After 911, when President Bush's popularity was through the ceiling, Democrats offered no opposition when he trashed the Bill of Rights.
When his popularity slipped slightly, they let him steal the election and give Halliburton no-contract deals.
By the time his popularity was at the 50% level, they approved his use of torture and deniable of all rights for "terrorist" prisoners.
Truly frightened by his popularity when he reached the 33% level, they approved of his surge in Iraq.
With his outstanding popularity in the high 20s, they gave him billions and billions of more dollars to fight the Iraq war any way he wants.
When his popularity reaches 20 pct, they'll probably throw in the towel and dissolve the Democratic Party.
And when it reaches the teens, they'll approve the folding of Congress and declare him Decider for Life.
You probably don’t know about it. It certainly hasn’t been talked about in the corporate media, and not even in the alternative media on the Internet, or the alternative progressive magazines that I get. The Democrats in Congress refuse to even talk about it.
But, 13 state Democratic parties have now demanded impeachment.
Surprised? I was.
To the media and the national Democratic party, impeachment is a dead issue. The silence is deafening. I learned about the state Democratic party actions in a story at SmirkingChimp.com
[[ http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7576 ]]
The Iraq war is not going to end, the Bill of Rights is not going to be protected, the drive toward a US dictatorship is not going to be stopped, unless or until Bush and Cheney are impeached.
It’s as simple as that.
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family spent a year eating locally, avoiding food that was transported hundreds or thousands of miles, burning great amounts of fossil fuel and helping to destroy the planet.
In the process, they also avoided all highly processed foods --- i.e. foods that bear as much relationship to nutrition as the Bush regime does to democracy.
In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she describes the family dynamics, the challenges of eating locally, and life on an Appalachia farm where they grew most of their own food, including turkeys.
And she champions the use of a great word to describe a person who is moving away from eating gas guzzling foods --- locavore.
Becoming more of a locavore seems the way to go for a rad/lib like me.
Greg Palast, one of the finest and most gutty newsmen in the world, reflecting on American media:
"We've got loads of terrific investigative reporters in America, but gutless editors...Think of the punishment inflicted for the crime of investigative reporting. Seymour Hersh told me he was forced out of the New York Times and Bob Parry, the guy who busted open the Iran-Contra story, was pushed out of the Associated Press.
"On the other hand, Bob Woodward, who had his journalistic tongue up George Bush's rectum, who went from writing 'All the President's Men' to being one of the President's men, is doing just fine."
After listening to the Republican presidential debate, Margaret Kimberley says: "All the candidates believe in the manifest destiny of white men to do whatever the hell they want, namely keep brown people and women under control. Their ideology can be summed up in 50 words or less:
*Americans have the right to kill.
*Americans love God, married couples and pregnant women.
*War is good.
*Ronald Reagan was a saint.
*Muslims, especially Iranians, must die.
*Taxes are bad.
*Fetuses are sacred.
*Immigrants are bad.
*Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are evil. "
Well, actually they could be right on that last point.
.
Corporatism is destroying the world.
It is responsible for wars, environmental degradation to the point of ecological collapse, and a dangerously narrow food supply.
I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." I started to say 'reading with delight', but given some of the things that she addresses, delight isn't the word. But it is engrossing.
In it she recounts one of the most outrageous examples of corporate madness and arrogance I've ever encountered. Several years ago in Saskatchewan a farmer's canola crop was contaminated by a wayward Monsanto genetically modified gene that had blown in from a nearby field.
Monsanto sued the farmer for using its patented gene, and won. The farmer appealed all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, and Monsanto won again. He was using their seed, after all, and hadn't paid for it.
It's rather like a rape victim being successfully sued by the rapist for receiving his seed.
Because I'm not currently driving, I don't pay as much attention to gas prices as I used to. This past weekend I did and was startled by the surge.
Back when a Democrat was president, a jump of two cents a gallon was news. Now with a Republican in the White House still beloved by the corporate media, a jump of $.20 goes mostly unnoticed --- as has the doubling in price since 2001.
Since they bought the White House and the Congress a decade or so ago, things are sure sweet for the corporations, particularly the oil companies.
Isn't it a wonder that whether we are talking about CITGO that gets it’s oil from Venezuela, or BP that gets a lot of it’s oil from the North Sea, or Royal Dutch Shell operating out of the Netherlands, or Exxon-Mobile, they can all sell their gas for almost exactly the same price at the pump.
It must be a coincidence, of course, because the FTC is guarding against price-fixing, aren't they?
"Some of these people frighten me," former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel said during a Democratic presidential debate.
Me too.
He was speaking particularly about the possibility of the US using nuclear weapons against Iran. "[if] I'm president of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices," Gavel said. "...it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy."
But of the eight candidates on the stage in the South Carolina debate, only Gravel and Rep. Kucinich would flat rule out nukes.
Gavel and Kucinich are the only two sane candidates, Republican or Democrat, so naturally, they don't stand a chance.
That's in large part a result of a truth that Gavel dared speak during the debate: "The military industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture."
In large part, they also control presidential debates through the media they own which will play a major role in choosing the nominee --- by sponsoring debates, and by framing the way candidates are seen by the public.
Get ready for a lot more wars.