RantDuJour

You learn about the “case” against Padilla. Here’s the guy that Ashcroft flew home from Russia early to trumpet loudly that caught a ‘dirty’ bomber. Here’s a US citizen that bush put away in a Navy brig without a lawyer for 4 years. Here’s a US Citizen who was tortured by bush. Here’s a US Citizen who has been left a virtual zombie after being tortured for years. Here’s a US Citizen who bush prevented from getting his day in court for years. bush fought all the way the Supreme Court, more than once, before finally agreeing, well after that lying scum Aschroft went home, to let Padilla have his day in court. All the while, they were torturing him and preventing this US CITIZEN from having any of his civil rights.

And, what does the US federal attorney finally present as evidence of what an evil terrorist-loving guy this is. 7 phone calls that barely even _imply_ _ANYTHING_ and a fingerprint, of undetermined age, on the top of document that doesn’t say anything about terrorist activities.

So, after 4 years incommunicado in prison, the US trumpeted that they had the goods on Padilla being connected to terrorism. This was after 4 years of claiming that he was planning on blowing up a dirty bomb. And, the evidence that they finally do present? Nothing more than some wire-taps, which prove nothing and a stupid piece of paper that they could have shoved under his hands while they were torturing him.

Disgusting, anti-American scum run this country.

Here are a couple of links for more information ->

Daily Kos

Christian Science Monitor

And, if you are even half as outraged as I am, please sign Sen. Durbin’s petition, Petition

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Let me see if I can count the number of ways this is stupid.

For one thing, Pelosi won with 80% of the vote in her last election. While there may be a larger than normal number of morons living in SF, it’s unlikely there are that many.

But, hey, let’s say that Sheehan does beat Pelosi. Let’s count what has been lost and try to figure out any possible gain at all. The Leader of the House of Representives will  have been replaced to by a 1st term representiave. What that means is that the Leader of the House of Representatives no longer resides from SF. That means that all the power that Pelosi currently has to steer things to SF will be gone. That means that all the power that Pelosi has to steer things to CA will have been lost. That’s not just projects like highway funds or reconstruction for, say, earthquake preparedness, but it’s attention to SF and CA’s priorities for Global Warming or off-shore drilling. While we’ll have some say with 10% of all  Representatives coming from CA, it’s a bit harder to get Repubs and Democrats to agree on priorities, even for CA.

Along the same lines as losing the Speaker of the House, if Sheehan does win, you kick off a Representative with very long tenure at the House of Representatives. (I don’t know how long off-hand and I’m too lazy to go look it up, but it’s not that important _how_ long, what is important is that it’s long.) The longer a rep has been in the House the more things get done and the more stuff can be brought home. One doesn’t have to be Speaker to get highway construction funds. Knowing how to work the system and/or being on the right subcommittees helps as well. Anyone remember that TV show? God, I can’t remember Jack this morning. It was about an “Independent” winning a Senate seat from CA. It was written by Lawrence O’Donnell. He’s big on ‘independence’ and non-partisanship. So, anyway, our hero needs to get some project for CA funded. But, because he’s not on the right committee, he gets shut out. He tries to do an end-run, but I forget whether he was succesful or not. It was an interesting look at the sausage-making that goes on in Congress.

Anyway, let’s look at what else will happen is Sheehan beats Pelosi. Will impeachment be on the table in Jan 2009? Well, gee, no, it won’t be. Bush will, finally, thank god, be out of office. But, let’s use the wayback machine and ask if Sheehan beat Pelosi in ‘06 would a 1st term congressperson be able to get impeachment on the table. Don’t make me laugh…ha, ha, ha. Not a chance in hell.

I’m in favor of impeachment, frankly. But, I’m also a realist. If there aren’t enough votes to stop funding bush’s war, there really arent’ enough votes to impeach bush and cheney. Chris Matthews, I think, voiced the views of the rightwing mainstream media on impeachment. It’s only valid if the president has committed a crime. While I need to think about that some more, it’s clear to me that bush and cheney have committed dozens of crimes. From illegally spying on Americans to illegally torturing Americans and non-Americans, to illegally rendering innocent people back to states that sponser torture, to illegally hiding information from Congress, to illegally firing Attorneys and policizing the entire Department of Justice a place that should be as non-partisan as they come.

Sheehan’s comments and complaints are pretty pathetic and show her to be not that very bright a person. While I admire her patriotism and her energies against this president and this war, she does show a failure to think through issues. It’s not Pelosi’s fault that things didn’t pass the way that Sheehan wants. There are Democrats, let alone Republicans, who aren’t supporting these issues. Those are the people to work on.

Go work on those people, Cindy. And, stop beating up on the people who support most of your cause.

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I’m finally getting around to reading (actually listening the book on tape) Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack. This is the book about the leadup to the War in Iraq. I resisted reading it because Woodward has shown that he’s not a serious journalist and that he loves the halls of (rightwing) power so much that he sucks up to them. I took a little solace from the fact that the bushies didn’t like his book. But, I figured that that was really just them whining about not getting as idealized a picture as Woodward gave them in his first book.

I’m about halfway through the book. Right now what is clear, despite a bunch of glorification by Woodward is that bush is clearly, oh so painfully clearly, out of his league. He just doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with the complications of the world. He doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with what was going on Iraq. I just read through a part where Powell went into great detail during a lengthly 1 on 1 with bush about how and why the proposed invasion was wrong and how it wasn’t going to help us in oh so many ways. Woodward asks bush about this conversation 18 months later and bush had a completely different take on it. He was oblivious to what the potential problems were. He listened to invasion plan after invasion plan given to him by Tom Franks and asked no questions.

Condi comes off as an enabler. She has no opinion, she just does what bush says. Rumsfeld comes off as a psychotic. He has no clue how the military works and he keeps talking about having to ‘think outside the box’. Rumsfeld started working on Iraqi war plans before bush’s inauguration.

Cheney is truly the evil force. Bush is a clueless idiot. Cheney basically does whatever the hell he wants. And, he is insane.

Tom Franks let himself be pushed around by Rumsfeld. He came up with these idiotic plans just to make Rumsfeld happy. Bush could not care less. He was oblivious.

Powell comes across as the only sane one. But, he’s probably just trying to save his own legacy. He enabled bush himself. If he really thought that the war in Iraq was insane, as  he claims in the book, he should have resigned. But, not only didn’t he, but he collaborated in the lie about WMD. He knew that there was no WMD.

It’s still really not clear what the reason was for bush’s obsession with Iraq. It’s a small not very unique country. It had a brutal dictator. But, so do dozens of others. He attacked his own people 12+ eyars before (with our help), but so have other countries. He wasn’t a threat to us. The claim was that he had WMD, but bush didn’t care enough about WMD to allow the inspectors to actually do their job. He had to have his war.

It’s just such a tragedy that had no way of being stopped.  You have the villiage idiot in charge. You have him surrounded by sycophants who don’t even think about the ramifications of a war. You have the evil rightwing cabal that is pushing bush to invade. And, you have the lone rightwing sane guy who didn’t have the courage of his convictions to do the right thing. It was inevitable. And, it was exacerbated by the cowardice shown by the Democrats. If they had had a backbone, bush still would have had his war.  There was no way to stop it. But, at least, they’d all be on the right side.

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