Rice on Torture: This is your baby, go do it!

Condoleezza Rice orders war crimes...

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The "Green Zone Fog" seems to only effect republicans

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), gets called out for his outright lies by Wolf Blitzer of CNN:

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A Prescient Thought to Ponder, Especially for Republicans

By Frank J. Ranelli


A Bush proclivity for secrecy, a reputation for arrogance and power grabs, and openly flouting the rule of law has one conservative Republican asking, “Do we candidly desire reaping what we have sown over the past six-plus years?”

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A short article entitled, More Bush-Congress court fights likely, is an interesting and contemplative piece highlighting the aggressiveness and smugness – including outright hubris – of the Bush Administration’s transgression of, and secretive standards by, a belligerent and confrontational President, that far exceeds Nixon’s pugnacious approach, has operated under since January 20, 2001.


Contained within this brief but telling essay, by Associated Press writer Charles Babington, is a keen and perceptive quote from Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general throughout the Reagan administration.


"The Bush administration is close to reducing Congress to wallpaper, when it comes to oversight, if Congress does not respond" more forcefully, he said. Republicans, he added, may come to regret the precedents that Bush is asserting. "I tell my Republican friends that Hillary Clinton will be the president some day," Fein said. "They just don't get it."


Fein, a strong conservative and constitutional lawyer, also recently spoke to Bill Moyers on PBS about Bush’s power grabs and over-reaching, calling for his (Bush’s) impeachment, critically reminded Moyers and us all why the Founders fittingly feared an unchecked executive by stating, “Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium.” That “equilibrium”, or symmetry and balance, has been vilely attacked and to a great extent neutralized under the Bush Administration. Abuse indeed, has been bountiful.


Of course, Fein is reminding the Republicans, and their supporters, of the old axiom that quips, “Be careful of what you wish for; for someday you may actual receive it”. Moreover, by abdicating and bequeathing many of Congress’ co-equal capacities under the Constitution to Bush, that this continued genuflecting to an egocentric, deeply unpopular President may likely be returned in kind, in the very near future. And the Republicans may find the fruits of their disgracefully obsequious labor to be a very fetid orchard crop of ill-advised deference once an exchange of power ensues.


Power only has as much clout and muscle, by that which it is given by those who bow or consent to it. In addition, power, no matter how seemingly omniscient and enduring is only immortal for an exceedingly limited time. No matter how consolidated, power habitually and frequently changes hands. When it does, the invertebrates that acquiesced and yielded to a flawed fallacy of permanent supremacy – and helped bring it about – always tend to have a rude and unpleasant revelation.


Recipients of power through overturn then tend to use the very monopoly of authority that the previous preponderance of blind ambition errantly and extemporaneously built, by relegating the erstwhile primacy to the minority, and therefore the retributive target of, the new pre-eminence. History is replete with examples of terrible and devastating consequences of such precarious power plays and shifts for omnipotence rule.


What Bruce Fein is suggesting, in fact pleading for, is for Congress to act as a whole and synchronous body of our Government, in the interest of our Nation, and not continue this sycophantic behavior to a supercilious Executive bent on an imperial presidency. To prolong doing so begets the very question Fein posited in his very quote above for all Republicans (and perhaps the rest of us) to deliberate, “Do you genuinely desire the near unmitigated and proto-despotic powers Bush has defacto claimed in the hands of President Hillary Clinton?”

Democracy Interrupted

By FRANK J. RANELLI




Why we as a nation, have been titrated, which is the gradual increasing of dosage, pressure, and propaganda, till the desired effect – an inured and compliant society – have willingly bequeathed away our autonomy of self-government, embraced the genesis of tyranny, and begin our seemingly inexorable march towards dictatorship.


Part IV of the "American Democracy in Crisis" series.

