Don't Forget these names

by Rich Miles
August 5, 2007

UPDATE with names of Dem Senators below.

I'm not the only one posting this. That's a good thing. Here are the names of the 41 Democratic members of Congress and the 16 Dem senators who voted for the dismemberment of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also known as S.1927, the black-comedically named "Protect America Act of 2007."

All the congresspersons and several of the senators are up for re-election next year.

DO NOT FORGET THESE NAMES! FORGETTING IS WHAT THEY'RE COUNTING ON. NEVER MIND THE REPUBLICANS - WE EXPECT THEM TO BE TRAITORS TO AMERICA. JUST REMEMBER THESE DEMOCRATS.

BLUE DOGS BE DAMNED.

In Congress:
Jason Altmire (4th Pennsylvania)
John Barrow (12th Georgia) Blue Dog
Melissa Bean (8th Illinois) Blue Dog
Dan Boren (2nd Oklahoma) Blue Dog
Leonard Boswell (3rd Iowa)
Allen Boyd (2nd Florida) Blue Dog
Christopher Carney (10th Pennsylvania) Blue Dog

Ben Chandler (6th Kentucky) Blue Dog - this sonofabitch is from MY STATE. He's not going back to Congress in 2009. Count on it, Ben ol' son!

Rep. Jim Cooper (5th Tennessee) Blue Dog
Jim Costa (20th California) Blue Dog
Bud Cramer (5th Alabama) Blue Dog
Henry Cuellar (28th Texas)
Artur Davis (7th Alabama)
Lincoln Davis (4th Tennessee) Blue Dog
Joe Donnelly (2nd Indiana) Blue Dog
Chet Edwards (17th Texas)
Brad Ellsworth (8th Indiana) Blue Dog
Bob Etheridge (North Carolina)
Bart Gordon (6th Tennessee) Blue Dog
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota) Blue Dog
Brian Higgins (27th New York)
Baron Hill (9th Indiana) Blue Dog
Nick Lampson (23rd Texas) Blue Dog
Daniel Lipinski (3rd Illinois)
Jim Marshall (8th Georgia) Blue Dog
Jim Matheson (2nd Utah) Blue Dog
Mike McIntyre (7th North Carolina) Blue Dog
Charlie Melancon (3rd Louisiana) Blue Dog
Harry Mitchell (5th Arizona)
Colin Peterson (7th Minnesota) Blue Dog
Earl Pomeroy (North Dakota) Blue Dog
Ciro Rodriguez (23rd Texas) Blue Dog
Mike Ross (4th Arkansas) Blue Dog
John Salazar (3rd Colorado) Blue Dog
Heath Shuler (11th North Carolina) Blue Dog
Vic Snyder (2nd Arkansas)
Zachary Space (18th Ohio) Blue Dog
John Tanner (8th Tennessee) Blue Dog
Gene Taylor (4th Mississippi) Blue Dog
Timothy Walz (1st Minnesota)
Charles A. Wilson (6th Ohio) Blue Dog

In the Senate:
(The Senate vote was 60-28. Both parties had agreed to require 60 votes for passage. That means that any ONE Democratic Senator who voted Aye could have defeated this bill by voting Nay.)

I will post the names of the Senators who voted for this bill as soon as I can find them. Not sure why I'm having so much trouble finding them, since the Senate vote took place before the House vote and those were easy to find.

If you have them, post them or a link as a comment here, please. Thanks.

Roll Call vote #309, 110th Congress 1st Session, not available on THOMAS as of Sunday Aug. 5 at 5:00pm.

UPDATE: Found the Senate slugspawn: There are some REALLY disappointing names on this list:

US Senate: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).

The Day Hope Dies and Despotism Thrives

by Rich Miles
Aug 4, 2007

Senate Gives in on Wiretapping. 16 Dems Go Along.

TWO UPDATES BELOW - Second update is to several links explaining this "legislation"

Was talking to a friend the other day, someone who, while of a progressive/liberal turn of mind, didn't USED to be very politically active.

