Here is a truly disturbing example of the all too common attacks on our civil liberties, courtesy of OpEdNews 8/25/08:

"As I walked toward my room, I noticed that the door was opened with the security bolt blocking the complete closing of the door. I knew immediately that I had not left the door open, and I double checked to make sure it was the right room because, as a frequent traveler, I have been known to forget my room number, but it was the right room.

I was upset at first thinking that housekeeping had made a mistake and left my room open and I was worried that something might be missing. So I walked into my room and bigger than life, there was a man standing by my desk holding the room phone with a screwdriver in his hand!

I immediately said; "What the hell are you doing? Are you putting a bug on my phone?" He looked like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and stammered out: "N--no, we are having problems with the phone." I told him to get out of my room because my phone was fine and I called the front desk and the person at the front desk stammered something out about "problems" with some of the phones.

This room was reserved soon after we got to Denver last night because the room we had was inadequate for 3 people. The room was reserved under my campaign manager's name with a CFC debit card. By the time we left for the march, it could have very well been ascertained that I was the one in this room, and the room we did reserve could be bugged, also. I am confident that that's what was happening when I walked in on the "maintenance" man"

You don't come in the room with a screwdriver if there are problems with the hotel phones. You do it electronically, through the system or you hook up a new phone.

You can't help but wonder if this was done as a political payback to Nancy Pelosi, who has violated her oath of office by blocking the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

 

Even Pelosi's methods remind one of Bush:



There also were protesters calling for impeachment, but it's not like she is going to suddenly take the Constitution seriously.

The hat tip goes to Nancy Pelosi's Table.

 

Hat tip to Dandelion Salad:



Great quote from Ms. Sheehan:

Nancy Pelosi is not afraid. She is an accomplice to Bush's crimes.

The positions Sheehan is taking on the issues are worth listening to. They are supposed to be what every Democrat stands for, but she is having to run as an independent to push them.

Sigh.

Please Visit Ms. Sheehan's Campaign Website

 

Hat tip to Ten Percent for leading me in the direction of excellent reporting on "Transparency International" (TI) by Calvin Tucker in the Guardian 5/22/08. He exposes the factually in accurate claims TI made against the government oil company in Venezuela. Tucker also exposes the role of the Venezuelan opposition and Big Oil in influencing TI. It's important reading, but, rather than reinvent this wheel, I'll focus on TI and the United States.

You would think that an international NGO focused on government corruption and transparency would make its single biggest focus the Bush regime. That logical expectation certainly is not met by "Transparency International" which gets major media play in here the US corporate media.

Based on primarily on greed and naked political corruption, the Bush regime has gotten the US into a war in Iraq that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, over 1.2 million Iraqi lives, 4000 US troops killed, and tens of thousands of troops maimed and facing psychological injuries.

The fact that the Bush regime is illegally occupying the White House due to two stolen presidential elections is a rather potent example of the corruption in our government.

Numerous "signing statements" where the Bush regime asserts non-existent constitutional powers to be above the law are something that only the most corrupt of governments would engage in. Dick Cheney's illegal, secret energy policy meetings with energy company donors (including Enron) also show how spectacularly corrupt this illegitimate regime can be.

Some of Many Resources on Bush regime corruption:

- Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment against George W. Bush (After Downing Street)

- The Downing Street Memo (more information)

- 8.8 Billion Dollars in US funds "lost" by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

- Corruption in war contracting.

Where did TI put the US in its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which it asserts as a measure of government transparency?

(A lower ranking number is meant to convey a less corrupt government.)

The Bush regime is tied for position 20?!?!?!?!?

This is less surprising when you follow the money. Take a gander at some of their major donors.

* Anglo American
* Ernst & Young
* ExxonMobil
* General Electric
* Merck & Co.
* Nexen
* Norsk Hydro
* Procter & Gamble
* SAP
* Shell International
* UBS
* Wal-Mart

...

* Credit Suisse
* HSBC Holdings
* KPMG
* XL Capital

That explains a whole lot.

Another major problem is their methodology:

Whose opinion is polled for the surveys used in the CPI?

