John Dean, a former Counsel to the President of the United States, wrote in FindLaw, “To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be ‘a ‘high crime’ under the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony ‘to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.’”

Oh, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to find that many of the wingnut trolls who frequent lefty blogs are actually being paid to do so.

And yet, they’re still getting their asses kicked in online organization and activism. I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is a medium that just doesn’t work for conservatives, who would rather have someone tell them what to think (e.g. talk radio) than carry on open discussions in which their ideas might actually be challenged.

And when Democrats do post on the ones that allow it, their posts generally get deleted.

I’ve said it before: The Republican party in ALWAYS attacking intellectuals is an anti-knowledge faction. They always talk about being pro-education yet they fight to keep public schools underfunded and especially to keep minorities from getting an adequate education, which is a blatant abettance of racism. This is not some new tack. The Republicans have been roadblocking education for decades. You have to ask why they want an uneducated populace.

The reason is simple. Education trains the mind to think critically and to weigh all aspects of an event to discern truth from disparate clues. Education creates a citizen capable of cogent argument, a person who might understand the real effect of Republican policies. This person, who will have the skills to concretely question Republicans and to see behind their sloganeering, is a real danger.

Inarguably, a lack of education creates a ceiling to economic improvement. Who could dispute that? This keeps workers in low-paying jobs because their options are limited. Since these jobs barely allow a worker to scrape by, little energy is left to this worker to focus on issues that have no immediate bearing on their lives or that seem too arcane to grasp. A lack of education causes an apathy toward policy that is beyond their ken. They don’t understand what the fuss is about and struggling to get by, they have little time to search the media for all sides of any argument. They detach themselves from the critical process.

It is this kind of voter most susceptible to sound-bites and to being told in simplistic terms what to think. That is the kind of voter Republicans crave, someone who has been so hobbled in their intellectual development that their fastest avenue to public participation is to let others do their thinking. So Republicans package what they wish these folks to think into easily digested blocks, always laced with a heavy dose of threat. Someone is coming to get you, someone is coming to steal your money, etc., etc., and these dangerous “someones” are always supported by the “intellectual elite” and the “liberal media.”

The constant threat Republicans offer up to those lacking full education is more loss; i.e. illegal immigrants will steal their already horrendously low-paying jobs (even though corporations love illegals because they accept sub-minimum wage pay). Other threats offered is that Democrats will tax them to the hilt to pay for the protection of a small minnow or that they will prevent these workers from getting better jobs because they block tax breaks for the wealthy who will naturally be inclined to create more and higher paying jobs.

Republicans rarely present a positive path. They are the party of fear-mongering because a fearful populace is most easily controlled and swayed. Even better to have this same populace under-educated.

When education is offered by Republicans it is structured to excise ideology and empirical fact that runs counter to Republican philosophy. The plan is to sow permanent doubt against liberal beliefs. So evolution might be true, but creationism might also be true. Vouchers for private and parochial schools are meaningless to the poor, urban worker. This parent will have to find some way to ship their child to an outlying school every single weekday, assuming that child even gains entry in the face of so much competition for scarce classroom seats. On the face of it, it is clearly cheaper and more productive to equalize classrooms statewide, so the child in an urban school gets the same education as a child in the suburbs. Republicans know that school vouchers will only play to the middle and upper class, those who already have options for decent educations. Since the Republican party has generally written off the minority vote, at least until that group reaches some critical voting mass, they are actually trying to convert to their way of thinking more and more middle and upper class students through the voucher system.

All you have to do to understand the truth behind Republican anti-knowledge is to listen to how often Bill O-Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh harangue against intellectuals. Where liberals embrace education as a leveling force, Republicans fear that same leveling because it will affect their bottom line. Smarter workers will be able to more effectively stymie corporate greed and they will be less quick to support Republican initiatives. They will also pay attention to those issues far longer than Republicans would like. Their whole modus is to spit out some program couched in the most glorious hyperbole, furiously attack and squelch any criticism and outlast the American attention span. By the time the full damage of these Republican programs comes to light, the American public has been dealt a new issue to worry about.

I understand that every president claims to be an “Education president” and in this regard leaders of both parties have shame to bear for not keeping that promise. But as we venture forth into this new century we have got to understand that our nation cannot become another Switzerland, merely a mover of money. We have to create new manufacturing. We have to again be the vanguard of technological revolution. This will never happen if we do not promote far-reaching and thorough education, especially in the sciences. Deny some inner-city kid a complete education, thereby relegating that child to a less than fully realized potential, and we will rob ourselves of a potential Einstein. We can’t accept that lost opportunity. Not only is it the right thing to do, the American thing to do, it’s just good business.

Whoever we choose to support for the next presidential run, it is our duty to grill into that candidate our resolve that he or she follow through on making education a top priority for the entire duration of his or her term.

At any rate, our entire system of governance pushes to the forefront the people who are least connected to the populace, those spoon-fed elites on both sides of the aisle who do not understand at a gut-level how hard it is for the average American to make headway in life, although Democrats and liberals by and large supersede their privileged upbringing because of a better grasp of empathy.

Now anyone who thinks George Bush is a “man of the people” should understand that Bush has never, not for one millisecond, feared that he might go hungry or feared that obstacles would be placed in the way of his attainment of wealth and power. He has always, since day one, been coddled by his self-same elites.

