists "shrink government" agenda, is merely a reformulation of President Bush's "Ownership Society" formulation.... as in, "The Plantation owners not only own the plantations and slaves, but OWN THE GOVERNMENT as well." Taking America as FAR BACK TO THE ERA OF PLANTATION ESTATES and legal, chattel slavery is the ultimate desire and goal of the Radical Right-Wing agenda. The only question is, "Just how far short of this goal would satisfy President Bush and other hard-right Republicans?"

Looking at the history of US sponsored death squads in Central America, South America, Haiti, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran (where US special forces sponsored "license to kill" units are allegedly operating), and the existance of slavery in remote areas of the Brazilian Amazon and Sudan genocide (long ignored by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice),the answer may be "not far short of ante-bellum plantation slavery at all."


__________________________________________________


<< McVeigh had been a Republican until around 1993 and was a member of the National Rifle Association while he was in the Army. [2] >> wikipedia.org

_________________________________________________________


Why do Bush's best friends hate America?
Friday | October 10, 2003
http://www.dailykos.net/archives/004524.html


You can judge the character of a man by the company he keeps. And given some of Bush's friends, his character is not looking so good.

Like, say, religious wingnut Pat Robertson:

The US State Department has lodged a vehement complaint with prominent conservative televangelist Pat Robertson for comments suggesting that its Foggy Bottom headquarters should be destroyed with nuclear weapons, officials said.
Or how about anti-tax wingnut Grover Norquist:

NORQUIST: The argument that some who play to the politics of hate and envy and class division will say is, "Well, that's only 2 percent -- or, as people get richer, 5 percent, in the near future -- of Americans likely to have to pay [the estate tax]." I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust: "Oh, it's only a small percentage. It's not you; it's somebody else." And [in] this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives -- they may have other things to focus on -- they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income, government should leave you alone, not tax you again.

GROSS: Excuse me one second. Did you just compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?

NORQUIST: No, the morality that says it's okay to do something to a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is okay because they didn't target everybody. "It's just a small percentage, what are you worried about? It's not you. It's not you. It's them."
So to recap, Bush's friends and political allies want to detonate a nuclear bomb in DC and think taxation is akin to the exermination of six million Jews (and other assorted 'undesirables').


Brilliant.
Posted October 10, 2003 10:05 AM
________________________________________________________

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756760496/102-3437188-2515310?v=glance&n=283155
30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

Be prepared to get emotionally upset., May 22, 2001
Reviewer: Felix Matathias (Centereach, NY United States) - See all my reviewsI have been living in the US for the past 5 years. It is in the nature of someone that comes from abroad to scholasticaly observe the new society that he lives in, compare the new culture with the culture of the homeland, and in general try to understand the laws of the new society that are formed by the people and the government.

This book taught me how superficial my understanding of the American culture was. This book is not only about McVeigh. This book is primarily about the gun culture in the United States and the antigovernment groups, their beliefs and their living habitat. I had never imagined that there are so many people in this land that share such antigovernement feelings. For the first time I understood what really gun owenership is all about. These are not simple matters. These matters run deep through the very formation of this society.

For most of the people McVeigh is a monster. This book does NOT follow this path. The authors try to follow mcVeigh from the time he was in the Army through his discharge, his frustration, his Gulf War experiences, the unemployment he faced afterwards, his reaction to the Waco incident, his involvement in the gun shows, his friendships. They authors try to understand how MvVeigh reached to the point of the bombing, step by step, trying to give a psycological explanation of what happened into the mind of this hero of the Gulf War. They do not justify what he did but they do not demonize him either. The authors themselves try to understand.

Anyone who thinks that MvVeigh is just a sick person or he does not have any logic or that he is just a monster must understand that this is only part of the story. America must understand why McVeigh was lead to the point of bombing a building full of innocent people. McVeigh was not always like that. America must understand what happened to him, what caused all the trouble. This is the only way that America can defend itself from this happening again. All the metal detectors in the world will not help a bit

_________________________________________________________

Timothy McVeigh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001), considered by the FBI an American domestic terrorist, was executed for his part in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing. Hundreds were injured and 167 men, women and children died when a truck loaded with improvised explosives was detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as federal offices began business for the day. Later a 168th victim died when a huge chunk of concrete crushed a rescue worker.

Most accounts say the ANFO explosive device arranged in the back of a rented Ryder truck contained about 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, a highly volatile motor-racing fuel. Prosecutors said McVeigh strode away from the truck after he ignited a timed fuse from the front of the truck. Although a day care center was located on the ground floor of the building, there is no evidence that McVeigh knew about it or purposely targeted children. However, it is suggested from prison interviews that McVeigh would have dismissed these deaths as necessary collateral damage.

McVeigh was a self described libertarian [1] and an anti-government extremist, with a long background in the survivalist movement. He was known to be a keen reader of the controversial book The Turner Diaries, which describes acts of terrorism similar to the one he perpetrated. Photocopies of pages sixty-one and sixty-two of the novel were found in an envelope inside McVeigh's car. These pages depicted a fictitious mortar attack upon the US Capitol in Washington.

Biography
McVeigh in the U.S. Army during the first Gulf War

McVeigh was born in Western New York State in Pendleton (near Buffalo) to an Irish-American Catholic family. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old. McVeigh and his siblings lived with their father, a devout Catholic who often attended Daily Mass. Although Timothy McVeigh claimed to be agnostic (http://www.guardian.co.uk/mcveigh/story/0,,504876,00.html), he was visited by a chaplain while he was in federal prison in Indiana. He attended the local public high school and after graduating joined the U.S. Army. McVeigh was a decorated veteran of the United States Army, having served in the Gulf War, where he was awarded a Bronze Star Medal. He had been a top scoring gunner with the 25 mm cannon of the lightly armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division to which he was assigned. He served at Fort Riley, Kansas, before Operation Desert Storm. His superiors and friends thought of him as a model soldier. At Fort Riley, McVeigh completed the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC), an Army school required for specialists and corporals to be promoted to sergeant. McVeigh had always wanted to join the Green Berets, the Army's Elite Special Forces. After his return from the war, he was given an opportunity to do this, but failed the grueling physical part of the indoctrination. McVeigh was devastated and decided to leave the Army.

Upon leaving the Army, McVeigh worked briefly near his native Pendleton as a security guard. But in the months before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, he eventually returned to Junction City, which is outside Fort Riley, among other places. His lifestyle grew increasingly transient. Prosecutors said he made the bomb at a lakeside campground near his old Army post.

Through its serial number, the FBI identified a rear axle as coming from a Ryder Rental Junction City agency truck. Workers at the agency assisted an FBI artist in creating a sketch of the renter who had used the alias Kling. The sketch was shown in the area and on the same day was identified by manager Lea McGown of the Dreamland Hotel as Timothy McVeigh.

While driving on I-35 in Noble County, Oklahoma, near Perry, OK McVeigh was stopped by Charles Hanger, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper from Pawnee, Oklahoma. Hanger had passed McVeigh's yellow Mercury Marquis and noticed it had no license plate. McVeigh was arrested for driving without a license plate and carrying and transporting a loaded firearm. Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt.

In a book based on interviews before his execution, American Terrorist, McVeigh stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war, and celebrated. But he said he later was shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners, and to see carnage on the road leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. In interviews following the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War. Some question the veracity of this claim in light of McVeigh's attempts to become a Green Beret after returning from Iraq.

In the wake of the standoff between federal officials and militiamen at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, McVeigh said he was further influenced by the 1993 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raid on the Waco headquarters of the Branch Davidians. He visited Waco during the standoff, where he spoke to a news reporter about his anger over what was happening there.

McVeigh had been a Republican until around 1993 and was a member of the National Rifle Association while he was in the Army. [2]

Bush wants a new war. Democrats want campaign donations. Give Halliburton and GE a call, Dems.. they can write your check for $100million....

Give Halliburton, Murdoch, and GE a call, Dems.. they can write your check for $100 million, not even break a sweat, and then DEDUCT their contributions from their US taxes. (IF they pay any US taxes, that is.)

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SIGN OF on George Bush's NEW WAR... just like you SIGNED OFF ON HIS LAST WAR...




