Akin to Sherman's march in the Civil War the Republicans will wage "total war" in the 2008 election. Why? Because they will lose at the county, state and national levels due to the ideological purity by their candidates of having America become a completely corporatist state both inside and through the use of military force to export that ideal to any country in the world.

Richard Viguerie, who is one of the fathers of the modern conservative movement, writes this:

The truth is that they know the Republicans are very, very likely going to lose the presidency anyway. And they are fine with it. It brings them together. Here's old hand Richard Viguerie making his pitch for GOP to lose in 2006:

[Sometimes a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.

Conservatives are, by nature, insurgents, and it’s hard to maintain an insurgency when your friends, or people you thought were your friends, are in power.

.

They use their time out of power to grow their movement and one of the main ways they do this is by obstructing anything positive the Democrats want to do. They are organized around the principle of being insurgents --- outsiders --- victims. It is not in their interest to cooperate with Democrats.

 (h/t to Digby)

I would say that once the primaries are over with then what we will be fighting against is that nothing will be off limits by the Republicans agains the Democrats.

The Bush administration will not stand by to see a Democratic candidate win the presidential election because there are too many scandals that have real constitutitonal and international implications for the new administration to ignore.

Imagine the South Carolina Republican presidential primary campaign in 2000 waged on a national scale.  Since the FEC is no longer a functioning agency because there are not enough commissioners to vote on election challenges and problems.  It was in the interest of Republicans not to have one in this election.

I've read some of the minor dust ups with Obama and Hillary but that will be nothing to what Republicans will do.  Republicans will be out to destroy the will of the people as they have done so in the last year through any means possible.

With a complict corporate media that allows Republicans a free hand to road block a progressive agenda that the American people want.  The media has failed to tell the Americans that Republicans are against reform because they cannot govern America.

What does America have under Republican rule?  

Debt and Death.

What kind of campaigns will Republicans run?  Fear and hatred will be the underpinnings of the Republican election campaigns.  Fear of the brown people.  Hatred of all that is not white.  Who is running for president in the Republican party?  Old, white men.   

Remember that Uncle Freddy Thompson has stated that there is no woman in America who is qualified to be President.

Remember that Mike Huckabee believes that a wife must be subservient to the husband in marriage.

The Republican Party rushing back to 1492 A.D. 

Who cares about the Fourth Amendment to the Constititution?

I can only hear the sound of crickets in the field. 

Nobody. 

Check this out from Privacy International's annual review for 2007 for "Leading Surveillance Socities in the World".   With the entire world backsliding for unrestricted government spying on their own citizens because of the faulty reasoning of this Bush inspired mantra of "the global war on terror" which is nothing more than a power grab by the masters of the world.

The United States of America is at the bottom of the heap, too.  The bulwark of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that is a shield against government from being too intrusive into the privacy of Americans has been discarded in a few short years because of the fear of being killed.  

But what is life without liberty?

A living death.

The verdict is in:  Americans prefer a living in slavery because being alive is better than being free and dead. 

Happy holidays!

This is not saving anybody any money:

Medicaid Funding for Schools Cut

The Bush administration yesterday eliminated about $700 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements to schools, sidestepping an attempt by Congress to block such a move.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expected to save the federal government $3.6 billion over five years, transferring those costs to school districts.

Another lump of coal for people who want to see their property taxes raised to pay for services that the federal government has an obligation to pay for.

Meanwhile, Turkey bombs Iraq again.

On Sunday, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker repeated his government's line that Turkey has a right to defend itself against the PKK rebels.

This is not the "hot pursuit" idea being used by Mr. Bush to give legal cover to his incursions into other countries in pursuit of "terrorists".  But these actions by Turkey are acts of war against another sovereign nation.  Iraq has international law on its side to defend itself, if it so choses, to use military force to defend itself and its citizens from armed military agression by Turkey.  

A big lump of coal to the people of Iraq curtersy of the puppet government of Iraq by He Who Cannot Be Named.

Finally the American people will be crushed by the predatory banking industry:

The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

Gee I wonder why the default rate is so high?

Even after the recent spike in bad loans, the credit card business is still quite lucrative, thanks to interest rates that can run as high as 36 percent, plus late fees and other penalties. [my emphasis]

Predatory lending practices that You Know Who will do nothing about because he is only for the rich people.

