Rep. Jerrold Nadler,(NY) member of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, the committee whose Constitutional duty it is to bring impeachment charges against criminal presidents, says it as baldly and plainly as it can be said:
The Bush Administration has committed War Crimes.The only thing stopping him from being impeached is politics.
In fact he has rather explicitly asks that YOU save HIM.
When he asks for citizens to become involved in the political process, in his campaign, that is what he is asking you for.
Here is how our government works, and ....surprise!.... Obama knows this. Politicians are individual human beings, (surprise again!) individual human beings, even Obama, are not gods. We, each and every one of us, including Obama, are subject to temptation, failure of will in the face of adversity, and yes, corruption. Not dirty back room money under the table corruption, but corruption as a process, over time, that saps integrity and will.
Washington DC and the strange dances of culture, pressure, and politics there are literally MADE to corrupt. To put it cutely, they have a whole street there (named K) that exists for one reason, to corrupt public servants. There is the culture of the Senate, (need I say more Harry Reid?) there is the culture of The Villagers, the cocktail party culture.....and then there are the real bad guys!
In the perhaps quixotic quest to Free The Press of some of the worst features of corporate hegemony over the very information we live and breathe, The Maddow Movement was born. With no illusions of anything but a starting point in fighting the influence of those who would narrow our perceptions through the presentation of Military Analyst Propaganda...or allow themselves to be cowed and complicit stenographers (alternately: "deferential, complicit enablers" ) of and for the lies that led us to Iraq and the death of perhaps a million people...or did NOT choose to investigate torture...or treason....a campaign was launched to throw out the old guard and hail and herald the new.
1246 good souls have signed The Maddow Movement Petition. Untold numbers of E-mails have been sent. Today...you too can help!
The Maddow Movement is pretty much over/redundant. I plan on making one last little push in the next few days for signatures (GO SIGN!) on the petition, and then sending it to the PTB at NBC, just to make sure they know how much we support them in giving Rachel her own show. Thanks for all your help, that was fun! And now we can move on to the next steps of the Free The Press campaign.
War and Famine and suffering stalk the planet. Climate disaster looms. What brought us to this sorry turn? A mode of thinking about our own survival, how to utilize the resources of the planet, and how to treat our fellow humans. A mode of thinking that due to extraordinary circumstances has been given free reign for the last eight years to "prove itself." And prove itself it has...it has proven itself to be an utter, across the board, complete and abject failure, by any metric you wish to measure it by save one. The rich have gotten obscenely richer and more powerful. The greed of their corporate entities has been fed...which only increases their appetite.
Republicanism has failed.
Even the Republicans are at least (partially) admitting it
Conservatism, in a world that is so rapidly shifting and changing and increasingly revealing it's mind bending complexity and inter-connectedness, has proven to be not just a bankrupt and ineffectual philosophy, but one that is actively damaging to the planet and her people.
Whereas; The Press, the Fourth Estate, is the gatekeeper of Truth in our country. If the Press does not report it, it effectively never happened as far as the all important reaction of the citizenry is concerned. Where the Press shines it's light, freedom follows.
Whereas; The Press during the Bush Administration has not only blinded its own light in regards to scandalous crimes, it has on far too many occasions, such as the lead up to the Iraq Occupation and on Domestic Spying, and in the latest instance of the Military Analysts scandal, actually aided and abetted in the criminal acts and despicable propaganda activities of the Bush Administration.
We have determined that in order to take our country back from those who have usurped our democracy, in order to bring to light their crimes, in order to expose their methods, and most importantly..in order to make sure that these crimes and outrages can never occur again, the first necessary step on the long road back to America is to reform and retake the Fourth Estate, to Free The Press.
One of the most impressive things about YOU, fellow Kossaks, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy. If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered`at the very least with a link or a clue!
The Daily Kos is truly a cornucopia of information. So much so that it can be like Sipping from a firehose ! I don't want to try to tell you how to use it!!! So here is Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos! The best guide to Dkos ever written IMHO! And for a list of GOOD series on Dkos have a look at part of the FAQ Yes dkos is Wunnerful and with these few extra gems of wisdom in hand, you may peruse its pulchritude at your pleasure!
In his speech, Bush said, "...some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along....