Is our democracy sleepwalking into a nightmare?
Gene Lyons
April 26, 2006
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/152892/



We hear a lot about “madmen”
taking power in far-off lands,
most often lands with large oil reserves. A few pertinent questions: Has the White House lost its collective mind ? Do the president and his minions believe that Americans can be stampeded into another needless war to save his party from the consequences of the catastrophe in Iraq ? Is the Bush administration seriously thinking of bombing Iran for political purposes ? Of a nuclear strike ? Is it actually possible, as has been said, that George W. Bush believes himself to be on a divine, messianic mission ? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then our democracy may be sleepwalking into its worst crisis since the Civil War. A pre-emptive strike on Iran, because it might hypothetically develop nuclear weapons five or 10 years hence, would be a naked act of aggression. Not to mention an offense against the U. S. Constitution. On what authority would Bush make war on a nation that played no role in 9 / 11, bears enmity toward al-Qa’ida and has never seriously threatened to attack the United States ? His own God’s ?
So far, Iran hasn’t even violated the non-proliferation treaty giving signatories the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use. It boasts of purifying a small amount of uranium ore to the standard needed to generate electricity. Experts say Iran would need roughly 100 times its present refining capacity over several years to accumulate enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb. Despite the absurd and offensive posturing of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a demagogic politician playing to his own base, no immediate danger exists.
Yet many of the same keyboard commandoes who orchestrated the propaganda campaign that drove the U. S. into Iraq are beating war drums. Scary “intelligence” claims again proliferate. The same geniuses who claimed to know the precise location of Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction now warn us of Iran’s double-secret arms programs. Full-page ads have appeared in newspapers in the U. S. and Europe conjuring the prospect of Iranian nuclear attacks against Israel and the West, an entirely imaginary scenario.
The other day Bush, sounding like a Valley Girl, told a California audience he’d tried to avoid war with Iraq “diplomatically to the max,” a falsehood so brazen that it’s almost tempting to fear he believes it. Given that British government documents portray Bush discussing with Prime Minister Tony Blair how to justify an attack against Saddam Hussein in early 2003, it’s reasonable to wonder what schemes he’s conjuring now. He also credited “the Almighty” as the inspiration for his foreign policy.
At times like these, it’s worthwhile recalling George Orwell’s distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Orwell wrote the essay “Notes on Nationalism” in 1945, just as the most cataclysmic war in human history was ending in Europe.
“By patriotism,” he wrote, “I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world, but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.”
Nationalism, as Orwell defined it, “is inseparable from the desire for power.... A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.... His thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations.” To Orwell, it was “power hunger tempered by self-deception,” a kind of moral insanity.
Presaging his masterpiece “1984,” Orwell was most alarmed by the fervid nationalist’s indifference to reality: “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage—torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”
An interesting list under present circumstances, don’t you think ?
More recently, the eminent Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has cautioned that hysterical warnings about this or that country—Russia, China, Pakistan, India—developing nuclear weapons have occurred regularly since Hiroshima. Yet the taboo against their actual use has held, partly because rational actors know that even the “tactical” weapons which Bush administration toughs fantasize about are upward of 10 times more powerful than the A-bombs dropped on Japan. Also because, van Creveld makes clear, deterrence works. Israel, he writes, “can quickly turn Tehran into a radioactive desert—a fact of which Iranians are fully aware.” To violate that taboo would justifiably turn the U. S. into a pariah state. It would all but guarantee eventual retaliation in kind. Even a conventional bombing campaign against Iran would, at minimum, send world oil prices skyrocketing, with disastrous economic consequences. Real patriots must prevent this madness from happening. The generals are speaking out. Where are the Democrats and the sane Republicans ?

–—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.

George Bush is BANKRUPTING Americans. Cowardly Democrats don't seem to notice or care...

It's not bad enough that the Republicans "won" the White House, Senate, and Congress by relentlessly attacking, smearing, and investigating ANYTHING to do with Democrats or the Clinton White House for over a decade. Or, after running on "uniter, not divider" and "moral values" themes, the Republicans obstructed Florida state law to prevent the legal and required vote recount as mandated in Florida election statuttes, thereby disenfranchising thousands of Florida votes, and overriding the one-half million popular vote majority for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election that the partisan majority Supreme Court handed to George W. Bush.

The FIRST thing the Bush-Cheney administration did after stealing the White House and US government was to slap "TOP SECRET!" on EVERYTHING that would possibly affect public opinion re the Republican drive to push America as far to the right - as far back to the days of disenfranchisement, segregation, autocracy, and one-party rule - as possible, Mr. Bush's clearly fraudulent "more bipartisan" campaign rhetoric notwithstanding.

And the Democrats are "OK" with all that. The sole purpose of the Democratic Party today is to provide a whitewash, a doormat, a facade of legitimacy to the Bush administration's radical right-wing agenda. In this case, as long as Democrats continue to earn their collective $100 million in campaign funds and big-donor donations, they will happily allow the Bush Republicans to loot the US Treasury of billions and billions in deficit spending,, and force thousands of US taxpayers into bankruptcy.

President Bush says "Kiss My Ass!" and the Democrats respond "YES SIR!"

This blog shouldn't have to point out HOW MANY AMERICAN FAMILIES CAN NO LONGER AFFORD HEALTH CARE since George W. Bush became president.. or how many American families have fallen BELOW the poverty threshhold since Jan. 2001. Those facts should be Democratic Talking Points EVERY SINGLE DAY, and the Democrats should be MOLDING the press-media to REPORT THE FACTS, instead of SELLING OUT MILLIONS OF AMERICANS for big-donor contributions that get handed right back to the anti-democratic corporate media.




Gauthier: Thieves in the White House
By Deborah E. Gauthier / Local Columnist
Saturday, April 29, 2006 - Updated: 02:24 AM EST
http://www.milforddailynews.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=90777&format=text

This country needs a positive unifying cause -- something that draws us together like brothers and sisters ’round the deathbed of a parent -- something upon which even political enemies could agree.
    That something could be oil.
    Illegal immigrants and American citizens, Iraq war supporters and peaceniks, Christians, agnostics and atheists, all pay the same exorbitant price to fill their gas tanks and, thinking ahead to the winter, worry over how they’re going to pay the ever-higher cost of heating their home.
    We’re not too far from a national consensus that the energy policy of the George W. Bush administration is deliberately skewed to favor oil barons like Lee Raymond, an Exxon-Mobil CEO paid EVERY DAY what the average joe is lucky to earn over a four or five year period.
    The headlines are gone, but bad memories have a way of sticking with us. Exxon-Mobil profits for 2005 totaled $36.1 billion, followed by Chevron, $14.4 billion, and ConocoPhillips, $13.5 billion.
    Big oil supporters say CEOs for those companies should be paid handsomely. It is their leadership, after all, that lead to handsome profits.
    Except it isn’t leadership, it is the right grease (political donations), at the right time (Republican majority in Congress), in the right place (Republican war chests). According to the the Center for Responsive Politics, political candidates on the federal level received $75,491,794 from the energy industry between 2000 and 2004, and $60,324,779 of that went to Republican candidates.
    Did those donations translate into access to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as they created an energy policy that some blame for the $3 plus we’re paying for a gallon of gas today?
    The Freedom of Information Center says yes, an opinion upheld, in a way, by Cheney, who headed the committee that created the National Energy Policy in 2001. Why would he refuse to release the names of those who helped write it? Why would he refuse to release records from each meeting? Meetings, by the way, that are supposed to be conducted publicly. Why? Because it would look bad.
    Cheney insisted on privacy, claiming he and the president have a right to formulate policies privately and to form those policies with advice from outside sources, such as energy company executives. What about our rights? Don’t we have a right to know how OUR national decisions are made?
    In the end, Cheney released about 13,500 pages of information on energy task force meetings, but the pages were heavily censored, some of them completely blank. Even so, the role of energy industries -- particularly gas and oil -- in the creation of our energy policy is evident. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, some recommendations were written, word for word, into the document.
    Sen. John McCain (a Republican) calls the policy "the No-Lobbyist-Left-Behind Act." In a special report released by The Freedom of Information Center, McCain is quoted as saying: "This secretive, exclusive process has led to a 1,200-page monstrosity that is chock full of special interest giveaways and exemptions from environmental and other laws that frankly can’t withstand the light of scrutiny."
    And Cheney, hiding behind "executive privilege" is making sure it can’t be properly scrutinized.
    The House Committee on Government Reform looked into a crystal ball and said the policy would cost taxpayers $140 billion over the next 10 years, and result in higher prices for gas and electricity. And that’s exactly what it’s doing.
    On Tuesday, the three biggest oil companies projected a combined 19 percent increase in profits for the first three months of this year. At the same time, Bush gave another perk to the energy industry. Disguised as an attempt to lower the price at the pump, he’s easing environmental standards that govern fuel.
    Illegal immigrants have marched on Washington. Iraq war protesters have marched on Washington. It’s time we all march on Washington and demand that Bush and Cheney answer for policies that are making a few people obscenely rich and bankrupting the rest of us.
     Deb Gauthier can be reached by e-mail at dgauthie@cnc.com

REPUBLICAN Senator Specter OUTRAGED at Bush admin. SPYING on Americans without warrants or oversight. COWARDLY DEMS pretend not to notice....

By now, the dirty secret in American politics and leadership is not the crimes, frauds, perjury, wars, torture, deficits, incompetence, missing billions of taxpayer monies, and distortions occuring under the Bush White House, but the facts that the cowering, tepid Democrats can't quite seem to find a single issue or agenda to unite behind in opposition to the ongoing Bush White House outrages.

Notice how the WASHINGTON POST puts this article on page A-4... PAGE FOUR. Our cowardly Democratic "leaders" are OK with the Washington Post burying a major story deep off the front page. By comparison, "Monica- did she, or didn't she?" was not only FRONT PAGE fodder, but FRONT PAGE, ABOVE THE FOLD, IN SCREAMING HEADLINES, for week after week, month after month, leading all the way to Mr. Bush's stolen presidential 'win' in Florida in 2000, overriding the ONE HALF MILLION POPULAR VOTE MAJORITY nationwide for Dem. candidate Al Gore in that election.

The Democrats JOIN the Washington Post in BURYING IMPORTANT, VITAL, CRUCIAL STORIES under a wall of indifference and neglect, while joining the Republicans in CRIMINALIZING non-criminal conduct, e.g., "travel-gate," "Whitewater", the Vince Foster suicide, and the NONEXISTENT "White House Trashing" 'scandal.'

COWARDLY DEMOCRATS- working overtime to DISENFRANCHISE and FAIL TO REPRESENT MILLIONS and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of American voters, Americans upset, dismayed, and opposed to the agenda and fraud of the Bush administration who do not have A SINGLE MAJOR VOICE in Congress or "the mainstream media."