Anyway, in the course of a conversation about how the Bushies seem dead set on world domination and fascism, she brought a tear to my eye with just one sentence.

She said, "I just get so tired of the bad guys winning all the time."

Even after the much-ballyhooed "November revolution" last year; even after the supposed "good guys" wrested control of not one but BOTH Houses of Congress from the forces of Darkness that had held sway over all for 6 years; even after it had started to appear that the People had awakened from their long slumber, and their elected representatives would live up to their obligation to serve those who elected them - even after all that, things like the top link keep happening.

Our alleged "good guys" keep knuckling under to the neocons. Even some of our totemic heroes, like Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb, voted FOR this extension of even greater tyranny to the Bush administration.

Got it? They made evil LEGAL. It used to be ILlegal, but they made it LEGAL. They did it just because the Bush center of evil told to them to.

So now, one has to ask:

What hope can there be? Who can we turn to now, when even those we elected to save America haven't the courage to stand up to this batch of unalloyed evil that is the Bush White House?

How can the good guys EVER win again?

Or perhaps the real question is - are there any good guys left?

UPDATE: The House of Representatives passed the bill.

They politicked it absolutely perfectly. Beat the ASSES of the Democrats, practically (and in 41 cases, actually) forced them each and severally to press that Yea button.

How long is this going to go on? How long is the minority going to keep calling the shots? This bill could have been defeated if all the Democrats had voted against it - but 41 so-called "librul Dems" voted FOR giving this corrupt and fascistic administration even MORE power to fuck us.

Could someone please tell me: why is this new law NOT the same thing as the White House saying, "We know Alberto Gonzales is a total toady and fuckup. So we're going to give him vast new powers to spy on the American people"?

I mean, is there any other way to interpret this? And is there any other way to see the whole episode than as another nail in the coffin of the U.S. Constitution?

UPDATE 2: Links to the shit that hit the fan:

More Surveillance: No, Don't Stop to Think

It's Official, We Are a Police State (written by a former citizen of the Soviet Union)

The Stench of Weakness Pervades our Capital this Weekend

There are or will be more...

If at First you Don't Screw Up Badly Enough, Try Again

by Rich Miles
June 28, 2007

So here's what the WaPo enlightens us with this morning:

Bush Plans Envoy to Islamic Nations

Hmmm...this whole concept seems awfully familiar. Where have I heard of this before?

Oh yeah...Karen Hughes named to State Dept. job

I mean, you really gotta read this. It's the exact same idea, even in some parts the exact same words used in describing it. Almost 2 years ago.

They really do think we're this stupid. They're right a lot of time about a lot of the country, but still...it's galling.

What's really mystifying about this WaPo piece, though, is that the writer, Michael Fletcher, didn't know about Hughes' prior effort, or at the very most charitable, didn't find it worthy of mention.

Just as an idle guess, you s'pose the reason the first time out didn't take was that Bush sent a woman into one of the most sexually-segregated and gynephobic cultures on Earth? Never mind whether she had the smarts and the experience for such a mission (she didn't, but it had nothing to do with her gender) - why would you send someone as a supposed envoy for peace who would, by her mere appearance, inflame half of her audience and enrage the other half? Does that seem like a consideration worth taking? Or am I just being picky?

I'm just sayin', maybe that might have required a bit more thought in the first place?

Damn, I can't wait to be rid of these morons. January 09, c'mon!!!

Cheney to Rule of Law: Go Fuck Yourself!

by Rich Miles
June 22, 2007

(Originally posted in a slightly edited form as a comment on BluegrassReport.org)

(Updates below 1 - 2)

Without further introduction, from today's WaPo on this matter:

...Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.

(emphasis added)

============================================

To all the right-wingnuts who visit and occasionally comment on this site:

Where do we go from here? I mean, is this just OK with you, that this sort of lawlessness in the highest offices of our land go not only unpunished but virtually unremarked for nearly FOUR YEARS?

