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Resolution To Impeach VP Cheney Submitted
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has submitted a resolution, HR 333, to impeach VP Dick Cheney on charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The charges were submitted on 24 April 2007. Congressman Kucinich has posted his supporting documents online, including a brief summary of the impeachment procedure (PDF), a synopsis (PDF), and the full text (PDF) of the impeachment resolution.
"Congressman Dennis Kucinich is invited to go hunting with Cheney."
In addition, once this road is crossed -- impeaching for , and every time the president/vp is in office, and a different party has a majority in the senate and house, you'll see an impeachment. It's the same thing that happened once the line was crossed with judicial appointments. Partisian politics has made almost every parties' political victory a Pyrrhic one for the American people. We get the shaft, while the politicians get rich fighting each other. We need a 3rd party...
Finally, does Kucinich this this will help him get elected President?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
...but the problem is, this guy has less crediblity than the late Henry B. Gonzalez (D) San Antonio, TX who, on an almost monthly basis called for a Reagan impeachment all through the 80's.
This is nothing more than a political stunt, and only half a degree more effective than the Olympia city clownsil (Washington) passing a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Woa -- I think you're off base here on two levels.
One -- If you can't win, you still have to do it. You cannot let crimes go, even if you cannot succeed in convicting. The problem is not this president/VP. The problem is the next one. To not impeach is to say "if the congress isn't dominated by the other house, you can do anything you want."
Two -- Cheny's not the target. Cheney's going to have to defend himself, and his interactions with the president will come out. It's at least possible that real solid evidence against the president will emerge.
This isn't stupid, it's both the right thing to do, and may help land the big one.
Besides, even Republicans hate Cheney. He's an easier target.
...were're just constantly amazed that it is as bad as it is, and presumeit couldn't have always been like this. History tends to disagree - politics has always been a nasty, dirty, hellhole.
As a centrist, I would prefer neither end of the spectrum in the congress - we don't need a few more far-lefts to outweight the far-rights, we need less of both!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Then consensus would be needed to get ANYTHING done. I mean, it's not like we don't have enough laws already...this system could help curb the 'look at me' laws passed to make a politician look 'proactive' but which don't do anything really new.
Blar.
Between this news and Congress ordering the Prez to withdraw tropps from Iraq this morning, all I can say is that it's about G-D damned time someone stood up to these two. Maybe our country still has a chance?
Perhaps Mr. Kucinich's altruism would be a little less suspect if he wasn't simultaneously running for president himself?
I'm not saying that he's not doing this for the very best of motives, but if one begins by presuming a purely malignant motivation for whatever Cheney's done, it would then be naked partisanship to assume anything but an equally malignant motivation for other politicians, no?
-Styopa
I'm confused. Has the Iranian government, at any time in the last 30 years, been the least bit friendly to the United States? How is it possible to negatively impact or 'destabilize' relations with a government whose foreign policy toward the US can be summed up as 'Death to the Great Satan'?
Iran is building up nuclear infrastructure. It's been doing it for years, usually in defiance of UN attempts to regulate said development. Some people say it's dangerous for the Iranians to do this, and that an Iran with nuclear capabilities is a threat to the interests of the United States.
In sum, Kucinich's position appears to be "I think Cheney lied about Iraq, so he must be a nasty lying liar about Iran, too." After all, no one with any common sense could imagine an nuclear Iran using its newfound clout to, for example, threaten US shipping or hold foreign nationals hostage. They've never, ever done anything like that before. Why is mean, old Cheney threatening the poor harmless Iranians?
The original announcement was to be Tuesday at noon.
Cheney went to the hospital for a knee-blood-clot "emergency" in the morning.
So, Kucinich delayed it until 5 pm when it was obvious there was no emergency with Cheney's health.
The newsday got slammed with several other big stories:
- EU says Wolfowitz should go;
- UN says Bagdad surge not working;
- House passes War-funding with timetable;
- Cheney speaking at BYU (Utah) commencement w/ lots of protesters;
- Very Conservative (not neocon) New Hampshire voting for Civil Unions
So, yesterday/today is news-dense. The impeachment resolution had to compete.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Now that is an impeachment worth reading. The synopsis alone is a solid piece of attack.
Let's see if your congresscritters have enough spine left to do follow the facts. Though I fear we will soon find out how much money Haliburton is willing to throw around in order to keep their sock puppet in office.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
He's referring to the resolution, not the Constitution. Article III in the resolution accuses Cheney of showing unwarranted agression towards Iran.
