Errm, why haven’t we started the impeachment proceedings on George W. Bush yet?
Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”
Is it because the Democratic Party is so gutless they can’t even legislate against an unpopular war, making a despised president untouchable?
There is a madness to his methods.
It’s the Democratic party that *you* supported, after all.
Ultimately it’s the people who are responsible for the quality of the government in a democratic system – which is increasingly why I think we ought to ditch it.
I wonder if he’s been drin… eating pretzels again?
I won’t even try to imagine what that means.
Why am I reminded of this website I saw in someone’s sig the other day?
In my blackest paranoid moments, I wonder if Bush might actually believe he’s the antichrist. That he’s on some bizarre Judas-complex secret personal quest to bring about the end of the world, or at least trying to rearrange the world so it looks more like Tim LaHaye imagines it. Maybe he’s not lying when he says it’s not about the oil; it’s Babylon and the field of Armageddon he’s after.
Can anyone verify the veracity of this?
Georgie Anne could have just made that up. I hate unattributed stuff like that. I don’t accept it from the likes of FOX, and I don’t take it from the left either. It’s shoddy journalism. In fact, she did make it up, according to sources who asked to remain anonymous.
Bush is a great foil for atheists. Nothing introduces a room full of people to the value of unbelief like a quiet comment or two to the effect of, “Well, Bush believes he’s getting advice from God. So, if you share his belief in God, you must assume that this inarticulate idiot is doing God’s will, right?” And my favorite, “Yeah… When you consider that Bush and a lot of his advisors believe that Jesus could come again really soon, to kill all the Jews and take his followers to heaven, you can get a real feel for why the Bush administration has such an unsound environmental policy. In fact, it’s hard to plan any kind of long-term national policy that makes sense if you believe the world is coming to an end in the next century.”
Usually people say, “that’s *ridiculous*!” or some such – the perfect set-up for a gently drawled, “…exactly!”
“our country’s destiny.”…?
Unfortunately, coming from Bush I can’t just automatically give him the benefit of the doubt on his meaning–It has creepy religious overtones.
And I can’t help but be reminded that we fought a big war in the last century against someone who used very similar language when occupying a foreign country.
(That’s not a comparison I like making, or even think is appropriate in many ways but…I’m just saying is all.)
Ummm. (a) Dick Cheney? (b) until the Republicans in Congress go along with the Democrats, there aren’t enough of them to override a veto. Bush is untouchable as long as there are GOP guys willing to support him. And Leiberman.
RE: “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”
Read the last part to mean – “so his succesor could not alter Gawd’s plan” – Georgie is a dominionist.
I think George Bush is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. I think George Bush deserves to be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Cheney deserves the same.
However, it would be a waste of time for the House of Representatives to spent a lot of time on impeachment proceedings. There is nothing even close to a two-thirds vote against Bush in the U.S. Senate, which would be required to convict. Thus I think Pelosi makes sense when she says impeachment is not on the table. For now, at least.
That said, I do not like the majority’s timorous approach to confronting the Bush administration. I want the misbegotten Iraq war shut down and my congressional representative knows that. The DCCC has also been informed that I won’t be giving them any contributions until the party as a whole finds its spine. In the meantime, I’ll contribute directly to individual candidates who not only share my convictions but act on them.
I see no way to accomplish things more rapidly than keeping the pressure on the Democratic majority. They can read polls. Perhaps eventually they’ll understand that the country is really fed up. If we give up, however, that just ensures the status quo ad infinitum (ad nauseam has already occurred).
I think Zeno has identified the real problem here. The leading Democrats have failed to do what their supports have been telling them to do for years: oppose the war steadfastly, and uncompromisingly.
Bush’s foolishness is humorous, but it would mean a lot less if the Democrats would do what the majority of the population has asked them to do.
All I ask is for someone to be a patriot and push that glass of wine closer to the President while simultaneously pulling that red button surreptitiously out of his reach.
Please!
Is it because the Democratic Party is so gutless…
Yes. Is anyone else getting tired of it?
I think this has happened because every time they take a stand, they get 3,000 letters from angry, organized conservacrackers ranging from “I’ll pray for you” to “Watch your back, I’m coming after you” and what do they get from us? Nothing.
Ah, what we need is a campaign song!
Bob
Impeach Bush? Bring it on:
http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/24/lets-do-it-lets-impeach-bush/
A link to The Anchoress? Oh, perfect! You can always trust her clearinghouse of right-wing talking points. They’re served up with a generous dollop of medieval religiosity, too, for extra scrumptious goodness.