Will Pres. Bush call Cheney down on this, and fire him if he refuses to comply? (See update #2 below for the answer.)

Will the Gonzales Justice Dept. cite him, and charge him if he refuses yet again to comply with the law?

Will the stacked, 5-4 in-favor-of-Bush-as-God Supreme Court find constitutional fault with his recalcitrance?

Or will the just-barely-Democratic Congress find the votes, or more to the point the political courage to impeach an Executive Branch official who flaunts the law in this way?

Where do we, the people, go for redress when our leaders are not only lawbreakers but flagrant and admitted lawbreakers, who protect each other at the grave expense of our democracy?

This is the box that the Bush administration has built for our country: they have so successfully loaded our government and our courts with their friends and fellow-travelers that there IS no redress. Cheney will almost certainly NOT be called to task for this unconscionable breaking of the law, and no one can do anything about it.

And some folks, mostly right-wing nutcases who seem incapable of seeing what damage is being done to America and Americans on a daily basis, but also a few people who see themselves as "thinkers", think that's just A-OK. They think it will never backfire on them, and that the government that takes their civil rights from them is "protecting" them by doing so. They never seem to imagine what it would be like if some of these "protections" were used against them.

And so our nation sinks ever lower into the pit of despotism, and there are still folks who cheer the descent and those who are taking us there.

Seriously, folks, you on the right who think all this is OK: do you really want this - lawbreakers in positions of power - to be America's message to the world?

Never mind, I fear your answer would only depress me further.

In closing, let me offer this from Salon's Glenn Greenwald. Yes, he's a liberal - but that doesn't make him wrong. At least not automatically. If you still think Bush is a strong and steadfast and righteous leader, read this, with at least a half-open mind. See if there isn't something you can learn from it.

A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency

The America Bush has created is NOT the America I grew up in, and is most assuredly not the America I wish to die in.

UPDATE 1: Cheney DID NOT say he is No Longer a Member of the Executive Branch: The Real Story is Much Worse

UPDATE 2: Bush claims oversight exemption too

Will no one stop these monsters?

WH Finally Cops: The 'Base' are Stupid

by Rich Miles
June 1, 2007

(Update below)

It's growing increasingly easy in recent days to find articles by the leading lights of supposed "conservative" thought outlining the death, indeed the cold-blooded murder, of conservatism at the hands of the Bush administration. Hardly a day goes by that some old GOP warhorse or other doesn't publish an opinion piece somewhere saying how much of a screwup GWB is, and how what the Republicans need now is someone who will return to "traditional conservative standards" in the 2008 campaign. In other words, the current rejection of the Right is because they haven't been Right-wing enough. The entirely laughable proto-candidacy of Fred Thompson is a case in point, as are the rumblings of that Smaug of the Right Newt Gingrich. If there were ever two candidates who would, if elected, ensure the death of America as we have known it for 200 years, these two would land near the top of the list.

But back to the massive "rats deserting a sinking ship" phenomenon: It's a tawdry spectacle, based mainly in these old farts' covering their asses in advance of an anticipated electoral conflagration, and perhaps even criminal charges against their overlords. The thinking seems to be: if we disassociate ourselves from the political and human carnage that is Bush NOW, perhaps he won't take us down with him when he, inevitably, goes.

But it's something else as well: it's a rehab project intended, once again, to pull the wool over the American people's eyes, and play to their stupidity, their intellectual laziness, and their short memory. In short, it's an attempt by a floundering GOP to resurrect the Reagan Era, aka "Morning in America." They hope we won't remember, and in some ways they may be right to hope it, that Reagan was a laughable old fraud whose main contribution to American history was his espousal of the (till then) biggest deficits in the country's history, and his failure to notice that, now communism was "defeated" with no help from him or his people, we needed to look to the Middle East and try to figure out what THOSE people are so pissed off about.

