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Yeah, Specter et al are worthless shells. But I don't think it's hopeless. Not yet. Ashita ga aru sa.
The way that the Democrats *NEED* to approach this bill is to very loudly and very publicly explain what's wrong with this bill/bills. If they do their usual pussy-footing around, not QUITE able to bring themselves to condemn it, then they're going to be royally screwed in November.
They need to not just vote against this bill, but ferociously campaign against it because if they don't, their vote WILL be used against them.
The only way they can possibly lose when they're fighting against legalized torture is to actually fight, not whine about specific subsections, or pull another 'I voted for it before I voted against it'.
*sigh*
Why do I feel like I'm wasting my breath? We all know what they're going to do...
The only option, for any legislator who has taken an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution, is to denounce and attack and obstruct and prevent these bills to legalize torture, rendition, and wholesale domestic surveillance.
Prevent and stop them by any means at hand.
Do your job, as you swore on the Bible you would.
You do not have a second option.
You will all have your heads shaved as collaborators, with these fascist bastards, if you go along to get along now.
Walk out of Congress, refuse to take part. The greater majority of Americans want their country back.
Not this shit.
billmon wants to escape to the arctic.
though i understand. i think i know better places. after all, before too long, the arctic is going to be littered with dead and dying polar bears. it is going to be very nasty.
i would like to recommend the other side of the planet.
ushuia, punta arenas.
cape town was once on my list, but the racial problems continue. if billmon is black, he might get by. if white, his life and the life of this family will be in jeopardy always.
i would have written this to billmon directly. don't have his address. perhaps you can pass it on.
concerning stone. i did have the pleasure of knowing him.
as regards myra, she wrote a great book, long time passing, and if her book on stone finally was published, she stiffed everyone by delivering the manuscript years past due.
so it goes.
3 (Senators), it's a magic number....
What do the Democrats need to grow some balls? The NIE estimate is devastating to the Cheney cabal, Major General John R.S. Batiste just delivered a blistering scolding of Rumsfeld and company, not to mention the Congress, also confirming the consensus of the NIE (Iraq has made the US and world LESS safe). What more do the Democrats need to take a stand against blatant violations of the Bill of Rights? How can anyone who has not completely succumbed to Rove's spin machine think that Democrats are weak for opposing violations of civil rights, basic human rights, human dignity? Christ if they can't take a stand now they don't deserve to win. Might as well let the jackals tear the Constitution to shreds, at least it will be over with more quickly that way.
How many days before the swift boating of General Batiste begins?
pssst, isn't it true General Batiste was [insert accusation that can neither be proven nor disproved here]
Walk out of Congress, refuse to take part. The greater majority of Americans want their country back.
Not this shit.
Anonymous | 09.26.06 - 2:49 am | #
Hear, hear ... but will they? I don't see any sign of it. Alas.
On the oath of office, it is astounding to me how it means nothing, to the Senators, to the press, to the public... to everyone except those who are both paying attention and not paid off.
Oaths, words, hands on a book. Empty rituals for these sociopaths.
The words comprising the Constitution, like the words comprising the Bible, might as well be written in invisible blood.
I'd love to create a viral ad which somehow distinctly notes things such as the following:
Under George Bush and his Republican friends in Congress, the USA has become a nation which legalizes torture, destroys sovereign lands for simple business advantage, provides specialized government jobs for friends instead of qualified specialists who deserve that responsibility and pay, hides evidence from defendants in court so that guilty verdicts are practically assured, and arbitrarily eliminates the possibility of ever having their day in a court of law to defend themselves against all charges which have thus far been found to be false for most detainees that we know of in Guantanamo.
Ask yourself this, citizen: are you next on their list?
Check the colour of your skin. Watch what you say about Republicans, regardless of how illegal or immoral their actions may be.
It's just a matter of time. Practice putting on your public face. Now.
They're rushing to make legal all of GW's recent actions before they lose Congress.
Odd, considering they've said all along that what they were doing was legal.
What are the rules regarding a quorum in Congress? Can House Democrats deny a quorum? Why don't they do stuff like this? Lord knows if the Republicans would have if something this important (to them) had been proposed when they were a minority. They may be sick fucks as far as their priorities, but at least they had the guts to fight for their twisted principles. WTF Democrats?