(IANAL)
I urge all Slashdot readers to write their respective Congressional Representatives and voice their opinions. I have just done so.
I think what it means is that Iran poses no threat enough to justify another preemptive war, not even a "diplomatic war", and that is true. Iran is no imminent threat to the U.S. territorial sovereign and, while being a threat to Israel (as every other country surrounding that territory), U.S. preemptive armed involvement there would be another catastrophe, possibly much worse than Iraq.
Anyone that could imagine (or fabricate) Iran (or Iraq, as it was being claimed as the reason for Gulf War II) attacking U.S. territory or other U.S. targets without warning and use that as a reason for a preemptive war deserves to be impeached and removed from office. That is, the whole higher echelon of the U.S. executive power.
The resolution would be "H.Res.333", not "H.R.333". If you want to read it in non-PDF form directly from the Library of Congress, look here.
Not that I don't trust a politician to faithfully present God's honest truth or anything, but here is the actual text of the resolution:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.res .00333:
I've been following this story since last week when the plan was leaked and then through Wednesday's postponement due to concerns about Cheney's physical status and through yesterday's news conference. What blew me away was the total lack of coverage it was getting in any press. In particular NPR really made me feel let down. I listened to Morning Edition and All Things Considered non-stop for days and did not even hear the slightest mention of this while I sat through literally hours of interviews with neocon assholes like freaking William Kristol.
What a sad indictment of what has become of the broadcast media. The above posts that mention the re-alignment of the "center" way off to the right is clearly evidenced by this example. NPR has no time to even mention the beinning of an impeachment of Cheney but, on the other hand, there's plenty of time for a pleasant chuckling interview with Billy Kristol on the brighter side of McCane's chances on this so-called left leaning media outlet.
Practically everything that was said regarding Iraq's WMD prowess was also said by
... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
George Bush
John McCain
John Kerry
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Robert Byrd
Sandy "nothing in my underpants" Berger
Madeline "Kim Jung Ill seems a nice guy" Albright
Carl Levin
Ted Fscking Kennedy
Al Gore and a HOST of others...
It begs the question why Kusinich is picking on Dick only?
Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton.
- (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam H
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Why are Libertarians insane? Because they willfully disregard any evidence that their simplistic theories will not and do not work in the real world. The free market is not magic and infallible. It is a complex system of feedback loops that does not posses any sort of true homeostasis and therefore needs external management in order to maintain its state of freedom.
Not all Libertarians are as "bug-fuck insane" as you're making them out to be; there is a clear line between Libertarianism and economic anarchism -- Libertarians generally advocate a form of government which creates as level a playing field as possible, and then lets individual actors do the rest; this is generally summed up by saying that it is OK for government to create a framework where individuals can make decisions on their own, but not to act redistributively. Although this would not allow for conventional anti-trust regulation in the conventional sense, their stance is -- and I think they have a very good point here -- much of the danger of monopolies and trusts isn't inherent in the monopoly itself, but in the accrual of power in a single organization which is then used to influence government and suppress competition; if you removed all the corporate welfare and protective legislation that large corporations have bought themselves, they would tend to be lumbering behemoths and, excepting some special cases which tend towards natural monopolies, generally aren't as competitive as they appear to be today.
There is a lot of debate within Libertarian organizations as to how those special cases should be treated, and setting aside orthodoxy, I think the vast majority of self-identified Libertarians would support some form of minimalist interventionism in order to counterbalance the distortive effects that some monopolies have had on the government, while the laws and welfare that they have purchased are repealed or dismantled.
In short, I think you're getting dangerously close to creating a straw man when you attempt to pigeonhole Libertarians so narrowly; like it or not, they're the closest thing that the United States has to a third political party, and their views are not nearly as simplistic as you seem to think they are.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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It's not on the front page for most of the MSM right now because Slashdot is two days behind the news cycle on this one.
Took about 2 minutes to find those stories and provide links. Easier to believe it's a corporate media conspiracy eh? I could provide a few hundred more but you truthers aren't worth the time.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
True in a way, but they unfortunately go so far as to disregard the need for checks and balances in massive inequalities of private power. Libertarians are simply under the delusion that a perfect free-market system is "fair" and allows anyone with enough gumption to rise to the top and ignores the inherent interest of those with financial clout in tilting the system to be as biased in favor of their offspring as possible. Basically, Libertarians only care about your freedom from government and your freedom from violence. Freedom from other forms of coercion, freedom from deception, freedom from having the costs of others pushed off on you, etc., and equality of opportunity don't really matter that much to Libertarians. It's all just about "what the market will bear."