I guess it is Fight Club Time for the banking industry:

Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. [my emphasis]

Let's bring the truth to those who want to keep pulling the wool over our eyes in the face of reality against an advertised reality. 

Glenn Greenwald writes on the FISA filibuster by Dodd and Reid's view:

It's one thing to watch Congressional Democrats fail to stand up to any of the Bush abuses. It's another thing entirely to watch as they actively enable them. But they've now moved beyond even that to actually perceiving as their Enemy anyone -- such as "Dodd and his allies" -- who seeks to disrupt their Bush-enabling efforts and, worst of all, who infects their rituals with any dirty, outside riff-raff, such as actual citizens.

But wait it goes to the attitude that the first woman Speaker of the House Nancy Pelos.  This was written by Digby:

Though crediting activists for their "passion," Pelosi called it "a waste of time" for them to target Democrats. "They are advocates," she said. "We are leaders."

Uhm, not exactly, Nance. They're citizens. And you work for them. That inconvenient first amendment was put in the constitution so you wouldn't forget that.

We are to vote for Democratic party candidates, get them elected, have majorities in Congress then what?  For the Democratic leadership to crap on the voters?

This is what they are saying...Elect us then we will crap all you, the voter, and enable Mr. Bush to destroy the Constitution?

If somebody wants to run in the Democratic Party primary against DeGette I will be the first to contribute and volunteer.

Who will step up?

Imagine a disaster that destroys your city. Then in the aftermath you have been taken hundreds of miles away to live "temporarily". Finally you come back to see that where you live will be razed for "mixed income" housing of condos.

This is what is happening in New Orleans. People are mad. The elected officials from the Mayor to the federal level at H.U.D. are not listening. When they will not listen to the injustice of razing public housing this is what will happen:

CAIN BURDEAU
AP News

Dec 20, 2007 12:37 EST

Police used chemical spray and stun devices Thursday as dozens of protesters seeking to halt the demolition of public housing in New Orleans tried to force their way through an iron gate at City Hall.

This is the face of the kind of America Mr. Bush has created- iron fisted and brutal to all who are the lowest and most wretched of the earth. 

Every knowledgeable person who knows about the Big Sh*t Pile is alarmed because our nation is in some serious trouble- no matter what Mr. Bush and his lackeys in Treasury say.

If we were not in trouble then why is the Federal Reserve offering a fourth bailout to banks while the little guys are screwed again? Only this time the bailout is being hidden:

Banks have typically feared negative reactions from investors when borrowing directly from the Fed, which some interpret as a sign of weakness. The auction, announced last week, tries to combat that stigma by offering banks the opportunity to borrow directly from the central bank in an anonymous forum and at a lower-than-usual interest rate.

Could it be that banks are weak because the whole banking system in the U.S. is based upon the Big Sh*t Pile of worthless paper?  

When a nation loses it industrial base and shifts to where people sell services like hamburgers or Collateralized Debt Obligation portfolios what will happen when it comes time to "pay the piper"?  Well it will start to look like this:

MBIA posted a document on its Web site late yesterday showing it insured the so-called CDOs-squared, a potentially riskier form of security than what the company typically guarantees. Rising defaults on subprime mortgages packaged into securities have led to bond downgrades and threatened MBIA's AAA guaranty rating.

``We are shocked management withheld this information for as long as it did,'' Ken Zerbe, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in New York, wrote in a report yesterday. ``MBIA simply did not disclose arguably the riskiest parts of its CDO portfolio to investors.''

This is what we are undergoing now.  (As I mentioned before OPEC will not tolerate the continuing slide of the value of the dollar because they are losing money on their oil revenue.) The central question is when will foreign governments call in our notes due to the worthless paper debt that our finacial system has been pedalling them?

Will Mr. Bush skate free or will it happen next year? 

Senator Harry Reid has done some good things (like keep the Senate "open" in order to block Mr. Bush's recess appointments), but when it comes to a substantial constitutional issue like enforcing the Fourth Amendment that protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures by which the state must have probable cause and limited in scope for each judicially sanctioned warrant he is very bad.

When the Orwellian named "Protect America Act" was passed only due to Mr. Bush's threatening, as John Dean writes, "to make a political issue of any effort by Congressional Democrats to protect the civil liberties of American(s)".  The most important proviso was that the Protect America Act would expire in six months which would be Febuary 1st, 2008.