If this were the South Korean legistlature they would have breaking chairs over the heads of the oposition a long time ago. The Koreans at least have enough fire in their bellies not to take any shit from political oponents, even though it looks comical on the nightly news in the US.
日本語をわかりますか？
I have to believe we'll see an old-fashioned filibuster from Sen. Feingold. Not the 40 vote block of cloture but the 'I'm going to speak until I drop' filibuster of Jimmy Stewart and Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond had 24+ hours in him in support of racial segregation. Russ Feingold's better angels damn well better be able to come up with that much and more in support of the US Constitution.
Jap torture and murder in the prison camps they ran, and atrocities against civilian populations in the countries they conquered, is not a secret - except maybe to contemporary Japanese (just as America's true role in the world is unknown to the vast American public). Is that the analogy that is intended by the use of that language in captions and comments here?
Brother, if Norman Ornstein, the quintessential beltway see no evil, speak no evil, moderate is troubled enough to offer public criticism ,we're all fuck.
Off-topic but important:
Olbermann's Special Comment from last night is up on youtube now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X...h?
v=XxciFULXjso
Please follow the link to help send this to the top of youtube's "most viewed"! Watch & leave a comment if you like. Ask your friends to click too. If this gets on the "most viewed" page, hundreds of thousands will see it.
A click it all it takes!!
Thanks
Can Bush pardon himself?
They'll need all the domestic surveillance and torture authority they can get once Bush attacks Iran. Serenely, Bush sails on, across a sea of commas. Forget about an "October Surprise," prepare for a "November Surprise" instead -- after the election. That looks to be Bush's best chance to try to clean up Iraq once and for all by going after Iran and bringing real democracy to the Middle East at last, before any meddling new Congress can stop him. Bush knows everything will be fine. He's working his way through the commas and approaching the end of the sentence. He's the democracy-bringer, and he's doing God's will.
I have to say this is the most absolutely corrupt and despotic Senate and House that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
Never has the US Congress worked so slavishly in favor of the executive branch and never has the US Congress worked so diligently to curtail any and all remaining civil liberties and constitutional guarantees, from the writ of habeas corpus to freedom of speech and association to the right to a fair trail. It's the absolute worst Congress ever.
Everyone writes, rightfully so, how bad Bush is, the worst in the 20th century no doubt (perhaps Hoover is the only other competitor for that prize), but no one seems to call the Congress on how despotic and depraved they are.
The more I read about these civil liberties issues, the more evident it is to me how close America is to a full fledged neo-fascist state with 'full spectrum' surveillance and the abolition of most if not all constitutional guarantees.
Had enough? Vote Democratic.
“…that the White House was retaining the right to order wiretaps without a warrant.”
So when exactly did the White House obtain this “right” to wiretap without warrants? If I’m not mistaken the whole point of this circle jerk is because there is no right to wiretap without a warrant and the anti-American republicans are trying their best to bestow such a right on the boy king.
.
So the fat lady sings?
MY GOD YES...they are so very clever...and while all who sit back in awe at the Repugs ability to put yet another devious play out there are breathless in appreciation...we lose more ground in the struggle to preserve America in the form it was intended to take. Sadly, like Eric Alterman on Sam Seder yesterday, I too feel sad and depressed about the way this election is shaping up. I believe Repugs will hold on to the POWER and move towards insuring that there will be NO MORE DEMOCRATS taking the "high offices" in my lifetime. This worm too will turn...but not until the sheeple WAKE UP! They'll wake up when it hurts THEM...
The GOP Senators just cannot bring themselves to hand the White House a clear defeat. The Republicans in Congress were out of power for so many years that I think they developed a sort of complex, where they are terminally attached to the idea of circling the wagons and "winning" at all costs, even when it doesn't make any sense. They cannot budge an inch, for fear that it would be a sign of weakness.
In fact, it's a sign of cowardice.
Thanks, elected Republicans, for the sorry state of affairs. But thanks, too, to the torturers next door.
Does it occur to any of those screaming for the Dems to grow a set that there is a more fundamental problem here?
