It's up to Progressives to Lead the Movement to Impeach Bush Following Another Stolen Election; Do You Agree?
11/21/04
Should any of this come as a surprise? The Cheney-Bush junta has an insatiable lust for power and does not care what it takes to achieve and sustain it.
We followed the Democrats, who should now truly be known as Deadcats based on their response to, in the words of Yogi Berra “déjà vu all over again” circa 2004. We heard all these solemn vows to count all the votes. Yes, right. After they were placed in a position of embarrassment by the combination of the Green and Libertarian forces, along with Ralph Nader, who spoiled the “unity parade” coalescing around Bush following the election, and took the vote fraud evidence more seriously, undertaking recounts, the Deadcats awoke from their slumber.
Well, yes, we did say that we would count all the votes and, all right, we will undertake a recount in Ohio, but just to be true to our word and because we said we believed that all the votes should be counted, and not, pray tell, because we believe that we actually might have won. So the Deadcats tiptoe forward for a recount in a state of apology.
How about an alternative to the tiptoeing? What about examining the U.S. Constitution and concluding that the Voting Rights Act along with the Civil Rights Act as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment hold binding validity? Upon such an examination one response should reverberate through our troubled land: The necessity to impeach George W. Bush and fellow transgressors of American democracy immediately!
I could hardly wait for the response if this grass roots citizen’s action option were to be tendered to the reigning Deadcats who bear such grievous responsibility for putting progressives in the mess they currently occupy.
“After holding six focus groups on this topic,” a spokesperson would begin, “it is our conclusion that to take this kind of drastic action would be counterproductive. In the focus groups whose participants we carefully questioned there was a decided turnoff. We feel that to take this drastic action would risk alienating those undecided voters in the center that the Democratic Party is appealing to, and will hold the key to future election results. Now, we agree that it is time to fight, and we do have some Louisiana congressional runoffs that deserve your support. After that there are, we will point out, some other important races. We are conducting focus groups now on crucial council elections first in Juneau, Alaska and then in Tombstone, Arizona. They deserve our undivided attention. We will conclude by imploring you to generously contribute to all of these aforementioned worthwhile endeavors.”
So, as I see it there are two choices. We can continue listening to the above-styled gobbledygook or we can step up to the plate on our own and assert ourselves by working aggressively to impeach a regime that came to power on the basis of fraud, lies, and deception and has continued operating in the same manner, leaving a badly shredded Constitution in its wake.
It was stated above that the hibernating Deadcats are responsible for putting progressives in the vulnerable position they now occupy. One major reason, along with an all too frequent “me-tooism” was not summoning the requisite grit to defend the Constitution when the Cheney-Bush junta savagely raped it by taking America to war on a tissue of lies, falsely asserting that a gigantic mushroom cloud awaited us from Saddam Hussein and that the Iraqi dictator, who solidified the power he had through past Republican largesse, was linked to Osama bin Laden.
The pressures exerted on the intelligence establishment along with the redacting of documents and outright distortion to change intelligence reports, and then proceeding to battle, was an act of preventive war that violated the United Nations and Nuremberg charters, to which the U.S. was a signatory. Those laws thereby became a part of the Constitution and were ruthlessly flouted by neoconservatives lusting for oil and hungry to provide work for Halliburton and Bechtel.
Many of us implored Congress to impeach Bush. We believed that it was required under the Constitution. Not one Member of Congress stepped forward to sponsor such a move. We were instead told to relax, that an election was forthcoming and that better times lay ahead. What happened when the Newt Gingrich led Republicans were feeling high and mighty? A Democratic president was impeached and tried for “high crimes and misdemeanors” which turned out to be lying about an extramarital sex act on an affidavit in a civil lawsuit. Who had the meaningful case? Who acted and who didn’t?
When courageous independent journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture scandal while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strove mightily along with other Bush Administration officials to erect a stonewall of lid sealing silence, another basis for impeachment arose. The renegade private contractors from the murkiest levels of the intelligence establishment ran roughshod over the Geneva Code, to which America is also a signatory. Ho hum, it was election time, and we had many focus groups to conduct and Crossfire and Hardball media sessions to engage in against the Republican opposition. Why let impeachment distract from other meaningful activities?
