Despite All The BushshitBullshit, Women in Iraq Still Suffer

Ashley Wright details some of the terrible stuff happening in Iraq that particularly target women. Mind you, before our invasion in March 2003, Iraq was perhaps the most "progressive" of the Islamic cultures toward women. But we put a stop to that! Just like Bush claimed we attacked Afghanistan to "help the women and let girls go to school" while women are at more risk there than ever before, and many (most?) girls have again disappeared from schools under threat of death.

How the bloody hell did we make Iraq even worse than it was under a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein? Sadly, the answer falls under the category of our own brutal dictators, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

"Save The Constitution: Impeach Bush and Cheney"

I LOVE this man and I NEVER say such things lightly (and please ADD to his acknowledgement that John Nirenberg is starting out in single digit weather - I got a touch of frostbite on a short midnight walk last night myself when it was a toasty 4 BELOW - with a major storm about to hit the hell out of New England):

BRATTLEBORO — He's got waterproof, size-11EEEE New Balance sneakers, a bright yellow poncho and a plan. He's got outrage in his heart, a Web site in his name and much of his retirement savings sunk into his cause.

John Nirenberg, a 60-year-old Ph.D., author and academic, plans to walk from Boston to Washington, D.C., to confront House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in hopes of persuading Congress to take up the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

He's no activist, he says. He's not sure he'll make a difference. But he's going to try.

On Sunday, he'll hit the road from Faneuil Hall, walking 15 miles a day until he gets to Capitol Hill, making symbolic stops at the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall and Trenton, N.J., as he makes his way to the U.S. Capitol.

Wearing a "Save the Constitution, Impeach Bush and Cheney," sandwich-board style sign, he hopes to rally support for an issue Pelosi has said is no longer on the table.

"This is about satisfying my conscience. I just don't want to be the guy who says in five years that I regret not having stood up and said something."

We should ALL be more like Mr. Nirenberg. And we should start REAL SOON NOW.

A Heart Where There Is None Or Just A Ploy To Get Rudy In Office?

Yes, MSNBC reports that Grand Emperor of the Evil Empire Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney has an irregular heartbeat.

Just one question: what proof is there he has a heart?

Ask the people of Iraq, of Afghanistan, our soldiers, to name but a few. I suspect they have no such evidence.

But beware: there has been speculation even among some on the right for more than a year that Cheney would conveniently disappear with at least a year to go to Bushdom to introduce a Rudy Giuliani, for example, in the Veep seat.

House Has Not Yet Killed Impeachment of Grand Emperor (VP) The Dick Cheney

While the Dem leadership seemed about as eager as most Repugs to kill it - and why they're so bashful about high crimes and misdemeanors when we're talking about treason committed in some of the most fundamental aspects of our society completely eludes me - it was Repugs who, thinking it might give Bush a "sympathy factor", who decided to let it hang around. (Somehow, I suspect only his parents give Bush much sympathy these days.)

Now others are pushing harder for the matter to go before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by none other than John Conyers, a Dem who has shown he does not always buckle to popular pressure. Keep hope alive.

Cheney Impeachment Resolution And War With Iran

I also posted this at All Things Democrat but...

From Ramsey Clark, an appeal to action in advance of plans against war with Iran and acknowledging that Rep. - and Democratic presidential candidate - Dennis Kucinich’s priority resolution to be presented on the floor tomorrow (Tuesday, November 5th) calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. Read the rest of this letter from Clark here.

President George Bush plans to attack Iran. From coast to coast, the people of this country are demanding impeachment, which may be the only way to stop him. We are acting now because a failure to impeach Bush with Vice President Cheney and other civil officers for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity may condemn the world to war without end. Has he not made it clear that he intends to attack Iran?

Again and again he has threatened Iran with attack if it does not abandon its nuclear program and act to please him. The threat, like the use of force against a nation, is a violation of Article 2.4 of the Charter of the United Nations just as the threat of assault, like assault itself, is a crime in all legal systems. President Bush has unilaterally imposed the most comprehensive economic sanctions within his power against Iran, excepting of course the purchase of Iranian oil. Sanctions are crueler than the colonial whipping post because they harm infants, children, the elderly and the infirm.