Specter Wants More Debate on Spying
Senator to Try to Block Program's Funding

By Walter Pincus and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 28, 2006; A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/27/AR2006042700977_pf.html


New expressions of frustration over how little information the administration has shared about the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans flared yesterday in the Senate, one day after House Republicans barred amendments that would have expanded oversight of the controversial program.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said yesterday that he will file an amendment to block the NSA program's funding -- but said he will not seek a vote on it at this time -- in hope of stirring greater debate on the warrantless surveillance, part of the agency's monitoring of alleged terrorists.

"Where is the outrage?" asked Specter, who has chaired hearings that questioned the NSA program's constitutionality.

Questions about the legality of the NSA program and the Bush administration's refusal to brief the full intelligence panel on it led Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, for the first time on Wednesday to vote against the annual intelligence authorization bill, which passed the House.

Harman, one of the few House members to receive briefings on the NSA program, said she believes in the program's approach but argued unsuccessfully on the floor Wednesday for a measure requiring greater congressional review.

"I do not support violating the law or the Constitution," she said. "Enhanced security without respect for law gives away the very values we are fighting to defend, and I believe that the program . . . can and must fully comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and with our Constitution."

The version of the fiscal 2007 Intelligence Authorization bill that passed the House contained no language on the NSA program. But lawmakers added provisions that could have an impact on the estimated $44 billion to be spent next year by the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community, as well as the operations of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and his growing, one-year-old organization. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress created Negroponte's office to oversee and improve coordination of the intelligence agencies.

Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Wednesday that his panel will be monitoring Negroponte's progress in restructuring the intelligence community and that "we would all like it to go faster because of the significant threats that we face as a nation." Although Hoekstra has been critical of the DNI in the past, he said the office "is beginning to bear fruit" and "incremental but real improvements have been made since the standup."

Harman expressed a gloomier view. She said Negroponte "has not taken command yet" of the intelligence community, "giving away authority to the Pentagon, which is happy to receive it, as it expands its own role in intelligence gathering abroad and here at home."

She added that "the CIA is in free fall," and that "300 years of experience have either been pushed out or left in frustration, and morale is dangerously low."

The committee took a step toward reining in Pentagon domestic intelligence activities. The Defense Department inspector general was directed to audit the activities of the Pentagon's newest and fastest-growing intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity. Created four years ago, CIFA has been increasing authority to coordinate and direct intelligence collection involved in protection of Defense Department facilities at home and abroad.

An amendment by Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) that was approved goes after the increasing practice of agencies, particularly at the Pentagon, to contract out analysis and collection of intelligence.

CIFA officials, for example, have said they spend 70 percent of their budget -- the amount of which is classified -- on contractors. Under Price's amendment, the DNI would set regulations for the hiring and training of contractors, and provide an annual report of contracts above $1 million with a description of the activities and whether they are classified or unclassified programs.

Specter's concerns about the NSA program were also reflected in much of the House debate on the intelligence bill.

Harman and other Democrats were angry that Republicans on the House Rules Committee prevented a bipartisan amendment that would have required classified briefings on the NSA surveillance program, which includes listening to U.S. citizens, to all members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. That proposal is similar to the one that Specter said he may soon introduce, although he would also include the parallel Senate panels.

At present, lawmakers on a limited number of House and Senate intelligence committees are briefed on the NSA program along with top leaders of the House and Senate.

At the White House yesterday, spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "The appropriate members of Congress have been and continue to be informed with respect to the terrorist surveillance program."

Cowardly Democrats: With Bush DISAPPROVAL way over 60%, with evidence of CORRUPTION and INCOMPETENCE everywhere, Dems sound like their tepid selves...

#1.
Rove Testifies in Leak case...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12388079/

Why aren't Democrats SHOUTING and DEMANDING AIR TIME, and running the video of President Bush PLEDGING to FIRE *ANYONE* associated with the ILLEGAL OUTING of an undercover CIA agent (Valerie Plame) AND HER ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION, Brewster-Jennings Co.? The fact that the Bush White House "OUTED" Ms. Plame as a means of retribution and revenge - a smear - on her husband, for Ambassador Wilson having the temerity to point out to America and the world that not only was President Bush wrong to include charges that Iraq was purchasing 'yellowcake' uranium from Niger for a WMD program that didn't even exist, but, crucially, Mr. Bush KNEW that the story of Niger uranium for Iraq was FALSE, WHEN Mr. Bush used the story of Niger uranium as "proof" of Iraq's WMD intentions, and therefore cause for America's invasion of Iraq in his 2003 State of the Union (SOTU) speech.

At this point, the facts that Mr. Bush knowingly used false information ('intel') as an excuse to launch an extra-legal invasion of Iraq, or that "the outing" of Ms. Plame and her organization was as a means of retribution on her husband, is almost not relevant to the scandal. The scandal is that the CIA, outraged at the "outing" and destruction of such an expensive and vital undercover spy front, demanded that federal prosecutors look into 'the outing' and consider CRIMINAL CHARGES. It was the Bush White House STONEWALLING of that federal CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, including Mr. Bush's misleading, FRAUDULENT pledge to "fire anyone who illegally leaked undercover CIA operatives", that allowed the White Houe to suppress the scanda as an issue in Mr. Bush's reelection campaign of 2004, and to mislead, divert, and put off an expensive federal CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION with lies and perjury.

Once again, Democrats are "OK" with President Bush and his staff using the US government as their private fiefdom, even in cases of MANUFACTURING misleading and lying "intel" as a causus belli for war with Iraq, even in cases of illegally "OUTING" undercover CIA operatives, and even in cases of PERJURY and LYING to a federal criminal investigation to stall a potential scandal and mislead the American public in a crucial wartime election.

And today, in the normal Bush administraion "flip" of what is criminal or perjurous, cowardly Democrats pretend ignorance, even as President Bush's DCI pick, Porter Goss, PURGES the CIA of qualified and competent staff and officials who resist the Bush administration MISUSE and ABUSE of the nation's intel agencies.

THAT IS, THE COWARDLY DEMOCRATS in the US Senate PRETEND IGNORANCE OF PERJURY, LYING TO federal investigators, the misuse of "intel" to start a war and extra-legal invasion of a nation already weakened by disarmament, international weapons inspectors, and internatonal sanctions; the stonewalling of a federal investigation to win an election; and just to add insult to injury and add another stripe to their pathetic subservience to the Bush White House, the Democrats now sit on on their hands and scamper to their Georgetown Cocktail circuit ratholes as Mr. Bush and Mr. Goss PURGE the CIA of competent and qualified CIA officials.



BY COMPARISON, the Cowardly Democrats stood aside as the Republicans MANUFACTURED A SCANDAL, and tried to make a crime, of President Clinton having guests spend the night at the White House - the so-called "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL."


Under "the leadership" of our senior Democratic "leaders," WE NOW LIVE IN A SEGREGATED, APARTHEID NATION: with one standard of "justice" for Republican right-wing leaders, who can use the government and captive media to CRIMINALIZE Democrats, government officials, and protesters (and ignore combat exposed war veterans), and an entirely different standard of "justice" for Republican officials "OUTING" undercover CIA assets, and then prosecuting government "whistleblowers" for exposing ILLEGAL CONDUCT and intel lies from within the government.

_____________________________________

#2. MSNBC poll: 94% of respondents believe, "YES, President Bush MISLED THE NATION IN ORDER TO GO TO WAR."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969

Democrat "leaders" cower from this appalling truth.

_______________________________________

#3. Republican Senator calls for REPLACING FEMA, the nation's decades-old Emergency preparedness agency.

The problem is NOT with FEMA.. the problem is with the INCOMPETENT, CRONY, CORRUPT LEADERSHIP that President Bush has assigned to the agency, including his former campaign manager Joe Albaugh, another Bush campaign crony Mike Chertoff to head Homeland Security, and yet another unqualified crony of Chertoff's, Michael Brown, to head FEMA in the months before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
INCAPABLE of declaring "INCOMPETENCE!" or "CORRUPTION!", the Democrats wring their hands, thereby inflicting American taxpayers with MILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars of federal spending INCOMPETENCE. Not only are millions of dollars worth of PREPAID MOBILE HOMES sitting UNUSED in an Arkansas storage field, but the reason the trailers are sitting unused - that FEMA has not qualified them for use in a potential flood plain - is merely symptiomatic of the much larger problem: ABJECT FAILURE of the Bush administration to come up with an OVERALL ENVIRONMENTAL PLAN for restoration of New Orleans/the Mississippi flood plain. In short, Mr. Bush, his administration, and the Republican Party see KATRINA as NO MORE THAN AN EXCUSE to spend BILLIONS of dollars of reconstruction funds AS PORKBARREL SPENDING - with NO overall plan, NO overall strategy, and NO RESPONSIBILITY for either INCOMPETENCE in the immediate disaster recovery, or fraud and waste in the long-term reconstruction planning.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12505146/

________________________________________

CIA agent (retired) Claims that Bush IGNORED pre-war intel that DISPROVED the existance of any Iraq WMD program.

