Cheney gone wild

For the record:

• Cheney said the president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy."
• Before 9/11, Mr. Cheney was trying to undermine the institutional and legal structure of multilateral foreign policy.
• He championed the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in order to build an antimissile shield that doesn't work but makes military contactors rich.
• Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications.
• Mr. Cheney started agitating for an attack on Iraq immediately after 9/11, pushing the intelligence community to come up with evidence about a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that never existed.
• When Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons.

What a record. And Bush hasn't said squat, so it can - and should - be assumed that he agrees with everything that Cheney has done, in all it's fascist glory.

Worst.President.Ever.

Republican Logic 101

Commenter on Atrios: There's nothing wrong with what Bush did, because it was done first by Bill Clinton - who was an immoral, power-hungry, dishonest monster and the worst president of all time - even though it wasn't ever done by Clinton.

BINGO!

Ditto

What he said:

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

President has broken laws and endangered nation

It has been reported and confirmed that President Bush ordered illegal spying on American citizens and their domestic communications for the past three years. He ignored the 25-year-old law that covers these activities. He bypassed the secret court that reviews these requests, which resulted in a judge on this court resigning in protest. He has admitted an impeachable and prosecutable offense for the most superficial reason possible: he did it because he could.

This president has abused the processes of our democracy at every step of the way in his quest to kill our enemies. There are plenty of tools available to fight our enemies legally and within the ethical bounds of civilization, yet he has ignored sound advice of any and all who have disagreed. He fought to allow torture of prisoners, he ignored the advice of our most experienced leaders. He has brought us more hate and more enemies with his ill-conceived war and poorly planned strategies, all the while weakening our democracy. Those who disagree are smeared and fired, their careers ruined.

I am amazed that the president’s supporters will excuse any act by this man. And I am truly disgusted that Bush cannot understand the simple truths of our democracy. We are becoming exactly that which the terrorists have sought. I am sure Osama bin Laden is in a cave somewhere in Pakistan, laughing at this foolish president he has duped so easily, knowing his job is almost done.

(from the Thursday, 12/22 Gazette)

A DeLayed Christmas

Weak-on-Terror, Cut-and-Running, Traitorous Losers

A matter of grave concern: "It seems to me that if you're the president, you have to proceed with great caution when you do anything that flies in the face of the Constitution," said Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire who has served on a number of government intelligence advisory boards. He calls the administration's surveillance program "a matter of grave concern."

Presidential Overreaching: David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, described the spy program as a case of "presidential overreaching" that he said most Americans would reject.

Casualty of Convserative Presidents: Columnist George Will wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that "conservatives' wholesome wariness of presidential power has been a casualty of conservative presidents winning seven of the past 10 elections."

An egregious violation: Bob Barr, a Georgia conservative who was one of the Republican Party's loudest opponents of government snooping until he left Congress in 2003, says the furor should stand as a test of Republicans' willingness to call their president to task. "This is just such an egregious violation of the electronic surveillance laws," Mr. Barr says.

Inappropriate: Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has called the program "inappropriate" and promised to hold hearings early next year.

Republicans joining him include centrist Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Sununu of New Hampshire, along with limited-government types like Larry Craig of Idaho.

God knows what Bush would have said if Howard Dean said the same exact thing.

Where oh Where?

In all these arguments over Iraq, illegal spying ordered by the President, New Orleans, ANWR Drilling, Alito and abortion, Cheney's unchecked lust for power, Rumsfeld's incompetence, tax cuts for the wealthy, the loss of manufacturing jobs, outing CIA agents, Tom DeLay's massive corruption, more tax cuts for the wealthy, Jack Abramoff's incredible corruption, indicted White House officials, phony wars on Christmas, real wars on the Constitution, House leaders breaking the rules, even more tax cuts for the super-wealthy, bribery on the House floor, lying about spying, corruption by Republicans in Ohio, and massive failures of Diebold voting equipment, there is one question everyone and their mother has forgot to ask of our President:

WHERE IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS HAD 4 YEARS TO CAPTURE HIM AND HAS FAILED.

Deluded

On Vice President Cheney: "He's living in a time warp," said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and Reagan administration official. "The great irony is Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he's still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974."

Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) said: "The vice president may be the only person I know of that believes the executive has somehow lost power over the last 30 years."

Isolated, delusional, paranoid, both Bush and Cheney have lost all perspective on what they are doing to this nation.

The ghost of Richard Nixon lives on in the Republican party.

King George IV

Stolen from Kos.

King George III

Bada-bing.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The ineffectiveness of the national Democratic party has been on display for years now. The President has shown time and again that he'll do as he pleases, consequences be damned, with nary a peep from the opposition.

Howard Dean took the grassroots power we gave him and has attempted to take the fight back to the Republicans, but every time he speaks out, our overly cautious representatives in DC undercut him. They truly don't get it.

They are weak, and they have abdicated their responsibility with milquetoast responses to the president's aggresive hyperactivity.

Peter Daou runs down the process, which we've seen over and over and over and over:

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democrat leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around.

Sickening as it is true.............

King George II

Dumbass kids think the Pledge of Allegiance actually means something. (Boy, 41 really honked them over that one!) I am President, and I'll make whatever laws I want, when I want.

We're at war, a war I started, and now I need all powers known to man to win this war. Those kids are so innocent, they don't understand war. They'll learn some day what a great leader was. And they'll learn that I saved America from Osama bin Laden, not those pansy-assed Democrats who believe in laws and stuff.

-- George W. Bush

President of the United States
December, 2005

A Shameful Act

“It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war. The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” he said at the White House event.

George Bush talking about the exposure of a CIA agent - by someone in his administration - who was working on WMD counter-proliferation?

George Bush talking about the exposure of illegal spying on American citizens - by the New York Times - that he approved, thereby breaking the law?