That is, as the young people say, fucked up. Makes one wonder what other vile stuff has been uttered by Republican BFFs.

My god Jon -- you're turning into Digby!

My god Jon -- you're turning into Digby!

Sort of. This sort of thing is a real and important phenomenon that we should be pointing out. But what I left out here is that the divide isn't Republicans v. Democrats. It's mostly supporters of US imperialism v. non-supporters of US imperialism. So Hillary Clinton actually might get away with meeting with Jumblatt, since he's on our side now. Likewise, Cheney et al would be attacked from the right if Jumblatt weren't currently doing our bidding.

More important is the fact that Jumblat, who is
heralded as a democrat is actually a feudal lord.
And during the civil war either he or his father
(I'm not sure)were war-lords, allied with syria dan ethnically cleansing...
christians.
Compared to him, even Bhutto is a democrat.

Whatever. Just please, p-l-e-a-s-e, don't start saying things like "I don't get why the Democrats are acting this way," or even worse, "liberals are the REAL patriots." You're nearing that area already; we've got enough of those sites as it is.

Another thing the media under-reported: The 2002 space shuttle disaster, which clearly didn't get as much attention as the one on February 1, 2003, which incredibly enough also killed an Israeli astronaut.

I see this is the WaPo's error, not yours directly. But unlike the WaPo, I trust you to get your facts straight.

1-202-225-0100 DEMAND IMPEACHMENT.

I would know your hypothetical wasn't true because there is no prominent liberal thinktank.

I would know your hypothetical wasn't true because there is no prominent liberal thinktank.

Yes, exactly right. I was going to point that out myself, but was too lazy.

please, p-l-e-a-s-e, don't start saying things like "I don't get why the Democrats are acting this way," or even worse, "liberals are the REAL patriots." You're nearing that area already

I might say the first thing, because I don't get it, and neither do you or anyone else. There's essentially no reporting on how much of their behavior is honest support of imperialism and the national security state, how much is general cravenness, how much is desire to play it safe until the presidential election, and how much is the desire to hold onto their power within the party. Or, something else.

You're safe on liberals being the real patriots.

I do get it, because it's easy to get: the Dems are part of the system of lies and control; they tactically differ with the GOP on how to lie and control. Not a hard concept to grasp. Of course the Dems are imperialists. Of course they want to win elections (unless winning means significantly changing their politics or approach, in which case they'd rather lose). Craven? Yeah, I suppose, but to whom? You and me? Ha.

I might say the first thing, because I don't get it, and neither do you or anyone else. There's essentially no reporting on how much of their behavior is honest support of imperialism and the national security state, how much is general cravenness, how much is desire to play it safe until the presidential election, and how much is the desire to hold onto their power within the party. Or, something else.

all of the above?

here's something intriguing - maybe you saw ralph nader's piece at counterpunch for oct 13/14 2007, where he quotes a congressman from western massachusetts, where town after town after town has passed resolutions for impeachment - and yet the congressman (john olver) won't push for it -

The last question to Cong. Olver was from a young veteran back from Iraq and Afghanistan. "What could we possibly do to bring you around to our way of thinking," he asked?

Cong. Olver's response, after several seconds of silence, was "You have to prove to me that impeachment will not be counterproductive."

in his article, nader says that the congresspersons should go ahead and honor their oath to uphold and defend the constitution, and that their current refusal to do so is cowardly

http://counterpunch.org/nader10132007.html

and on the other hand, i read this article after having seen a video of nader posted at youtube with the title "Things Are a Lot Worse than We Thought!"

"Ralph Nader, activist, author and lecturer, shared his views in the matter of the "Next Steps for the Peace Movement," at a panel discussion on Oct. 11, 2007. The event was held at Bus Boys and Poets, in Washington, D.C."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIO-tCPSfHA

i've just watched it again

in this video nader, reading from a piece of paper, says congressman olver "expressed his opinion that the current autocratic executive - meaning the White House - would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, institute martial law, and call off the 2008 elections, were the Democrats to initiate impeachment"

nader says - "things are a lot worse than we thought" if olver's views are correct - OR if olver and those who think like him are just being paranoid - "either way, they're not a proper opposition party"

the view ascribed to congressman olver does not seem paranoid to me - the bush/cheney gang could do such a thing - if so, i wonder what would happen next

and i also wonder why a video of ralph nader saying this is available, but a written article is not

So, it's agreed YOU are All afraid of IMPEACHMENT?

what you mean YOU, boy?