When President Bush decides to launch missiles at Iran, he will proclaim the ecessity for his action to prevent nuclear terrorism, and save freedom and democracy. “This government does not torture people,” President Bush assures us despite Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition, the staunch defense of torture by his legal advisers throughout his Presidency and what We the People know, as he knows we know. We are being told that truth is what the Decider says it is. As with Iraq before, he now says Iran is a nuclear threat to the U.S. and brooks no dispute of his decision.

Failure to act will place the United States and much of the rest of the world in great danger of spreading war and violence resulting from a direct attack ordered by President Bush against Iran, retaliation by Iran and the fueling of existing tensions and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

Much Better: Arrest Impeach Supporters Rather Than Indict A Lying, Thieving President

It's amazing, really.

A president who stole two elections, lied us into countless wars (the one in Iraq and the ridiculous one he labeled "War on Terror" are but two), violates the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention on a daily and egregious basis, has made our country far less safe (and our risk from terrorists seems almost microscopic compared with our grave and present risks from the Bush-Cheney minions who are themselves terrorists), has killed the American dollar (still in freefall throughout the world) along with countless soldiers, civilians, and so-called enemy detainees, goes scot-free.

But cops arrest a 74-year-old man for selling Impeach Bush buttons at a Maryland farmer's market. Cindy Sheehan and nearly four dozen other Americans have also been arrested this week for impeachment efforts.

Feel any safer? I don't.

Nicholas D. Kristof: "Cheney's Long-Lost Twin"

That there can be even one Cheney has cost many meals and countless times worshipping the porcelain goddess" after reading about the Bushies' latest atrocities; the idea, as Kristoff proposes in this Times OpEd column, he may have a twin is beyond frightening (read it all here):

Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?

The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.

Both men are hawks who defy the international community, scorn the U.N. and are unpopular at home because of incompetence and recklessness — and each finds justification in the extremism of the other.

“Iranians refer to their new political radicals as ‘neoconservatives,’ with multiple layers of deliberate irony,” notes Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University, adding: “The hotheads around President Ahmadinejad’s office and the U.S. foreign policy radicals who cluster around Vice President Cheney’s office, listen to each other, cite each others’ statements and goad each other to new excesses on either side.”

So one of the perils in the final 18 months of the Bush administration is that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad will escalate provocations, ending up with airstrikes by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites.

Already we’re seeing a series of leaks about Iran that echo leaks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The reports say that Iran is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda, is using Hezbollah to wage a proxy war against U.S. forces in Iraq, is transferring bomb-making skills to Iraq insurgents and is handing out armor-piercing bullets to fighters in Iran and Afghanistan so as to kill more Americans.

Yet the jingoists aren’t all in our government: These leaks may well all be accurate, for Mr. Ahmadinejad is a perfect match for Mr. Cheney in his hawkishness and contempt for the international community.

It’s worrying that Iran has just recalled its most able diplomat — Javad Zarif, ambassador to the U.N. — and sent him out to pasture as an academic. Hard-liners always hated Mr. Zarif; goons from a mysterious Iranian security agency detained me on my last trip to Tehran and accused me of being a C.I.A. or Mossad spy, apparently because they were trying to get dirt to use against Mr. Zarif (who had given me my visa).

[...]A recent opinion poll in Iran found that 70 percent of Iranians want to normalize relations with the U.S., and 61 percent oppose the current Iranian system of government. Any visitor to Iran knows that it is — at a people-to-people level — the most pro-American Muslim country in the region, and the regime is as out of touch and moribund as the shah’s was in the late 1970s.

The ayatollahs’ only hope is that we will rescue them with a military strike, which would cement them in place for many years to come. But look out, because that’s what may happen if bilateral relations are driven by those jingoistic twins, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad.

JP at Pottersville offers more.

Proof Is In The Papers: How Cheney Sold American Energy to Enron, Ken Lay, And Others

If you want to feel even more sick than you do seeing your latest electric bill or the rising total as you fill up your tank with gas, check out the piece I wrote at All Things Democrat about some of the "truth" finally beginning to leak out about Dick Cheney's energy task force and the way it was bought and paid for by energy conglomerates, Ken Lay and Enron, and the lobbyists they make so rich.