If there isn't already enough proof of this thesis found in the recent Republican candidates' debates, let me offer the following article, written by none other than the Grande Dame of right-wing apologists, former Reagan "special assistant", and Bush the Elder speechwriter Peggy Noonan:

Too Bad: President Bush has Torn the Conservative Coalition Asunder

There's a very interesting observation in the following quote from this article - as recently as two years ago, could you ever even have IMAGINED a leading Republican saying this?

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.(emphasis mine)

Frankly, I hope Bush and his dead-enders remain true to form, and continue to ignore the signs that are rife around them. I hope the Republican Party continues to think that the way to electoral victory is by simply digging in their heels and being even BIGGER warlike, bloodthirsty assholes than they are now. I hope they continue to miss, and ignore, and stomp on the will of the American people and the international zeitgeist.

But too many more articles like this one, and the GOP might just wake up to reality. At least, long enough to get elected again in 08. Then they can go back to the rape and destruction of America they've been bent on for at least the past 40 years.

Update 6/4/07
Dammit, dammit dammit:

Glenn Greenwald: The great rightwing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush

The Bush Corruption Has Now Reached Our Children

by Rich Miles
April 21, 2007

(See updates 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 below)

This post has been moved to the top of the site. Original date shown above.

I haven't done a lot of teaching in my life. I was an instructor in broadcast journalism for a year back in the 80's, and I taught general broadcasting technique at a couple of broadcasting schools for a while. Recently, however, due to some...shall we say, professional reverses, I signed up to become a substitute teacher in the school system in my county.

I've learned a lot in the short time I've been doing that, but mostly what I've learned is that most of the people whose regular, day-to-day, year-to-year living is made by teaching in our public schools are sick to effin' death of the No Child Left Behind Act.

And apparently, with good reason. The entire act is a multi-layered bureaucratic boondoggle that, far from facilitating teaching and learning, seems mostly to consist of mandating rules on teachers that force them to do that most heinous of educational acts: teaching to the tests.

The whys and wherefores of that would fill, in fact have filled several books. Suffice to say that jargon is king, and teaching materials are forced down the teachers' throats, whether the kids are actually learning anything from the techniques and materials or not.

And based on my short experience as a teacher, I'd have to say that in a significant number of cases, they're not.

I wondered why this was so when I first started subbing. I mean, even if the teachers do have to make sure the kids pass the standardized tests, why wasn't it still possible to teach a genuine curriculum even with those restrictions?

Today, an article in the Washington Post called Key Initiative of 'No Child' Under Federal Investigation brought the question, if not the local-level answer, into something like crystal clear focus: the Bush administration is using our national educational system as one more corruption-filled piggy bank for their big contributors, who as always are NOT delivering what they're being paid for, and are being grossly OVERpaid in the process.

Not content with the ill-gotten gains derived from the Halliburton no-bid contracts, and all the rest of the war profiteering, and the Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff and Rick Renzi and Tom DeLay and his wife and daughter and Michael Brown and Monica Goodling and Paul Wolfowitz and Reps. Jerry Lewis and Gary G. Miller and John Doolittle and Tim Murphy and former Rep. Curt Weldon and his daughter and who knows how many other cash-grabbing scandals, the Bushies are now seen for the past several years to have had a hand in the cookie jar of our kids' futures. They're stealing from our CHILDREN, for God's sake!

And this scandal, but one more on top of the thousands of others, will maybe get a day or two of traction, if that, and then the thieves will just go right on back to business as usual. There is NEVER any accountability for these people, and the rape of America just goes on and on. Even when they get caught, nothing changes.

Man, this shit makes me tired.

UPDATE 1 : Got an email from a friend asking how Goodling was included in the "cash-grabbing scandals". Here's my point: For at least the past 6 years, since two years after she graduated from a poorly-respected FOURTH-TIER law school, she has been taking a pretty hefty salary from the American people for a job that, now the pressure is on, she is clearly unqualified to do. At even the prospect of Senate questioning she has folded like a house of tissue-paper cards and gone into victim mode. I'd call that theft. I'd call it a good reason for Congress to insist she pay back her salary, though I know that will never happen.