i am in favor of impeachment, even though i think congressman's olver's alleged ideas about what the bush/cheney gang may come true

a) "were the Democrats to initiate impeachment" "the current autocratic executive - meaning the White House - would attack Iran from the air"

i think this is likely, but i also think that if they are NOT impeached they are likely to attack iran from the air

b) "declare a national emergency, institute martial law, and call off the 2008 elections" -

yes, they might do all these things if congress dares impeach them - and none of them if congress does not impeach them

but if the bush/cheney gang can do these things >>>and make them stick

may the Creative Forces of the Universe
stand beside us, and guide us, through the
Night with the Light from Above - if any

mistah charley,ph.d I got "YOUR BOY" hanging right here. Since YOU've taken the trouble to INSULT me, Sir, first, let me say Thank You. And second, if I may ask, HAVE YOU CALLED 1-202-225-0100 and said ANYTHING at all?

Mike Meyer -- I've got no dog in your fight between Mistah Charley and yourself, but must you sweat so mightily to make other people bend to your will? Throw out your ideas and let it rest. Jeebus.

Piehole: Make hay while the sun shines, I got 14 months.

Of course, that's all YOU got too.

Piehole: You DO REALIZE that to have IMPEACHMENT, one MUST convince The Speaker Of The House Of Represenatives Of The United States Of America to "table" Articles of Impeachment against The Vice President and The President of The United States Of America, one Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. This is Madam Speaker's phone number. 1-202-225-0100. (quit possibly as close as she will ever get to hear MY voice, to be realistic)( Now if YOU are IN LOVE with Dick and George and their governance suits YOU to a T??? then ENJOY the next 14 months.)

Walid Jumblatt is a nut case AND a warlord with the blood of innocents on his hands. Unfortunately, he's a nutcase and warlord etc. who continues to hold power in his home country.

THis summer he made a big shift from Anti-American to pro-American, largely because of his traditional sectarian hatred of the Shi'a, which would include Hizbullah. Jumblatt is a Druze, which is a kind of break-away-Muslim sect that reminds me of the Latter-Day-Saints - I call the Druze Lebanon's Mormons. Druze and Shi'ites have traditionally hated and massacred each other. My own Christian village was set up in south Lebanon in the Ottoman era as an attempt by the Turks to to buffer the Druze and Shi'a areas from each other. The Turks established a belt of Christian villages from Sidon east up into the mountains, to keep the Druze and Shi'a apart.

Anyway. Jumblatt was a sort of lefty and there was a time when lefty Lebanese I knew admired him. His father was a revered figure. But Jumblatt has been clearly and certifiably batshit insane for quite some time now.

And those massacres against Christians during the Lebanese civil war? Yup, they happened, and Druze forces committed these crimes against villages who were not in combat.

I think it's a sign of BushCo's desperation in the Middle East that they would take this raving, vicious, wacko flip-flopper on as an ally. They don't have many other cards to play. And I think they figure no one is paying attention. (They're right).

Interestingly, Jumblatt has even called Bush "a mad Emperor"...which makes me wonder, why does Republican toleration for open humilitation suddenly become so high in the face of a dumbass worm more ignorant than them such as this, when they are always willing to take on the wiser, nobler and more honorable?

This is why we need greater media consolidation and pay-to-surf intertubes. To stop stories like this one from leaking out. Little boy Rupert Murdoch and Clearwater need even bigger megaphones because they haven't succeeded in keeping us totally ignorant.

I realize arguing with all-caps Mike is a fool's game, but a few questions come to mind:

1) Would you suggest calling the White House to demand that George Bush turn himself in to the nearest authorities for prosecution as a war criminal?

2) If the answer to 1) is "no", why not? Is it because you recognise that calling Bush is a waste of time because he's never going to do what you want?

3) If the answer to 2) is "yes", then how is Nancy Pelosi significantly different from George Bush, at least in terms of her willingness to do what you want?

I'm not saying we should always tailor our demands to what those in power are willing to do, but still - at some point, reality must have some effect on our actions.

Or not.

Nowadays there is (understatement alert) much discontent with the performance of the Democrats generally, and Reid and Pelosi particularly, and after some discussion of the failure of BushCo someone writes, "How come the Demos don't impeach him/them?" And someone looks at the Constitution and says, "Hmm, well one plus one equals two, so how come they don't DO SOMETHING?"

Obviously, there is something wrong with the system, but people don't know or don't want to know or can't figure out what.

I've been posting portions of this around the internet recently because it is the answer to the question. The democratic system in the U.S. has always been deformed. When "all men are created equal" was written, that didn't included women, minorites or unpropertied white men. As each reform occurred, the core of monied peoples made moves to further consolidate their power and wealth.