The expertise reflected in the CPI scores draws on an understanding of corrupt practices held by those based in both the industrialised and developing world. Surveys are carried out among business people and country analysts. The surveys used in the CPI use two types of samples, both non-resident and resident. It is important to note that residents' viewpoints correlate well with those of non-resident experts.

It would be interesting to know who the "country analysts" are. The more transparently disturbing aspect is that they rely on surveys of "business people." Business interests are hardly going to provide accurate or meaningful results. They will only report corruption when it is not in their favor.

Corruption Iraq War contractors, Big Oil, and war profiteers will see the corrupt war in Iraq and the corrupt contracting practices of the Bush regime as fine and dandy. Drug companies whose products don't get adequate scrutiny from the FDA are delighted with the way their campaign contributions pay off. Monopolies like Microsoft and Wal-Mart (a major TI donor by the way) are not going to think that the lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws is a problem.

Sigh.

The upshot is that TI is primarily an advocacy group for the interests of corporations and their wealthy owners. The next time a news outlet cites TI as an information source, you know to take what they say with a grain of salt.

 

The code for this was emailed to everyone in the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, which I am a member of through my efforts in the March 19 Blogswarm Against the Iraq War.

"Impeachment is off the table," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping people get ahead."
...
She used the word "bipartisan" at least eight times in her few minutes before the media, and said that she had promised the president that she would cooperate with him as much as possible.

-- Two days after the 2006 midterms, by Bill Moyers, National Examiner, November 09, 2006

They are inviting people to spread it around. Here is a version of the code I modified slightly to fit better within a Blogger Blog.

<br /><img style="width: 305px; height: 196px;" src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/vradul/pelosibushcemetery.jpg"><br><br><blockquote>"Impeachment is off the table," said Pelosi, D-Calif. <span style="font-style: italic;">"Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping people get ahead." </span><br>...<br>She used the word "bipartisan" at least eight times in her few minutes before the media, and <span style="font-style: italic;">said that she had promised the president that she would cooperate with him as much as possible.</span></blockquote>-- <a href="http://www.examiner.com/a-388565%7EPelosi__Impeachment__off_the_table_.html" target="_blank">Two days after the 2006 midterms</a>, by Bill Moyers, National Examiner, November 09, 2006<br><br />

 

Kucinich has been the strongest voice in the House for impeachment, an end to the Iraq War, and Universal Healthcare. No wonder corporate interests are out for blood. No wonder they have recruited a bought politician to run against him in the primary.

You can learn more and contribute at the Kucinich Campaign website.

Stopping the war will require sticking with the brave people opposing it.

 

There have been so many ways in which the Democratic Party "leadership" has betrayed the party's values in addition to supporting the war and pushing through the nominations of Mukasey and other dangerous right-wing extremists.

ENDA
I have blogged extensively on how the Democratic Party "leadership' has sabotaged ENDA by excluding gender identity and through other efforts to water the legislation down. In a year where ENDA faces certain veto, the party power brokers have diluted ENDA so that any bill that will reach a Democratic president in the future will be either incredibly weak or completely worthless.

Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, acting on behalf of Nancy Pelosi and other heterosexist bigots in the party, have ignored the views of the queer community on what kind of civil rights bill we want. Heterosexual liberals who are vaguely sympathetic to lgbt issues may be fooled by this phony show of support by the Democratic Party insiders, but queers are not. Liberal queers know what was done to us and will remember it in 2008.

Katrina
It is a sad day when liberal Democrats need to lobby Democratic Party bigwigs to actually take action to deal with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. From Progressive Democrats of America:

Push the Senate Today to Support Katrina Survivors
September 25th, 2007

100,000 displaced. 65,000 families still living in FEMA trailers. This is the Gulf Coast two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. After years spent dragging its feet, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is holding hearings today on the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, the bill that will create a real road home for thousands of renters and owners in New Orleans and throughout the region.

The Gulf Coast Civil Works Project, an even more comprehensive approach to helping people still being screwed over years after Katrina and Rita still languishes in the House with a leadership more interested in supporting Katrina profiteers than Katrina victims.