It’s times like this when I think about something Patton Oswalt said: “I don’t think Bush wants to be the President. I think he wants to be The Last President.”
To think they wanted to impeach Clinton because he did not tell the truth about having a sexual encounter. I guess as far as the wingnuts are concerned sex is impeachable but starting a war and killing many thousands of people is not, especially when the war was not really justified
A Spartacus moment would have been good.
‘I’m the President!’
‘No, I’m the President!’
Shrub is on the record as saying that it would be up to the next president to get the troops out of Iraq. There was a press conference or an interview quite awhile back where he stated explicitly cleaning up the mess was not his problem; it would be his successor’s. Unfortunately, I can’t recall what that was — my recollection is more of the bruises I got when my jaw hit the floor, first in disbelief that he’d actually admit that bluntly that basically he had no plan and didn’t much care, and then again when the so-called journalist(s) questioning him just moved on to the next question, which was something totally innocuous, like what Barney’s favorite flavor of dog biscuit is. It’s kind of a toss-up as to which is the most nausea-inducing group in D.C.: the spineless Democrats who could be doing something constructive now but aren’t, the incredibly corrupt Bush administration, or the MSM personalities that have never seen a butt they didn’t want to kiss.
We could whine about how ineffective and corrupt our political system is, or we could do something useful and riot in the streets and bring down the government.
Guess which option everyone here, including myself, is going to choose?
We simply don’t care any more. We know our society is crumbling, we know there’s nothing we can do to change it, and so we sit back and watch the slow. TV has taught us well.
I don’t understand why everybody’s calling the Democrats gutless for not legislating against Bush. If they do that, he vetoes it, and then he vetoes everything else they try to do out of spite. If he vetoes it, they don’t have enough votes to override, because the Republicans won’t go along with it. I would love to see Bush tossed out of office, but I don’t see how the Democrats could do that if they tried.
The thing that people miss is that while the Democrats can “defund” the war in Iraq, Bush can still divert funds from elsewhere in the military to keep our troops there and then beat the Democrats up for not supporting the troops while also having a handy excuse for why there’s still no real progress in Iraq. Unless Democrats can get enough Republicans on their side to override a veto by Bush they can’t force a withdrawl from Iraq, short of defunding the entire overseas operations of the U.S. military.
Not one of the blogs above mentioned or even intimated that the insidious Israel Lobby is an inescapably significant variable in the murderous Irag war. As significant as the professed and proven oil lobby.
The evidence for the Israel-first influence, both names and acts, in our representative government is overwhelming. How can the killing stop, if we fail to identify the causal chains? Talk about framing?
The point is to keep pushing legislation that 70+% of the American Public wants enacted – minimum wage increases, out of Iraq post haste, collective bargaining on prescriptions, for starters – and show the people that it is the fascist Republicans who are standing in the way, so that in ’08 we can kick another 30+ of them out of office and actually get the votes necessary to work for the American People again. Also, we can kick out conservative Dems in their primaries, too, because conservatism’s tenets are demonstrably wrong and harmful, no matter in whom they reside.
[Re: Godwin – I’m not kidding or overreaching. They’re actual fascists. Go look up Fascism, I’ll wait. These guys are it.]
Bush is a puppet of Haliburton, C.A.C.I, and other civilian contractor corporations. As long as White House crony’s are getting multi-million/billion dollar Cost+ contracts to be in a war, the US will continue to be in a war.
And as long as the media is intimidated into not showing the hardline truth about the origins of the Iraq invasion, the people will continue to think that the “battle against terror” in Iraq is making them safer in the heartland.
Go look up ‘zealot’. We’ll wait.
Oooooh, the “Insidious Israel Lobby.” Skeeeeerry.
Yeah, that horse is long dead, buddy. I don’t think it can feel the riding crop any longer….
Yes. Is anyone else getting tired of it?
That’s an understatement.
“our country’s destiny”… what a hair-raising statement. Lil bastage really IS imminentizing the eschaton!
The case for impeachment isn’t visible at the moment. It may become visible, but recall that it took more than two years between the Watergate burglary by Nixon’s henchmen and his resignation when the House Judiciary Committee voted out bills of impeachment; Clinton didn’t drag his feet as much, and it was briefer, but our recent experience is that it takes about a year after a sizable percentage of people think the case is clear.