That said, I think the government would be far better if it were split between Libertarians and Democrats than between Republicans and either of the other two. Our government might still be torn over economic issues, and the economic divide might still be widening, but we wouldn't have to worry about the abuses of executive power that we've seen in the past few years.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Harry Reid publicly stating the fact that "this war is lost" is not a constitutional offense. It is simple recognition of reality. There is no way to win a war in the way that we are currently fighting this one. Cheney trying to start another one, or expanding the current one, is political posturing at the cost of thousands+ lives.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
The problem isn't that the general public isn't supporting it.
The problem is that nobody takes Kucinich seriously, even within his own party. He's maybe not quite as ridiculous as Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson on the list of "hopeless ideologues who continually run for President," but he's definitely on that list. Hell, he gets regularly ridiculed by Jon Stewart, who is practically the mainstream Democratic party's mouthpiece on national television. He is, in general, a loose cannon, and I doubt that earns him many friends on either side of the aisle. (Well, some Republicans might secretly like him just because of his entertainment value, and because he creates things they can point at and use to condemn Democrats in general with; e.g. his proposals to ban handguns make for great NRA campaign fodder.)
None of the real players in Congress are going to touch this, because they don't want to be associated with him. He's practically famous for introducing feel-good bills with no cosponsors, that get him a little media attention and then get tossed in the circular file in committee.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
with the success of the right wing campaign to reclassify righ as center and center as left.... there are no candidates representing the actual left, which make up the majority of the population, hence low voter turnout.
maybe instead of allowing news pundits in the ivory tower to scare them off their populist positions, candidates for the left should plough forward and see what kind of interest they can develop in the 250+ million people who didn't vote in the last few elections because the only candidates to choose from were a corporate schill and a corporate schill who happens to be christian.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Let's look at the articles objectively (if that's even possible). Did Cheney commit any crimes, according to Kucinich? Note that lying in a political speech is not a crime (nearly every politician in the country would be behind bars if it were). Neither is lying to Congress, unless it's under oath, and we know how fervently the Bush Administration opposes testifying under oath. It's also not a crime to break a solemn promise, like the oath of office an elected official takes. These may be reasons not to reelect somebody (except that America did), but they're not crimes.
Article I: Cheney lied about Iraqi WMDs. Reprehensible, yes. Cynical and morally bankrupt, yes. Criminal, unfortunately not.
Article II: Cheney lied about a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. But again, not a crime under any law.
Article III: Cheney's been rattling his saber at Iran. It may be foreign policy by sledgehammer rather than Xacto knife, but there's no law against this either.
So although I would really, really like to see Cheney removed from office, Kucinich's articles of impeachment don't contain any actual crimes for which he could be tried. Not that that's stopped impeachment proceedings before, but there was a better case against Clinton, because he actually testified under oath. We have some truly reprehensible people leading our country, and they should be stopped before they get us into even more trouble, but unfortunately this isn't going to do it.
As wary as Madison was of parties, he failed to understand two fundamental things.
First, parties are inevitable. From an economic standpoint, they represent a pooling of resources that is more efficient for campaigning than individual candidates all going it alone. From a social standpoint, they are the result of likeminded individuals coming together for the same goals -- political bent in many ways is tied strongly enough to personality types and the background of your upbringing that it was inevitable that politicians would find that some of them had a LOT more in common than they differed on and choose to team up. From an mass manipulation standpoint, parties would provide a common set of assumptions to bring in less informed voters. You may not know what candidate X's standpoint on Issue Y might be, but you probably know what their parties stance is on Issues A-Z.
Second, Madison and the others missed the nature of future parties. The Constitution was written under the assumption that regional blocks would form and that factions would largely revolve around regional issues that were prevalent in the day -- slavery vs. abolition, agriculture vs. shipping, etc. etc. The general assumption seems to be that there would always be many candidates in a race. They failed to see that the electoral system would condense down to a winner-take-all system in almost every state and mathematically make the viability of anything other than two parties inevitable. While Madison speaks of the tyranny of the majority, I don't think he was really expecting for there to be only two parties at the time.