Now the election that was beforehand touted as “Armageddon” but was greeted in its aftermath with all the shock and awe of the powers that be as a Saturday afternoon golf loss at the local country club has come and gone, there are those of us who are back again, but no longer looking to the frightened souls so petrified of “rocking the boat.” The corporate media tells us that these stirrings are all just part of a few disenchanted hotheads on the Internet and the evidence fails to bear out the contentions that the Bushies stole another election.
Come to think of it, this is what the so-called conventional wisdom said when those upstarts Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were investigating Watergate in 1972. “We have nothing more than a tempest in a teapot,” we were assured. These same paragons of wisdom also laughed at Greg Palast when he began reporting about Florida in 2000.
When he could not break his story about the ruthless duo of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris stealing Florida and with it the election for God fearing Christian George W. from Texas in America’s mainstream media he took his story to London and the BBC. The BBC paid attention and the rest is history. We learned a lot in the process about the U.S. corporate media, which is now telling us that there is really nothing there regarding 2004, just a few little mistakes at best that will not alter the results.
This pesky guy Palast has resurfaced, telling us that it really is déjà vu all over again. This time the miscreant is Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. The fact that Blackwell is himself an African American in no way interferes with his determination to work his way up the political ladder, and so he began tossing nails in the road for Democrats long before election day, aiming them at his own people.
Palast asserted before the election that Kerry was starting off at least a million or more votes behind Bush before the counting began. He stated after investigating the Ohio fiasco following the election that Kerry had won. Ralph Nader stated that the Republican cheating was so concentrated that Bush had won before the voting began. Nader called attention to the Republican strategy, dutifully implemented by Ken Blackwell and others, to provide a woefully inadequate number of voting stations in minority precincts. “The idea was to force voters to stand for nine hours,” Nader explained, “knowing that a lot of them would give up and leave.”
Blackwell and his fellow travelers also made certain that the old punch card system was used in minority precincts, disdaining pre-election changes. This resulted in plenty of “spoiled votes” that were ultimately thrown away. Katherine Harris carried this procedure to virtuoso perfection four years ago in Florida, amassing a huge “spoiled votes” pile. This helped win her celebrity status and a standing ovation at Bush’s Washington coronation.
Oh, and speaking of Florida, Robert and Sam Perry, the father and son reporting team at Consortium News, one of the most reliable Internet sites for solid information, concluded that it defied reason for Bush to inflate his vote from the 1996 cycle and the Bob Dole candidacy to the present in the Sunshine State. The Perrys pointed out that only in the cases of two landslides during a three election cycle, such as following Lyndon Johnson’s victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon’s massive triumph in 1972, in which substantial party vote reversals occurred, had a candidate achieved such a difference within such a cycle as experienced by Bush in 2004. Dole’s loss to Clinton in 1996 was by 7 points. Four years later then Governor Bush ended in a virtual tie with Al Gore in Florida’s balloting.
The Consortium News article was attacked in the mainstream Washington Post as lacking validity. The point registered was that conservative Democrats known as Dixiecrats living in the state’s northern tier, called the panhandle, had voted for northerner Kerry in smaller numbers than they did fellow southerner Gore four years earlier, and that this accounts for the factor to which the Perry team alluded.
The Perrys countered by explaining that they had never used the more conservative panhandle region for their model. Instead they focused on Democratic stronghold counties such as Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade as well as swing counties such as Orange and Hillsborough.
John Zogby has become so troubled by events that he has now stated openly that “something strange” is happening out there in 2004 election land. Zogby called Kerry the winner in the Electoral College on election night with the popular vote ending in a statistical tie. Not only was Zogby well off, but so were other pollsters. Suddenly the conventional wisdom, also known as the corporate media, while it dismisses reports pointing toward fraud, presents the theory that Bush voters happened to be a little on the bashful side and did not participate in exit polls as readily as Kerry voters. Apparently this phenomenon surfaced this time when it did not in 2000. So whose theory is more plausible, particularly based on past performance?
Oh, and the ever forthcoming Dick Morris has his own reason. He concedes that based on his extensive experience exit polls are amazingly reliable, but another factor was in play this time. The Kerry forces pulled off a scam by rigging the exit polls to make the Democratic nominee look like the winner. Right, and Dick, it must be pointed out, is a political analyst for Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes’s Fox News.