The case against Bush probably would revolve around the Justice Department shenanigans coupled with a clear connection to intent to violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a case which I think is quite doable on the basis of information we have now. If such an investigation were careful enough and were to uncover Bush complicity in stealing Ohio — is there a good reason that Treasury Secretary John Snow effectively lived in Ohio for the last months of the campaign, and has anybody bothered to check on what he was doing there? — or Florida, or Wisconsin or Missouri, then criminal indictments might be unavoidable, leaving the path to impeachment clear.
But what do we get if Bush is impeached? Cheney. Unless there’s a really good case against Cheney first, it’s fruitless and probably stupid to push a case for impeaching Bush with just over a year and a half left. The cleanup from the corruption of this administration will be massive and time consuming. If Pelosi and crew can get it started now, perhaps it can proceed faster once Bush is gone.
Impeachment, maybe we get Cheney and greater disaster; no impeachment, we can try to get the cleanup going early. Which path is best for the nation?
Call me overly-optimistic but i just don’t believe that article. It doesn’t provide enough information.
The Democrats impeaching Bush isn’t going to happen. As has already been mentioned, they don’t have the votes necessary to convict. Also as soon as they begin the process they’ll be attacked for “supporting the terrorists, hating the troops,” etc. etc. et al ad nauseum.
The Democrats also have their hands tied somewhat with the resolutions (and funding) regarding the Iraq (non-)war. Again they will be attacked if they don’t provide funding while at the same time Bush can hold out channeling money from other areas to fund what needs to be done while bashing the Democrats for “hatin’ the troops!” I’m not sure why people thought this was going to be any different then it has been, the Democrats don’t have enough votes to override a veto, most of the Republicans only have this war to make them “strong,” so they wont vote against Bush, and the more Democrats try to do something about it, the more Bush and his cronies can scream about them not supporting the troops, being unpatriotic, being soft on terror, having the terrorists follow us home, etc.
The interesting thing is, it’s a continuation of the cold war and the Democrats “losing China.” Change a few words, Iraq to Vietnam, terrorists to communists, soft on terror to soft on communism, and follow us home to domino theory, and the anti-Democrat(ic) speeches make a lot more sense.
The Republicans managed to make the Democrats “pussies” in the 50s and really, it’s the only argument they have today. They just change a few words, here and there, and pull out the old cold war speeches.
I just don’t get how after a landslide election… and overwhelming public distrust of the way the war is going and how it’s being managed. That the Democrats are just pounding away at Bush on it. Day in and day out. He’s screwing up over and over again. And he somehow walks around like he’s a hero and he’s doing the right thing.
Everyone should be calling him a failure… endlessly!
They’re talking about being there for 50 years and we’re talking about a year.
Anyone think that point should be brought up with the American people?
They’re talking about being there for 50 years and we’re talking about a year.
That gigantic walled-and-fortified embassy is a perfect symbol of the bush admin’s stubborn, us-against-the-world, bunker mentality.
Soon he will display the chests of seashells he got from battling Neptune.
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN3041621320070530?pageNumber=1
Like South Korea???? There’s a border, an isolated government and and no one shooting at you from behind. Oh yeah and the whole truce thing.
How about Northern Ireland… but both the Catholics and the Protestants want to kill you.
Fucking idiots. Pardon my english.
I can’t say that I’m surprised at a semi-permanent American military presence in Iraq – Bush got Negroponte in there as soon as he could (and then brought him home so he could keep track of us).
Of course Washington wants permanent bases in Iraq! Bush wanted this from the outset. Why wouldn’t he?
Impeaching Bush and getting Cheney as president would not be a bad outcome. Cheney has minimal popularity ratings and would be an even weaker president than Bush, and you couldn’t ask for a better dead albatross around the neck of the republican party going in to the 2008 elections. Cheney’s strength has been that we have neither strong laws nor strong traditions re checking up on a VP the way every last action of a President gets recorded and examined, so he’s been able to operate “under the radar”, despite having an unprecedentedly large and powerful staff. Bring him out from under his rock, and he’ll wither away in full sunlight. Plus the added stress would probably do him in.
Not only do the Democrats not have a large enough majority to convict Bush, but I’ll go one step farther and note that if the House had passed the war funding bill with deadlines, we’d STILL be in Iraq in 12-18 months from now.
Stay with me here.
In 12 months, there will be presumed front-runners for the office from both major parties. The Democrats will all say we should get out of Iraq ASAP. Because of Hillary’s twisted history of her votes on the war, I think she’s at an automatic disadvantage to Obama. So let’s just say I’m right, and Obama is the presumed front-runner.
