The One and Only Reason to Love Bush
Leaving Bush behind, the old bedraggled Texan that he is now, will be easy and somehow just pitiful. Cheney, on the other hand, I’d love to see burn in hell. He’s the sinister force behind Bush’s (I’m being generous here) vulnerable ignorance. Cheney took the office of the vice president to new levels of executive control, at times even bypassing (“protecting”) the president from controversial executive decisions.
Past vice presidents have attempted to assume greater authority, with results that just look quaint next to Cheney. From Mark O. Hatfield and the Senate Historical Office:
In assuming substantive policy responsibilities, vice presidents often ran afoul of cabinet secretaries whose territories they invaded. As administration lobbyists, they also irritated members of Congress. My favorite example of this problem occurred in 1969. President Nixon had pledged to give his vice president a significant policy-making role and – for the first time – an office in the White House itself. Spiro Agnew was determined to make the most of that role and to expand his legislative functions as well. Since he lacked previous legislative experience, he had the Senate parliamentarian tutor him on the intricacies of Senate floor procedure. Soon he began to inject himself into the course of Senate proceedings, contrary to the well-worn practice that constrained his predecessors. During the debate over the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty, Agnew approached Idaho Republican Senator Len Jordan and asked how he was going to vote. “You can’t tell me how to vote!” said the shocked senator. “You can’t twist my arm!” At the next regular luncheon of Republican senators, Jordan accused Agnew of breaking the separation of powers by lobbying on the Senate floor, and announced the “Jordan Rule.” Under his rule, if the vice president tried to lobby him on anything, the senator would automatically vote the other way.
What did Cheney do?
According to a 2004 Executive Intelligence Review article, Cheney was already, pre-2004 election, racking up impeachable offenses. Remember the invisible weapons of mass destruction? The author says:
Cheney, beyond all other Administration officials, was the Joseph Goebbels of the Iraq war. As recently as his media interviews in Switzerland and Italy in late January, he continued to lie about Iraq’s weapons, claiming that several trailers seized by American inspectors, following the March 2003 invasion, were mobile bio-weapons labs.
David Kay, the CIA’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq until his hasty mid-January resignation, made clear in interviews and in testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 28, that these trailers had nothing to do with WMD. Former CIA chief of counterterrorism Vincent Cannistraro told Salon magazine on Jan. 29, “It’s disgusting. I just can’t find words to describe how horrible it is…. It just illustrates the peculiar worldview Cheney has and how distorted it is.
Here’s a quote from an NPR article in which Washington Post reporter Bart Gellman, author of Angler, discusses Cheney:
“Cheney created a new doctrine in which the president was accountable to no one in his decisions as commander in chief,” Gellman said. “What was new and innovative here, and quite radical, was the notion that the president’s interpretation could not be challenged, that because the executive is a separate branch, courts and Congress could not tell the president, in any way, how to exercise his powers as commander in chief.”
Indeed, so pervasive was Cheney’s control that when lawyers from the National Security Agency, which was conducting the domestic surveillance, went to the Justice Department to look at the legal opinion authorizing the warrantless surveillance, Cheney’s lawyer, Addington, showed up and angrily told them they had no right to see it.
On keeping Bush in the dark about the surveillance program, Gellman says:
“You had the FBI director, attorney general, the next five levels of officials — which is a couple of dozen people — in the Justice Department, the general counsel of the CIA and the FBI, were all going to resign, in principle because they believed this program was unlawful,” Gellman said. “And George Bush didn’t know it until an hour before it was going to happen.”
And are you ready for this? The New York Times reported last week that Bush rejected Israel’s request for bombs to drop on Iran. According to the NPR article:
When the president refused to give bunker-busting bombs to the Israelis for use against Iran’s nuclear sites, the president’s decision was made over Cheney’s objection, according to a high-ranking former administration official.
The Bush legacy is not pretty. But PROPS to Dub because in the end, he saved us from Cheney.
~Elation~
Whew!! It’s been a LOOOOOOOOONG eight years. But this morning, I am feeling redeemed. Our country was hijacked for too long by people who co-opted the word ‘freedom’, eroding it all the while bantering it about like a marketing slogan. Freedom and liberty aren’t just words, they’re deeply-held values. So, in celebration of those values, here is the TOP TEN LIST OF THINGS I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO UNDER OBAMA:
10.
