Telling Truth to Power
I'm reprinting here the email I received this morning from The Pen. One Congressperson is trying to do something.
Exactly what we had feared most, and had predicted, has happened.
Admiral Fallon, the man who famously said that an attack on Iran
would "not happen on my watch" was just "retired". Now, he is no
longer on the watch. And they are absolutely planning to start a war
with Iran and World War 3, against all strategic wisdom. And they are
absolutely planning on doing it before the next general election.
Indeed, they will mostly likely do it for the PURPOSE of tilting that
election, unless they are stopped first by impeachment.
We have one and only one hope.
Congress must immediately commence impeachment proceedings against
both Dick Cheney and George Bush, the shadow emperor and his
ventriloquist dummy.
And only one dynamic can force Congress to stand up for itself, the
impeachment based primary challenges now ongoing, and in particular
Shirley Golub's challenge to the speaker of the house herself, the
primary impediment to enforcing the Constitution, who has perversely
declared that impeachment will never happen on HER watch, Nancy
Pelosi.
Shirley Golub taking action now. She wants to run the largest display
ad she can afford in her district's main newspaper, the San Francisco
Chronicle, calling out the speaker of the House on her total failure
to do job number one, to protect and defend the Constitution. And if
Shirley can raise just $16,000 in the next 24 hours, she wants to do
it in the very next possible Sunday paper, in the main news section
Display Ad Donations: http://www.shirley08.com/donations.php
What will this ad say? Besides the specific language above, we will
draw an ominous parallel between what is going on now and what
happened in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. General Zinni
opposed that invasion. He said, "I had grave reservations about this
whole undertaking and I expressed those". And he was forced out.
Please chip in anything you can. But if you can make a contribution
of $100 or more, Shirley will give you one of the new bright orange
"IMPEACH BOTH!!!" baseball caps, embroidered to two colors of blue.
And if you want to be a big time hero, and you can donate $1,000 to
this cause, Shirley will send you one of her brand new, custom
embroidered baseball award jackets, with the "I'm On The Table"
message, AND one of the baseball caps too, a perfectly coordinated
set!
Here is the rest of the proposed text for the ad we can run with your
help:
General Shinseki predicted that it would take at least a couple
hundred thousand troops to stabilize a post invasion Iraq. He
assessment was ridiculed as "wildly off the mark" by Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz. And he was undercut even before his already
scheduled retirement.
Every time a top military commander who actually knows what they are
doing gets the ax, something very bad happens. And now they are doing
the same thing again, purging the last dissenting voice to a even
more lunatic plan.
Now, Admiral Fallon is the epitome of a good soldier. And he will
always protect his commander in chief, no matter how misguided or
wildly off the mark they are. He will tell you that nobody forced him
out and that this was his decision alone. But anybody capable of
reading between the lines of his painstakingly diplomatic resignation
statement will know that he will be gone because he was standing in
the way of another premeditated strategic disaster, one that again
they are perhaps too blinded by power to foresee, or maybe they do.
But the chain of command at the White House does not extend to the
U.S. Congress, at least it's not supposed to, not according to our
Constitution. So when exactly is Congress going to stand up for
itself, and for us, and put an end to the hideous debacle in the
Middle East and in the White House?
Display Ad Donations: http://www.shirley08.com/donations.php
After nearly a year of clutching its skirts, the House finally worked
up the nerve to vote to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in
contempt for refusing, under direct orders from the White House, to
testify in response to congressional subpoenas. If Congress had any
spine at all, even one vertebrae, they would have invoked the power
of inherent contempt and had the two of them arrested on the spot.
Instead, after nearly a year of irresolute vacillation, they
pretended to expect contempt citations would be enforced by the new
attorney general, who the Senate was so ill-advised to confirm in the
first place, who had plainly suggested in his own confirmation that
the president's constitutional powers could override federal law. Fat
chance of getting any redress there.
And now they tell us they are going to file a law suit. Oh, please,
what a sad pathetic joke of a publicity stunt. In the first place,
there is zero chance that such a law suit would even be finally
decided in less than three to five years. It absolutely would go to
the Supreme Court. And what would be the chances there? Take a look
at some of the appointments the Democrats in the Senate have so
gullibly waved through in the last couple years and you can answer
that question yourself.
And in the second place, to even contemplate taking on such a
struggle by way of the courts, they better have the top notch
constitutional litigation experts at the helm. Instead they just
filed something knocked off by a couple staffers. Our intelligence
can hardly stand any more such insults.
Display Ad Donations: http://www.shirley08.com/donations.php
Let us be clear. The president and vice president of the United
States have at least committed treason. The Scooter Libby trial
revealed that the White House was directly involved in leaking the
identity of Valerie Plame, an undisputed undercover CIA agent, which
destroyed perhaps the most effective operation they had to deal with
the proliferation of the very weapons of mass destruction we were
supposed to be so afraid of in the Middle East. And it was done for
political retribution purposes.