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If the past is prologue, then the present may be prescient. Each day, many of us awaken to a queasy feeling of unrest, knowing that the rule of law is under assault. The Constitution is in jeopardy and our unassailable rights to an egalitarian society are quickly being abolished. Television, newspapers, blogs, and a litany of books are reminiscent in our collective conscience that America has been browbeaten into trading peace for war, liberties for securities, sovereignty for safety, and blood for oil.

Our reputation on the world’s stage is indelibly stained by pernicious acts of imperialism, hegemony, blind patriotism, and outright incompetence by Washington’s power brokers and their agents of avarice. Yet, beyond dystopian polls and sparse demonstrations, Americans seem unwilling to accept and are extraordinarily unaware, that tyranny is taking root here in America.

We have ran the gamut of – and sadly sanctioned – some of the most unconceivable and heinous measures in American history. The Military Commissions Act, The Patriot Act, The Domestic Wiretapping Program, ignored the Geneva Conventions, revoked habeas corpus and engaged in torture. We removed our selves from the world’s courts, attacked and now occupy a country that never posed a grave or imminent danger to our own nation and then failed to adequately care for the pointlessly wounded soldiers, evident by the Walter Reed Hospital debacle.

The Justice Department enacted by law and created in1870, to make certain fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans was carried out under the law, has been purely politicized. It has been altered and grotesquely mutated into a blanket of immunity for loyalty and allegiance to an autocratic president that has throttled our nation to the point of snuffing out all legitimacy of our national system of jurisprudence.

Alberto Gonzales, the empty suite at the head of the Department of Justice, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate in 2005, not only repeated lies with impunity, but also obediently abdicates his sworn duty. He obsequiously yielded to Bush’s wild assertions of executive privilege and steadfastly refused to pursue Congress’ mandated contempt citations for Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton. Justice, by these lawless actions, is not being served, but is abruptly being handed its hat.

The commutation of I. Scooter Libby, an obstructionist of the law and felon, reminds us that justice is no longer in service in the interest of integrity and impartiality. Justice is now enslaved to the bidding of the Bush Administration and serves only to provide shelter and safe haven for loyal soldiers within a rogue, Mafioso-style executive branch.

Pre-emptive war planning operatives, such as John Yoo, David Addington, Paul Wolfowitz, the infamous “Torture Memo”, the radical “Unitary Executive Theory”, unconstitutional signing statements, the shocking Abu Ghraib torture pictures, The Project for a New America Century’s outlandish, 1998 white paper entitled, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, all signify we are on an inexorable march towards dictatorship.

It should now be brutally apparent and undoubtedly understood by all that the Bush Administration is not merely above the law; it is the law. Our seven-year autocracy has now morphed into full despotism. Bush and his actors of austerity, beyond all doubt, are desperados who are unrestrained and unfettered, severing all ties with restraint and decency, decorum and sound judgment. The nascent Nixon enterprising years of imperialism and lawlessness are feeble by contrast.

We have rhetoric from armchair members of Congress who assert, “This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful[1]”, and then refuse to breathe life into the comatose corpse of a once proud and functioning democracy by taking impeachment, the people’s remedy for the infringement of our independence, “off the table.” Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats are quite content to allow Bush to self-destruct, in full view of the nation, while the U.S wreaks havoc in the Middle-East, in order to create what they falsely believe will be a landslide election weighted heavily for the Democrats by Bush's massive blunders and political collapse.

Thirty plus years after Nixon's failed coup d'état, George W. Bush has taken the idea of a tyrannical, presidential despot, at the helm of the Executive Branch, to dizzying heights and abject lows in America in the 21st century. Bush has now fully entrenched himself – in a twisted, extravagant, bravado-ridden version of Richard Nixon – by stonewalling every action Congress takes, as a totalitarian ruler, more bellicose and bombastic than his previous six years of pompous swagger and reckless governing.