No more Sarah Palin! You betcha she’s a great governor for Alaska and all, but can we get her off the national stage? Also? Please?
9.
Justice John Paul Stephens, who at 88 years of age has held out admirably, can now retire. THANK YOU JUSTICE STEPHENS!
8.
Proposition 8 may lose in California, but we are, once again under Obama, a country that stands up for individual freedoms in the face of discrimination. Gay civil rights are coming. Keep fighting!
7.
A more humane response to any national tragedy. Remember Bush when he was notified of the 9/11 attacks? The seven-minute blank non-response? Can you imagine how very differently Obama would’ve handled 9/11 or Katrina? Healthcare, or lack thereof, counts to me as a national tragedy. We are too rich a nation to let our own people suffer without care.
6.
A return to the balance of power between the branches of government. Goodbye to the abuse of executive orders. WOOT!! CHENEY’S FINALLY OUT!
5.
An end to the Bush Doctrine. Pre-emptive strikes? Insanity. And a violation of International Law. A pre-emptive strike in defense is a poorly masked act of hegemony at best, an outright invasion of a sovereign country at worst.
4.
A return to ANY form of fiscal responsibility. Can we say, $10 trillion in debt? According to Kathleen Parker, Bush “spends like a day-wager on a three-day drunk.”
3.
A return to sanity for Women’s Reproductive Rights and international support for Family Planning. Enough with the archaic, anti-woman dogma that led Bush to ban all support for international family planning organizations within hours of his inauguration. You get the feeling that all those millions of poor starving third world babies are invisible to religious extremists. Of any flavor.
2.
Goodbye Gitmo and all the shame it stood for. When detainees protested by attempting suicide, the Pentagon reclassified suicides as “manipulative self-injurious behaviors.” When detainees protested with hunger strikes, they were force fed with tubes down their throats. In June of 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that internees at Guantanamo Bay were entitled to habeus corpus since Combatant Status Review Tribunals were determined to be an inadequate substitute for representation before a fair court to determine if they were held justly. I am looking forward to a return to individual rights and freedoms, even for accused foreign peoples. If they are truly “terrorists” or criminals, the truth will out. Arbitrary imprisonment without review is Stalin’s legacy, not ours.
1.
Most of all, I am looking forward to a sane and reasonable president who instills confidence with his calm, his intellect, and his compassion. This is a man I respect and am proud to call our next president.
The Argument Against CA Prop 8
I could vote NO on Proposition 8 because I have gay friends and relatives who would want me to. I could vote NO on Proposition 8 because I don’t care that much if gay people get married because it doesn’t really affect me directly. But those reasons are the weak side of the argument.
Most of the Prop 8 supporters that I know want to see gay marriage overturned because they are opposed on religious grounds. Gay marriage makes them uncomfortable. According to the Bible, they say, it’s wrong. One friend actually whipped out the “next they’ll be marrying horses and dogs” argument. She’s intelligent. I was pretty shocked.
The NO on Prop 8 campaign today announced that the secret $1 million donor to Prop 8 has been revealed: Alan Ashton, of Lindon, Utah. According to the Deseret News, Ashton is a Mormon and grandson of David O. McKay, President of the Mormon Church from 1951-1970. Ashton made his fortune in software.
The major force behind the proposition is church groups. No real surprise there except that our state, our country, has as a fundamental tenet: freedoms shall not be limited by a tyranny of the majority. John Stuart Mills famous essay, “On Liberty,” argues that:
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
In fewer words, it’s wrong to allow the majority to dictate their morality onto others when the majority suffers no injury from the minority. Don’t take away liberty just to assuage your own discomfort with people who are different from you!
The line between church and state is functional and appropriately drawn in this argument. If your church chooses NOT to sanctify gay marriage, great. That’s a religious choice. But if the state discriminates against gay marriage on religious grounds, something’s gone very wrong. The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage for the right reasons. The law recognizes the needs and fundamental LEGAL rights of these individuals to enter into a binding contract known as “marriage.” For financial reasons. To own joint property. For medical benefits, and death benefits, and parental rights, and for all the reasons that straight people get legally married.