The GOP candidate? Not so simple. Now I see that Giuliani is flip-flopping on a variety of important issues, so I can’t support him. A lot of Republicans can’t support him. McCain? He’ll get no crossover Democrat vote. His positions are quite clear on Iraq, so, done, I won’t vote for him.
So, we have a classic situation: A Democrat candidate who will unite Democrats and attract Republicans vs. a Republican candidate who automatically divides the GOP. So I am very optimistic. I think, now, that there was a method to Pelosi’s madness.
I know you don’t like to hear this, PZ, but I now fully support Obama. Mainly I support him because he’s showing a backbone where Kerry didn’t show one. He will push back. Now, the extremely evil Karl Rove probably has the Swiftboat ready to go on Obama, but I think Rove understands that Obama won’t take weeks and weeks to respond to lies. He will push back, which makes him even more ideal as a candidate.
What we need to do, too, is get rid of the slaveholder-era Electoral College. We only had that so states with a lot of slaves (who could not vote) would count during the voting process. Get rid of the Electoral College, and this country would be a different place today.
Abe Lincoln would spin in his grave if he knew the EC was still in effect. It’s obsolete.
Well, we know that Georgie Boy is “The Decider” — a quote which (especially when seen on video so you get the tone and expression) sums up both the arrogance and childishness of the man.
However, the attestation of this latest doesn’t seem very good. It’s one of those stories that I perversely wish were true, because I ignobly like having my opinions confirmed, though pretty scarey if it is.
The image of a gorilla leaning back, pounding on its chest while twisting back and forth and roaring, “I’m the President!!!” just popped into my head, for some reason.
Bush needs to go, pure and simple. I’m sick of hearing about his childish behavior.
I haven’t seen anyone else mention it yet, gogmeattib came close though, as a few others.
Remember why the Democrats had to add all the pork barrel projects to the war funding bill to start with. The Republicans refused to do their job when it was clear they were going to lose majority. Thus leaving a lot of projects and departments without funding (NASA comes to mind). An impeachment takes up all the time of the congress, both house and senate. While lacking enough votes to convict (which just means that the Republicans are too scared to go against their party figure head), nothing else would be done either. And then the Republicans would be able to blame the lack of a working government on the Democrats, who were on a witch hunt.
Yes the Dems giving into Bush by making the benchmarks optional was a mistake, however you don’t win every battle in a war. The dems need to make changes to things like the FCC and the FDA first, and go from there. Start getting people to realize that they’re not done yet, and maybe point out a little better how bad an impeachment would be. There has already been articles of impeachment for Chaney put out there, but the people running the Dems in congress, Pelosi and Reed, tried to point out that there is a lot of work they need to do, before they can even think of impeaching.
As for Caledonian’s comment about riots, its already stating in Texas of all places, or did everyone else miss the part where the Texas state government rioted against the Bushie who is the speaker there?
I know Caledonian’s just a curmudgeonly old contrarian autocrat, but I have to ask:
Calley, Show me a plank of conservatism that doesn’t completely fuck over a majority of Americans.
Socially and fiscally, they’re out to fuck over anyone who’s not already rich (white, het, and male).
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
Quoted for truth.
I would not be surprised if what is reported is true and it would be a beautiful illustration of Bush’s insanity for moderates and conservatives to chew on (though the latter might simply admire his “passion”) but as it is I don’t think passing on this story would do anything for my credibility, as I can’t say I completely trust the reporting myself.
Why do I suddenly picture picture George the lesser behind Harry Reid (whose naked haunches are thrust high in the air) with a shit stained arm from his elbow to his ring which is only slightly smaller than my screen door?
I am curious to know…What is it about this report that seems so far fetched to some?
I’m pretty sure we’re using the word ‘conservatism’ differently.
So let me then, for one, welcome our new pogonophoran overlords… :->
So let me then, for one, welcome our new pogonophoran overlords… :->
Then why doesn’t he go to church more often? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a banana is just a banana; but cold hard cash is always cold hard cash.
“Blessed are the warmongers, for they shall inherit the oil.”
Interesting idea. I followed you all the way to “Maybe he’s not lying”.
Typical Bushevik reaction: anything that works less than ideally must be destroyed, no matter what its potential.
It’s very easy to come up with suggestions on how to turn your oiligarchy and MORONARCHY back into a democracy.