However, the esteemed Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid is considering this:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday he would seek to extend a controversial interim wiretapping law through February to avoid the early presidential primary season.

The Hill reporter Manu Raju writes about the calculations that Reid is considering, including Senator Dodd's filibuster using instead this language:  "used procedural tactics".

This is the heart of the matter which Raju writes but doesn't fact check with the constitution: 

But other Democrats, like Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), along with Republicans, argue that the firms need protection because the administration gave them assurances that their actions were legal and in the interests of national security.[my emphasis]

Senator Feingold hits the nail on the head.  It is this that we must fight in the mass media to change the perception that Mr. Bush sends out of him being the "fighter against all enemies who must do anything to protect Americans":

“People are firm for the moment … but then the intimidation starts,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a staunch critic of the telecom immunity provision. “Too often Democrats allow themselves to be intimidated by phony arguments.”[my emphasis]

Write, call, fax or use this webform Senator Reid now!

528 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3542 / Fax: 202-224-7327

(Maybe it is time for Senator Dodd to become Majority Leader?) 

Take the time today to tell Senator Dodd how much you appreciate his excellent work in blocking this vote.

Now it is time to do the hard work of meeting with our Colorado Senators and letting them know that "retroactive immunity" for criminal acts is completely unacceptable to us.

We teach our children that to do wrong acts deserves punishment.  This is no different.

I believe that Republicans, like Bush, need the firm hand of discipline for doing bad acts and deserve to be punished.  As far as I know there are no Republicans that have come out to say that retroactive immunity by telecommunications companies in return for lucrative government contracts for spying upon Americans without court orders is wrong. 

Corporations that do wrong should be punished.  FISA has criminal statues in it to punish transgressors.  Bush has admitted wrong doing by circumventing FISA to spy on Americans long before 9/11.  The people who support such wrong doing deserve to be punished because the law is the law.

This should get very wide coverage because it goes to the heart of why Mr. Bush has destroyed the effective fighting strength of the U.S. Army.  I first saw this on Buzzflash several days ago and now it has been picked up by Editor and Publisher. 

From the ArmyTimes staff writer Kelly Kennedy's report:

On July 17, Charlie’s 2nd Platoon was refitting at Taji when they got a call to go back to Adhamiya. They were to patrol Route Southern Comfort, which had been black — off-limits — for months. Charlie Company knew a 500-pound bomb lay on that route, and they’d been ordered not to travel it. “Will there be route clearance?” 2nd Platoon asked. “Yes,” they were told. “Then we’ll go.”

But the mission was canceled. The medevac crews couldn’t fly because of a dust storm, and the Iraqi Army wasn’t ready for the mission. Second Platoon went to bed.

They woke to the news that Alpha Company had gone on the mission instead and one of their Bradleys rolled over the 500-pound IED. The Bradley flipped. The explosion and flames killed everybody inside. Alpha Company lost four soldiers: Spc. Zachary Clouser, Spc. Richard Gilmore, Spc. Daniel Gomez and Sgt. 1st Class Luis Gutierrez-Rosales.

“There was no chance,” said Johnson, whose scouts remained at Apache and served as the quick-reaction force that day. “It was eerily the same as June 21. You roll up on that, and it looked the same.”

The guys from Charlie Company couldn’t help but think about the similarities — and that it could have been them.

“Just the fact that there was another Bradley incident mentally screwed up 2nd Platoon,” Strickland said. “It was almost like it had happened to them.”

The battalion gave 2nd Platoon the day to recover. then they were scheduled to go back out on patrol in Adhamiya on July 18.

But when Strickland returned from a mission, he learned 2nd Platoon had failed to roll.

“A scheduled patrol is a direct order from me,” Strickland said.

“‘They’re not coming,’” Strickland said he was told. “So I called the platoon sergeant and talked to him. ‘Remind your guys: These are some of the things that could happen if they refuse to go out.’ I was irritated they were thumbing their noses. I was determined to get them down there.”

But, he said, he didn’t know the whole platoon, except for Ybay, had taken sleeping medications prescribed by mental health that day, according to Ybay.

Strickland didn’t know mental health leaders had talked to 2nd Platoon about “doing the right thing.”

He didn’t know 2nd Platoon had gathered for a meeting and determined they could no longer function professionally in Adhamiya — that several platoon members were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.

“We said, ‘No.’ If you make us go there, we’re going to light up everything,” DeNardi said. “There’s a thousand platoons. Not us. We’re not going.”