Trade
House and Senate Democratic ringleaders have been pushing through more corporate trade deals that hurt wages and jobs in the US while promoting abject poverty abroad. How are they going to get union members to turn out and vote Democrat in 2008 when the party is doing everything to destroy their standards of living?

Impeachment
How can anyone talk about the betrayal of liberal Democrats and constitutional responsibilities without mentioning impeachment?

Bush and Cheney don't just have bad policies, they have committed serious crimes including but not limited to:

- Illegally occupying their offices due to stolen elections.
- Fraud in order to get us into the Iraq War.
- Perpetrating a war of aggression and genocide in Iraq, crimes against humanity which carry life imprisonment as penalties
- Torture
- Illegal wiretapping and email monitoring
- Ordering federal employees to engage in campaign activities, while on the clock.
- Blocking and obstructing criminal investigations of themselves and other administration figures.

Every member of Congress, regardless of party, has a constitutional obligation to impeach Cheney and Bush. Yet, Nancy Pelosi and other DINO's have violated their oaths of office by keeping impeachment "off the table."

Impeachment is one of the most important issues to liberal Democrats and to many conservatives and moderates who place the rule of law above ideology. Yet, power brokers in the Democratic Party treat those views with utter contempt.

How Out of Touch Can the Party Apparatus Get?
If you look at the tone of fundraising appeals from the DCCC and DNC, you would think everything is just fine between the power brokers and liberals in the party. It is as if Howard Dean and other Washington insiders have lost complete contact with the party's base. They only seem to talk to the pundits and corporate interests who write the biggest checks.

You can see what party liberals think by looking at Democrats.com's call for a donor strike.

Impact on 2008
Obviously, Democratic candidates face major obstacles to getting liberal support in November 2008. The Democratic Party is in an amazingly weak position during an election where the party should be poised to pick up the presidency and win a few Senate seats.

However, the GOP has enormous problems too. The military defeat in Iraq is helping to divide the party even though they won't admit publicly that Bush has lost the war. The rapture that never came is weakening the resolve and unity of the Christian Taliban, just as the sexual behavior of many Republicans fails to conform to the puritanical idiocy of Christian extremists. GOP economic policies are kicking many out of the middle class while making the lower middle class and poor whites who used to faithfully vote Republican even worse off.

The Republicans face the opposite problem than the Democrats. The GOP's fanatical pursuit of far right policies has left them incredibly vulnerable as those policies are failing miserably for the vast majority of Americans and the country as an entity. The Democrats are in serious trouble because they have shown contempt for liberal positions and policies that can save our country.

The two major parties in this country are at their weakest point since the time of the disintegration of the Whigs in the middle 18th Century.

Displaying her fanatical loyalty to a war criminal, Nancy Pelosi diverted Dennis Kucinich's Cheney impeachment resolution to committee, which is expected to bury it.

The Los Angeles Times' coverage showed its right-wing bias in a rather brazen fashion.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) hoped to avoid a bruising floor fight that would have required Democrats to choose between a liberal base that might cheer a Cheney impeachment and a broader electorate that might view it as a partisan ploy at a time of war. She held open the vote, technically slated for 15 minutes, for more than an hour and finally forced the measure to an uncertain future in the committee.

The notion that upholding and defending the Constitution of America is a "partisan ploy at a time of war" is as reprehensible as it is dishonest.

Nancy Pelosi was not the only member of the "Democratic" leadership to act in an execrable fashion:

"Impeachment is not on our agenda," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). "We have some major priorities. We need to focus on those."

When upholding and defending our constitution is not one of his priorities, Hoyer is unfit to hold public office.

Kucinich's statement is excellent and shows what a Real Democrat is like.

You can find the full text of Kucinich's impeachment resolution on his web site.

Article III addresses Cheney's military threats against Iran. This is terribly significant since an attack against Iran would be a war of aggression, a crime against humanity under international law.

Article III
In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit:

The corporate media, who are trying to start a war between the US and Iran, are largely ignoring Article III.