As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
One of the most impressive things about YOU, fellow Kossaks, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy. If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered`at the very least with a link or a clue!
The Daily Kos is truly a cornucopia of information. So much so that it can be like Sipping from a firehose ! I don't want to try to tell you how to use it!!! So here is Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos! The best guide to Dkos ever written IMHO! And for a list of GOOD series on Dkos have a look at part of the FAQ Yes dkos is Wunnerful and with these few extra gems of wisdom in hand, you may peruse its pulchritude at your pleasure!
Germany and Japan were not responsible for rebuilding Germany and Japan and making them responsible allies.....
The Victors were.
Thus is it always.
After a war....no matter how nasty a war, no matter how many have been 'killed and wounded,' no matter how terrible the tactics of the Vanquished....it falls to the Victor to create a lasting peace. To construct a new world after the old one has been destroyed. To create a world where the Vanquished can save face, put aside the enmity, and instead of being forced to keep fighting by a ungracious and irresponsible Victor, be included as a partner in the rebuilding.
Only in this way, the way of the gracious, responsible Victor can past conflict be put aside and future resentment, out right hostility, and even subtle unconscious sabotage be avoided.
Indeed, when their is yet another enemy to fight, it is imperative to turn former foes into allies. If the reconstruction isn't approached and executed well, it ultimately hurts the Victors more than the Vanquished. The Vanquished, after all, have nothing to lose. The Victors.....everything.
One of the most impressive things about YOU, fellow Kossaks, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy. If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered`at the very least with a link or a clue!
The Daily Kos is truly a cornucopia of information. So much so that it can be like Sipping from a firehose ! I don't want to try to tell you how to use it!!! So here is Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos! The best guide to Dkos ever written IMHO! And for a list of GOOD series on Dkos have a look at part of the FAQ Yes dkos is Wunnerful and with these few extra gems of wisdom in hand, you may peruse its pulchritude at your pleasure!
The strength of Progressive/Liberal/Democratic activists (hereafter referred to as The Left) has always been their passion.
The weakness of Progressive/Liberal/Democratic activists..... has always been their passion.
That weakness is haunting us again, right now. Passionate people are easy to manipulate. Passion overwhelms thought and causes emotional, rather than analytical decision making. That passion and emotion has united The Left into a powerful force in the past around many issues such a Civil Rights, Womens Rights and the Peace Movement. That passion has also been used to easily sow division in The Left, by introducing agents provocateurs to redirect that passion from its Right Wing targets....and to foment division in The Left. Thus fracturing it.
One of the most impressive things about YOU, fellow Kossaks, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy. If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered`at the very least with a link or a clue!
The Daily Kos is truly a cornucopia of information. So much so that it can be like Sipping from a firehose ! I don't want to try to tell you how to use it!!! So here is Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos! The best guide to Dkos ever written IMHO! And for a list of GOOD series on Dkos have a look at part of the FAQ Yes dkos is Wunnerful and with these few extra gems of wisdom in hand, you may peruse its pulchritude at your pleasure!
In the deliciously gosippy story of Rachel Maddow spanking the Very Serious Person(al) tushy of Joe Scarbough for talking over her...Moran Morning Joe states the following (paraphrased): "People don't know him, (Obama) they know John McCain....snip....It's about defining the candidate, defining your opponent."
Do they Joe? Do they REALLY know him? Let's play "Define The Candidate"
As Americas infrastructure crumbles, as the Iraqi government builds a surplus. As New Orleans languishes, still destroyed, still hanging on by a thread, still essentially abandoned by both government and the Republican lauded "private sector." (Please read commonscribes diary on the insurance industry and NOLA!)
"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson
A Free Press is one of the foundations of a free country. But as with all freedom, it comes with responsibility. The press, the media, in America has not just abrogated that responsibility, they have thrown it on the ground and urinated on it. With very few exceptions, they have become more of a public relations arm of the government than the absolutely vital component of democracy it is their duty to be. The Fourth Estate, they were once called, in effect the fourth branch of government itself, the keepers of truth, the arbiters of honesty, the last resort against corruption. A great objective equalizer, the conscience of the nation.
Journalism was once a sacred and noble trust. Newsrooms were once sacrosanct chapels of Truth. Now they are an industry. Now they are little more than pimps for fast food...and fascism.