You might recall that it was Fox’s 2000 election night analyst John Ellis who precipitated a major media ripple effect by declaring a Bush victory. Ellis happens to be George W. Bush’s first cousin. What would George’s response be? It would be the same as what he told Diane Sawyer about those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that never existed, “What’s the difference?”
In a future column I will be carefully detailing how I believe the Cheney-Bush junta with mighty gusto from Karl Rove pulled off their latest fraud. In the meantime I focus on the additional article of impeachment that looms from trashing the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment all in one swift swoop. We have a choice, listening to the party bigwigs who tell us to forget about it and concentrate on the next series of focus groups or responding in the manner of the late Peter Finch in his memorable Academy Award performance in Sidney Lumet’s Network, who said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
I know which way I am going. Impeachment is a paramount concern. I will keep you posted on my continuing efforts. In the meantime, I would like to know how many of you out there in reader land support the idea of an aggressive response to the brazen hijacking of democracy by the Cheney-Bush junta. If you agree that it is time for progressives to stand up and be counted and that impeachment should be aggressively pursued, let your opinions be known in the Comments Section of this site.
Election 2004
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You're right.
Something is rotten. Impeaching--and removing--Bush is appropriate but that will leave us with Cheney, followed by Dennis Hastert and Ted Stevens. I prefer guerilla tactics, using the truth wherever possible to highlight the junta's contradictions, irresponsibility an violations of law. But it would be nice if at least one Democrat would file articles of impeachment. If nothing else, it would highlight what "high crimes and misdemeanors" really are. Maybe he or she could nail them to the Capitol door.
Welcome back, Bill!
Go for it ... something HAS to be done. It is absolutely frightening what is going on in your country. He HAS to be stopped.
I'm all for impeaching the brazen lying bunch, but pray tell how that is ever going to happen with a republican controlled house and senate. Not likely I'd say. I don't believe it's gonna happen. This year I saw numerousw Kerry Edwards signs on the road I live on. Its the first time in the 20 years I've lived here I saw so many democratic supporters as I live in a conservative area of Missouri. Something stinks to high heaven in this election.
Thanks, Gail, for welcoming me back. It is good to be back. As for the other comments, by referring to the Cheney-Bush junta I am referring to all the "usual suspects" in any articles of impeachment. I agree that to leave Cheney out would be like banishing Charlie McCarthy and letting Edgar Bergen stay. By including Abu Ghraib you would, for instance, necessarily include Rumsfeld. Rice's repeated misstatements of facts would necessarily involve including her at well. The impeachment movement would necessarily include all of the miscreants of the junta. Cheney is certainly on any list of particulars to be drafted. Yes, to some it could look like a dead issue with the Republicans in control, but history has also told us, particularly re Nixon, that once a gang becomes unpopular the very forces, such as the media and even certain elements of corporate America, will desert the powers that be in the wake of a threat. If it appears to certain influential forces that this gang can spell jeopardy for America then pressures will be brought to bear, even from some forces on the other side. Remember, some of the most articulate and effective forces bringing down McCarthy were Republicans. The same also applied to Nixon. It is us up to us to fight for democracy by making the case, by asserting that the Cheney-Bush junta never had a voter's mandate to be where they are. Not only do 2000 and 2004 need to be fully explored, but 2002 as well. The constitutional means of redressing these grievances is the impeachment process. While the elitist wing of the Democratic Party continues doing focus groups for 2008 it is up to progressives to fight now. Our democracy hangs in the balance!
Bill Hare
Absolutely, I am
bursting to see
Bush exposed for
the lying fraud he
is. Impeachment
sounds awfully
sweet to me and
none deserves it
more than Bush,Cheney & Condi.
Where is the Left's Ken Starr?
Bruddah, I'm in!
I have worked for grass-roots campaigns for years and the one thing I've learned is that all it takes is a beginning, SO LET'S DO IT!!!
Aloha no ahui ho,
Sounds great but doesn't anyone realize that it takes a congress with integrity and a conscience to initiate impeachment proceedings? The only thing which could conceivably result in an impeachment would be something as blatant as the sins of the Nixon administration. It would also require a Washington Post or other high profile newspaper with the grit and integrity to keep it on their front pages...not possible in today's political environment and timid media. And no Republican government is going to appoint a Ken Starr-type prosecutor to go after its own.