Kucinich also has made a logical and courageous call for impeaching George W. Bush.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is the group that raises money for House Democrats as a whole. Giving money to them functions as a vote of confidence in what House Democrats are doing.

The DCCC also was notorious in the last election cycle of raising money from queers and opponents of the war and diverting the money away from pro-queer, pro-peace candidates to homophobic war mongers.

So, it should hardly be surprising that their fundraising tactics were misleading this time around. The mailing said it was a "Presidential Campaign Survey," yet nearly all of the questions on the bullshit survey were designed to make this terrible Democratic Congress look good. And, the real reason for the mailing was to raise money, not get peoples' views.

I decided to include a note with their mailing to express my views on giving money to the DCCC.

I will not give a dime to your organization until the Democratic Congress meets the following minimal and incredibly modest conditions:

1)Passage of a trans inclusive ENDA.

2)Cutting off all funds for the illegal and unAmerican war in Iraq.

3)Living up to the constitutional requirement that Bush and Cheney be impeached for their many crimes against America and crimes against humanity.

If “Democrats” are going to act like a bunch of corrupt, bigoted Republicans, there isn't any point in giving money to Democrats.

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!

Best of all, those jerks are paying the postage.

From the Green Party of the United States (9/28/07):

Summary of Green positions on the war:

The Green Party of the United States has called for full and immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of which is entering its sixth year; the party opposes a US military attack on Iran and warns Americans not to believe the new flood of deceptive war propaganda.

Greens stress that Congress could end the war quickly if Democrats refused to move on bills for war funding, including the latest request for nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is necessary to keep combat troops in Iraq for another year. Greens urge Congress to divert federal funds from war spending to human needs and services in the US, including restoration and rebuilding in the Gulf Coast.

The Green Party has called for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for numerous abuses of power, including misleading the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. Greens have called the invasion a criminal breach of the US Constitution and international law, motivated by desire for political and corporate dominance in the region, control over Iraqi oil and other resources, and cooperation with Israel's aggressive strategic objectives.

How in the world do Democratic Party strategists plan to keep liberal and progressive voters from voting Green in 2008 when the Democratic Party leadership acts like a bunch of war mongering Republicans? The Democratic leadership seems determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Their cowardice and dependence on big money contributors have left them incapable of acting in their own interests or in the national interest.

Matt Stoller of Open Left deserves a lot of credit for his Tighten the Leash on the Blue Dog Democrats Campaign. He has put together a list of rightist House “Democrats” who are wholly deserving of primary challenges in 2008. Here is that list.

Jason Altmire, PA-04
Brian Baird, WA-03 (he didn't vote for FISA, but he just switched his position and now supports the surge)
John Barrow, GA-12
Melissa Bean, IL-08
Dan Boren, OK-02
Leonard Boswell, IA-03
Alan Boyd, FL-02
Chris Carney, PA-10
Ben Chandler, KY-06
Jim Cooper, TN-05
Jim Costa, CA-20
Bud Cramer, AL-05
Henry Cuellar, TX-28
Lamar Davis, TN-04
Joe Donnelly, IN-02
Chet Edwards, TX-17
Brad Ellsworth, IN-08
Bob Etheridge, NC-02
Bart Gordon, TN-06
Stephanie Herseth, SD-AL
Baron Hill, IN-09
Nick Lampson, TX-22
Dan Lipinski, IL-03
Jim Marshall, GA-08
Jim Matheson, UT-02
Mike McIntyre, NC-07
Charlie Melancon, LA-03
Colin Peterson, MN-07
Earl Pomeroy, ND-AL
Ciro Rodriguez, TX-23
Mike Ross, AR-04
John Salazar, CO-03
Heath Shuler, NC-11
Vic Snyder, AR-02
Zack Space, OH-18
John Tanner, TN-08
Gene Taylor, MS-04
Tim Walz, MN-01
Charlie Wilson, OH-06

You have to wonder if this is enough. The three most prominent “Democratic” presidential candidates, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, all support keeping tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq to continue Bush's illegal and unAmerican occupation. The many important similarities in political views of Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush are downright scary.