First, abolish the electoral college; no matter what theoretical arguments there might be for it, it has outlived its sheer feasibility, now that Greens in swing states exchange their votes over teh intarwebz with Democrats in safe states. Abolishing the electoral college would abolish the silly difference between swing states and safe states — and this would make participation in election jump up: currently, if you don’t happen to live in a swing state, you waste your time if you vote for president.
Next, make the government (administration) responsible to the parliament (Congress), not to the president. Introduce the separation of president and government, like what the rest of the democratic world has. This would automatically end the stupid two-party system, which has only arisen because a president can’t be a coalition. It would also end the stupidity of split government where administration and Congress block each other and nothing gets done.
I’ll stop for now, it’s 3 at night. Just the most important point: Vote in ink on paper and count the ballots by hand.
Then why doesn’t he go to church more often? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a banana is just a banana; but cold hard cash is always cold hard cash.
“Blessed are the warmongers, for they shall inherit the oil.”
Interesting idea. I followed you all the way to “Maybe he’s not lying”.
Typical Bushevik reaction: anything that works less than ideally must be destroyed, no matter what its potential.
It’s very easy to come up with suggestions on how to turn your oiligarchy and MORONARCHY back into a democracy.
First, abolish the electoral college; no matter what theoretical arguments there might be for it, it has outlived its sheer feasibility, now that Greens in swing states exchange their votes over teh intarwebz with Democrats in safe states. Abolishing the electoral college would abolish the silly difference between swing states and safe states — and this would make participation in election jump up: currently, if you don’t happen to live in a swing state, you waste your time if you vote for president.
Next, make the government (administration) responsible to the parliament (Congress), not to the president. Introduce the separation of president and government, like what the rest of the democratic world has. This would automatically end the stupid two-party system, which has only arisen because a president can’t be a coalition. It would also end the stupidity of split government where administration and Congress block each other and nothing gets done.
I’ll stop for now, it’s 3 at night. Just the most important point: Vote in ink on paper and count the ballots by hand.
Actually, the type of exercise that Bush does, leads to acute psychosis, the same kind of psychosis that PCP, cocaine, other stimulents, or hypoglycemia. What they all do is deplete the brain of ATP, which triggers low ATP compensatory and response pathways (one of which is psychosis).
The characteristic ATP depletion mechanism for males over evolutionary time was single combat to the death over females. When males get sufficiently depleted in ATP, it triggers the “berserk” pathway, where they become violent and unpredictable. A “feature” in single combat.
When Bush exercises to extreme exhaustion, that is precisely what he is doing. He says it “clears” his mind, like the “runner’s high”. That is a delusion, a useful delusion if you are running from a bear. It is a very powerful survival feature for the feelings of fatigue to disapear, so that one may continue to run irrespective of the damage that one is doing to one’s body. Escaping from the bear, saber toothed tiger, lion, etc is more important than preventing damage, including brain damage.
Coupled to the brain damage that Bush had from his early drug abuse days, Bush may have periods of quite frank psychosis, even delirium.
It would be appalling for the Dems to lose control of the House of Senate, or fail to gain the White House in the next election cycle. Yet, if they don’t get their shit together, it may well happen. GW is vulnerable right now, but I fear the Republican strategists still have enough media savvy to engineer another victory, especially if the Dems continue to portray themselves as “Republican Light”. I am a registered Republican, but it will be a LONG time before I vote for *any* Republican candidate again.
In the interests of fairness, I read some definitions of zealot, zealotry, fascist, fascism, and conservatives and conservatism.
And wouldn’t you know it, modern American conservatives pretty much fill every definition of fascist. The need for a national identity, authoritarianism, building up the police state and the military, first recourse to threats being a military response, unity of religion and race, dismissal of individual liberties in favor of group unity, dismissing unwelcome speech or criticisms on “patriotic” grounds…yep, sounds like a republican to me. The question of whether modern republicans can fairly be called conservatives remains open. And to be honest I couldn’t care less- the only traditions or institutions I credit for doing me any good are parenthood and public education, and many American conservatives seem obsessed with claiming ownership of the first while trying to destroy the second.
As far as zealotry goes, there are zealots all over. But the last time I checked, disagreeing with Caledonian was not the defining factor. In fact if you take the historic example of the zealot Jews protecting their religion from heathenizing by the Romans, it fits pretty well on American conservatives, with one major difference. The Jews involved were actually trying to protect their culture from a real and forceful enemy. The republican, mainly christian zealots here, are usually fighting strawmen for the benefit of cameras. Or have the gay socialist pothead hippie environmentalists taken over the country while I was at work?