The juxtaposition of these two loggerheads – an ineffectual Congress and an imperial President – leads to the will of the people being usurped, subjugated, and silenced. The People no longer have a voice in this government, for it is no longer our government as much as it is no longer a democracy. What America has become is an autocracy operated by lobbyists, mega-corporations, the military-industrial complex, and the whores in Washington that these power brokers, in a very fascist way, have bought politicians’ loyalty, acquiescence, and obedience. Contrary to the revisionist history so may of us are indoctrinated with, and unswervingly clutch to without reason or true examination of the facts, is our nation is run by an oligarchy.

Our will as a nation is not being done for a very simple reason. We, as a nation, have been titrated – the gradual increasing of dosages, pressure, and propaganda – till the desired effect, an inured and complicit society, have willingly bequeathed away our autonomy of self-government. We have bestowed our birthright to despotic rulers who do not find fear in – or seek shelter from – the near unanimous disapproval of the people they suppress and subdue[2]. They seek not the consent of the people for they seek only allegiance and adherence to their own reprehensible, egocentric, and depraved pursuits for power, money, and authoritarian control. Never in America's past has an assault on the truth and freedom been waged so viciously nor have the American people been so reprehensibly divided and utterly deceived by men we never truly elected in the first place.

What is prescient about the present is the deafening silence in which we fail to speak out, take action, or demand accountability. George Bush and Dick Cheney are the epitome of, the embodiment of, the exact personification of, what the founders feared in an autocratic oppressor, the rise of a despot to the presidency, and how that despot would come to exist. The framers of the Constitution gave us all the tools we need, without the shedding of blood, to ensure the rights and freedoms of the people remained intact and attempts at tyranny or oppression were rejected and ultimately beaten back.

We have to begin to change the framing of peoples’ mind first, and then explain the actions that need to be taken. No matter what or how somber the facts are, if the framing, the paradigm within which people operate is not changed, then no transformation will take place.

The only proper instrument for accountability and transformation – when a president becomes despotic in his actions – is impeachment, trial, and removal for failure to respect and honor the Constitution and faithfully execute the laws of the land. Impeachment is a just and necessary remedy and we must immediately diverge away from the idea that it takes away from other work Congress should and can be doing. When you have a president who openly flouts and disobeys the law, intentionally attempts to erase the separation of powers of our tripartite government and assume dictatorial powers, no legitimate work, which will stand as the rule of law for all men, can be realized.

Here is the straightforward reason why impeachment is a mandate to return to a working democracy: No matter what legislation Congress passes, Bush will veto it, ignore it, or add a dubious “signing statement”, making unilateral claims he may disregard it or claim the bill is "unconstitutional", plainly bypassing the judicial process of the Supreme Court, as well. As many historians have appropriately point out, not even King George III of England had or assumed these kinds of authoritarian powers.

The fabric of democracy is feeling the strain and we must unburden our country, through impeachment, from a despotic president and a dangerous vice-president who uses fear and subjugation to rule by and not the rule of law to govern our nation by. There can and must be far more significant consequences for all of these abuses of power and executive anarchy, or the actions of Bush and Cheney will simply become historical precedence for future abuses by future presidents, whether a republican or a democrat.


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[1] Senator Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin, on Meet the Press, July 22, 2007
[2] 71% of Americans Disapprove of the Way Bush is Handling His Job; July 23, 2007, American Research Group

Soldier Challenges Bush & Congress to Step into the Morass

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Specialist Michael Vassell:

“I challenge anybody in Congress to do my rotation... Because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year-old who don’t know what they’re doing...I challenge the president to ride along with me for 15 months."

Click on the link below and watch the ABC video of an,

"Exclusive Look at Soldiers on the Front Line"

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3383873

This rare, candid and somber video confirms, in lurid and stark details, of the daily horrors and despair that soldiers and Iraqis face together, while Bush prosecutes his 'War on Terror" in Iraq.

The casualties in this video include, six U.S. soldiers burned to death in an up-ended Humvee from an IED, an old woman's wits; whose tears and shrieks of terror echo eerily in your mind long after the video stops, and finally a taxi driver erroneously shot to death by over-vigilant, weary and nervous American troops -- from an extended 15-month tour -- who was circling a neighborhood looking for an address to pick up a customer.