It's not that the Dems are so afraid or so cowardly or so stupid.
It is that too many of the Bigger Dems agree with the demolition of the Republic and its replacement with Autocracy.
They are not going along to get along, they are going along because they think this course is the right one.
We can't get them to act or to do their jobs -- because they believe they are acting and doing their jobs as they believe is right.
This should have dawned on us a long time ago. It didn't. We kept thinking they must have a plan, they must know what they are doing, by golly, they're going to use that dry powder any minute now.
No. They're not. There is no plan. There is no hidden knowledge. That powder will never be used against anyone... except perhaps us.
Not all of Our Dems favor and support what's going on. Russ Feingold in the Senate and the Congressional Black Caucus are reliable opponents who can and sometimes do actually oppose and say why in no uncertain terms.
However, Russ is denounced by his own party and the Black Caucus is ignored by its own party.
The whole idea that the minority party has no "power" is ridiculous. They don't have authority but they have plenty of power. They just refuse to use it in service to the nation.
The American People are beyond fucked at this point. Our representatives simply will not act on the People's behalf, and anyone of them who tries will most certainly be shot down, denounced, disparaged and condemned to the Outer Darkness -- by members of their own party.
Vote for Dems, sure vote for Dems, but don't expect your vote to count. And even if Dems take control of one or both houses (something I sincerely doubt will happen at this point), don't expect anything (much) to change.
And I'm the one who wants a positive alternative world view to the dark vision of a non-future presented by the Busheviks.
I still want that, but our current crop of reps are pretty much on the same side, no matter their party, aren't they?
Had enough? Vote Democratic.
"A handful of principled Republican Senators have forced the White House to back down from the worst elements of its extreme proposal for new interrogation rules,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. . . .
And Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, praised Senators Warner, McCain and Graham as “standing up to the administration” and producing a bill that, “while it has a number of problems, is a substantial improvement over the language proposed by the administration.”
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.c...-agrees-
to.html
The US takes another large step towards a one party state.
Had enough? Start a new political party. Unfortunately that is not a realistic alternative in the United States. It has been quite some time since the US was a democracy. It's time for the left to remove their heads from the sand. The choice is between the lesser of two evils… or is that the evil of two lessors.
For the antiauthoritarian left and the principled liberals there are "lines in the sand". The Democratic Party has managed to cross two of them. 1. Due process and 2. Torture.
I will not say how to vote. The arguments for and against strategic voting are complicated. Just don't think that you are voting for justice, truth, freedom, or democracy if you vote Democrat.
Why do they do this? That's what I want to know. In their heart of hearts, they must know they are fucking over the Constitution.
I guess they respect the President too much to do anything to oppose him. They certainly are not going along because he is popular with the American people. Perhaps they actually LIKE George W. Bush and want him to succeed.
McCain is in this camp. What has this suck up done with his career? His campaign finance reform is a joke, and now he brings us torture. He's not going to go down well in the history books.
A more humane Mikado never did in Japan exist!
They do it because they intend to use warrantless wiretaps and torture against the political opposition inside the United States. Torture and police state spying are a very effective means of terrorizing a population into silence and compliance with an authoritarian corporate agenda.
The Preznit is permitted to secretly detain and torture anyone he wants and there is no recourse through the courts due to the limitations on habeus corpus. No one will be able to help you because they won't know where you are.
The Republican's have become the biggest gang of traitors in the history of the United States.
So this is what a "Christian" nation does. No wonder the Framers wrote the Constitution as a secular document. And no wonder the "Christians" are about to feed it into the paper shredder of history.
They do it because they intend to use warrantless wiretaps and torture against the political opposition inside the United States
I think that this is not true for a large majority of the house and senate. While I think that it is not true, I think that it will become true in the future. Whom to torture is a very slippery slope indeed. Torture is also apparently quite addictive. (thanks digby for the posts)
One bill makes it more efficient to fight back, as well--if only we will.
Charles
Have to say I think Che Pasa has it about right. If they were to sweep to power in 06 and take the White House in 08, they won't repeal anything done by these thugs; they'll want that juice for themselves. The long night is coming on, and quickly.