Don't just talk about impeachment, get the ball rolling and let's see how soon we can take back our government. WE,the American public sat back and let the bushies steal the 2000 election and now the ghost of election 2000 has reared it's ugly head again. The media has s------ us long enough. The media is so scared of the bushies they roll over and play dead. I have never seen such a bunch of wooshes in my life. Let's not only make the bushies accountable, we need to take the media to the woodshed for their lemming attitude.
I'm all for Impeachment, however BEFORE we can get THERE, we need to PROTEST and show our COLORS to the world!!
I've been checking with Democratic Underground everyday, but still NOTHING is happening!
I think we need to have a HUGE PROTEST "BEFORE" the Inauguration just to let the little weasel know what's coming. Anyone else know anything??
yes i am for impeachment what goes around comes around,its time to get rid of this lying cheating bunch of crooks
This is one of the best articles I have read concerning issues I am very concerned about. I do not want my representatives and congress weaker. I want them even stronger because they are going to have to in order to fight the criminals in the White House.
Impeachment is absolutely necessary in order to show that at least half of us cared enough about democracy to proceed with it even though it might not happen since the House probably will not vote for it.
However, if we show enough corruption, collusion, criminal activity, maybe even the republicans in congress will feel their own reputations will be sullied if they do not vote for impeachment.
I know one thing -- we have to try. My representative is Henry Waxman and he is doing a lot of research which shows they are criminals. We need to get a Senator to get all the research, all the discovery work already done by not just Waxman but several of the representatives and proceed with impeachment NOW.
Thanks for the article. It's so good to read an article written by someone with common sense and anlytical ability.
Sharin Bowers
Southern California
I absolutely agree!
The Bush crime family didn't waste any time at all installing/playing musical chairs with the Cabinet, nominating the torturer-in-chief for Attorney General, planning the demise of Social Security, flattening the tax system for the benefit of the wealthy, sliding anti-abortion wording into the Omnibus Budget bill that just passed, slipping language into the same bill to allow members of Congress unfettered access to our tax returns, and I don't expect the BCF (Bush Crime Family) to stop there. All our worst fears are coming true quicker than you can blow out a candle. Truly ominous signs are popping up that Iran is in the administration's crosshairs, and Syria and North Korea can't be far behind. Powell's last act appears to be positing "proof" that Iran is building nuclear weapons based on an unsubstantiated report from a sole source; didn't they "learn" the last time that nothing is assured unless it is sourced three times over? Guess not.
Not only count me in, but tell me via email how I can help you get the movement to impeach these criminals off the ground!
The outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative by the Bush-Rove Gang seems to point to another charge--namely, suborning of treason.
These foul people have soiled the soul of our country in the mad pursuit of power. The Bush Family has a long history of dealing with the enemy--from Grandfather Prescott, known as "Hitler's Angel"-- to Daddy and Junior holding hands with the Saudis.
We have to do something. I believed Kerry when he promised that he'd fight. Recounts won't help us if the candidate himself refuses to step up.
I support a joint impeachment of Bush and Cheney --another traitor who wraps himself in the flag while he does business deals with embargoed regimes.
Do we have to wait, hoping the Dems take back the House in 2006? Do we have to pray that they'll have the guts to run on an impeachment platform? What do we do?
Ramsey Clark has already begun an impeachment campaign at impeachbush.org.
See Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times Op-Ed Columns, ABSOLUTE POWER ERUPTS - it is beginning to resemble how Hitler and the Nazis got the Germans under their control. Canadians want him out - let's see if some media up here can pick up on this.
I am sick and tired of hearing on the news how the Democrats need to rethink their strategy for the NEXT election! Nothing has worked correctly since the 2000 election was stolen and now the 2004 election has been swiped as well. Talking about these things just keeps our heads down, distracted from the main truth: the Bushies did everything they could to cheat so that they appeared to win. If I hear another comment on the news about how Bush won the election, I am afraid I'll go up in smoke. We need to impeach that criminal and his loutish administration NOW. I don't want to wait and read some historical book 50 years from now about the disappearance of democracy in America and where it all began.