We have yet to see her fingerprints directly on any transactions that steer large amounts of taxpayer money to unqualified "consultants" or the like, but that's only because she has hidden herself from the entire world, and promised to take the Fifth if anyone asks her even so much as her full name under oath.

So it's early days yet for Bush's Monica, but I have "faith" in her finally to show up as corrupt as her handlers.

UPDATE 2: Lest we forget, even the Bush family is or was directly profiting from NCLB: No Bush Left Behind: The President's brother Neil is making hay from school reform

Remember how Mama Babs actually defended her cub dipping into the federal honeypot?

UPDATE 3: Just for another little glimpse into the Bush family's dedication to education, take a brief look at this one: Jeb Bush WILL be Memorialized!!

UPDATE 4: The college loan people have been gaming the system for years - and here's one instance where Clinton personally sought to put a stop to it, and partially succeeded. Apparently he didn't count on just how corrupt and thieving these bastards can be: Whistleblower on Student Aid is Vindicated.

These people will steal the paint off the walls if they can turn a buck on it...

Connect the Dots! It's Fun and Easy!

by Rich Miles
May 4, 2007

Originally posted as a comment on Salon.com at this link:

Will Justice probe block Gonzales aide's testimony?

Read the above-linked Tim Grieve story on Salon. It's not long.

Then read this story about Scott Bloch's and the Office of Special Counsel's "investigation" of three separate WH scandals:

CREW Says OSC is the Wrong Choice for Bush Investigations

Then finally, for now, read THIS story about the investigation by a WH "panel", whatever that means, into allegations of wrongdoing by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction

White House Panel Investigates Inspector General for Iraq

They're not very difficult dots to connect, really. Every one of the above, and certainly more besides that are going on under the radar (so far), are attempts by this corrupt administration to appear to be doing something to address serious issues and allegations, while in reality - remember reality? - doing all in their power to shield the guilty parties, especially those in the top levels of government, almost certainly including those in the White House and Bush himself.

How much of this filth must we take? I mean really, how long will we be lied to, and OBVIOUSLY lied to, before people take to the streets and scream, finally, loudly and long enough to be heard?

Our government is LYING TO US DAILY about stuff that really matters, not just the piddling crap that all governments lie about, but real, honest to god life and death stuff. Why are we allowing it still?

What's at stake - what's REALLY at stake

by Rich Miles
April 27, 2007

The following started out as a short comment on BluegrassReport.org, and just grew and grew as I wrote:

A commenter on BGR who calls himself "arejar" ended a brief comment with the observation: for the children's sake, vote Democratic.

I said the following:

arejar, that's a great campaign slogan! I'm not kidding, the Dem candidates in every race need to use that, over and over and over!

For the Children's Sake, Vote Democratic

Now, back to the subject at hand: my picks for Democratic Presidential nominee in 2008, based in part on the results of last night's (Apr. 26) first debate among 8 potential Dem candidates:

1 Gore
2 Edwards
3 Richardson
4 Obama
5 Gravel (I think he could do it, but in any case would be a hoot, and we could use some humor in the WH)
6 Kucinich I guess
7 HR Clinton
8 Mrs Kucinich (WOW)
...
27 Dodd
...
153 Biden

We also really MUST elect a Dem for the sake of the SCOTUS justices who are getting on in years and are trying their damnedest to wait it out till Shrub is out of office. They (Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens and even Souter, fer cryin' out loud) are hanging on by their fingernails, and won't all make it another 4 years. Their avg. age is 75, and Stevens is 87. The 5 conservatives average less than 62 years old.

The next preznit of either party is going to get at least 2 and perhaps as many as 4 SCOTUS nominees, and it's almost certain that they'll all come from left-side retirements. Roberts and Alito are young enough to be there for a long time, and Scalia and Thomas are looking pretty healthy.