For the one-thousandth time, DEMOCRATS ENABLE LYING and FRAUD by President Bush and his White House.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12485336/

CIA "leaks" expose existance of SECRET US TORTURE network, including use of Soviet-era gulags for CIA torture and prisons. Bush administration and Attorney General attempt to CRIMINALIZE the "leaking" of the existance of this CRIMINAL organization that unilaterally abrogates the 100 year legacy of the Geneva Conventions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12479685/

__________________________________________

Here's a double-citation of how CORRUPT and FRAUDULENT the right-wing Republican claim to "MORAL VALUES" is.
While, for all his other sins, convicted (bribery, fraud) Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham may not have had any links to the Klan (KKK) and/or other White Supremacy groups, there can be no doubt that Mr. Cunningham was one of the most outspoken "liberal bashers" in the Congress. A Vietnam war hero (the only Navy fighter pilot to shoot down 5 NVA jet fighters, thereby making him an "Ace fighter pilot"), Mr. Cunningham was rarely restrained in his blasting of Democrats, progressives, and "liberals" as the font of America' alleged slide into immorality and moral disgrace.

Yet it turns out, that in addition to BRIBERY - corruption on such a scale that it almost certainly impacted the supply and readiness of combat troops in the Iraq war - Mr. Cunningham may also have been involved with prostitutes as the price of his bribery.

Being a war hero and combat veteran is not a crime. Being an outspoken proponent of "Moral Values" and "Conservative Virtues" is not a crime. SELLING ONE's office to unqualified defense conractors and accepting bribes IS a crime, and using one's position and status to demean others for "moral failings" while consorting with prostitutes and accepting bribes IS THE HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY.

And finally in today's "wimpy, voiceless Democrats" roundup, we have our last article, "KKK Plans Protest March at Antietam, the battle victory that allowed Civil War President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in Confederate territory (only), and setting America on the path to make good the Declaration of Independence pledge, "All men are created equal."

Again, while there may be no DIRECT link between the KKK, other White Supremacist groups, the Republican Party, and Republican leaders such as President Bush or former Rep. Cunningham, by now it is obvious to EVERYONE but our Democratic "leaders" that the Republican claim to "MORAL LEADERSHIP" is as hollow and shrivelled as the treasury and pension funds of President Bush's #1. campaign contributor in his 2000 presidential campaign, the ENRON co.

- CORRUPTION
- INCOMPETENCE
- Crimes and bribery
- BILLIONS of dollars of taxpayer reconstruction and disaster prevention funding- with pathetic results...
- a hollow and hypocritical call to "Moral Leadership"...
- Systematic MISUSE and ABUSE of the nation's "Intel" services to launch a WAR OF CHOICE
- a torture empire using prisons from the former Soviet KGB gulag!
- treating the GENEVA CONVENTONS the way the Nazis treated political opponents and "race enemies", as expendable

....regarding all the above outrages and more, the Democratic Party is not LEADING Americans in outrage and dismay, but merely FOLLOWING as 50%, 60%, and now even 70% of voters DISAPPROVE of the lies, fraud, and incompetence of President Bush and his administration.



Prosecutors May Widen
Congressional-Bribe Case
Cunningham Is Suspected
Of Asking for Prostitutes;
Were Others Involved?
By SCOT J. PALTROW
April 27, 2006; Page A6
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114610728002837324-nRnF_ahxSnYdWg6foBQ3_mvCwZ4_20070427.html?mod=blogs

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with PROSTITUTES and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn't clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.

______________________

Klan plans rally at Antietam battlefield
White supremacist group gets permit to use site of bloody Civil War clash
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12503490/

Victory at Antietam gave President Lincoln the political strength to issue the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the South....

Wow. David Sirota lays into SELL-OUT Democrats....

Wow. We have to gasp in amazement and hold our breath..... David Sirota comes out, all guns blazing and naming names, (1) as he lays into Democrats who SELL OUT the traditional, 100+ years-old democratic or "liberal" or "Progressive" agenda, in favor of a big fat corporate bankroll, corporate lobbying jobs, and currying favor with the DC press corpse and "major media" establishment, a.k.a. "the corporate media".

Indeed, we must confess, Sirota takes what we had previously viewed as some good news - "Democrats Beat Republicans in 2005 Fundraising on Wall Street" (Bloomberg news) (2) and counter-spins it as proof, not that corporate America (even Wall St!) has become disgusted with the damage inflicted on the American economy by President Bush, the DeLay Congress, and their merry, merciless, incompetent band of thugs, but instead that Democrats have simply become better at corporate arse-kissing and playing the inside corruption game than they were five years ago.

Wow!

On economics, we reserve the space to disagree with Sirota's main economic contention that NAFTA, CAFTA, and other trade deals with foreign trading blocks are the main culprits in America's economic and trade meltdown. We are sympathetic with (even if we don't understand all the details about) John Maynard Keynes economic contentions that ISOLATIONISM and HIGH TARIFFS, along with the vengeful, ruthless, and extortionate-against-Germany Versailles Treaty ending WWI, were all partly responsible for the worldwide economic depression of 1929. Keynes resigned his post as Britain's Finance Minister in protest of the treaty when it was passed in 1919; he predicted that it would create another war on the heels of WWI in the future as an entire generation of Germans would be raised not knowing about the horrors of war, but despising the treaty noose around Germany's neck; and he predicted that isolationism and the false wealth created by those exorbitant German war reparations would lead to the collapse of French, British, and other western economies, including possibly the relatively distant America's economy. Just as the false wealth of plundered gold extorted by sword, genocide, and slavery from native civilizations in "the New World" by Spanish conquistadors and administrators, would ultimately wreck the Spanish empire's economy as well (along with a few dozen major wars along the way).

On four out of four contentious economic predictions Keynes was proved right, in addition to which he had the courage of conviction to quit a powerful job in protest, on top of which his economic policies had helped keep Britain in the fight in WWI as her economy was sapped by the terrible, never-ending (5 years) war, so even today we are inclined to give Keynes' theories and humanitarian convictions a lot of respect.

So with Keynes in mind, we feel it is not CAFTA and NAFTA (and other trade treaties) alone which have devastated the American industrial, production-based economy, but the fact that the wage, environmental, and worker's rights provisions of those treaties have been gutted or abandoned that has led to the collapse of America's manufacturing industry and wage scale. Oh... that and the fact that corporate leaders and Congress have now devolved to the point where not only is loot-and-plunder of America an everyday part of the "leadership world," (mining giveaways, forest giveaways, oil lease giveaways, Bush's $18 billion tax-rebate to America's oil companies in a year in which they saw UNPRECEDENTED PROFITS... ALL the giveaways which have created the Bush-deficits in the trillion dollar range), but in addition we are now at the point where not only does Congress and American law ENCOURAGE PROFLIGATE CONSUMPTION, but Congress and American law now actually ENCOURAGE, SUBSIDIZE, and reward the EXPORT of American jobs and manufacturing capability. EVEN in industries vital to America's defense and military technology sector!

For example, on her Air-America radio show yesterday, Randi Rhodes pointed out that President Bush and the Republican Congress actually REWARDED small firms and business owners for driving gas-guzzler monster trucks and SUVS. Even if your business was a one-man accounting firm, you could deduct the entire cost of a "Hummer" or Cadillac Escalade (or any other giant, gas guzzling SUV) over one year, instead of depreciating it over the normal 7 year scale, thus giving a $70,000 tax deduction to a small business that might not even require any auto at all! And over at the right-wing, Republican-friendly, Democrat-hating "World Net Daily" several articles illustrate that the Bush administration has been encouraging American owned companies to move their vital-to-US-defence-industry plants over to... Communist China! (3)

This two-paragraph diversion into the "outsource, import, and deficits" details of the Bush agenda does not even begin to address the job-crushing and income-crushing horrors of the Bush economy, but it does add a burden to this commentary, and it does give substance to David Sirota's main point that the corporatized Democrats ARE NOT pointing these horrors out, and certainly not in an aggressive, vocal manner to the American voting public who is reeling back on their heels as the Bush economy eviscerates whatever gains some American families made during the Clinton boom years.

Having made these economic points about trade treaties, job outsourcing, and economic and tax policies that ENCOURAGE profligate consumption, we must agree that Sirota lays out a hell of a charge; that "inside the beltway Democrats" are more concerned with currying corporate favors and huge insider lobbying fees and consulting contracts, than they are with representing the rank and file constituents out there in America-land.

And having said THAT, we must make at least one concession or acknowledgment to the corporatized Democrats and Congress: it is not entirely their fault that the GREAT AMERICAN PUBLIC prefers ENTERTAINMENT to knowing and understanding what their leaders and legislators are up to. "CAVEAT EMPTOR" as the Romans said, and if the American public WANTS to BUY the swill that the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox 'news,' GE 'news' (NBC), Murdoch, Rev. Moon, Scaife, AOL/Time-Warner, and a hundred dozen other media tycoons and robber-barons want to dish out, well, voters are grown adults who should be responsible for their actions. If Americans would prefer to sit on their sofas watching SITCOMS, SOAP-OPERAS, and SPORTS, to finding out what their legislators are doing, and where America really stands in the world, then you can hardly blame Congress for that, right?

Especially since ever Congressman, every Senator, every representative and legislator and even judges throughout America must spend at least as much time, energy, and money getting elected, as they do legislating or representing or overseeing justice. If Americans are so satiated and satisfied sitting at home on their sofas that THE ONLY WAY TO REACH THEM is by multimillion dollar TV ad campaigns, CAN YOU BLAME CONGRESS and lobbyists and the Democrats??

Well, yes.

Most Americans are busy earning a paycheck and raising families, and don't have the energy to dig into tax policy and international affairs on a daily basis. Which is why it is incumbent, in a democratic system, for the OPPOSITION PARTY (parties) TO PROVIDE SOME OPPOSITION.