Anyway, for all the reasons in the first paragraph, you can't get rid of parties. Parties are a natural outgrowth of the existence of common political philosophies and the desire of people to pool their resources with others to achieve their goals in a world where each individual is relatively powerless. The only thing we really can (and should) do is to change the system so that it doesn't favor the dominance of only two parties. Breaking the collations of the main two parties into a more fine-grained choice would allow the will of the people to be expressed better, but you cannot expect for us to go back to the system of each candidate fund-raising and introducing themselves to the voters individually and from-scratch any more than you can expect us to go back to a barter-based economy.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I looked on CNN, Euronews, the BBC website, and the dutch Journaal.
There is absolutely no mention at all of this impeachment procedure, which according to the website started 2 days ago.
I don't understand, can anyone explain why this is so under-represented in the mainstream media? (I'm not an USian BTW).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Libertarians generally advocate a form of government which creates as level a playing field as possible, and then lets individual actors do the rest; this is generally summed up by saying that it is OK for government to create a framework where individuals can make decisions on their own, but not to act redistributively.
Well, the problem is that without acting redistributively, you simply can't create as level a playing field as possible. Take the inheritence tax, for example. Without the inheritence tax, you get economic dynasties where the child of a wealthy and powerful individual not only starts off with an advantage in education and political connections (that you can't really erase) but also with an entire foundation of wealth that an otherwise equally talented individual would not start with. In essence, the race is already lost. I've always been of the opinion that wealth should be earned, but a lack of inheritence tax allows for the existence of an upper class that has no need for work when they can simply let their money work for them by entrusting it to investment advisors. Most if not all Libertarians consider the Inheritence Tax to be an abomination, though it is widely considered outside of the American Right to be a necessary foundation for the creation of equality.
I think the vast majority of self-identified Libertarians would support some form of minimalist interventionism in order to counterbalance the distortive effects that some monopolies have had on the government, while the laws and welfare that they have purchased are repealed or dismantled.
The problem is that most Libertarians don't seem to believe that there's a problem with a monopoly having a distortive effect on the market or on consumers as long as they don't get the government to do them any special favors. I, too, would like to see less corporate influence on government, but until corporations are prohibited from or (by force of law) gain no profit from donating to the campaigns of politicians, you'll never see and end to special favors for industry. I find it very rare (i.e. I've never met) a Libertarian who does not consider the ability of the wealthy and powerful to spend their money as freely as they want on political donations to be a matter of their free speech rights, nor have I met a Libertarian who thinks that the idea of corporate personhood and the existence of the same free speech rights for corporations should both be abolished.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There's a difference between "they pose a threat" and "they are threatening us." In the latter, anyone can threaten us -- whether they can do anything about it (or even plan to) is another issue. Heck, given the current climate of the world, we'd be bombing everyone if we based it on who spoke ill of the United States.
Ahmadinejad is a nut, and perhaps a dangerous one. But so is Kim Jong Il, I'd argue moreso. So is China. But we can't win those, so we've looked the other way. (Of course, given what we've seen in Iraq, I doubt we could win in Iran, either.) This is not the Iranian government posing an immediate and direct threat to the U.S. -- this is the current administration's dislike for radical Islam. I'm not too fond of the radical part myself, but we can't go around blowing up everyone who may one day pose a threat.
The American people get this (more than the White House originally gave them credit for), and therefore lies must be told to make the threat seem more imminent than it is. The first three articles of impeachment spell out this tactic fairly clearly, and the only reason the fourth doesn't do as well is because the Iran issue hasn't been around as long. Give it a year or two, and more lies will be told about them. Sadly, I think all it takes is one level of lies, and many Americans (due to media fatigue) seem to just buy it.
I don't doubt that Ahmadinejad is a bad guy. Nor did I doubt that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. But if we look the other way on North Korea, China, Sudan, and others while cutting a path through the Middle East, it looks more like either religious or oil-based profiling than it does like policing to me.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Where exactly did you study the political process? Street protests are used by groups that are in the minority to bring awareness and supporters to their cause. A lack of street protests means a suppression of the minority. The abortion issue will cause street protests forever, no matter which side wins, because the other side will always be pissed. Right now the pro-life people are in a pretty sharp minority (only 30-40% of our population), notice how much they protest?