Oh and BTW, Kennedy can no longer be thought of in any real sense as a "swing vote" - did anyone read his majority opinion in Carhart? He's officially gone over to the Dark Side, IMO.

So just in case this little point has slipped by, look at the extreme right lean of the SC now, and imagine it with 2 to 4 MORE wingnut judges.

We gotta win this one, folks!

No, the Polls don't just go "poof."

by Rich Miles
April 22, 2007

OK, people - I TOLD you this before, and some of you just didn't listen, so here it is AGAIN:

POLLS MATTER!

OK? It's not just something that a bunch of chrome-domed intellectuals do for fun over Bombay martinis - it's a way of collecting information, a way of learning what large numbers of people are thinking on various topics. Get it?

Polls are not the ONLY information we should pay attention to. They're not the results of an infallible and precise science. They are not the weathervanes by which public policy should always be conducted. But they ARE important!

So when our Preznit says that he doesn't listen to or pay attention to what polls say, that he's the Decider and he knows what's best, and it doesn't matter if the polls say he's wrong, what he's really saying that he is not paying attention to the people who HIRED him. He doesn't give a SHIT what you think. He doesn't think you even deserve to have your opinion acknowledged, much less acted on. Here's what he said at one of those rigged "Town Meetings" he holds once in a while to show himself and presumably us that he really is well-liked after all:

Sometimes the polls just go 'poof!'

Why is it so hard for the wingnuts to recognize that he just doesn't give a damn what they think? Or am I perhaps asking the wrong question? Are they so filled with fear and self-loathing that they actually WANT a preznit who tells them they're stupid and that their opinions are of no consequence?

We really gotta get rid of this "unitary executive" thing...

P.S. Here's the article in which I originally told you that Bush doesn't give a shit about you. As Molly Ivins said, when I tell you not to elect a politician from Texas, LISTEN to me!!!

We Don' Need No Stinkin' Will of the People

I think I finally understand

by Rich Miles
April 20, 2007

Alberto Gonzales finally cleared it all up for me.

For the past 6 years, I've been wondering what in the everlasting blue-eyed hell was going on in the White House - how could they be so consistently, constantly, unwaveringly incompetent, stupid, arrogant and lacking in even the most rudimentary understanding of how to govern.

But on April 19, ol' Fredo's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee was like a big light bulb going off in my head. I finally figured it out:

They're fucking with us. They're, as we used to say back in the 60's, messin' with our heads. Just because they can.

I mean, really: what may be the most thoroughly incompetent performance by a Cabinet-level officer of the U.S. government in the history of the nation took place yesterday, right there on C-SPAN3, and the President of the United States says he's "pleased with the AG's performance", and Gonzales still has his "full support."

His Girl Shill Dana Perino actually calls Fredo "our No. 1 crime fighter."

And they do all of this with totally straight faces.

So seriously, it's reached a point, if it ever meant anything else, where they're fucking with us. They're just pushin' it to see how far they can go, how much they can get away with, how stupid the American people and the press really are, how much of it people will take.

Can't you picture it, though? Bush, Cheney, Rove, all sitting around in the White House living quarters, imbibing their favorite intoxicants - 20-year-old Scotch and blow for Bush, tanks of compressed Bush farts for Rove, the blood of Iraqi infants for Cheney - and gettin' shitfaced. Just getting giggle-assed loaded, and trying to figure out what they're going to try next.

"Hey...teehee...let's send FREDO up to the Senate! Man, he (snort) don't know shit, let them ol' Democrat senators try to get anything (heehee) out of him. Last time Fredo had an independent thought, he didn't recognize it and it died of loneliness."

I mean, wouldn't this scenario make a lot more sense than any other explanation we can come up with?

Foreign policy as stoner toy. Our soldiers as the butt of a big ol' joke. Our legal system as a bar game.

Now it all makes sense.