Congressional Democrats could easily stop the war by refusing to fund it, yet they continue to support the war by paying for it with our tax money. Congress refuses to even try to impeach Cheney or Bush despite their many crimes against US law and crimes against humanity. Democrats in Congress continue to illegally expand Bush's wiretapping powers, despite the fact that the Bush regime had more than enough intelligence information to prevent then 911 attacks.

It is starting to look like November 2008 will be a good time to boycott the Democratic Party entirely and stick to progressive Green and Independent candidates. How much more of this corrupt, right-wing garbage are liberals supposed to accept from the Democratic Party before we finally stand up for ourselves?

Conservative Democrats may want impeachment "off the table," but patriotic Americans do not. It is important to let the DCCC know that failure to impeach Bush and Cheney will hurt Democratic candidates nationwide.

Contact the DCCC

I usually try to ignore the DailyKos, realizing that claims in the corporate media that it is a liberal or left blog are laughable. It is a forum for highly partisan, conservative and centrist Democrats. It really isn't much of a place for liberals like me or for people like myself who are not blindly partisan.

However, I had read about how many people there had trashed Cindy Sheehan when she tried to hold pro-war Democrats to the same standards as pro-war Republicans. Now, she is considering an independent run against Nancy Pelosi, if Pelosi does not live up to her responsibility to uphold and defend the constitution by starting impeachment hearings against Bush and Cheney.

I wanted to check out the responses. When someone challenges a pro-war Democrat, the Kos community tends to be hostile. Some have been admirable, most have been hostile, but others have been disturbing.

Rico had an excellent diary supporting Sheehan, but one of the comments who disagreed with him showed a typical bit of male-supremacist ideology when it dismisses female political views and activities as being all emotional.

And it's insulting to most of us to hold supporting Cindy's run for congress as a litmus test of the sincerity and intensity of our desire to end the war or even a remte clue to what any of us has laid on the line. In fact, I ssuspect most of us here don't think of Cindy as a traitor or anything remotely like that -- there are always a few extremists -- but rather an invaluable contributor who simply is letting her emotions rather than her brain lead her this time and won't accomplish anything useful in getting us closer to ending the war by this run.

Another commenter went directly to attacking her as a woman.

The more attention we give her the more she thrives in her lunacy. She's nothing more than an attention whore now, and that's sad. People should just ignore her, and she just might eventually go away and retire like she said she would.

Another DailyKos diarist posed a question as to whether Sheehan would be banned. A commenter went to the old “women just want attention” tactic.

I think 'sideshow' is an accurate description of Cindy's diary. As much as I admire her actions in standing up against the war and speaking her very powerful truth, I find her recent actions to be very passive-aggressive and attention-seeking.

Another Diarist posted on whether or not Sheehan can address local San Francisco issues. This diary posting was amusing, since most of the issues that were listed are dealt with by local government, not by Congress. Some of the commenters' statements were not so amusing.

A woman who does not follow the party line must be stupid or overly “emotional.”

Ms Sheehan never impressed me as being terribly bright. I may be wrong, it's probably elitist - but there it is.

We're where we are now because we weren't "elitist" enough to elect an intelligent President (among his many other faults).

Sheehan may or may not be a smart woman, but what bothers me is her 200-proof emotional response to every issue, every problem, every situation. She shoots off her mouth with all the accuracy of Dick Cheney in a quail field.

When men get involved in political actions, you don't read as much psuedo-psychoanalysis.

Of course, the majority of the people on the DailyKos site did not spew misogynist rhetoric. Most of them were just partisan hacks who will blindly follow any Democrat, no matter how awful. Pelosi's support of devastating corporate-controlled trade deals, her de facto and uncompromising pro-war stance, and Pelosi's fanatical opposition to impeachment mean nothing to them. For most DailyKos commenters, politics is like spectator sports. You cheer for the home team. The consequences for the country get drowned out by the cheering.

However, the misogynistic tone of some of the commenters on DailyKos reflect a tendency of a vocal minority of bloggers to use gender, sexual orientation, or race as a convenient weapon to silence those who disagree with them. If DailyKos actually were the liberal blog community the corporate media says it is, that weapon would be more likely to backfire.