From what I've read it is a command failure.  The soldiers of 2nd platoon were aware enough that they were not mentally up to the standard of what a professional soldier should be.  

I think that there are hundreds and hundreds of "incidents" which could be avoided it commanders were aware of the mental conditions of their soldiers. 

This story by Kelly Kennedy reminds me in some ways of the lack of command and control of officers who should have taken the time to get to know their men or those officers were incompetent to begin with as was the case of Tiger Force in Vietnam.

Support Senator Chris Dodd's filibuster of the Senate Intelligence Committee's version to allow immunity for telecom companies active cooperation with spying on you without a court order that is illegal with penalties of jail time and a hefty 100,000 dollar fine per act.

Harry Reid won't honor a "hold" on the bill.

Some senators promised to support Dodd. You know what to do.

Name Fax Phone

Feingold (202) 224-2725 (202) 224-5323

Dodd (202) 224-1083 (202) 224-2823

Obama (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854 Sanders (202) 228-0776 (202) 224-5141

Menendez (202) 228-2197 (202) 224-4744

Biden (202) 224-0139 (202) 224-5042

Brown (202) 228-6321 (202) 224-2315

Harkin (202) 224-9369 (202) 224-3254

Cardin (202) 224-1651 (202) 224-4524 Clinton (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451

Akaka (202) 224-2126 (202) 224-6361

Webb (202) 228-6363 (202) 224-4024

Kennedy (202) 224-2417 (202) 224-4543

Boxer (415) 956-6701 (202) 224-3553

Chris Dodd must be crazy because he isn't in Iowa today!!

(h/t to Atrios) 

Alan,

I'm proud to be a part of "the rabble" because there is a profound constitutional crisis caused by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and their views on how this administration "works".

What tools that are left by this administration which damages the constitution should be immediately neutralized by Congress and the judicial branches of government. However, with the selection of Federalist Society lawyers into judgeships and far right religious reactionaries into leading Republican leadership positions there must be the founding fathers solution to this crisis: Impeachment.

As Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has written a book "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush" which picks four charges for impeachment: warrantless surveillance, misleading Congress on the reasons for the Iraq war, violating laws against torture, and subverting the Constitution's separation of powers.

As University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle's "Draft Impeachment Resolution Against President George W. Bush" lists six articles: 1). "acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States  by suspending the constitutional "Writ of Habeous Corpus"."; 2). "has violated the Equal Protection Clause"; 3). "has violated the Constitutional requirement that all treaties be part of the supreme law of the land"; 4). has planned, prepared, and conspired for war with Iraq; 5). did not receive a formal declaration of war against Iraq; 6). " planned, prepared, and conspired to commit crimes against the peace by leading the United States into aggressive war against Iraq in violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, the Kellogg-Brand Pact, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956)"

"The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens" by Holtzman and Cooper their book lists five charges: "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information."

David Swanson writes in the current issue of The Humanist: 

Of course, the Democratic leadership in Congress believes it to be of the utmost importance to keep Bush and Cheney around, the theory being that this will help Democrats in the November 2008 elections. This strategy isn't just morally shallow but, as the historical record suggests, is likely to fail on its own terms. When the Republicans tried to impeach Truman they won big in the next elections. When the Democrats tried to impeach Nixon, they won big in the next elections. When the Democrats promised not to impeach Reagan, making the same arguments for restraint that they make today, they lost the next elections. 

Meanwhile John Conyers has apparently "deep sixed" HRes799 in his committee for the above mentioned reason by David Swanson.

We could email John Conyers John.Conyers@mail.house.gov and help him to remember that he issued The Constitutuion in Crisis last year.

From Talkingpointsmemo.com:

The bitterest pill for House Democrats is their continued inability to force U.S. troop withdrawals in exchange for continued funding of the Iraq war. Final details were undecided Wednesday, but top Democrats said the administration will get a significant portion of its war spending request, with no strings attached.

It is time for a new Democratic leadership in the House and Senate.

Diana DeGette is one of the leaders in the House.  She is part of the problem.

From the Republicans (same article from TPM): 

"It's the cave-in Congress," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. If congressional Democrats truly want to change Iraq policy, he said, they must have the courage to cut off its funding and then be "accountable for what happens."

I could not agree more. .  Tie Iraq withdrawl funds to every bill sent to Bush for signing.