The first president Bush said it all, when he said "I have nothing
but contempt and anger for those who expose the names of our sources.
They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors". And what does
the Democratic majority in Congress do about it?
Nothing.
There is hardly a federal law passed anymore that does not suffer
crippling by a so-called "signing statement" to negate it, signing
statements concocted by Cheney staffers, brazenly defying the
authority of Congress to do anything, referring to that authority as
"purported" compared the presumed imperial largess of the White
House. And what does the Democratic majority in Congress do about it?
Nothing.
We have traded a rubber stamp Congress for a rubber spine Congress.
What's the difference? Now finally empowered to hold hearings on the
endless constitutional crimes of the Cheney/Bush White House, the
lies that took us to war in the first place, the rampant illegal
wiretaps, the firing of U.S. Attorneys for partisan reasons, an
official policy of torture and all the rest, and what does Congress
do?
Nothing.
Instead they fritter away their hearing time harassing baseball
players, threatening them with long years in prison for not telling
the immaculate truth about using performance enhancers. Well, maybe
Congress needs a performance enhancer, and big dose of it.
A year ago we were promised a "new direction", and we have been
waiting for even a glimpse of it ever since. It is now too late even
for inherent contempt. Congress must impeach. And if you support me
as your representative in the 8th Congressional district, we can up
impeachment on back on the table no later that June 3, the day of the
Democratic primary here, by showing Nancy Pelosi herself a new
direction . . . out the door.
Display Ad Donations: http://www.shirley08.com/donations.php
So please make a contribution if you can to run this historic
newspaper ad, using the contribution form above. There also you can
see the very video she is running right now on MSNBC in heavy
rotation, talking about making impeachment happen for real, and
rallying her local constituents to come out and demonstrate with her
in front of Pelosi's district office to demand it. Your contributions
are what is making it possible for Shirley to have a competitive
media presence, and let everyone know this a serious candidacy, and
that the impeachment movement is gathering speed.
Or if you would, just send this email to other people you know, to
encourage them to visit Shirley's site, you can help her to spread
the impeachment now message, and inspire other candidates to step
forward and do the same thing in their own districts. For if the
speaker of the House can be successfully challenged, why not any
member of Congress who still cannot find their spine with both hands?
Paid for by Shirley Golub for Congress
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
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COMMENTS:WA: No, No, SheaNC, don't apologize! I am GLAD you've let us know about this problem.
SheaNC said...
Hi Granny :) This is a very important and ominous subject, but if I may stray from the topic for a moment: I have to let you know that the way this blog is diplaying on the screen is very difficult to read. The font size is quite large and bold, and the colors are rather vivid, so on the whole it is visually very difficult to look at. I mean this with all due respect, you know - I love you folks and this blog - but I'm having a hard time looking at it.
If it is just me; if other readers are not having the same problem, please let me know. Maybe it's on my end, but everything else I visit online looks normal.
This is just meant as contructive criticism from one blog friend to another. The content of your blog is, as always, great!- GADFLY: I'll have to refer this to the Old Woman. Sorry, SheaNC. It looks fine on my computer and on Old Woman's. It look weird to anybody else??
SheaNC: So glad to have you visit us again but really sorry you're having problems with our blog.
Do you use Internet Explorer for your browser? I use IE and Mozilla Firefox. I once got MF, disliked it and uninstalled it. For a long time I used IE exclusively. It started messing up my blogs and drove me nuts so I installed MF again. Still didn't like it for some things but my blogs came out better.
Gradually as Mozilla Firefox got better, it seemed like Internet Explorer got worse. I use MF almost exclusively now.
If I check my blogs when on IE, they come out much as you describe. Gigantic print, horrid colors, and my sidebar scattered all over the bottom of the page in a mish mash. It is AWFUL and I well understand the problem you have. Unfortunately, I don't know any way to rectify it. Perhaps some of our readers will have suggestions.
It is odd that only our blog is messed up. I will switch to IE and access other blogs and see what it does with other people or if it is just me.
I am glad you let me know even if I don't know how to fix it. If other people have problems with this blog, perhaps that is one reason they have discontinued visiting us. I had just assumed that they had wandered off. There are so many blogs and so little time, one can't keep up with all of them.Well, I use IE, but I am now checking it through Firefox and it is much better. But, the sidebar appears at the bottom (due to a couple of items that are too wide for the sidebar, I think). Again, sorry to sound critical. It's like telling someone when they have something in their teeth :)
There's something about IE and blogs that's just plain weird. It happened over on "granny" a couple of years ago too.
Dan'l, The Pen has been screaming about impeachment for years now. A for the Congresswoman, she may have been as well. There are a few but they don't get very far.- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
posted by Granny @ 3/14/2008 12:01:00 PM
That was a most stirring letter. I still get the uncomfortable feeling that this is grandstanding time, that all parties know the clock has ran out, so they are free to bluster and bluff.
Saturday, March 15, 2008 12:56:00 AM