Your attempt at false equivocation is completely dishonest. The Democrats have used a strategy of containment since Clinton was elected in 1992. It worked, there were no WMD to be found. Attempting to equivocate the fraudulent rush to war with a reasoned effort to contain a known danger is bs. Are you seriously going to argue that the interests of the United States have been served by the actions of this administration? And what freedoms or other traditions are Conservatives conserving if it is ok for the government to use my tax dollars to lie to me? How are the claims of the Bush administration not fraudulent? They were the ones advocating for war, they were the ones making the claims that a change in the course of action must be taken. Ineffective defense against fraud might lose you an election, but it is not grounds for impeachment, commission of said fraud is. The Democrats gave up their responsibility to criticize unsound evidence, but in the light of the fact that they were the minority party and could not win in either the House or the Senate their political expediency and deferment to a extremely popular president during an election season is reasonable. However, the Democrats sin was accepting the evidence as presented by the administration. Since then, they have repeatedly (except for Hillary) stated that they should not have trusted the Administration's claims and that doing so was a mistake. Again, all of the quotes you have about Iraq possessing WMD from 02/03 are based on information promoted by the White House that had no integrity. Quotes before then are based on a strategy of containment, not invasion.
Show me the evidence from an actual intelligence agency that says Saddam had weapons in 2002 or 2003, hell anytime after 1998. Other than the rockets that exceeded the allowed range (which were destroyed before the war by inspectors and had no WMD warheads), Iraq possessed no capabilities to threaten the US or it's neighbors. The Democratic strategy of containment was working until Bush decided it wasn't good enough for his delusions. It's the same thing in N Korea, the !Clinton policy of the Bush Administration has managed in 2007 to get the same agreement Clinton got in 1995, but now Pyongyang has a couple more warheads it can sell to real terrorists. How did Bush's actions advance the interest of the United States? Why did we invade Iraq? To what purpose are our soldiers and treasure being spent?
I'd really like someone to show me a person with actual intelligence credentials that believes invading Iraq was a good idea. Defectors provided by "heroes in error" over at the INC don't count, they have been exposed as frauds. Plagiarized thesis don't count either. Show me the CIA approved intelligence, show me the mid-level analysts who actually believed Saddam was capable of building nukes, would in a million years team up with Al Qaeda or provide them with WMD or would be stupid enough to attack the US with the amount of US military power already pointed at him.
I want something that didn't come out of the the White House Iraq Group, the INC, the Office of Special Plans @ the Pentagon and that wasn't a delusion with no evidence (Atta in Prague). I seriously challenge you to come up with something.
What Bush and Cheney said:
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb."
PRESIDENT BUSH (Discussion with Congressional Lea
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
On a related note, was Hitler a moderate simply because he was at war with both the capitalist democracies of the West and the communist dictatorship of the East?
Short answer: No, who your external enemies and friend are do not necessarily reflect the economic stance of your own country.
Long answer: Hitler was an economic moderate because National Socialism was a semi-rightist totalitarian system that shared control of the country between government officials and industry leaders. The economy was semi-planned, but much of the planning was done by government recognized monopolies and cartels instead of by the government itself. In addition, property was assumed in general to belong to the citizen instead of to the state. That last distinction is very important between leftist and rightist totalitarian economies and is one of the few places where they don't blur together much.
As for defining them by allies, note that the Nazis and the Communists were initially allies until they turned on each other, and a sizeable portion of the wealthy and of the intelligentsia of America in the late 30s were more sympathetic to Germany than to England. Hilter wrote quite glowingly of Americans in his writing, praising them and considering them as potential fearsome rivals. The clash of powers was more pragmatic than ideological until the war got started and the propoganda started up. History largely writes it as a war against an evil power that massacred Jews, but it got started more out of a fear of the balance of power.
I mean, what kind of nation are we that is allied with both Norway and Saudi Arabia?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Kucinich is such a marginal figure that even his democratic colleagues are distancing themselves from his antics:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artiAre you aware that following every cut in Federal Income Tax, revenues received by the federal government from income taxes has gone up? When tax rates are lower economic activity is greater. At some point, this increase in revenue from decreased taxes stops, but we don't know where that point is. I am confident it is at a lower tax rate than our current one. Oh yes, when the taxes were cut the last time, the percentage of income tax collected from the top quintile of earners went up. That is, the people who earn in the top 20% of incomes in this country pay a greater share of the money collected from income tax now than they did before the last round of tax cuts were passed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Please support H Res 333, the articles of impeachment of Vice President R. Cheney submitted by Congressman D. Kucinich, in the most vigorous terms possible. The invasion of Iraq was an international crime, and I do not need to describe to you the colossal human, economic, and social costs that have already accrued, and that will increase in the future with the inevitable multi-faceted blowback that will result.