Just Say No To Dick (And What a Dick He Is, Too!)

Dick Cheney just isn't loved (quite) as much as he once was (and then, only by very scary people, including wife, Lynne). While he still tells us that his convicted-of-lying-and-obstruction-of-justice former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby is the most honest man he's ever known, the Senate is trying to cut off his funding since Dick claims he is answerable to no one.

Senator Dick Durbin, in the move to cut off such funding, should be very careful around Darth Cheney when he's carrying a gun. As Lynne can attest, "Duck, It's Dick!" Cheney often ejects his ammunition prematurely. [Insert Marine ditty about the difference between a rifle and gun here.]

Bitter Vitters, Fred Thompson "Mole" For Nixon, And Fibby Libby

Even George Orwell could not have imagined, much less felt it would make believable fiction, some of most recent headlines out of the Bush White House, their "moralist" (which always means, "you better live by my moral standards if you want to stay out of trouble, but hey, if I falter, I'll just claim God's forgiveness and keep on keeping on") far right, and their subversion of democracy.

Let's look at a handful, shall we?

*As The Times reported several days ago, Donald Rumsfeld as then Defense Secretary called off a strike against a supposed major meeting of Al Qaeda officials, including the purported #2 man to Osama bin Laden, the former pediatrician al Zawari; because it was just too dangerous for the Navy Seals and CIA operatives who would have attacked; uh... so it's better to keep tens of thousands of far less trained 18 year olds out fighting where the biggest terrorist is often a (perhaps all too justifiably pissed off) civilian?

* Turns out Fred Thompson, the bad actor and even worse politician, may have been a "mole" for Richard Nixon (the original Tricky Dick, although he was never as good at it as Dick Cheney has proven to be), carrying confidential information from the 1970s Watergate Commission to Dick Nixon's White House to help a lying leader avoid pitfalls; really makes you want to entrust Fred with the White House, eh?

* While the tighty righties scream that Bill Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich (who, I believe, gave a considerable amount of money to Republicans beyond the contributions of his ex-wife noted to Democrats) was MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more evil than George Bush's miraculous and quite probably illegal commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence in the PlameGate affair, none of them ever bothered to mention that Libby happened to have been Rich's lawyer and one of those lobbying Clinton for clemency; Libby has certainly been the benefactor of so many riches

* Senator David Vitters (R-Louse... er... Louisiana) who railed against Bill Clinton's immorality while screaming that marriage is too precious to waste on gays who just happens to have been a client of not just the infamous "DC Madam" but also other prostitutes during - and this is just toooooo precious - the same time period he was shaking his moralist finger at Clinton

Slamming The Door Shut On A Dick

According to the Washington Post, support for the impeachment of (at the very least) Vice President Dick Cheney is growing.

More Bushian Drumbeats Toward War With Iran

Now another American general is claiming - at the behest of the Bushies who would very much love to "control" Iran's oil as well - that Iranian security forces are training both Hezbollah and Iraqi militants. Uh huh.

If you want to blame someone for the terrible state of affairs in Iraq, you need to look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to two treasonous tyrants named Bush and Cheney with a hell of an assist from the Pentagon.

The Indefensible and Olbermann's Call For Bush-Cheney To Resign

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had very strong words for the latest corrupt, self-serving, indefensible, protect-the-elite-Bushies-while-screwing-everyone-else action on the part of President Bush: commuting the sentence of convicted liar and former Cheney chief-of-staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby so he does not have to serve a single day in prison for outing former CIA operative Valerie Plame in the scandal known as PlameGate.

Olbermann called Bush gutless, that Bush proved beyond all doubt that he is not the leader of the United States but the titular head of a small and very elite group for whom their protection and profit is all that matters to this White House, and more than merely suggested that not even disgraced former president, Richard Nixon, would have dared pull such a nasty trick.

Yet, as Olbermann also announced on Monday, tonight (Tuesday) he will deliver one of his scalding and scalpel-sharp Special Comments in which he calls for (demands?) the resignation of both Bush and Cheney. You should watch (8 PM ET, MSNBC).