A textbook political science definition of parties and interest groups holds that one of the main functions of political parties is to EDUCATE CONSTITUENTS and voters. At its simplest level, that would be Boss Tweed and the Tammany political organization standing on the docks in New York in the mid-1800s, handing out soup and items of clothing to Irish immigrants getting off their transport ships and stepping onto American soil for the first time, the Tammany men telling the new arrivals "vote for us." Certainly the modern Republican Party has mastered this communication art, and fine-tuned it to where Microsoft or Walmart look slow in communicating with their far-flung subordinates by comparison. If a new policy, opposition talking-point or (heaven forbid) scandal hits the Bush White House or Republican Party, within the hour they have orchestrated a political response. They have decided on the best talking points to support their policy or rebut the criticism; they have faxed those points over to FOX 'news' congressional offices, other Republican media outlets, and Republican think tanks, and within another hour, those talking points have been disseminated to millions of party supporters, either as "news" on TV and radio broadcasts, or as e-mails and bullet-point faxes. A single fax from Karl Rove's campaign office to Rush Limbaugh's microphone will reach at least five to ten million listeners by 3:00 pm that same day.

THE DEMOCRATS HAVE NO COMPARABLE MEDIA EMPIRE, at best the Democrats have only some diverse and uncoordinated e-mail lists, and (within the past two years) Air-America radio. It is like fighting a stronger, bigger opponent, with one hand tied behind your back!

And, as the last two presidential campaigns have shown, while Republicans have MASTERED the art of ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! - throw relentless charges against your opponents, and give "your base" a steady diet of red-meat and outrage, the Democrats respond with sonorous platitudes and meaningless waffle. "Time for a change" or "we don't oppose the war, and don't call for a pullout, but we don't support it, either" is the BEST the Democrats and their $50 million per year campaign brains can come up with??!! In case the Democrats HAVEN'T NOTICED, the Republicans now enjoy a MONOPOLY CONTROL OF THE US GOVERNMENT - House, White House, Senate, federal judiciary, Supreme Court, 4th estate (and up until the Bloomberg article cited above, corporate support) - because their RELENTLESS decade-long BASH DEMOCRATS agenda, up to the point where Righty-Repubs made "LIBERAL DEMOCRAT" into a pejorative!!

WELL! Those are the caveats to our agreement with Mr. Sirota, that the "inside the beltway" structure of the "establishment Democrats" is not entirely to blame for the meltdown of the American economy and the destruction of our manufacturing base. To whit: international trade agreements with our neighbors could and should be a stimulative part of America's economy, just as tariffs and isolation contributed to the great depression; Democrats are not entirely to blame for the disinterested and misinformed (and now resentful) attitudes of the public towards economics, justice, and governance; and, indeed, the Democrats face a tremendous disparity in media resources and "mainstream media BIAS."

But having said that, Mr. Sirota is entirely correct: a HUGE part of the problem facing America today, is that Democratic "leaders," on issue after issue, crisis after crisis, constituency after constituency, PREFER TO GIVE IN to the corporate/GOP/right-wing agenda, to STANDING UP and FIGHTING IT OUT. Even with Republican SCANDALS and criminal CONVICTIONS, the Democrats can't seem to find their voice, or an articulate way to inform Americans and stoke voter outrage. By way of comparison, millions of "Righties" STILL hold that Hillary Clinton somehow had Vince Foster murdered, and that 9-11 was... Bill Clinton's fault! (Or, at the very least, that Saddam was behind the 9-11 attacks.)

And, as Mr. Sirota so explosively details, a huge part of the problem is that so many Democrat officials actually do sellout, get PAID to LIE to voters and Democratic constituencies, further enabling the Republican media bias, and UNDERCUTTING the Democratic message and Democratic unity.




(1) http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/04/25/mike-mccurry-is-a-dishonest-shill/
(2) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=ann7KHncBOdc&refer=us
(3) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34037


<< I’d like to believe that “McCurry is a nice and a smart guy,” as Matt Stoller generously says. Call me jaded, but I’ve worked in politics long enough to know that SOMEONE WHO DELIBERATELY DECEIVES PEOPLE on behalf of Big Money interests in order to screw over average Americans may be smart, but certainly isn’t “nice” - no matter how affable he may be among his fellow elitists on the DC cocktail party circuit. >>



_________________________________________________

Mike McCurry & the Hostile Takeover of the Democratic Party
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/04/25/mike-mccurry-is-a-dishonest-shill/

Since my book, Hostile Takeover, is a look at how both parties engage in corruption, people have asked me a lot lately for good examples of exactly who is leading the Hostile Takeover of the Democratic Party on behalf of Big Money interests. While there are certainly a lot of examples, today it seems the best example comes in the form of Mike McCurry. The former Clinton press secretary, who appears throughout the media billed as a party strategist, is now using his skills to try to destroy the Internet on behalf of the big telecom companies. That’s not a surprise - McCurry is now raking in cash from those companies trying to get Congress to legalize a system that would split the Internet into two classes - big corporations that are forced to fork over cash to the telecom companies in their extortion scheme, and the rest of us (for more on the net neutrality debate, see this site).
What is a surprise is how dishonest McCurry is in twisting the facts. Also shocking is how he is publishing material pushing the telecom industry’s agenda without disclosing that he is making cash off his advocacy from those same telecom companies. You’ll notice in this op-ed in the right-wing fringe Washington Times today, McCurry’s tag line lists him only as “press secretary to President Bill Clinton 1995-1998,” “a partner at Public Strategies Washington” and “co-chairman of ‘Hands Off the Internet’ which is euphemistically labeled “a policy advocacy group” - instead of a front group to push the telecom industry’s agenda.
I’d like to believe that “McCurry is a nice and a smart guy,” as Matt Stoller generously says. Call me jaded, but I’ve worked in politics long enough to know that someone who deliberately deceives people on behalf of Big Money interests in order to screw over average Americans may be smart, but certainly isn’t “nice” - no matter how affable he may be among his fellow elitists on the DC cocktail party circuit.
McCurry represents a sickening breed of operative in the nation’s capital - people who are absolutely comfortable with using their experience in public service to then shaft the very public they had previously served. That’s, of course, understandable among Republican operatives, who even in public service, don’t make much of a real effort to claim they are doing anything but trying to sell off our country to the highest bidder.
But it is particularly disgusting among so-called “Democrats” like McCurry. Their high-profile Benedict Arnold acts only reinforce to the public that the Democratic Party in Washington is just as corrupt as the Republican Party. As Hostile Takeover details, D.C. is, quite literally, swarming with former Democratic operatives who cashed in their public service to do Corporate America’s bidding. The practice is so common among Democrats it has become mundane. If you don’t think McCurry’s sickening behavior shows this, then just look at the recent launch of the “Hamilton Project” whereby a bunch of Democratic-officeholders-turned-Wall-Street-fat-cats stood up at the Brookings Institution, declared themselves saviors of the Democratic Party and then dishonestly disparaged Democrats as “protectionists” while promising to wage a war on grassroots groups like organized labor that make up the foundation of the Democratic Party.
This behavior has become the norm - not the exception - in D.C.’s Democratic Party circles. Any moral questions are about how disgusting or wrong this behavior is are seen in Washington as a cause for laughter, not pause. And that leads us to the hard truth: Until it becomes unacceptable in Democratic Party culture for high-profile operatives to brazenly sell out like this, Democrats in Washington are going to face continued - and justifiable - skepticism from the public that they represent the real “change” that the party claims.

Dangerous Times: As Bush-Rove feel heat from indictments and Impeachment, Cowering Dems IGNORE the threat of treachery or attacks....

<< The noose is tightening around George Bush and his gang of White House crooks and liars, with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald reportedly getting closer to an indictment of Karl Rove, and now with the Illinois and California state legislatures considering resolutions that would have those states submit bills of impeachment to the U.S. House of Representatives--an alternative means of bringing an impeachment case against a president when, as now, the sitting members of Congress DO NOT HAVE THE COURAGE or CONVICTION to do themselves.

These are dangerous times, because the Bush family history, and the Rove M.O., are to attack viciously and without restraint when cornered.

At a book signing on Friday at Columbia University, a number of journalists told me they worried that Bush, Rove and Cheney, if they thought they were going to lose the House in November and face serious investigations into their crimes and deceits, would do something TREASONOUS, like launching a war against Iran, or perhaps ALLOWING ANOTHER MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK AGAINST A US TARGET, so that they could then clamp down further on domestic freedom and ramp up jingoistic support among their wavering base. >>

[ - note: Bush should have been impeached immediately after 9-11 for gross negligence and dereliction of duty to do ANYTHING, NOT ONE THING, to prevent even a "typical" terrorist hijacking in America, given the glut of warnings and official commissions. (Hart-Rudman comm. on terrorism and national security, Gore comm. on airline safety, in addition to repeated CIA, FBI, and "counter-terror czar" briefings that Al Qiada was looking to "top" their successful Oct. 2001 attack on the US warship Cole, probably by using coordinated simultaneous bomb attacks (as per Africa embassy bombings, Lebanon embassy bombings) or more "traditional" hijackings.) But the human social condition causes us to group around our 'leaders' when we have been attacked by an outside threat. Despite the plaudits for Bush's "leadership" in the war on terror - the "GWOT" (global war on terror) we still have NO LEADS, NO SUSPECTS, and NO CASE for the ANTHRAX ATTACKS which "piggybacked" on the 9-11 terror attacks, although almost certainly the Anthrax attacks were NOT linked to Saudi/Islamic terrorists, just as the London subway bombers, while Islamic, were NOT linked to Al Qaida. George W. Bush is a huge threat to American security, and in the climate of fear, hate, insecurities, and death squads worldwide that he has created/is creating, he and his administration are EMPOWERING suicide bombers all over the world to make the ultimate statement by making the ultimate sacrifice - an option many Islamic warriors have been taking for decades, before the US invasion of Iraq made America the new poster child for torture, conquest, colonialism, and (as it is perceived in the Muslim world) anti-Islamic crusades.]