Please make this your top priority and do everything in your power to recruit your colleagues in its support, and to ensure the successful impeachment of Mr Cheney.
Thank you very much!
All of the quotes from before 2001 are irrelevent. Inspectors were not allowed in Iraq from 1998 to 2001, so it was feasible to speculate that Saddam had WMD at the time. In 2001 inspectors were allowed back in and no evidence of WMD was found. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, but I do think it's important to keep quotes in context.
Someone else asked why Kucinich targeted Cheney but not Cheney's boss. "There's a practical reason," the congressman explained. "If we were to start with the president and pursue articles of impeachment, Mr. Cheney would then become president. . . . You would then have to go through the constitutional agony of impeaching two presidents consecutively."
You do realize the government hurts they poor don't you? The biggest example of this is the federal reserve system and the entrenched inflation policies. With the current policy, it becomes a bad proposition for anyone to simply save money in the bank as its value is less every year. Since the lower income brackets typically do not have money to invest, their primary option has been to save money instead.
This is in effect a stealth RECURRING tax on money that you and I have already paid taxes on.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I'll bite.
Look, it's not World War II. It's also not the American Revolution, and it's not the Star Wars Trilogy. The mess we find ourselves in in Iraq is more like France's involvement in Algeria, or in Indochina, or our own involvement there. It's not an honorable thing, it's not an admirable thing, and it's one of the worst foreign policy decisions ever, right up there with Operation Ajax and the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. We're not fighting Hitler or Sauron, George Bush isn't Winston Churchill or Aragorn or Feric Jaggar, or whatever your preferred fantasy trope is. This was a stupid mess, and it cannot be made better. Our options are (a) leave, and watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, (b) keep doing what we're doing until the Republicans are safely out of office and the disaster can be blamed on the Democrats, then watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, and (c) roll through Iraq like the Ottoman Turks, the Roman Legions, the Golden Horde, the Germans or any other empire-builder of yore, and exact disproportionate revenge on random civilians for any act of defiance, causing them to fear us more than they fear the insurgents. (I provide option (c) only for completeness; if you find it appealing, please seek help.)
Occupying a large country and pretending that we're not invaders is a stupid idea. It was a stupid idea before it was executed, and it's a stupid idea now. No good will come of it, no matter how much better you feel when you blame the person who points out that it was a stupid idea.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Hear, hear! It was also plainly and obviously stupid before it was done, but too late now.
I do take issue with the current conventional wisdom that "the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism" if we leave. That claim represents a shallow view of history. Much more likely is that the Shiites will unabashedly exterminate any remnant of Al Qaeda in Iraq, arguably a desirable outcome, and viciously repress the Sunnis, arguably a recipe for prolonged conflict. The Saudis and other Gulf states will support both the Sunnis and Al Qaeda, as they apparently have been doing for quite a while. Iran will support the Shiites by supporting instability within Saudi Arabia and the other authoritarian Gulf states, which these days is probably not a difficult thing to do. These forces will test each other and back down if the heat gets too high, and trust me, it will. The region will cool off to a simmering conflict among the local players, and the usual supects there and here in the US will take advantage of the situation to cry out impending doom to ensure high oil prices, as they have been doing all along.
Suckers the world over will believe the bullshit, and spend their lives in fear of chaos and imminent massive terrorist attacks, which will rarely occur. The US energy and "defense" industries, the Saudis, and the Gulf states will continue to be controlled by wealthy oil-industry players who will enjoy an even greater windfall than they already have, and will use part of that wealth to 1) ensure that the windfall continues by supporting the conflict and public sense of emergency, 2) viciously repress anyone or anything that threatens them, and 3) support terrorists attacks in the region and occasionally in the west, so that "world public opinion" stays in line.
If you actually bother to read the politics section - you'll find that it has historically confined to itself to political topics of specific interest to nerds, not general political news.
In a bizarre coincidence, I just happened to have replied you your comment, despite "not bothering to read the politics section" as you have said. Interesting, eh?