Freddy el Desfibradddoro:
I believe that digby's Japanese cultural reference was to the art of kabuki players, a theme he has often visited with regards to Bush Republicans in politics and the press/blogsphere.
jtegnell:
I'd tend to believe that GWB's only exposure to *anything* related to Japan is that his Daddy threw up on their Prime Minister.
billmon wants to escape to the arctic.
Someone may have explained this above (I haven't gone through the comments), but I believe billmon was making a little joke about global warming...and some line about how humans will just have to move toward the artic where the temperature will still be livable.
Ché Pasa and Edwin speak truth. Wongo sad. Dems not stupid, know exactly what doing. DEMS BAD MENS TOO!
Wongo say, learn to grow beans and run fast. Wongo need to lose 40 pounds, better for hide.
I know I'm annonymous. But something just materialize in my mind after reading many of Tri's and Dig's posts lately.
What if the plan is for the republicans to make things SO bad, that people rise up with guns etc and try to rebel and they declare martial law and put down the rebellion.
Then they disolve congress and suddenly we are living in "1984" or "Handmaiden's Tale".
They have been planning all this for years, slowly taking over everything, eroding rights, eroding voting rights.
I know it seems tin foil hat, but man.
It just struck me. like a lightning bolt.
So, it seems it does not matter what we do, they always seem to have an answer.
If the balloon does go up, I guess I'd rather die than live through that.
And will the ones who are dead be considered the lucky ones?
B
Che Pasa - I came to that conclusion not long ago. They don't fight, becuase they agree wwith the course. Now, what do WE do?
Part of me says, just go ahead and vote Dem in Nov, becuase what the heck else am I going to do, and there remains in my heart a sliver of hope that this can be turned around.
The other part of me says ... well, I'm not sure what it says. Just wait for the inevitable horrible conclusion to this? But at that point, will we rise up with pitch forks, or will it be too late?
Dark days ahead.....
I think one thing is pretty sure. Should Bush get his way with the Republican's in the Senate and they pass the Bush backed bill, the number of requests for warrants to the FISA Court will drop substantially while the total number of wiretaps increases substantially. And nobody will be the wiser because there will be no Congressional oversight.
Democrats opposing these bills are getting no press time. Harkin has talked out against torture and Bush's illegal wiretapping-no press coverage any where accept buried in the Des Moines Register in the back pages.
Then they dissolve congress...
that's what eventually happened in peru in their own fight against terrorism. i've posted this before, but again, a reading of the peru's history against the maoist shining path has shocking parallels to our own situation...
I think Iowan has it right. We don't hear the opposition very loudly because they aren't covered. After all, why would a lazy myopic media care what Harkin has to say. He's just a member of the minority party. It's so much more interesting to cover the drama of a "renegade" senator of the president's own party. It's just too bad it plays into Rove's hand when those same senators cave in all the important points. This is why it matters to elect a Democratic Congress: if the Republicans actually have to negotiate with Dems then they won't be able to pull this bait-and-switch shit so easily. It's the only way to stop this slide into tyranny.
Arrgh, why is it so interesting to the media to cover these "renegades"? Why do they have their heads up their asses?
"What do the Democrats need to grow some balls? The NIE estimate is devastating to the Cheney cabal..." -(Republicant)
The litany that the Democrats "need to grow some balls" is a common refrain that should no longer be queried. The answer has been quite obvious for as long as anyone can remember.
The people who "need to grow some balls"are those who still reference themselves and their thinking through a Democratic party lens.
You may say that you have no other options until something better comes along? That's an old game. Remember that this is now an America quite different than the naive fantasies that still hold so many in the thrall of a hideous stupidity.
You say that then the Republicans will win? People fail to see that the Republican victories are not simply a matter of their electoral victories. It is that cumulative increments of American fascism have now reached a critical mass where they no longer merely effect electoral politics but have infected the entire culture.
America itself is a death house.
"The NIE estimate is devastating to the Cheney cabal..."
I wish it were so.
Nothing is devastating to the Cheney cabal.