The comments about Sheehan making decisions based exclusively on emotion are as absurd as they are sexist. It has been obvious for months now that independent, third party, and primary challenges are essential if progressives want to counter the right-wing agendas of Phonycrats like Nancy Pelosi. Without electoral challenges from the left, most Democrats will continue to take our votes, our time, and our money for granted, while pursuing a conservative political agenda.

While preemptive wars are a bad thing, there is nothing wrong with making a political endorsement in advance.

That is exactly what I intend to do. I am endorsing Cindy Sheehan if she decides to go ahead with a primary challenge she is considering against Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi has been acting like an unpaid political advertisement for the Green Party for some time now. She resorted to making racists comments in an attack on Hugo Chavez. The attack itself was desperate pandering to an unelected and unAmerican Bush regime.

Pelosi has been more interested in short-term political laziness than her Oath of Office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America by insisting that impeachment is “off the table.” She has shown her contempt for our troops and the results of the 2006 elections by insisting that ending funding for the Iraq War is “off the table.”

Pelosi regularly insults the intelligence of Democrats by saying that she is opposing the war while doing everything in her power to keep funding it. She even lies and says that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to stop the war. Here are two ways to stop the war that don't involve 60 senate votes;

1) A simple majority of House members vote against war funding appropriations.
2) 41 Senators filibuster war funding.

Either, by itself, is sufficient to stop the war.

Pelosi has a nasty history in San Francisco politics. She originally got her house seat by queer-baiting openly gay frontrunner, Supervisor Harry Britt. She also would not have won without the support of the now-defunct Waxman/Berman/Feinstein political machine, which was determined to keep any openly gay or lesbian people elected to congress from California.

It's too bad Harry Reid is not up for reelection in 2008. He deserves a primary challenge at least as much as Pelosi does.

MoveOn.org has been pretty wimpy about impeaching Bush and Cheney, but now they have taken a step in the correct direction. Here is the text of their new petition:

"Congress must force Vice President Cheney to respond to its subpoenas. If he continues to obstruct justice and disregard the rule of law, Congress has no choice but to begin impeachment proceedings against him."

Of course, Dick Cheney defrauded Congress and the public in order to bring us into a war in Iraq which violates international law. Impeachment should start immediately. But, at least MoveOn.org is moving towards where they should be.

Now, if only they would demand that Congress halt all funding for the US/Iraq war.

Link to Petition

Brave New Films has a new short supporting impeaching the man who is occupying the Vice President's office.



You can learn more about the film and find ways to support impeaching Cheney at ImpeachCheney.org.

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films is the outfit behind full length documentaries such as “Iraq for Sale” and “Outfoxed.”

This is from a recent Democrats.com email on the July 1 march in Kennebunkport, Maine:

Yesterday in Kennebunkport, Maine, 3,000 citizens marched for impeachment through the narrow streets of this little coastal town and delivered a message to Bush and to the international media that Americans are demanding impeachment. Video, photos, news reports, and information on the August 25th march planned for Kennebunkport are here: http://afterdowningstreet.org/me

The link takes you to in-depth coverage of the effort in Maine to support impeachment and to video from speeches at the rally.

This important story received very little coverage from the same corporate media that buries or censors coverage the issue of impeaching Bush and Cheney, the most important issue facing the nation. This is an extreme example of the right-wing bias that permeates the corporate media.

Video of protesters challenging unconstitutional "free speech" zones:


More video from the protest:

Democrats.com also has actions you can take to support impeachment.
Call your Representative to impeach Cheney and Bush:
1 (800) 828 - 0498
1 (800) 459 - 1887
1 (800) 614 - 2803
1 (866) 340 - 9281
1 (866) 338 - 1015
1 (877) 851 - 6437

Email your Representatives to Impeach Cheney: http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73

Email your Representatives to Impeach Bush:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/88

Email the House Judiciary Committee to Start Hearings on H.Res. 333, Articles of Impeachment for Vice President Cheney
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been playing a sick game with the anti-war movement, with the lives of US troops, and with the lives of Iraqis for some time now. They pretend that they oppose the war, yet they have made clear from the beginning that they were determined to continue the war by continuing the funding.