A Cornered Administration
Dangerous Times Ahead

By DAVE LINDORFF
April 24, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04242006.html

The noose is tightening around George Bush and his gang of White House crooks and liars, with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald reportedly getting closer to an indictment of Karl Rove, and now with the Illinois and California state legislatures considering resolutions that would have those states submit bills of impeachment to the U.S. House of Representatives--an alternative means of bringing an impeachment case against a president when, as now, the sitting members of Congress don't have the courage or conviction to do so themselves.

These are dangerous times, because the Bush family history, and the Rove M.O., are to attack viciously and without restraint when cornered.

At a book signing on Friday at Columbia University, a number of journalists told me they worried that Bush, Rove and Cheney, if they thought they were going to lose the House in November and face serious investigations into their crimes and deceits, would do something treasonous, like launching a war against Iran, or perhaps allowing another major terrorist attack against a U.S. target, so that they could then clamp down further on domestic freedom and ramp up jingoistic support among their wavering base.

The time for vacillating, cowering Democrats is over. The only way to defeat this threat is to warn about it and resist it openly now.

Democrats also need to stop waffling about voter security and vote fraud. It is essential that all voting machines in November have paper records, and that an army of activists begin now preparing to block Republican efforts to confuse and intimidate progressive voters to keep them from even getting to the polls.

Italians and other people in nations around the globe have shown the way, standing up to fraud and intimidation to insist on honest elections, and throwing out charlatans.

November 2006 will be America's turn.

Will the American people be up to the task?

Three state representatives in Illinois--Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough (217-782-8120), Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (217)- 782-8062), and Rep. Eddie Washington (217-558-1012)-- have struck the first blow in defense of liberty, and have shown us all the way. They were quickly followed over the weekend by California Assemblyman Paul Koretz (310-285-5490), who introduced a bill calling for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book, "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is due out May 1.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

Kerry "defends" Rumsfeld critics- without seconding or approving their calls for Rumsfeld's resignation!

In 2004 John Kerry fought for and accepted the Democratic nomination for president, pledging, as Al Gore had done 4 years earlier, to "FIGHT!" for Democratic voters, millions of whom felt they had not been adequately represented in the Florida recount debacle of 2000 four years earlier. (In 2000 the Florida presidential vote count was NOT recounted as demanded by Florida state law, based on: #1. the Gore-Lieberman failures to understand or fight for Florida's laws; #2. based on the Florida state Republican Party's refusal to comply with state law (Katherine Harris/Gov. Jeb Bush) ; and #3. of course based on Republican candidate George W. Bush running to the US Supreme Court to overrule Florida's Supreme Court ruling that the recounts proceed as per state law.)

In 2004 Mr. Kerry made the Democratic nominating convention, and subsequent campaign, ABOUT HIMSELF. This was probably the most egregious, awful campaign of any Democratic candidate since any of the Democratic landslide losses of the 1980s, and we're including in this list President Carter's completely oblivious unawareness to the "October Surprise" of 1980 (in which Republicans formulated "back door" links to the Iran revolutionary government, in contempt of the Carter administration and defiance of the Constitution), and Gov. Dukakis' landslide loss to George W. Bush in 1988.

Kerry consciously made the convention and campaign about himself, and his running mate, John Edwards, similarly focused his attention on singing John Kerry's praises. In this 'strategy' Kerry and Edwards REPEATED the mistakes of the Al Gore 2000 campaign, in which Gore studiously REFUSED to examine or confront the record of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who by then had a well established record of TAX CUTS for MULTIMILLIONAIRES, SLASHING of health, education, housing, and other social programs, and IGNORING the plight of those injured or made sick by Texas' industrial pollution and hazardous working conditions. In 2000 Gore's campaign was so pathetic that the Vice President actually canceled a campaign appearance at the Florida Everglades to avoid "environmental" protesters, when instead Vice President Gore SHOULD HAVE CONFRONTED those protesters with photos, videos, statistics, or speakers bearing testimony to the environmental degradation that Gov. George W. Bush had wrought on Texas in his two terms as governor there.

As we just mentioned, in 2004 Kerry FOLLOWED Gore's "speak no evil of George W. Bush" campaign of 2000, which allowed the Bush campaign team (read, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and other assorted minions) to unleash the savage attack dogs, "The Swift Boat Veterans for Bush" to scorch and smear Kerry's record. NOT ONE of the 'Swift Boat Veterans' actually served IN COMBAT with then Navy Lt. John Kerry; but the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush LEFT THE IMPRESSION that they HAD served with Kerry, and during that service, found Kerry's conduct sub-par and unbecoming.

In perhaps the ULTIMATE example of Right-Wing hypocrisy, the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush even implied that Kerry was guilty of MURDER, for running down and shooting an armed VC suspect fleeing the ambush site that Kerry and his crew had come under fire from! As always, the Righty smear-mongers want to have their cake and eat it to: Kerry was, they claim, a "coward" for shooting a young VC gunman in the back; and back in America (upon his return from the war), Kerry was a traitor for opposing more death and mayhem (war) in that country!

While the depths to which right-wing propaganda will go to make a smear or accusation is breathtaking and jaw-dropping (turning a decorated veteran into a coward, and making an AWOL National Guard pilot who refused to take the flight physical he was ordered to take into a national hero), the important thing here is that Senator John Kerry HAD TO KNOW that the Republicans and right-wing Democrat haters WOULD MAKE AN ISSUE of his, John Kerry's, well publicized opposition to the Vietnam War, including Kerry's testimony before the Senate about the conduct of that war. (Then, as now in Iraq, the United States used torture and summary arrests as tools in the "pacification" or attempted control of regions under sway or influence of rebels and/or the VC.) Here is John Kerry's speech, defending the rights of Vietnam protesters, TWO YEARS LATE.

Of course (in most cases) "better late than never;" but once again we must point out: Senator Kerry has no problem using the verb "lie" in context of the now-departed President Nixon, but Kerry DODGES using similarly tough words in describing Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, President Bush, or Vice President Cheney.

Senator Kerry DOES use the term "dishonors the sacrifice" to describe the POLICIES of the Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney administration, but somehow the rhetoric does NOT make the SOLID, FORCEFUL CONNECTION, that it is THE ACTIONS and WORDS of our Republican leaders that LEAD TO THAT "dishonor."


Or, in short, Senator Kerry is speechifying. He defends the right of Critics of Sec. Rumsfeld to express their opinions and be free of any smear reprisals, BUT Senator KERRY CAN'T QUITE BRING HIMSELF TO CALL FOR Sec. Rumsfeld's RESIGNATION.


Senator Kerry, MILLIONS of us Americans MAY NOT BE AS SMART, as experienced, or as well connected as you.


But ALL OF US can understand, "ELEVEN PARAGRAPHS, and you have NOT called for Sec. Rumsfeld's RESIGNATION, can only mean that YOU MUST APPROVE OF THE JOB HE IS DOING."

Either that, or you are simply too scared to follow your own convictions.



<< We would watch the Nixon administration lie, break the law, and work overtime to squash dissent -- all the while claiming absurdly they were prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew. We were a country deeply divided. World War II fathers split with Vietnam generation sons over a war that was tearing us apart -- and split, particularly, over our responsibilities during a time of war. >>


<< In recent weeks, a number of retired high-ranking military leaders have publicly called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And from the ranks of this administration and its conservative surrogates, we've heard these calls dismissed as acts of disloyalty or as a threat to civilian control of the armed forces. We have even heard accusations that this dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. That line of attack is shameful, especially coming from those who have never worn the uniform. >>






Patriotism Is Truth, Today as in Vietnam
Senator John Kerry, Democratic Presidential candidate, 2004
April 23, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/patriotism-is-truth-toda_b_19603.html

Thirty-five years ago today, I testified before the United States Senate.

I was a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who believed the war had to come to an end. It was 1971.Three years earlier, Richard Nixon had been elected president with a secret plan for peace -- a plan he kept secret from the American people as young Americans continued to die for a mission high-ranking officials of two administrations had decided was unwinnable.

We would watch the Nixon administration lie, break the law, and work overtime to squash dissent -- all the while claiming absurdly they were prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew. We were a country deeply divided. World War II fathers split with Vietnam generation sons over a war that was tearing us apart -- and split, particularly, over our responsibilities during a time of war.

Many people did not understand or agree with my act of public dissent. To them, supporting the troops meant continuing to support the war, or at least keeping my mouth shut.

But I couldn't remain silent.

I felt compelled to speak out about what was happening in Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, sleeplessness, and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes invisible and firing at us, and sometimes right next to us and smiling. It was clear that thousands of Americans were losing their lives in Vietnam while politicians in Washington schemed to save their political reputations.

Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history repeating itself. It is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a course in Iraq that weakens the nation. Again, we must refuse to sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn't working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded unpatriotic.

Just as it was in 1971, it is again right to make clear that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves the American people and our principles.True patriots must defend the right of dissent and listen to the dissenters. Dissenters are not always right, but it is always a warning sign when they are accused of unpatriotic sentiments by politicians trying to avoid accountability or debate on their own policies.