Get off your pedantic ass and actually look at politics.slashdot.org and note the type of story typically published there - and note how this one doesn't match the general tenor.
General tenor == politics. Story subject == politcal. Just like how I don't get pissy when I see articles about wristwatches, crays and Amigas under "hardware", I am prepared to see the spectrum under politics. It's general. Get over it.
There is a difference between the two even if you lack the wit or energy to actual read and understand my post.
Funny how you complain about lack of wit when you yourself can't conjure up something better than a bad adhom.
This is not really a joking matter. Most people in the U.S. have no idea how corrupt the U.S. government is. If you knew, you wouldn't joke.
We need to help each other educate ourselves about the corruption. Here is my summary of U.S. government corruption. Where's yours?
There is no such thing as legal rebellion, rebellion is always illegal. There is moral rebellion vs. immoral rebellion within the Protestant culture that formed the rationalization for the Revolution and the continuance of which South Carolina claimed when declaring it's right to secede. Within a logically consistent view of that framework, South Carolina did not meet the requirements necessary for moral rebellion. It had not exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, nor had it obtained the moral high ground.
I'd really have to dig to find the reference, but Bill Clinton had an interview once where he stated that he believed that the Constitution required logical consistency. That belief in logical consistency is found throughout our nations legal framework and the rationalization for the Revolution, which was moral rebellion. This is why your Xth Amendment argument falls flat. The Constitution would have no power if states had a right to secede. If the Constitution contained a provision designed for the survival of the nation that disproportionately affected a single state and that state could secede from the Union for such an provision, then how many states would be left today?
Why wouldn't Texas or Alaska just have taken their oil and told the rest of us to piss off? Don't Federal revenues for oil extraction unfairly benefit the citizens of other states for resources found in that state? It is logically impossible to have a Union with centralized authority and then allow people to leave that union because they don't like the way it's going. To put it in perspective, the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as a compact with the significance and weight of the compact God made with Abraham. Just as there was no force on earth capable of breaking that compact, the Founding Fathers did not believe there was any justification, outside of the framework that justified the Revolution, to break this compact.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that this country's founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, built the new government with the hopes that it would succeed, but also with the hope that a corrupt government would be overthrown by the people.
Again, such an overthrow would require the same efforts put forth by the Founding Fathers to reconcile with George III before declaring Independence. South Carolina did not meet such requirements, the Civil War was not a failed Revolution pt II. The rationale for secession was inconsistent with the logic of the Constitution. The SC Articles of Secession lays out this legal history, from the Declaration of Independence through the Constitution. It's claim is that the other states are violating it's rights by not returning escaped slaves and agitating through entirely legal and Constitutional means to make slavery illegal. It's like Texas seceding because California passed a clean air law that disallowed cars that Texans liked in California and then tried to pass such legislation nationally through normal legal means.
Go read the Articles for yourself, those that supported and designed the secession from the Union made it clear that they believed in the institution of slavery over the Constitution. That the North had legitimately gained the political power within the legal framework of the Constitution to dismantle slavery was not justification for rebellion within the belief system that the South claimed it was upholding. There is no integrity to the argument for secession.
If South Carolina wasn't following both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, I've yet to see a state that has come any closer!
Uh, the ones that didn't secede. There is no spirit of rebellion within the Constitution, don't you think a bunch of rebels would have put it in if they had believed such a thing? I mean really, why would people who had just finished rebelling not think to put in a clause regarding rebellion if they thought it was a right? I really think this line of thought comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose behind the 2nd Amendment combined with a bad case of "Red Dawn/Rambo" syndrome. The 2nd Amendment is not a license for armed rebellion, and neither is the 10th.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Umm. That's not a centrist. You've given almost the dictionary definition of a libertarian. Try the age-old political quiz.
A centrist beleives that government should control people and restrict their rights, just not completely. They believe that government should be big enough to do many unnecessary things, but it should strike a "balance" between liberty and socialism.
If you have a graph, where the x-axis is increasing personal freedom and the y-axis is increasing economic freedom, the libertarian is the furthest from the origin. A centrist would want a moderate amount of economic freedom and a moderate amount of personal freedom (for example, perhaps they have an agenda of being pro-life and anti-drugs, and want the government to control interest rates and feed the poor).
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Oh,.. and here is your rebuttal:
http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_ch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgjWGVHxW8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_(video)
And here is a pre-emptive one: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell