Bill Moyers Journal: Impeachment Part 1

The first in a series of Bill Moyers Journal entries on Bush and impeachment. My favorite line from Bruce Fein, who drew up the articles of impeachment on Bill Clinton:

"Congress in an invertebrate."

Entire Bush administration made of pussies

White House: Clinton shameless in Libby comments - CNN.com

I'm the last guy to -- pardon the pun -- pardon Bill Clinton for his, um, pardons: I think he went nuts in granting felons and miscreants pardons during his last days.

But Tony Snow is the pussy spokesman for the biggest pussy ever in the White House. These guys always -- ALWAYS -- point to Clinton as the poster child for everything that they do that is questioned.

"Clinton did it." The standard response. These guys not only have no morals, ethics, or collective conscience, they also are just like those little pricks in school who shout at you when you're a hundred yards away, and then stand behind the big bully (Dick Cheney) when close by.

I think Cheney would die of a heart attack if anyone ever stood up to him. Hey, there's an idea! Why doesn't somebody stand up to Dick?

I'm not the only guy who noticed this diversionary tactic away from the issue.

John Edwards' $400 haircuts

Do these guys never learn? Why get a $400 haircut when the same result could be gotten with a Flowbee.

Edwards' Haircuts Cost a Pretty Penny | The Huffington Post

Tony Snow on Executive Privilege

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com came up with this juicy piece of literature on the topic of "Executive Privilege," that interesting term invoked most often when a president is about to have his shorts pulled off in public (and, by the way, he forgot his underwear):

Evidently, [the President] wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.

One gets the impression that [the President] values [his] survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in [the President] will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold -- the rule of law.

Now, to whom do you think that Mr Tony Snow was referring? Bush Administration Press Secretary Tony Snow wrote the above in an op-ed titled "Executive Privilege is a Dodge" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on March 29, 1998, obviously before he was Press Secretary.

[The President], in this case, was Mr Bill Clinton. But didn't it sound like he was talking about any President who's just lost his shorts in a strip poker game?

Former President Gerald Ford dies at 93

They're all dead. Nixon, Reagan, Ford. Only Carter, Bush, and Clinton are left...

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Bush stumping for his Republican Congressmen

President George Bush is on the stump for some of his Republican Congressmen, who are most likely behind or running neck-and-neck with their opponents. One has to wonder why anyone would want Bush in their corner. He has one of the lowest approval ratings of any president, ever. In short, his stature with the American public sucks.

He is giving campaign speeches on 3 key topics:

1. Democrats don't have a plan for victory in Iraq. Neither does he. Oh, wait, his is private. Hey, maybe the Democrats have a private plan, too. You know, so they don't tip off the enemy when they win back control of both Houses. (I know, this is wishful thinking. At the very least, Karl Rove has rigged the machines again to give slim wins to Republicans, to make it look close.)
   
2. Democrats will make us less safe. As if we're safe with this joker. Security "theater" is being conducted right now. All the safety "precautions" we have to undergo at airports is just that -- theater. It doesn't make us any safer. And remember, the worst attack in 60 or so years on our own turf occurred during Bush's watch, when he was focused on the Cold War and Iraq, and took his eye off the ball (PDB entitled "bin Laden determined to attack" only one month before he did).
   
3. Democrats will raise taxes. Well, he may be right on this one. After all, Clinton raised taxes and look where that put us. The economy tanked (it didn't -- in fact, the economy was rip-roarin' nuts), the deficit grew out of control (oh, wait, the deficit went down under Clinton, UP during Bush, by a LOT), and people were throwing themselves out of buildings (oops, they did that only after Bush came to DC, when the NASDAQ fell from 5000 to less than 2000; oh, and when planes crashed into the two biggest buildings in America). And they might have to raise taxes to get our asses out of debt to the Chinese. The biggest threat to our existence is the Chinese and their having us by the collective debt balls.
   

Gay marriage? Has he been talking about this? I don't know. I only know what's reported on TV and I haven't seen any of his tripe about that. And it's probably good, now that one of the top "evangelicals" (Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a 30-million member body) in the country may have had a gay relationship with a male prostitute. Hmmm, cover my eyes and it's not there, I guess is what the Republicans are doing.

What with Mark Foley and other Congressional members hiding in the closet, only to have been outed by those they scurried naked around with at summer camp, the Republicans really look like a bunch of hypocritical, gay, confused, imbeciles. More in the next post when I talk about Laura Bush stooping -- um, stumping -- for Dick Pombo in Pleasanton this morning.

Nazi

Wikipedia lists these attributes for Nazism:

• nationalism,
  
• racism,
  
• totalitarism,
  
• homophobia,
  
• anti-Semitism, and
  
• anti-communism

The only thing the current administration isn't is anti-Semitical (we love the Israelis, to the detriment, I think, of the entire Middle East and beyond).

George Bush is not a Nazi. But our government certainly shares similar attributes. I will take each point one-by-one.