The quote is from an interview with Jim Garrison, the DA in New Orleans who was investigating the assassination of JFK. He was smeared and castigated like no other public figure because he deigned to question the Warren Report. At the end of the interview he was asked where he considered himself on the political spectrum. This is what he answered. See if you disagree with his analysis, in 1967, of what was happening to our country:

That's a question I've asked myself frequently, especially since this investigation started and I found myself in an incongruous and disillusioning battle with agencies of my own Government. I can't just sit down and add up my political beliefs like a mathematical sum, but I think, in balance, I'd turn up somewhere around the middle. Over the years, I guess I've developed a somewhat conservative attitude--in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to the thumbscrews-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right--particularly in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the state and the individual's own responsibilities to humanity. I don't think I've ever tried to formulate this into a coherent political, but at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society.

I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau. I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I've always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers.

I'm concerned about all of this because it isn't a German phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow man. What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions, and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society.

Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work.

But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act.

I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I''ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

+++

Has fascism come to America in the name of "national security"? Is Congress reduced to a debating society? How about this one? "The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions, and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution."

It's a different war, but the song remains the same.

SteveB. George IS A CRIMINAL and I feel Nancy is NOT. Dick IS inclined to TREASONSOUS behavior, and I feel Nancy is not. NANCY HAS EVERYTHING TO WIN, George and Dick have everything to lose. (1-202-225-0100 call it)

Mike - I want you to know that I used to call the White House five days a week, plus my two Senators and Representative. Since the last election, I have not done it as much, but I do it regularly, and every office knows my name and my face.

And I call Nancy and tell her to impeach regularly too. And stopped in last June and told the staff directly.

And I have called the White House and told them that bush/cheney/rice/rumsfeld are war criminals and need to turn themselves in.

My favorite approach is a bit different though: I call and start talking rationally about what I have been reading and seeing on the internet about Iraq then I go into near-hysterical ranting and begging them to STOP KILLING PEOPLE. I say "Please stop killing people, I can't stand it anymore" about a dozen times. I think I really do make their day when I do that. They often ask me to calm down, and I don't.

I used to think that if 10% of the country did what I did, then things would really change. I am not so sure anymore - I think we are in a failed state now. But I will continue to do what I can do.

By the way, doing these calls takes less than 10 minutes out of my day.

And I do lots of other things, too numerous to count.

Currently, I am thinking hard about moving to Canada - not that that is far enough, but it will be better than the USA when the shit really hits the fan.

And - finally - I would like to recommend the book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein. It ties a lot of things together, and I am very impressed by her massive intelligence.

Susan: Interesting approach with the hysteria, I may try it myself. (sadly I've never been very effective over the phone)
Almost any petition hinges on that 2% of the electorate. OUR population is 300,000,000 persons so I'm shooting for 6,000,000 phonecalls, and a fairly reasonable goal. The whole idea is to pressure Madam Speaker to the table on IMPEACHMENT. (The Lady's going to do just fine ALL she needs is is a "little" shove out onto the dance floor)

To the commenter who called Jumblatt dumbass: the man is not dumb. Nuts, but not dumb.

My mother, who lived in Lebanon for ten years after the civil war ended and has met Jumblatt personally, reminds me that Jumblatt is not the only Lebanese leader with the blood of innocents on his hands. How about the Gemayel family, Samir Geagea, Nabih Berry, and that parliamentarian who was blown up next to the swim club last summer? I'm not even including Hizbullah types on the list because they are not officially in power. Oh yes, Michel Aoun, the opposition leader whom many of my relatives like - killed a lot of innocent people during the civil war.

The list is quite lengthy. Even Gibran Tueni, the journalist assassinated by car bomb for whom I wrote elegaic posts on my blog - Gibran Tueni was involved in some pretty nasty stuff while the guns were firing.

But Jumblat is one who has mouthed off a great deal and very publicly about his hatred of America, Israel, etc. etc. Look, he is the leader of the Druze, including Druze in Israel. Druze in Israel have important positions in the Israeli military. Don't believe for a minute that Jumblat has no contact with Israel, or that his Israeli Druze followers have no contact with him. He is their spiritual as well as political leader, and he has been playing every side of every fence all of his life. As head of a long-embattled minority religion, this is only natural. But his public pronouncements have never matched up with what he really does and everybody knows it.

Oh yes, and part of his switch this summer is due to his hatred of Syria, which killed his father, and is now aligned with Hizbullah, his traditional enemy.