If your only argument against gay marriage is religious, it’s time to admit you’re making a mistake. On election day, do the right thing for other human beings who deserve the same legal rights as you. Vote NO on Prop 8.
Sums It Right Up!
Brilliant video for the pro-Obama camp. Only 9 days to election! GO OBAMA!! Don’t let that door hit ya on the WAY OUT Mr. Bush!
Thanks Andrew Sullivan at the AWESOME Daily Dish.
Dear Religious Right: It’s My God, Too
I am positively ecstatic about the shift in the cultural tide, away from the stifling narrowness of the neoconservatives. We’re moving towards a more liberal agenda and policies, but we’re also seeing a long-needed resurgence of traditional conservatism with its fiscal restraint and hope for smaller government. While Sarah Palin managed to “energize the base” (whose “base”? “Base” of what exactly?), the backlash has been energizing for the rest of us.
Colin Powell stepped up in support of American Muslims and Jon Stewart led the smackdown on Palin and McCain’s “real America” claims. We’re getting closer, but we’re not there yet. Obama needs to get elected, conservatives need to put forth substantive candidates who don’t pander to the religious right, and the rest of us need to continue to reclaim our country, and especially, our God.
I am not a born-again Christian. Technically, I’m not even a Christian. Neither am I an agnostic. I believe there is most definitely a “God” though I am of the belief that we as humans are too simple to even begin to comprehend the depth and breadth of what God is. I believe we have a sense of God, a palpable sense that we define for ourselves. This definition takes the form of many religions and views. The sooner we come to understand that it’s the same God we all feel, the better, more humble, less punitive, and certainly more tolerant we’ll become.
While I espouse tolerance, I tread the fine line that many of us struggle with: I have no tolerance for zealots. I can’t stand abortion clinic bombers, nor can I bear Jewish or Islamic extremists who sow intolerance and promote war. One thing my palpable feeling of God taught me is that violence is not the answer.
The religious right in this country offends me because, like many religions, they claim to have exclusive 
rights to God. That smug, narrow-minded, ignorant thinking, that Sarah Palin arrogance, has no place in American politics, no place in this country where diversity and religious freedom are two of our greatest accomplishments.
If the World Could Vote, They’d Elect Obama in a LANDSLIDE
I love the Internet. There just so much cool stuff out there. Well, at least now that more websites have come online, cause you know it just wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t surf very far or very long without running into porn.
Here’s a very cool site called If the World Could Vote where Internet users from all over the world vote for US presidential candidates. The numbers are staggering in support of Obama. When you realize how much of the future of the world is riding on this election, the mudslinging dis-information campaign about Obama as a Muslim terrorist goes beyond absurd. It reaches the level of globally offensive. (I think I’ll coin that term right here: GLOBALLY OFFENSIVE!) And I call bullsh*t on the latest AP Poll that supposedly shows Obama and McCain in a very tight race. I am hoping and praying that sanity prevails. Do we need to pass a Constitutional Amendment right now that counts only half a vote for people who are obviously REALLY STUPID?!
Being the person who practices impartiality and tolerance for all people, I draw the line at that select voter, the willful ignoramus. This quote is from the comments section of a lengthy post by a Christian Republican outlining the verifiable perpetrators of the Obama-as-Muslim rumors:
Read your Quaran- honey.
A Muslim is a Muslim is a Muslim.
If they “say” they are a Christian- they will die,
BUT- If they “lie- for a greater purpose” they are exhonerated. (All those virgins and stuff LOL)
What greater “lie” has Obama told- than by trying to steal (ACORN) the presidency???
Do you know Google?
The ideologues have a problem with the truth!
YOU CAN’T HANDLE the TRUTH!
~CoolPillow
Clearly this guy needs the cool pillow for his hot head. It’s not a good thing when someone can be presented with facts and research but continue to espouse an angry untruth. And, as many have pointed out, what if Obama was actually a Muslim? This would not make him a bad person! It’s really the practice of calling him “an other”, an alien, and I can only guess, substitutes for calling him race-based epithets.
If anyone wants to fund that Constitutional Amendment, I’ll promote it right here!
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