Nationalism

After 9/11, the overabundance of American flags on cars was ridiculous. I saw many cars and trucks, not with stickers of American flags, but with actual flags. One guy had a full-size Betsy Ross fastened to his pickup truck. That was outrageous.

Now, I was as heart-broken, shocked, scared, and stunned that America had been struck by terrorist as anyone else. I can remember that day like it was yesterday. The horror hasn't left me. The memory of the planes striking the Twin Towers, the fires, and the collapse of the buildings are etched forever behind my eyeballs. I have never been more afraid, on a national scale, than I had been then. I thought the world might be coming to an end.

However, I didn't put a freakin' flag on my car. I didn't wave Old Glory like I was better than anybody else. National pride is one thing. Back then, I was proud to be an American. Now, I am ashamed. I hope, soon, that my feelings will change.

After WWI, the Germans felt deeply ashamed of their plight. WWI caused WWII. The Germans were wracked with debt, inflation, poor self-image, and generally crappy living conditions. They were in the midst of a global Depression when Hitler arose as a national figure. He had charm. He had charisma. One might say that the typical German would like to share a brew with him. He was not looked upon as evil. Even after the atrocities started happening, Germans defended him.

Now, what this American administration has done is nothing close to the Holocaust. But it's pretty bad, not befitting a civlized society. Beatings, torture, detentions without due process. Secret spy planes taking "enemy combatants" to foreign lands and then beating them to death is not something I am proud of.

But we had to do something. What we should have done is kill bin Laden when we could have. And that's not Bill Clinton's fault. It's George Bush's fault, without a doubt. We didn't invade Afghanistan until 2 months after 9/11. Talk about giving the guy a lead! He left Afghanistan and surely fled to another "-stan."

So, we invaded Iraq. That's were the terrorists were (or were to be?), after all. You know, Sadaam Hussein loved the terrorists. I'm sure he was so in love with them that he had them all shot. Because terrorists don't operate well within a totalitarian regime. The dictator usually suffers some sort of delusion and is certainly paranoid that he's going to get blown up by somebody because he's just such a big dick.

Racism

Of course, President Bush is not a racist either. As Bill Maher puts it, Bush doesn't hate people. He just doesn't know they exist. Rather, it's a class thing with Bush and his cronies. There's the lower class, middle class, upper class, and uber class. (See the German reference? Witty, huh?) Bush belongs to the uber class. The uber class, otherwise known as the ownership society, is the only thing that matters. Witness Katrina, the assault on Social Security, the Medicare legislation, etc.

Of course, it only seems as though brown people make up the lower class. They're the ones you see on the news. But it's not true. There are more poor white folks than black, mainly as a function of there are more white people around than black.

So, much of our "racism" is really mischaracterized: It's really "classism."

But the recent electoral diversion called "immigration" has really stirred America's melting pot. A skeptic might call the debate a racist debate. It's a matter of "what's mine is mine." Most Americans are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Only the Native American Indians can truly be called "native." Anybody who wants to keep immigrants out ought to look at their lineage.

I'm all for legal immigration. But ask yourself this: If you were being paid $1 a day and could get $40 a day by crossing an invisible border, which could help you feed your family, would you do it? I'd say you're a deadbeat if you didn't say "Yes!"

It's still all about class, though. It's the case of the "haves" versus the "have nots."

Totalitarianism

If we aren't approaching totalitarianism, I don't know where we're going. From wikipedia:

Totalitarianism is a term...to describe modern regimes in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior...Common to all definitions is the attempt to mobilize entire populations in support of the state and a political or religious ideology, and the intolerance of activities which are not directed towards the goals of the state, such as involvement with labour unions, non-sanctioned churches or opposition political parties. Totalitarian regimes maintain themselves in political power by means of single-party state, secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cult, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics (political purges and persecution of specific groups of people).

This description seems to fit the current state of the union to a tee. Warrantless wiretapping, poring over phone and Internet records without any court orders, Faith-based initiatives, anti-Islam, Swift Boating, secret CIA prisons, FOX News, censored and filtered sound bites and audience participation at Bush rallies: All symptoms of the totalitarian disease.

Homophobia

The Defense of Marriage Act pretty much sums this one up. And the fact that gays cannot openly serve in the military. How many openly homosexual people are employed in Bush's cabinet? Now that the Mark Foley scandal has broken, it seems that there might be a lot of Republicans in the closet, but nobody's sayin'.

Anti-Communism

One of the main reasons 9/11 happened was because the Bush Administration took its eye off the ball (the ball being legitimate, plausible threats) and watched out for the Commies. Secretery of State Rice was selected for Bush's cabinet primarily becuase she's an expert on the Soviet Union (which, NEWSFLASH, fell during Bush I's reign. I guess the boy wasn't payin' attention). Rumsfeld had his first stint when the Soviets were a real threat. I guess he thought they were playing possum.

Anyhow, these guys were preoccupied with the Cold War. They didn't pay any attention to al Qaeda. They're nothing but anti-Communist.

Summary

It appears that the United States shares many of the attributes of Nazism. We've come a long way. Only it's the wrong way.