"And even if Dems take control of one or both houses (something I sincerely doubt will happen at this point), don't expect anything (much) to change." -(Che Pasa)
Spending good 'sincerity' and leaving the question open that things will change leaves too much wiggle room for those who need to see their hopes crushed in order to think clearly.
Saying nothing will change (which you already know) is more to the point.
People should 'know' that things won't change not continuing to 'hope' that they will.
hey people, anonymous is not as farfetched as some others might think. The rethugs are just WAITING for a domestic insurgency so that they can finally shut the door on dissent. Think this is ridiculous? Then read Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto, about how Argentine military intelligence infiltrated the Peronist left in the early 1960s, allowed and incited that left toward ever more violent actions, in order to have the excuse to overthrow the government and to begin El Proceso, their blood-drenched attempt to impose their authoritarian and allegedly Christian moral vision on the country. 30,000 killed out of a population of 20 million. Hundreds of thousands tortured. Read the speeches by the military leaders-- they read like Spanish versions of what Cheney says just about every day (e.g. "civil rights are no good if you're dead," "we can't afford habeas corpus or due process because terrorists abuse those legal rights to do us harm," etc. etc.)
sorry, Martin Edwin Andersen
Why do they do this?
Why? because it's 2002 all over again.
If the dems vote against it, like they did on the Homeland Security Bill, they get slimed. Remember what they did to Max Cleland.
This shit will not end until the people wake up and figure out they're being herded like a bunch of frightened sheep. This republican party could teach the nazis of the Reichstag a thing or two.
It's like some evil moonian conspiracy I tells ya!
"The rethugs are just WAITING for a domestic insurgency so that they can finally shut the door on dissent. " -( the exile)
This is more or less true. They would not have gone as far as they have without this scenario happening.
I do not think that this is a paranoid statement in the least.Those who understand anything about America expect this.
My only caveat is I don't even know if they will need a "domestic insurgency" as a pretext.
It is certainly easier and far more American to 'just do it.'
They have already dispensed with so many formal niceties that this will be cake frosting.
Hilary? Nancy Pelosi? Obama? Their securities and hedge fund assets will be secured much in advance.
why is this not standing up
http://www.tompaine.com/
articles...over_habeas.php
Showdown Over Habeas
Sen. Patrick Leahy
September 26, 2006
It occurs to me that the current noise about attacking Iran is a setup for more Kabuki. Even Rove has to understand that the Republicans will get creamed in the Nov. elections if such an attack happens in October.
The real October Surprise is Bush beats the drums for an attack, and Congressional Republicans get him to back off, thereby distancing themselves from Bush and getting rid of some of the Republicans' current reputation for insanity.
Not to make fun of anyone but this is news? We've had five years of this shit. I'm not surprised.
Once again, the rovian dictum of doing what you accuse the other side of doing is in play. The right constantly says the opposition is only motivated by hatred of bush and that everything the opposition says proof of that.
Actually, nearly everything bush has done is wrong, morally, ethically or for some reason, and pointing it out doesn't make anyone an opponent of much other than acting in our own national self-interest (as opposed to bush's political interests).
Calls for not supporting Democratic candidates (or, the general party) is more Election 2000-style, false equivocation garbage that is about as transparently useless now as it was then.
Republicans represent the BIG WHITE GRAB of our century in the USA, which has brought most of us beyond the boundaries of despair and clouded many expectations of achieving healthy, sustainable or secure futures.
All that we have complained about up to this point has been uniquely, unilaterally and uniformly created from the minds of immensely grandiose, insanely selfish plans of far-right conservatives under the Bush Republican umbrella. Democrats have been powerless and frankly confused that any party - let alone individual pockets within a party - could be so intensely bent on pulling all manner of power, influence and markets into their pockets using the United States government as their primary enablemer to their business channels of choice.
And, in these odd comments, we have the impractical and frankly myopic notion that Democratic party members in office simply seek to become the new Bush Republicans.
Graft and pork is usual in politics.
Openly and brazenly raping a country's mind and infrastructure, regardless of short-term injury or long-term disease to the country being assaulted, in the eyes of the entire fucking world has nothing to do with politics as usual. It is a brand new, violent revolution in the USA we are living through - by a few people, for a few people.
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