At a certain point, war opponents have to realize that we are being betrayed by politicians who take our votes for granted while continuing to have our young people fight and die for Halliburton, Big Oil, the Christian Right, and other corrupt Bush regime cronies.

If these pro-war Democrats cared about fighting terrorism, they would not join Bush and Cheney in aiding and abetting Al Qaeda's terrorist training and recruiting efforts by supporting the war in Iraq. Sadly, Reid, Pelosi, and most other congressional Democrats just don't care, an attitude they share with the worst of Republicans.

The Democratic Party leadership has just agreed to legislation with no enforceable conditions for Iraq war funding, much less a timetable for withdrawal. (Bush can waive “conditions” on reconstruction funding, and there are no limits on the military spending.)

Of course, the Democratic Congress has done little or nothing worthwhile on a lot of other important issues as well. According to Nancy Pelosi, impeachment of Bush and Cheney is “off the table,” just like stopping war funding. So much for the rule of law.

The “Democratic” leadership is pushing another job-destroying trade deal instead of working to repeal NAFTA and withdraw the US from the World Trade Organization. Congress has yet to take any steps to restrict handguns, much less ban them like they should. Congress has yet to even try to revoke Most Favored Trade status for China, despite their economic exploitation of the US and their economic support of genocide in Sudan. Aside from holding hearings, Congress has done nothing on Global Warming either. Dealing with climate change needs action, not hot air.

On other issues like banning Halliburton from all government contracts, increasing fuel efficiency standards, windfall enacting profits taxes for oil companies, cutting government subsidies for corporations, taxing SUVs to pay for more public transportation, and increasing OSHA safety inspectors, the proverbial crickets are chirping.

Even on hate crimes legislation for the queer community, the only action taken so far is a House vote passing a heavily watered down piece of legislation. This is similar to the distressingly low increase in the minimum wage passed by congressional Democrats. Pelosi and Reid have nibbled on the edges of a few important issues, while carrying the water for corporate interests the vast majority of the time.

Now that we know that most congressional Democrats will support the war and most other corporate interests when it really counts, there are two choices for progressives. One would be to give up on the Democratic Party and vote Green. The other alternative is for progressives to run primary challenges against war mongering corporatists to replace them with Real Democrats.

If that does not work, it is important to remember that voting for Real Greens is better than voting for fake “Democrats.”

Some of the many reasons why Dick Cheney should be impeached follow.

• Defrauding Congress and the public about “WMDs” in Iraq and on non-existent Al Qaeda/Baath Party links in Iraq in order to get our country into war.



• Working to get our country into a war of aggression against Iraq, which violates international law.



• Participating in the illegal wiretapping program on Americans.



• Illegally occupying the office of Vice President as the result of two stolen elections.



• Assault with a deadly weapon (the time he shot his “friend” in the face).



• Holding illegal, secret meetings with energy company donors on energy policy.

Dennis Kucinich's courageous decision to introduce articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney creates additional pressure on the faux VP, who already is widely unpopular due to a variety of reasons, including:

• the Iraq War and the fraud committed to get us into that war


• his fanatical support of torture


• his reclusive and secretive behavior


• the conviction in the “Scooter” Libby trial


• his efforts to intimidate those who disagree with him


• his hateful personality


• the fact that he was never elected to the office

Cheney has had four heart attacks and been through other heart surgery. There has been tremendous press coverage of his problems with clotting blood in his leg.

Cheney is 66 years old. This is past the theoretical American retirement age of 65, and he would personally and professionally be better off if he did retire for health reasons.

GOP political operatives must have realized by now that their jobs would be much easier if Cheney was hanging out with the bin Laden's, rather than decreasing Bush's poll numbers further than even Bush is capable of doing.

There has been some speculation on a couple of other blogs about this in the past:

Was McCain Offered Cheney's Job?

Changes in the White House

Cheney is one of the most power-mad people in world history, but even he may see the benefits of doing so. Maybe, some Republican high-rollers will be smart enough to convince him.