Here’s a great tidbit about Bush, the man of the people. When he owned the Texas Rangers he would often invite VIP guests to sit in his private box to watch the games. A friend of mine was an executive for Tandy Corp. and Bush invited him to sit in the box. It wasn’t relevant to Bush what my friend’s politics were. All Bush knew was that my friend was a corporate executive and that was all Bush needed to know. This was in 1998 and Bush’s full run for the presidency was still gestating. While sitting in the plush accomodations my down-to-earth friend asked one of the attendants stationed to serve the guests for a beer. The attendant kept calling my friend “sir.” Well my friend hates to be called sir so he told the attendant to call him by his first name. The attendant got very edgy and said he would be fired by Bush for getting familiar with a guest. He told my friend that he had to call all male guests either sir or “master.” Master? My friend was shocked. He waited until there was no one else around and then he coerced the attendant into calling him by name, wanting to equalize their shared humanity. Now that they were on friendlier and more easy-going terms, my friend asked if he could get a beer out of a glass-fronted fridge in the room. Suddenly tense again, the attendant went back to calling my friend “sir” and said that it was not allowed. He could get a beer from downstairs but only the owner could get a beer from that fridge. My friend asked if he meant George Bush. The attendant said yes. Now what’s the point of this? George Bush says he stopped drinking years ago, the same time he found Jesus. Yet here was an attendant in 1998 saying that this beer was for George Bush. Taking a page from Bill Frist, my video diagnosis is that Bush’s radically inoperative syntax is the result of brain damage from drinking that continues to this day.

What more examples of Bush’s snooty elitism? Recall the recent anger Bush had toward a film crew daring to sit on the furniture in the Oval Office, getting petulant and sour and acting as if this was HIS furniture.

Bush is a snob, a fake cowboy and an upper-crust elite who hides his blueblood credentials behind a veneer of stupefaction, that deer-in-the-headlights smirk that makes him appear to the general public as an “Aw, shucks” man of the people. George Bush, the man, doesn’t know one damn thing about what it means to live in the real world and all of his fantastical ideals and elite-serving, cabalistic actions bear this out.

I will say that sales pitch that repubs use to gain new members is both current and backwards at the very same time.

Let me explain. It has seemed to me that part of the pitch for new members was that “if you are one of us and vote like we do, you too will one day be totally rich and in a position of power”. I’ve actually had co-workers tell me they are republicans along these lines. The hey me-too people who think they are going to get in on a gravy train. That is the current part. By selling to folks self-intersts they mislead them into thinking they will one day be any of that.

The backwards part is just that. The policies put in place by the CURRENT republican party throw largese at the already wealthy while at the same time making it more difficult for the poor & middle to move up the ladder and claim their own. But the bozo’s fail to see they are getting hoodwinked the whole way. Who knows, maybe it’s a pride thing not being able to admit you were wrong about something or got scammed.

Unfortunately, we live it right now. In my mind, I don’t necessarily think we should be putting the greater good ahead of the individual (although I could argue that we should) but we should at least be putting the greater good at the same level as our own interests. Somehow our society has devolved into one huge crass completely materialistic and selfish mass of people walking around with blinders on.

OK – off my soapbox. I’m leaving & will try to think good and positive thoughts. Later all.

Although I’m a lifelong Democrat and liberal, I applaud the existence of a thoughtful opposition party to restrain any trend toward extremism on the left. Yet that thoughtful opposition is missing in action. The childish and churlish behaviors of the Bush administration would be comical if they were so deadly and destructive.

People do tend to overlook the history of the Republican party. In Lincoln’s day they were the party of abolition and Democrats were against abolition. In those days it was the Democrats who were all about state’s rights (the right to own slaves having primacy) and it was the Republicans who believed in the judicious use of federal powers. Following Reconstruction there was a real movement in the Republican party to become the frontmen for industry and elite. In the 1930s the Republicans were all about isolation and undermining the New Deal. They didn’t want to confront Hitler and did everything they could to block FDR from taking us to war. They are no longer isolationist, at least with regard to the use of our military, but they still crave the end of the New Deal.

Many Republicans prior to WWII cozied to Hitler because he was good for business. George Bush’s grandfathers both conducted business with Nazis even after we had declared war against Germany, having to be stopped by an act of Congress. It is true that Teddy Roosevelt was a genuine environmentalist and even Nixon did some good in this regard. But the modern Republican party primarily grew out of a reaction to the Civil Rights era. In the face of Democrat support for ending segregation, Republicans siphoned millions away from the Democratic part during the 1960s by appealing to racist mindsets. The south, historically solidly Democrat, shifted en masse to become a Republican bastion because Democrats and not Republicans wanted to give blacks an equal footing.

The foundation of the modern Republican party is made of repugnant elitism, the elitism of the racist and the elitism of the wealthy. It long ago ceased to be the party of the people. Any overview of the years since Lincoln will demonstrate to even the least observant that the tenets of the two parties have been completely swapped. The best word to describe the modern Republican is this: SELFISH.

The me-first and you-never Republican greed makes them the worst kind of citizen and the most foul patriot, the kind of parasite who drains the weal of the nation for short-term, personal gain. Another way of saying it, zeroing in on the most rabid right-wingers, is they are traitors. They think of themselves only and care not about the long-term fallout of their gluttony.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_07_17_atrios_archive.html#112196670535331303

I think we should seek the death penalty in this case and we’ll let Dillema, Lyle and Fake do the honor.

I doubt they’ll get much opposition and again America will be united.

Gotta go, gotta show to do but wanted to stop in and gloat that Bushco has been caught red handed.

Patrick Fitzgerald for Prez!

votetoimpeach.org