WE ARE ALL BEING NAIVE;PROBLEM ORIGINATES FROM THE FACT THAT THE LIBERALS FELL ASLEEP. CONFIRMING THIS FACT WILL HAPPEN IF ONE BOTHERS TO READ DAVID BROCK'S FINE BOOK, THE REPUBLICAN NOISE MACHINE. HE IS RIGHT ON THE MARK AND IF THE PROPAGANDA MACHINES IS NOT REVERSED ALL THE YELLING AND SCREAMING WILL BE IN VAIN. MONEY SPENT THE WAY IT HAS BEEN ALTHOUGH FORMIDABLE , IT HAS NOT BEEN ENOUGH TO CRACK THE SOLID WALL OF BIAS EXPENDED BY THE "LIBERAL MEDIA". AL FRANKEN AND HIS RADIO STATION AND SIMILAR ACTIVITES IS WHERE CONCENTRATION SHOULD BE. OTHER LIABILITIES ARE THE SO CALLED LIBERALS WHO CONTINUALLY MAKE CONCESSIONS TO THE CONSERVATIVES, WHERE THEY NEVER CONCEDE ANY MISTAKES, PER BEGALA,MARK SHIELDS ,MARGARET CARLSON AND THEIR ILK.
Yes on impeaching all the criminal cabal
To those of you who are finding reasons why this "will not work!"
Please spend one-quarter that time thinking of why it will work and then contact everyone on your email list with this URL:
http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000838.php
and invite them to join US!!!
As well as the people at impeachbush.org
And let's get moving on this. The election isn't over until the electoral college declares a winner on 12/27/2004
Yes , the progressives have to unite and take over the democratic party. We should be donating all our money and time to pdamerica.org, and they, in turn, should be investigating and lobbying for impeachment. Doesn't a senator have to initiate proceedings? As far as I'm concerned the DLC is only another branch of the Republican party, and if the progressives don't become the dominant power in the democratic party, then I say it's time for a new political party.
Yes, count me on on the effort to impeach shrub. I wouldn't even be able to find a place to start with all the reasons why, so this should suffice.
Yessir, we must
continue to peacefully resist the Bush agenda
First, I am still waiting for the recount in Ohio to show that Kerry won. And, hope that the inaugueration would be Kerry's.
Second, before impeaching Bush, Cheney needs to be removed from office. His Halliburton shenanigans are a good place to start. There does appear to be some bribery in Europe while he was head of Halliburton. Then, we need to find a replacement. My personal favorites are Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or maybe even John McCain.
After that impeachment would be the next step; but, not sure how to achieve that. I have signed all petitions found on the internet. I plan to write people in Congress and remind them of how Watergate was resolved, by Republicans who put the country over the party.
If an impeachment were successful, I am afraid that I would not be happy with that. Once he is out of office, I think he should be handed over to The Hague and then tried for crimes of humanity all with Rumsfeld, and others.
If all efforts are unsuccessful, we will know that we did our best.
Re: Bush's trip to Ottawa. Isn't it interesting that this so very macho president cannot deal with heckling in an audience. The solution is not to speak. What a coward! He certainly wouldn't be the first U.S. President heckled; but, he'd be the most deserving of it.
I wrote to my REP to ask him to start impeachment process and he said he didn't think it was right. We had to work together!. So who will stand up in Congress?
We need to do whatever it takes to make sure that liars and criminals are not allowed to get away with using our government for their nefarious purposes. I am all for impeachment. The next question is how?
To the people who wondern HOW!
One constituent and one representative = NOTHING!
But one constituent who is joined by several hundred others could mean their--the representative, the senator, or the congress's person's-- last political breath!!!
We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here, we're just playing by the rules.
I don't think the time is ripe for impeachment Congress is no help at all, and we need strenght there. We have to find a way to prevent the second coup. Count the votes and sue for re-election across the nation. Our weenies in Congress might go for that. Veronica
Impeachment is not enough. Jail is too good, for traitors to the Constitution.
www.unelectedpresident.info
IMPEACH BUSH, but not just for the election, how about misuse of presidential authority, he's made more enemies than we've had in the world wars, just get him OUT
