If the Opposite of Pro Is Con, Then the Opposite of Progress Is ...
By David Swanson
Created Jun 23 2008 - 8:46am
Why is Congress ranked right below Dick Cheney in popularity?
Because nobody has yet polled on the popularity of pond s***.
The day before Congress tossed the Fourth Amendment, and literally five
minutes after they took out a $163 billion loan on behalf of my unborn
grandkids to kill Iraqis and U.S. troops for another year, I had to give a
speech at a university in Milwaukee about peace, impeachment, and
elections.
I started like this, before breaking the news about what Congress had just
done:
Happy Juneteenth! The words that were read to the slaves in Texas are
worth
remembering:
"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation
from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This
involves
an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former
masters
and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes
that
between employer and free laborer."
If someone would read the recent Supreme Court decision in plain English
to
the captives at Guantanamo, the words might sound very similar -- shocking
to the point of unbelievability.
So, good things can happen, and they can take a long time coming, and then
they can suddenly surprise you....
That was my attempt to offer encouragement. Then I broke the news, to lots
of moans and groans.
But there's an im****tant catch that I should have stressed more than I
did,
I think. Good things cannot happen in Congress, because the soulless
spineless servile scoundrels running the place would throw their own
mothers
under a bus for a cor****ate campaign contribution or to avoid being called
names by a pundit on TV or perhaps - we can only speculate - to suc***b to
blackmail and avoid exposure of the fact that they once tried to have ***
with a sheep, and that the sheep - of course -turned them down.
Somebody needs to tell members of Congress, with regard to their jobs,
what
a CIA torture strategist advised six years ago: If the detainee dies
you're
doing it wrong. If thousands of people die to enrich your "contributors,"
YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
Here I am hanging out with my rightwing Midwestern relatives who complain
nonsensically about affirmative action and welfare, and they agree with me
on all the big things. They want to stop paying for the war. Even the ones
who still believe Iraq attacked the World Trade Center still want to stop
paying for the war. They do not want to give immunity to lawbreaking
telecoms. They do not want to lose the Fourth Amendment. They want the
legalized bribery system that we call "campaign financing" shut down. They
want the power of political parties curtailed. They want independent
non-wealthy candidates to run for office and win. And they want them to
serve one term and quit. They want power taken back from the White House
and
restored to the Congress. They want green energy and no more wars. If you
just make clear that they can keep lots of guns and Bibles around, they'll
get enough other stuff right to fix the broken system, except that they
aren't trying. They're going hunting and reading the Bibles and hoping
somebody else will fix everything. They think the only place to effect
change is through elections. And they think the electoral system is rotten
to the core. So they give up. Just like most East Coast liberals.
But, of course, elections alone have never fixed anything. Movements of
people pressuring for change, working for change, risking for change, and
sacrificing regardless of how soon - if ever - they can be expected to
succeed is what fixes things. If electing people alone could change
anything, the 2006 elections would have changed at least some teeny tiny
noticeable policy. Instead those elections changed absolutely nothing.
Congress Members don't acquire humanity by being elected. They have to
have
it injected into their hollow toxic souls every single morning by massive
public pressure. And then you have to keep them out of sight of a full
moon,
or they can lose it again.
On June 19th, the so-called leaders of the so-called Democrats in Congress
passed an amendment they had carefully drafted and negotiated to assure
its
passage, dumping another $163 billion into the humanitarian project of
liberating Iraqis from their homes and limbs and lives. Most of the votes
came from Republicans (188). Some came from Democrats (80), including
Hoyer
and Emanuel. Most Democrats voted No, including Pelosi, Obey, and others
who
worked tirelessly to make sure the thing would pass. In fact, every single
congress member who voted No did so knowing the thing would pass. And in
the
days leading up to the vote, not a single one of them publicly lobbied
their
colleagues or the so-called leader****p to vote No or to not bring it up.
Almost all of them voted Yes on the Rule, the procedural vote to bring the
matter up for a vote. Not a single one of them went to any more effort
than
pulling one lever instead of another. Not a single one of them risked a
broken fingernail. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of Americans have
made
huge sacrifices over a period of years trying to grab the attention of
these
living dead fascist functionaries.
Congressman David Obey considers it a law of physics, both that the war
simply must be funded even by those who claim to oppose it, and that his
own
**** doesn't stink. Yet, when Democrats.com commissioned a poll last
month,
it found a majority of Americans wanting Congress to cut off the money and
demand that the president bring everyone home within six months. That's a
majority of the citizens of this country, who have heard more about Iraq
than any other topic in the news over the past six years. If Obey won't
trust us on this one, what will he trust us on? And if he considers a
majority of Americans to be "idiot liberals," why should a majority of
Americans continue to masochistically employ this arrogant and
unaccountable
accountant for mass-murder?
In November 2006, I said there would be two things Congress could do in
the
next two years. Because any good bill would be vetoed or signing
statemented, Congress could only usefully stop funding the occupation or
start hearings on impeachment. Assuming we don't stop the funding that the
House just passed, there will remain only one useful thing that Congress
can
do. Of course, the "leaders" don't want to impeach, and they especially
don't want to impeach for crimes they have been complicit in -- and that's
most of the crimes.
But, believe it or not, there is a type of impeachment that a number of
congress members in both parties have begun expressing interest in, namely
Congressman Dennis Kucinich's 27th article of impeachment: the refusal of
the president to comply with congressional subpoenas. Congress Members
can't
be complicit if they try (and you can be sure they'll try) in a
president's
refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena. And an impeachment
hearing
on that abuse cannot take a lot of time. The president simply has refused
to
comply with numerous subpoenas, not to mention contempt citations. It's an
impeachment hearing that takes under an hour, requiring zero staff time or
expense.
But, of course, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers wants to wait
until Bush bombs Iran to start impeachment. This is like waiting to begin
surgery on a patient until he's lost a pulse. This Fourth of July,
somebody
needs to remind these senile servants of dictator****p how we got the
constitutional system of government that they are destroying before our
eyes.
A president whose character is marked by every act which may define a
tyrant
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. We therefore do, in the name
and
by the authority of the good people solemnly publish and declare that
these
free and independent people are absolved from all allegiance to the
president, the vice president, or the corrupt cabal of court jesters on
capitol hill, and that all political connection between them and this
so-called government is and ought to be totally dissolved. And for the
sup****t of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives,
our
fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Of course, somebody will have to explain to each congress member what
"sacred honor" means.
_______
http://www.davidswanson.org
[1]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues.
I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
|