We should know by now that those who are right should never fear scrutiny of their policy and thorough debate. In World War I, America's values were degraded, not defended, when dissenters were jailed and the teaching of German was banned in some public schools. It was panic and prejudice, not true patriotism, that brought the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II, a measure upheld by Supreme Court justices who did not uphold their oaths to defend the Constitution. We are stronger today because no less a rock-ribbed conservative than Robert Taft stood up at the height of World War II and asserted, ''The maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur." --

In recent weeks, a number of retired high-ranking military leaders have publicly called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And from the ranks of this administration and its conservative surrogates, we've heard these calls dismissed as acts of disloyalty or as a threat to civilian control of the armed forces. We have even heard accusations that this dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. That line of attack is shameful, especially coming from those who have never worn the uniform.

Generals and others who call for recognizing the facts on the ground in Iraq are not defeatists, they are patriots. At a time when mistake after mistake is being compounded by the very civilian leadership in the Pentagon that ignored expert military advice in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, those who understand the price being paid for each mistake by our troops, our country, and Iraq itself must be heard. At a time when our nation is imprisoned in a failed policy and we are being told once again that admitting the mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory, that we literally have no choice but to stay the course even to a bitter end, those who seek to reclaim America's true sovereignty and freedom of action must be respected.

Iraq is not Vietnam, and the war on terrorism is not the Cold War. But the threat of jihadist extremism is another ''long, twilight struggle," as President Kennedy said in his inaugural, and the threat is very real, but we will never defeat terrorists by trampling our own freedom and democracy. The Swift Boat-style attacks that have been aimed at dissenters from Gold Star mothers to decorated veterans like Jack Murtha hurt our democracy even more than they wound their target. I still believe as strongly as I did 35 years ago that the most important way to support our troops is to tell the truth. Patriotism does not belong to those who defend a president's position -- it belongs to those who defend our country, in battle and in dissent. That is a lesson of Vietnam worth remembering today.

Gov. Dean lashes at Bush-Republican Party's "culture of CORRUPTION, CRONYISM, and INCOMPETENCE."

Here at C-D.blgspt.com we couldn't have said it better ourselves: we are TIRED of the Republican culture of INCOMPETENCE, CORRUPTION, CRONYISM, and lies, and we are also tired of those cowering Democrats who FAIL TO NOTICE same.

Gov. Dean is not, and has never been, in that list of cowering Democrats, although they did silence him for awhile when he first became DNC Chair.

Gov. Dean:

<< "I think Americans are tired of being lectured to by Republicans who have brought a culture of CORRUPTIOIN, CRONYISM, and INCOMPETENCE, to Washington," he said. "They offer a legacy of more of the same -- DEFICITS, DIVISIVENESS, and DECEIT." >>

<< "There has been enough of FEAR, INCOMPETENCE, and CORRUPTION," Dean told DNC members. He said voters would judge President George W. Bush's administration and the Republicans on their slow response to Hurricane Katrina and failure to develop a suitable recovery plan. >>



BRAVO! Governor Dean; We here at C-D.blgspt.com COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER ourselves!


For those cowering Democrats who haven't yet got the message... who think it is "BUSINESS AS USUAL" to ALLOW the Bush-Republican party to CONTINUE their agenda of "INCOMPETENCE, CORRUPTION, CRONYISM" and lies unmolested, thereby ENABLING same, we would like to point out, "It isn't that difficult to point out what Democrats SHOULD stand FOR."

Here, in one sentence, is the core of what Democrats COULD be campaigning for, instead of finding 1,001 new ways to Kiss Royal...., er, "bow before the royal throne."




<< Dean said the Democratic platform would include a rise in the minimum wage, protection of Social Security, a fix for the Medicare prescription drug plan, tax fairness for the middle class, lobbying reform and a quick transition to local control in Iraq. >>




(Quibble: but why does "prosecute corruption and investigate war-contracts fraud" seem so radical as to be excluded from this platform?" )



__________________________________________________

Dean says Bush "cut and run" on Katrina

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Sat Apr 22, 2006
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-22T180945Z_01_N21387310_RTRUKOC_0_US-DEMOCRATS.xml



NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said on Saturday the Bush administration had "cut and run" on Gulf Coast hurricane recovery and created a political legacy of deficits, divisiveness and deceit.

Dean, speaking at the Democratic National Committee's spring meeting, said November's congressional elections would be a choice between real change from Democrats or more of the same from Republicans.

"There has been enough of fear, incompetence and corruption," Dean told DNC members. He said voters would judge President George W. Bush's administration and the Republicans on their slow response to Hurricane Katrina and failure to develop a suitable recovery plan.

"Republicans have cut and run when it comes to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, and we will not do that," he said.

The Democrats chose New Orleans for their spring meeting in part to highlight the administration's heavily criticized handling of Katrina, which killed more than 1,300 people, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and shattered New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Dean said Democrats offered values based on community and opportunity and a more inclusive vision for the future.

"I think Americans are tired of being lectured to by Republicans who have brought a culture of corruption, cronyism and incompetence to Washington," he said. "They offer a legacy of more of the same -- deficits, divisiveness and deceit."

Control of Congress is at stake in November's elections, when Democrats need to gain six seats in the Senate and 15 seats in the House of Representatives to claim majorities.

Dean said the Democratic platform would include a rise in the minimum wage, protection of Social Security, a fix for the Medicare prescription drug plan, tax fairness for the middle class, lobbying reform and a quick transition to local control in Iraq.

He blasted Bush for saying recently that U.S. troops would still be in Iraq into the next presidency. "He got us into it," Dean said. "He owes it to the American people to get us out."

The meeting on Saturday also heard from three Louisiana Democratic officials, each of whom has also faced criticism for their response to Katrina -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, one of 22 candidates in the city's mayoral election being held on Saturday.

Nagin told the DNC members, many of whom performed community service in the battered city during the three-day meeting, he was glad they saw the devastation for themselves.

"Television does not do justice to what has happened to this city," Nagin said. "This country must step forward in a bigger way."

Sen. Durbin calls for Rumsfeld's resignation, but Cowering Democrats CONTINUE to play the "no problem here... move along, Move Along" game.

<< Meet Marcy Winograd, longtime activist and grassroots organizer, who recently stepped over that line, from ordinary citizen to political candidate, and has been waging a gritty campaign in Southern California’s liberal 36th Congressional District (a strip of oceanfront communities near L.A., from Venice to San Pedro), to unseat six-term incumbent “Republicrat” Jane Harman in the state’s June 6 primary.

“People have said to me, you are so courageous. I don’t feel courageous, I feel compelled. I feel I have no choice,” she told me. “I’m running with a sense of urgency — to stop the next war before it happens and redirect the war billions to education, health care, housing and the environment.”

Harman, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is a loyal and important member of the INEFFECTIVE opposition: She SUPPORTS MORE of the BUSH AGENDA THAN SHE OPPOSES, including VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING RELATED TO THE DISASTROUS WAR in Iraq and the incursion of unchecked presidential power into our constitutional rights and protections. Harman is part of the Democratic Party’s drift away from its base and its de facto surrender to the fanatics of the right and the politics of fear. >>





A Sense of Urgency
Robert Koehler
April 19, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/a-sense-of-urgency_b_19430.html

We call our disillusion with democracy “politics” and let it go at that. It’s raw, it’s dirty. The fix is always in. You’ve got to be a cynic to go into it — able to tolerate the stench of moral compromise. You’ve got to serve the shadowy interests of the powerful; you’ve got to play their game.


Yeah, sure, the Bush Administration is a disaster and the Democrats are no better, but they’re on the other side of that foul moat we call politics and they’re going to do what they want, right? Most Americans oppose the war; Bush’s approval rating is in the 30s — down to the true-believing core. But he has only scattered, Quixotic opposition in Congress, even as the virulence of his policies gets public exposure and the electorate looks on, appalled and helpless. And now the fanatics who wrecked Iraq are seriously eying regime change in Iran. Is there no way to stop them?
“‘There’s no pressure from Congress’ not to take military action,” writes Seymour Hersh in the April 17 New Yorker, quoting an anonymous congressman about Iran. “‘The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.’ Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, ‘The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.’”

I’m happy to report that not everyone feels helpless in the face of this unchecked messianic vision of war and global domination, or is content to believe that a counter-vision of peace, global interdependence and the rule of international law is a political pipedream.

Meet Marcy Winograd, longtime activist and grassroots organizer, who recently stepped over that line, from ordinary citizen to political candidate, and has been waging a gritty campaign in Southern California’s liberal 36th Congressional District (a strip of oceanfront communities near L.A., from Venice to San Pedro), to unseat six-term incumbent “Republicrat” Jane Harman in the state’s June 6 primary.

“People have said to me, you are so courageous. I don’t feel courageous, I feel compelled. I feel I have no choice,” she told me. “I’m running with a sense of urgency — to stop the next war before it happens and redirect the war billions to education, health care, housing and the environment.”

Harman, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is a loyal and important member of the ineffective opposition: She supports more of the Bush agenda than she opposes, including virtually everything related to the disastrous war in Iraq and the incursion of unchecked presidential power into our constitutional rights and protections. Harman is part of the Democratic Party’s drift away from its base and its de facto surrender to the fanatics of the right and the politics of fear.

