[Sosfbay-discuss] Doug Thompson of Capital Hill Blue: Turn off the life support: America is dead

[JamBoi]

Turn off the life support: American is dead.
Date:	 Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:33:47 -0500

Turn off the life support: America is dead 

By DOUG THOMPSON

03/09/07 "Capital Hill Blue" -- -- Maybe, just maybe, it's time to pull
the plug on this failed democratic republic called The United States of
America.

Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the priest for
last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance for revival.

Some 40 years ago, I lost friends in the heat and squalor of Vietnam.
They died in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause
that didn't exist for a government that lied to justify the fight.

A few years later, as a young reporter, I wrote about the attempts of
Richard Milhous Nixon to destroy the Constitution of the United States.
He failed because the system worked and both Congress and the Supreme
Court exercised their powers in our system of checks and balances to
restore order to a faltering nation.

"The lessons of Vietnam and Watergate provide a roadmap for the
future," I wrote at the time. "With luck, our leaders can use that
roadmap to avoid the mistakes of the past."

Now, 33-and-a-half years after the Vietnam War came to an end without
resolution and Nixon left office without honor, I'm losing family of
friends in the heat and squalor of Iraq. They die in a war that never
needed to be fought, supporting a cause that doesn't exist for a
government that lied to justify their sacrifices.

Another despot occupies the Presidency, an evil man whose lust for
power surpasses Nixon and who poses a far greater danger to the
Constitution. This time, however, the system is failing to protect
America from despots. George W. Bush rides roughshod over a compliant
Congress. The Supreme Court, packed with knee-jerk right-wingers who
helped put Bush in office in 2000, abdicated its role long ago.

For a moment - a brief one to be sure - we held out hope that the voice
of the voters might be heard after the November midterm elections. But
turning out the corrupt Republican leadership of Congress was not
enough. Democrats who control the House lack the balls to take Bush on
and the razor-thin majority in the Senate can't even get a vote
together on a non-binding resolution.

Democrats Thursday unveiled a plan to bring troops home by the end of
2008 but Bush is already threatening a veto if the bill gets out of
Congress, which is probably won't.

In the meantime, we've learned that Bush lied about both the size and
cost of his "troop surge" that he claims will bring peace and stability
to Iraq. Not only are we sending more troops in than he said, at a cost
far higher than he projected, his own general on the ground says they
will have to stay longer than he told the American people earlier this
year.

Over at the U.S. Department of Justice, an contradiction of terms if we
over heard one, the FBI has lied repeatedly about its use, and abuse,
of the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act to obtain information on U.S.
citizens. I find it disturbing that in all their rhetoric about
restoring America to the people, the new Democratic leadership of
Congress doesn't say a damn thing about repealing the USA Patriot Act,
an ill-conceived bill crafted by former attorney general John Ashcroft,
and hastily voted into law after 9/11 by shell-shocked representatives
and Senators who later admitted they hadn't even read it.

Today we learn that the federal government, at the direction of the
White House, routinely ignores the Freedom of Information Act and hides
more and more government documents under a cloak of secrecy.

Both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid joined with Republicans to vote not only for original passage of
the USA Patriot Act but also to reauthorize it. Bush has used the act
to justify spying on Americans, wiretapping without warrants and strip
away the last protections of the Constitution.

While Congress slept and the Supreme Court looked the other way, the
Bush administration has gone on its merry way seizing absolute control
of the United States government. He fired independent thinking U.S.
attorneys, replacing them with lockstep right-wingers who share his
view of totalitarian control of government. He ignores the laws of
Congress, issuing "signing statements" that give him the power to do
whatever he wants. When the federal courts declared his wiretapping of
Americans illegal, he ignored the ruling and appointed an in-house
review panel that declared the program "legal."

It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead
institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any real
role in the governing of this nation.

It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The
President of the United States has declared himself a "war time
President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in
Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge him.

The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless
dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died for in
Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet over Uncle Sam's
head and prepare for the funeral.

Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government? Perhaps, but
doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not talking about kicking
out one party of political hacks and replacing it with another: Been
there, done that, witnessed the failure.

We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to
start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that
our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the
cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.

Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the last one
started because another guy named George tried to destroy our way of
life.
 
*****************

___________________

JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com


 
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