The craftiness of the wording of their answers is proof in and of itself of their deceit. They make sure not to tell a technical lie, but watch how they choose their words.

Dick Cheney appeared to refute Joe Wilson’s claim that he was sent on his mission to Niger by the CIA in response to an inquiry from the Vice President’s office. His “denial”? — that he never met Joe Wilson. Of course, if you read Wilson’s op-ed piece you’ll see that Joe Wilson also never met Dick Cheney; nor does he claim to know that the Vice President asked for this intelligence to gathered, only that that was what the CIA told him. If Cheney could have denied that he made the inquiry, he would have done so. (He later made the absurd defense that his claim of not knowing about Wilson’s mission really meant that he didn’t know that Wilson was the person who had been sent).

Then there is the claim that “the leaker” (as if being the first to tell Novak were the only leak that existed) was, after all, Richard Armitage and not one of the insiders in the administration. True enought, but whenever Armitage is identified as “THE leaker” there’s the implication that only he leaked her identity (I almost wrote “her name”). Astounding! especially when you consider how many people were bandying her identity about and feeding it to various journalists. It reads like the plot of “Murder on the Orient Express”. Everyone and his brother in this administration had the information and was sent on an errand.

Ah, yes — then there is the claim that there was no crime committed (and therefore Fitzgerald was overly zealous) because Plame-Wilson’s name had been declassified prior to the leak(s). This begs the question of what possible purpose there was in declassifying her name, if not to discredit Wilson. And the even more obvious question: if there was nothing wrong done, then why didn’t the President just say that the information had been declassified instead of denying any knowledge of who had leaked the information.

My own take on her outing is that, even more than it was a retaliatory tactic, it was a diversionary tactic. No-one in the Bush administration ever really denied the content of Wilson’s article — that the administration knew that its claims about Iraq getting or (effectively) seeking uranium from Niger were unfounded. Instead, they turned everyone’s attention to the mystery of “who leaked Plame’s name”. Any discussion of Wilson’s allegations was pushed into the background. He was almost always incorrectly described as someone who “criticized the administration’s policy on Iraq”.

If you really want impeachment, forget the letters and the tables–just tell your Congressperson that they’re not getting another dime or another vote from you until and unless they impeach. Stop enabling them and try some tough love–these are greed and power addicts and they won’t respond to anything else.

Exactly! And we should start by targeting Nancy Pelosi!

I previouly posted “Impeach Nancy Pelosi”. Obviously, that was foolish. That was my anger speaking. I’ve given it more thought and I now have a strategy. I posted it in a comment at Larisa Alexandrovna’s blog. We need to draft Matt Gonzalez to run against Nancy Pelosi in 2008, and we need to build that movement now. Anyone who lives here in San Francisco knows who I am talking about; for those who don’t, you can read his Wikipedia entry. I’m not trying to build any personality cult around him. I bring him up because he is the only one who could give Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi a real run for her money and send a loud message to the corrupt political establishment that the people have had enough!

It’s time to stop playing into the cynical self-serving political games of the spineless Democrats and start holding their feet to the fire! Political activists need to stop blindly playing into the hands of the politicians; they need to step back and think and start using some smart strategy to effect real change. Real change won’t come from giving spineless Democrats a free pass; it will come when they realize they will pay a political price for refusing to take action. So where are the activists who know how to make this happen? I have no experience as an activist, but I want to do something and am not willing to just help the careers of Democratic politicians who are not standing up for the republic!

So let’s make this happen! Draft Matt Gonzalez to run against Nancy Pelosi in 2008!

Thanks, mods

Pleasure, Kathryn.

Finally we have a high crime and misdemeanor committed by the Republicans that the Democrats didn’t vote for.

Miss this opportunity and it’s back to business as usual.

If there was a law that said that no federal legislator can own stock in or receive benefits from corporations, particularly defense corporations, not even if the stock is in a blind trust, not even if they don’t know they own it, and not even if their profits go into escrow until they leave office, Washington, D.C. would be a ghost town tomorrow.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are millionaires and have large stock portfolios. Defense stocks have been doubling and tripling in value every year that Bush and Cheney have been in office. How can they impeach their golden goose? Why should they care if middle class and working class rabble scream about democracy, when the war profiteers in Congress are getting richer every day?

Here’s how it works. First they buy defense stocks. Then they award the company whose stock they bought a whopping no-bid contract. The value of the stock shoots up on the basis of the contract, they sell those stocks for a hefty profit, and they they do it again with a different company. This isn’t rocket science.

Why else would anyone raise and spend millions of dollars to get a job that only pays a couple hundred thousand?

It works the same way in local politics, and in every other banana republic.

For “national security,” read: personal profits for those in power.

By law, Valerie Plame’s husband was a terrorist: he was trying to interfere with corporate profits (the profits, amounting so far to trillions of dollars, that defense corporations and their stockholders have made on the Iraq war), by pointing out that Bush was lying about the reasons for going to war. All Bush, Cheney, and Libby did, in outing Valerie Plame, was to fight terrorism, terrorism being defined as anything that might interfere with their war profiteering.

Stop begging Congress to do things for you. You’re an adult American and they’re not your mommy and daddy. If you want something done, you’re going to have to do it yourself, because they’re too busy making money. And stop buying the story that they’re making money to support you–they don’t care about your health, pension, your job, your kids’ education, or anything but their own designer clothes and fancy country clubs. Stop thinking that you elected them–the media gave you a choice only between a greater and a lesser evil, so you had to vote for one evil or the other. In a democracy you’d be allowed to disregard evil altogether and vote for GOOD people, not corporate shills.

If you really want impeachment, forget the letters and the tables–just tell your Congressperson that they’re not getting another dime or another vote from you until and unless they impeach. Stop enabling them and try some tough love–these are greed and power addicts and they won’t respond to anything else.

As for:

Donate money to a worthy Democratic candidate

Are you nuts? This is part of the problem right now: knee-jerk partisan Democrats offering themselves up as useful idiots to Democratic politicians who refuse to stand up to the Republican Treason Party. As far as I am concerned, that makes them criminal co-conspirators. I live in San Francisco; my rep. is Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi. I vow to do everything possible to defeat that traitorous hag in 2008. There is not a chance in hell I am going to help Democrats who refuse to stand up for this country.

Both the Democrats and Republicans can both go to hell!

Impeach Nancy Pelosi!

“The Framers, ever sensitive to the need for checks and balances, recognized the potential for abuse of the pardon power. According to a Judiciary Committee report drafted in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis:In “the [Constitutional] convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to ‘pardon crimes which were advised by himself’ or, before indictment or conviction, ‘to stop inquiry and prevent detection.’ James Madison responded:

“[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds [to] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty. . .

Of course, that’s the caveat. “If found guilty”.