A quadruple-slam of Bush-Repub Treachery, Democratic cowardice...

#1: Bush-Republican Treason: SLASH Homeland Security funding for Washington DC and New York City, the two cities attacked on 9-11, in preference of, surprise surprise surprise, REPUBLICAN leaning cities. Like the Confederate Army during the Civil War, the Bush administration would not mind if what happened to Richmond, Vicksburg, and Atlanta happened to New York, Washington, or other "Blue" northern cities. Just as wars (slave raids) are a necessity for running a slave trade; death squads are a necessity for undermining democratic governments in Central and South America (what native would want to see American firms walk off with the lion's share from local resources - oil, minerals, etc - because corporate America was able to bribe corrupt local leaders with kickbacks and bribes, see "I Was an Economic Hit Man").

So too, if enticing, encouraging, and DOING NOTHING to prevent a new terrorist attack on the USA is how the Bush-Republican Party will slap the NEXT round of rights-curtailing legislation, i.e. STATE OF EMERGENCY, that is a

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060101722.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/06/06/edi06044.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060102012.html?sub=AR


#2. FOAMING-at-the-Mouth Republicans: have MASTERED the art of getting Americans to HATE_EACH_OTHER, belying Mr. Bush's 2000 pledge to be a "Uniter, not divider" and to run a "More bipartisan tone in Washington."

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/06/con06220.html


#3. ALWAYS looking for SCAPEGOATS, the cowardly Bush administration tries to blame BAD NEWS FROM IRAQ on "journalists and reporters who don't report the good news."

Never mind that more journalists have died in Iraq in 3 years, than died in the much larger Vietnam War or, even, WWII in (respectively) 10 years and 4 years. The Republicans simply continue to ABUSE their powers to insert Americans IN HARM's WAY, and then demagogue that any who oppose such abusive policies is "against the troops."

http://64.226.238.78/PA/md/md208.shtml (Dowd column, Live From Baghdad: More Dying)

#4. Republicans have MASTERED THE ART OF STEALING ELECTIONS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr: How Republicans STOLE Election 2004 in Ohio.....
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen


Palast - how Republicans plan to STEAL election 2008
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/06/con06219.html

#5. Bush-Cheney OIL GRAB in Central Asia sparks NEW Cold War...

The worst part of Bush and Cheney and the Repub. Party is that they have turned us into a nation of thieves, liars, and bullies. Like white settlers rushing into the Dakotas or California or Louisiana territory in search of land, gold, or other riches, the US is now, under the neo-confederate Cheney-Bush regime, rushing to establish US bases all over the world. Call it "The Only Good Injun is a Dead Injun!" policy for the 21st Century.

Mark Ames has the details of how Cheney is pushing war, dictatorship, torture, and brutality on one hand, while scolding others for doing 1/2 as much.

http://www.alternet.org/story/36881



#6. Bush misusing wartime powers is A_DANGER_TO_DEMOCRACY

A state of emergency

Bush is a danger to the constitution in his wartime capacity as commander in chief

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday June 1, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1787109,00.html

Within the Bush administration something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the central organising principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, but they bend policy to serve it. After September 11 the war paradigm was instantly adopted. George Bush, who proclaimed "I'm a war president", assumed the paradigm as his natural state and right. According to its imperatives, the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances. Some of the paradigm's expressions include Bush's fiats on the treatment of detainees, domestic surveillance and international law, and his more than 750 "signing statements" - interpretations of laws that he claims he can implement as he chooses.

In the beginning, the elements of the war paradigm appeared to be expediencies, conceived as emergency measures in the struggle against al-Qaida. But their precepts were developed before September 11 by John Yoo, promoted to deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel at the department of justice, where he was tasked to write secret memos on torture, surveillance and executive power.

Once Bush approved them, the clerisy of neoconservative lawyers put them into effect. They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed. The Bush administration's holy grail is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm is to be strengthened to conduct permanent war against terror that can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.

In the short run, Bush's defence of his war paradigm may precipitate three constitutional crises. In the first, freedom of the press is at issue. On May 21 Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, announced the possibility that the New York Times would be prosecuted for publishing its Pulitzer prize-winning article on the administration's domestic surveillance. "It can't be the case," he said, that the first amendment trumps the right of the government "to go after criminal activity".

In the second case, a wartime executive above the law may be asserted. Last week the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who charged the vice-president's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice, made plain his intention to summon Cheney to the witness stand to impeach Libby's credibility or else commit perjury himself. But will the administration fight the subpoena as an infringement on a unitary executive that should be immune from such distractions in wartime?

In the third case, if either house of Congress should fall to the Democrats in the November midterm elections, the oversight suppressed during one-party rule would be restored. Would the administration refuse congressional requests for documents as it did when the Democratic Senate in Bush's first year asked for those pertaining to Cheney's energy taskforce, which reportedly included Enron's CEO Ken Lay, last week convicted on numerous counts of fraud?

Bush does not contemplate retreat from the war paradigm, which he embraces as his reason for being. After his 2004 victory he claimed he had had his accountability moment. But the constitution is an intricate mechanism of checks and balances that creates constant accountability. The question at the heart of Bush's politics is whether that can be indefinitely suspended and the constitution radically revised.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com