Six U.S. soldiers, an old woman and a cab driver: fighting "them" there, so we don't have to fight them here....

Think about it, America.

No Time, No Spine! Democratically Controlled Congress Capitulates to Bush’s War of Perpetuity!

BY FRANK J RANELLI


Minimum wage increase trumps ending Bush’s war, Democrats cave and bow to Bush’s demand of perpetual war funds.


The mainstream media is reporting that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their minions of enablers in the Democratic Party are waving the white flag and acquiescing to Bush’s bullying and demand for a “clean bill” to fund his illegitimate Iraq war for a further six months. All timelines for withdraw are to be removed from the latest legislation. The conciliation is yet another example “proving the posit” that the Democrats do not want to end this war; they were only posturing and prevaricating for the press and the people who elected them.


Exactly what, if anything, does Bush have to concede in order to receive his unending endowment of evil? In full display of cowardice and spinelessness, Reid and Pelosi appear to accept Bush’s pledge to approve of a federal minimum wage increase – a pittance and trifle amount of 70-cent increases over the next three years – in exchange for 124 billion dollars to wage an incessant, insidious and pointless war of belligerence.


What’s going on here? Congress is, and has always been, complicit in this war of aggression and inhumane act of senseless death and violence. The Democrat's opposition to Bush’s illegal act of hostility was a canard and merely to appease the anti-war advocates for voting them into office. I will say it again, as I did in my last article, the Democrats do not wish to end, nor reign in Bush, the war or his de facto expanded powers; they wish to possess it.


A long over-due federal, minimum wage increase for unmitigated mayhem, American supremacy and hegemony is how Democrats define “success” and is the essence of the Clintonian triangulation strategy. Give enormous concessions to the power-that-be and throw a few inklings of goodwill to the disadvantaged in hopes of atonement for their unforgivable transgressions against the real underpinnings of this country.


Bush, the “Dour” Furor, has finally gotten his wish.

Vigilante Troops Doll Out Ultra-harsh Punishment for Stealing Wood!

A group of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq – true knuckle-heads in this case – decided to be judge, jury and executioner all on their own – to a group of Iraqis who where accused of stealing some wood. What these lowbrow, crude meatheads extemporaneously decided upon, likely without orders or authorization from any superiors, was to teach the cowering, unarmed, and helpless Iraqi civilians a lesson in American might and Red-White & Blue justice.

These dullards of dimwittedness, while hovering over a group of crouching, frightened men and even a child, try in hopeless vane to admonish them for their petty theft while speaking in English. When the language barrier proves too much, this group of “defacto sheriffs” take matters into their own hands.

After some pompous chest beating and mugging for the camera, two of these mental midgets pull out their side arms, indiscriminately open-fire on the car and shoot out the windows and the tires. Still loaded with testosterone, “GI Joe” and his henchmen decide to crush the car with their tank. Rolling over the car several times with the massive force of the burgeoning tank, they smash the car flat and then offer a chilling declaration of how justice had been served by announcing, “That’s what you get when you loot!”

Later, the narrator tells us the owner of the car was a taxi cab driver who needed the car for his livelihood. So much for the crime fitting the punishment and another case of heroes to zeros status for our U.S. military. No wonder we are not seen as liberators and greeted with flowers at our feet. If this is liberation and freedom, then perhaps the Iraqis might prefer and long-for the good old days of Saddam.

Certainly, these lug-headed thugs are not ultimately to blame. Placing mere children in a foreign land with “big boy toys” is the ill-fated decision of our glib Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush. With brash, ill-advised statement like “bring ‘em on” from Bush, it’s no wonder morality, fairness and a sense of dignity has been lost in the message to our service men and women.

It makes you wonder, “Just who are the terrorists and who is using weapons of mass destruction on whom?”