Finally, it was Harman’s public support of warrantless wiretapping back in February, on “Meet the Press,” that pushed Winograd to step out of her idealistic comfort zone and enter the primary fray. “And by the way, I deplore that leak,” Harman had said, mouthing the Bush administration talking point that the program’s exposure in the New York Times was the problem, not the unregulated domestic spying itself.

“We think of others as taking the reins of history. We don’t think of doing it ourselves. But there are times when we must act,” Winograd said. “As I watched that interview, I felt such a sense of urgency. . . . Will the Democrats denounce Bush when he sends bombs raining down on Teheran? What kind of world do I want my children and grandchildren to inherit?

“I never planned to run for office. . . .”

So far Winograd, who is president of the Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles (for more info, visit winogradforcongress.com), has generated national interest in her campaign. Her high-profile support includes endorsements from Daniel Ellsberg, Ed Asner, Ed Begley Jr., Howard Zinn, Ron Kovic, Tom Hayden and Jim Hightower. She has also been endorsed by important local politicians like Manhattan Beach Mayor Mitch Ward.

The reluctant candidate has also made an impact. For instance, when she appeared at the state’s delegate caucus at the beginning of April, she managed to sway enough of those present to block the party’s automatic endorsement of Harman.

“If you have ever protested the war,” she told the delegates, “if you have ever sent an e-mail urging a Democrat in Congress to take a stronger stand in the face of the Bush administration’s reckless agenda, if you have ever felt frustrated with the lack of leadership within the Democratic Party, now is the time to send a message. Your vote to bring the troops home and end this senseless war will reverberate across the nation.”

David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org has written: “If Democrats want to end this war (and they do), they will need to replace every Harman in Washington with a Winograd.”

What’s at stake is the enfranchisement of the anti-war majority, whose voice in the national debate is a minuscule percentage of its numbers. What’s at stake is our transition to a sustainable way of living on this planet.

“Let us be visionaries,” Winograd told me. “Let us affirm life, not destroy it.”

- - -

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2006 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Sirota: "The Democrat's [cowardly] Seinfeld Strategy"

Dave Sirota echoes the lament and painful cry of CowardlyDemocrats.blogspot.com: our professional Democrat "leaders" REFUSE, REFUSE, REFUSE to CONFRONT the radical-right-wing agenda that EMPOWERS the abject in-your-face CORRUPTION, cronyism, lies, and crimes, if not war crimes, of the Bush administration and Republican Congress.

Even with the Washington Post headlining an article "Intense and Widespread OPPOSITION to President Bush"**, the Damn Democrats JUST DON'T GET IT: they would RATHER COWER to Bush, and SUCK UP to the "mainstream media conventional wisdom," THAN DO THEIR JOBS representing those of us who are INTENSE in our opposition to the thoroughly criminal Bush-Republican agenda.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/16/AR2006041600648_pf.html

Need we list the Democratic "leadership" BETRAYALS, AGAIN??

- Katrina victims, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER
- 2000 Florida voters, DISENFRANCHISED by the Republican Party... Sold Down the River....
- Army privates and guards accused of "ABUSE" for FOLLOWING torture ORDERS,
...SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Democrats and Rusmfeld's kangaroo courts
- the GENEVA CONVENTIONS, Sold Down the River by Democrats and Republicans alike
- the Nuclear Non-Proliferation efforts, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER with NO Dem. confrontations
- America's Blue-collar and White collar taxpayers, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Tax Cuts for billionaires...
- a "FAIR" and truly "BALANCED" media, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER to major corporations with NO oversight
- thousands or millions of voters, Sold Down the River to Diebold/ES&S/Sequoia's NO OVERSIGHT computer codes
(which BEG for "back door" or "secret key" hacking.
- VETERANS of the Iraq war... SOLD by Democrats DOWN THE RIVER to Rumsfeld's "back door draft"
- public education Sold Down the River...
- energy consumers (ALL Americans) SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Cheney's "Secret Energy Task Force"
- women who do not want to carry a pregnancy past the first week, or girls traumatized by rape, incest or unintended sex


Well, that's enough of this growing but by no means complete list. What Sirota points out is, that Democrats PREFER TO COWER from CONFRONTING THE RIGHT WING agenda which EMPOWERS THE ABOVE BETRAYALS, to STANDING UP FOR CONSTITUENTS who WANT A FIGHT.


We Democratic voters- who EVEN BY BUSH-GOP's OWN AKNOWLEDGEMENT gave john kerry FORTY EIGHT PERCENT of the vote in the 2004 election (and clearly a much higher total of opposition to Bush today) ARE NOT BEING REPRESENTED!

THANK YOU, COWERING DEMOCRATS, for STEALING OUR VOICE, and short-sheeting our opposition.


<<
As a short-term electoral tactic, the Seinfeldian "competence" strategy ALLOWS the GOP to right itself with new management. Sadly, it is not a strategy based on ideological differences that puts a boot to conservatives' neck when their hypocrisy trips them up and they fall down. Thus, while Democrats celebrate the resignations of people like Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas) and Duke Cunningham (Calif.), the GOP simultaneously celebrates because they can now counter the Democrats' "competence" argument by pointing out that their party has sloughed off the incompetents. In short, the Republican Party and the right's ideological agenda march forward, largely UNSCATHED [by in-your-face, pervasive and blinding CORRUPTION].

In making such a LIMITED critique, Democrats tacitly VALIDATE conservatives' IDEOLOGICAL GOALS, and further reinforce the public feeling that Democrats have NO CONVICTIONS of their own. For example, despite the GOP scandals and the political opportunities they present, Democrats REFUSE to push serious reforms like public financing of elections and instead push half-measures and focus on Republican missteps. [HELL, THE COWARDLY DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO EVEN MENTION THE NAMES, "Abramoff" and "Cunningham" or "DeLay and Libby INDICTED"!]

In the process, they are implicitly saying they believe the system THE SYSTEM THAT MOST AMERICANS KNOW IS CORRUPT, is actually PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. The same thing on Iraq: The Democratic Party REFUSES to take a position wholly different from the Republicans, simply saying the management of the war--rather than the war itself--is the problem. >>



** (OK, we confess, we fibbed: in TYPICAL Washington Post fashion, they run the less-intense, less informative headline, "Anger at Bush MAY hurt GOP at polls"; the "Intense and Widespread Opposition to Bush" is actually the first words of the first sentence, not the headline. Huffington Post uses the "Intense and Widespread" headline not only for the article link, but for their main lead on 2-17-06.)


___________________________________________________________

Democrats' Seinfeld Strategy
David Sirota
April 17, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/democrats-seinfeld-strat_b_19267.html

I was asked to write the lead editorial for In These Times this month, and decided to focus on what I call Democrats "Seinfeld Strategy" for 2006 - a strategy that tries to make the election "about nothing." Here is the editorial re-printed here in full:

The Seinfeld Strategy

For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seem to have a shot at taking back Congress. But also for the first time in recent history, Congress is on the cusp of switching hands without a voter mandate. How is that possible? Because Democrats are only in the hunt thanks to gross Republican missteps--and they are going out of their way to make sure their potential election to the majority is about nothing. Call it the Seinfeld strategy.

Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein reports, "Democratic leaders are drifting toward a midterm message that indicts Bush more on grounds of competence (on issues such as Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and prescription drugs) than ideology."

As a short-term electoral tactic, the Seinfeldian "competence" strategy allows the GOP to right itself with new management. Sadly, it is not a strategy based on ideological differences that puts a boot to conservatives' neck when their hypocrisy trips them up and they fall down. Thus, while Democrats celebrate the resignations of people like Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas) and Duke Cunningham (Calif.), the GOP simultaneously celebrates because they can now counter the Democrats' "competence" argument by pointing out that their party has sloughed off the incompetents. In short, the Republican Party and the right's ideological agenda march forward, largely unscathed.

In making such a limited critique, Democrats tacitly validate conservatives' ideological goals and further reinforce the public feeling that Democrats have no convictions of their own. For example, despite the GOP scandals and the political opportunities they present, Democrats refuse to push serious reforms like public financing of elections and instead push half-measures and focus on Republican missteps.

In the process, they are implicitly saying they believe the system that most Americans know is corrupt is actually perfectly acceptable. The same thing on Iraq: The Democratic Party refuses to take a position wholly different from the Republicans, simply saying the management of the war--rather than the war itself--is the problem.

National Democratic leaders will say they are forced to use the "competence" argument because it is the one big theme that unifies their ideologically diverse congressional membership. But that hides the not-so-secret fact that very powerful, very vocal, and very ideological forces within the Democratic Party support many of the conservative goals that a "competence" strategy inherently validates.

On domestic policy, these forces went public in April at a press conference at the Brookings Institution. Led by Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin--Clinton's former Treasury secretary--the "Hamilton Project" announced plans to "to take on entrenched Democratic interests" such as teachers' unions, according to the Financial Times. Participants at the event used words like "protectionist" to describe courageous congressional Democrats fighting to reform the corporate-written trade pacts Rubin and others helped pass in the '90s. They also advocated school "vouchers" and "entitlement reform"--code words for defunding public education and eviscerating bedrock Democratic programs like Social Security and Medicare. At least they were honest in naming themselves after Alexander Hamilton, the leader of the elitist Federalist Party and rival of Thomas Jefferson, the populist founder of the Democratic Party.

Public opinion data consistently show Americans are desperate for political leaders who will represent ordinary citizens' interests--not just powerful lobbyists and their wealthy corporate clients.

Until Democrats decide to stop taking part in "business as usual" and start fighting back against the right wing's ideology, they will face the same political liabilities they do today.