In the meantime, even the often far-too-Bush-defensive Washington Post editorial page today calls Bush's action indefensible (meanwhile, everyone else connected with the case, including the Justice Department, rushed in to claim Bush came up with this terrible deal mostly on his own, without their consultation):

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. But reducing the sentence to no prison time at all, as Mr. Bush did -- to probation and a large fine -- is not defensible.

Mr. Libby was convicted in March on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff had told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists, but after hearing abundant testimony and carefully deliberating, a jury concluded that he lied. As we wrote at the time of the conviction, lying under oath is unacceptable for anyone, and particularly for a government official. As Mr. Bush said in his statement yesterday, "our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable."

Bush: The "Gutless" Wonder

Virtually no one - except perhaps President Bush and Vice President Cheney - expected that this White House would rush in so soon to keep a convicted liar and obstructor of justice, former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, from having to pay any real penalty for his role in outing CIA covert operative Valerie Plame in the debacle known as PlameGate.

That Bush would subvert justice should not be such a surprise; after all, making a mockery and laughingstock out of the United States, its system of laws and government, and endangering the very people "charged" with protecting us while maximizing corruption to the great advantage of his pals is what he does best.

Yet even Bush reached a new low by delivering this announcement not in person, not on camera, not by official White House press conference, but by a press release delivered over what many are taking as a 10-day-long July 4th weekend. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted Monday night, the way Bush did it proved he is entirely "gutless"; he hopes no one will notice because he expects them to be too busy drinking beer and swilling hotdogs.

What Punishment/Reward Will Scooter Libby Get?

Tuesday is I. Lewis Libby's sentencing day for his role in PlameGate.

What do you think he'll get, if anything?

And Still The Bushies Do Nothing But Lie, Inflame, and Corrupt All They Touch!

So Emperor Bush continues to behave, while things worsen by the hour, like he's the only one smart enough to know what's going on and he's sure he owes the American people NO explanation, let alone apology. When great skepticism was tendered about Bush's "Iraq Surge", and a way to burn through a trillion more dollars and lives of soldiers and Iraqi citizens, the Bush crew either ignored the skeptics outright, tried to discredit them, or flat out lied. With it, they've concocted huge webs of lies and spin so convoluted and labyrinthian they are sure the "dumb" voting public will nap through it.

If you've been paying attention to any of the Bush Administration's latest ever-expanding lists of the reasons King George demands we "give war a (thousand more) chance(s))", you're welcome to share my bottle of Bush-strength Excedrin. While you swallow (and the longer Bush and Cheney stay in office, the harder it becomes each day to try to force down your palate their strange and twisted recipes), let me note some of the White House's wildly changing rational, talking points, and unofficially official statements: which include:

• why we haven't caught Osama bin ForgottenLaden whom Bush told us "can run, but can't hide!" - For a megalomaniac who smirks thinking how smart he is (anyone who disagrees with him is garbage), the president SURE is wrong a lot, a WHOLE lot
• it was necessary to LIE throughout the build-up to war
• why we waged war when we KNEW there was no reason to do so
• we keep forgetting that Afghanistan, since our invasion on October 8, 2001, has turned from a bottom-of-the-bottom third world country into a full fifth world humanitarian meltdown producing a truly STUNNING amount of drugs and people with no great love for Bush, the United States, or the Bush Far Right's war on Muslims/oil producing countries
• With it clear to almost every American now (and obvious to those outside the U.S. far sooner) that the War on Terror was to finally satisfy those rich dinosaur fatcats (in deep grief since the Cold War "ended") and their war-making hardware, how can anyone treat the War on Terror seriously when the Bushies and Neocons try to act like something out of a very dim-witted Marvel comic book?

I don't know about you but I don't need superheroes. Especially pretend, fucked-up, corrupting superheroes like The Burning Bush, "Duck, It's Dick!" Cheney, Why-ever-would-you-conclude-I'm-a-woman-of-color? Captain Condi (Rice), Revoltin' Smotin' (John) Bolton, Karl "Blow Out The Pilot Lights On That Democrat's Gas Stove" Rove, and a cast of tens of thousands more representing "connected", crooked, confabulating, incompetent, factless fuckers of all time.