Have the Democrats tell every voter that Bush and his Republican Party is for having our troops killed by Iraqis because Iraqis want our troops out of their own country for good.

Iraq is a land that is the birthplace of western civilization.  It is the home to one of the seven wonders of the world: Hanging Gardens of Bablyon.

Mr. Bush and we, this nation's people, are responsible for this:

When Camp Babylon was established by U.S.-led international forces in April 2003, leading archeologists and international experts on ancient civilizations warned of potential peril and damage. It was "tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," according to a damning report issued in January by the British Museum.

The report, drafted by Dr. John Curtis – one of the world's leading archeologists – documents that the military base, built and overseen by Kellog, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, jeopardized what is often referred to as the "mother of all archeological sites." Helicopter landing places and parking lots for heavy vehicles caused substantial damage to the Ishtar Gate, one of the most famous monuments from antiquity. U.S. military vehicles crushed 2,600 year old brick pavement, archeological fragments were scattered across the site, trenches were driven into ancient deposits and military earth-moving projects contaminated the site for future generations of scientists. 

It is time to replace all Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.  The American people want out of Iraq but our leaders won't listen.  I have been to DeGette's office and talked with DeGette and her staff numerous times.  Sure they talk a good game but when it comes to push they will not stand with the lives of our sons, daughters, fathers and mothers who serve in our armed forces.  

Finally, it is time to beg forgiveness and to repay the people of Iraq and the world for the destruction of the western world's cradle of beginning. 

Bush and his heavy extraction industry friends are the enemies of the human race.  I remember back in 2000 listening to an NPR interview with a environmental scientist in which the idea that we have approximately a twenty year window to reduce the worst affects of global warming.  Well, we have seen the results of what Bush continues to do which is to accelerate cardon emissions and sabotage any meaningful efforts by the rest of the world's nations to help the human race survive and prosper.

Al Gore speaks to the Bali Conference on climate change:

"My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," said Gore, who flew to Bali from Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change.

George W. Bush will be remembered as the killer of mankind. 

American right-wing populism is an interesting phenomenon that's coming to the fore once again in its usual nativist and racist form, but also as smooth misrepresentation of "tax reform"; clever, misleading public relations messaging about fair trade; and some fairly outlandish paranoia about conspiracies to erase the borders. Various permutations of these fairly common right-wing themes abound among conservative politicians and thinkers alike. But conservative populism is an oxymoron.

As Phil Agree wrote in this much discussed article about the definition of conservatism, "Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy ... [it] is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world."

Modern conservatism's most successful strategy was to merge public relations and politics into a seamless operation in which it could use modern marketing methods to convince people to vote against their own interests. In that sense, right-wing populism is just another marketing campaign for the aristocrats. And it's working:

South Carolina has embraced foreign investment, with companies from BMW to Michelin transforming a state once dominated by the textile industry. Another aspect of the global economy hasn't gone down as well: immigration.

While an influx of money from overseas has made free trade palatable even as thousands of mill jobs have vanished, voters are growing increasingly hostile to undocumented foreign workers, polls and analysts say. As a result, illegal immigration is a top economic issue in the state's Jan. 19 Republican primary, a key test for the candidates since it's the first in the South.

"Trade is all right as long as everybody goes by the same rules," said David Robinson, 65, who recently retired from a job at a Michelin tire factory in Spartanburg and whose son works in a Hitachi Ltd. plant nearby. Illegal immigration, on the other hand, "is a big problem, and that's one you can get a handle on," he said.

Who is Ron Paul? Why do some progressives seem attracted to his presidential candidacy? I noticed a big Ron Paul sign at the last major anti war rally.

Is it just because his is an anti-war Republican with libertarian beliefs?

This is his position on immigration:  He wants to end birth right citizenship.

Read TPM Election Central's Greg Sargent on a Ron Paul flyer distributed in South Carolina.

Dave Neiwert has written extensively on Ron Paul.  For all of the media attention to Ron Paul's anti-war stance there is his nativist view on immigration, far right conspiracy theories of the New World Order and monetary systems, and his racism as repackaged libertarian idealism.

Ron "Tin foil hat" Paul is savy and understands the financial power of the netroots.  But digging beneath the glitter and you will see a presidential candidate who is feverently anti-liberal and anti-progressive on labor, women, education, immigration, healthcare, worker safety, industrial and financial regulation, environmentalism, affirmative action, and welfare.