Remember. This is still the Bush Administration, where we consider Charles Darwin a greater threat than Osama Bin (over)Laden-with-business-contacts-with-Bush-Family bank accounts, where free speech should only be allowed to praise this president and to demand more war, and where the 25-year-old-and-never-held-a-job Bush Twins have spent more in one single night of partying (with some of the same drugs that would send you to prison) than almost all U.S. soldiers in Iraq each earn in a single year.

Vermont Impeachment Movement Showing Its Cracks?

As even semi-regulars here know, I'm way beyond wanting Bush and Company impeached. After all, their crimes LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY crossed the threshold of treasonous acts and they're still racing to do far worse!

After reading this by Odum, who runs the Daily Kos-Vermont version Green Mountain Daily, I'm worried about the impeachment efforts myself. However, as Anon tells us here in Comments, all hope is not lost (600 more days of Bush, God help us all). Namely:

Hi. Yes, there is something that can be done. Two links VT/Odum at GMD may be interested in: When impeachment is not an option/off the table, a sitting President may be prosecuted outside Congress, outside impeachment.

1. Blogswarm: Visit these links, and let others know Bush can be prosecuted outside impeachment/Congress:http://www.haloscan.com/
   comments...a=13945#2389359
2. Commentary/discussion at the end of this blog thread [See the links in the end-comments/blog responses]:http://indictdickcheney.blogspot...comey-
   only.html

If the State/Federal legislators refuse to act -- as they have done with the House Rule 603/impeachment proclamations -- any one of the State Attorney Generals or District Attorneys may prosecute a sitting President. Congress and the states legislators have had their chance, and refused. Prosecution is the only option and remains on the table.

On This Memorial Day Weekend...

Let us appreciate America's 25 million living veterans (one in every dozen citizens), demand we stop unnecessary aggression against other countries, and begin to worry about our own massive problems. At the same time, think about all the many wars this Republican chickenhawk vice president (Dick Cheney) and chickenshit commander in chief, Mr. Bush, have started since they used corrupt court processes to take the White House in December 2000:

Besides those declared wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the proxy war Israel waged for Bush to break the spine of Lebanon in proxy:

• War on the military and our veterans (asking so much while cutting services to them every damned day)
• War on basic human rights
• War on individual privacy
• War not on poverty but against the poor
• War on families (you have to be the "right" kind of family not to feel "intruded" upon
• War on science
• War on reason
• War on truth and accountability as well as the whistleblowers who try to make the Bushies honest
• War on public education and against the best conditions for our kids
• War on young minds, trying to lure them away from high school or college with lies
• War on drugs (which got rolled into the War on Terror which, as they say, is a bumper sticker motto but hardly a game plan) which includes the ability for Americans to afford them, to get them for their most urgent needs (ex: contraception, pain relief, and yes, even decongestants in cold formulas), and to make decisions about their own bodies
• War on anyone who isn't of the Fascist Fundamentalist Christian "faith" (Muslims, especially)
• War on America's honor, its reputation, its compassion
• War on the sick (remember Terri Schiavo, kept alive when there was little brain left in her while the Bushies had no trouble discontinuing treatment to the ultra poor minority babies)
• War on journalism
• War on the United Nations, NATO, and other worldly agencies

Care to name some other wars?

Excuse Me? Cheney Thinks Bush Takes Diplomacy With Iran TOO Far?

I must have read this story through seven times on Cernig's Newshog (aka The Newshoggers) before I could get my jaw up from my toes (yeah, I'm short, but not THAT short it doesn't hurt). It still has me speechless, which I've already been at least five times today just in pol reading.

Steve Soto has a tale for you - a tale of dumb and dumber...or more like crazy and crazier.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

Wait!

Let me picture this.

George "Nuke 'em first, then we'll see if they're the enemy!" Bush is just TOO willing to let diplomacy take its course. The same man, we're told, who's been upset with Condi Rice because (allegedly) she tells the president he should not have this "give Israel anything it wants, damn the criticism" because it's messy up the entire Middle East and hurting the U.S. [And if true, the only true "reason" we have ever heard from this Secretary of State.]

More Dirty Tricks on Iraq?

David Sirota writes that Dick Cheney may have been onhand to help "hide" who really voted today to give Bush's latest dark fantasy a blank check re: Iraq War funding.