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

[Andrea Dorey]

As long as people are willing to vote for one or the other of the two  
Majors that will throw a few crumbs to them, we will continue to have  
the government we "deserve," unfortunately.  A man called Jefferson  
warned the people that we would need a revolution every 50 years.  We  
ignored that.  Another man called Eisenhower warned us about the  
unholy trio that runs the eternal wars.  We ignored that.  Lately, a  
man called Nader told us that we needed to vote for a strong third  
party to challenge the assumptions of the two-headed hydra.  We  
ignored that.  We have the government we deserve.  I include myself  
in that because I have not been able to explain and frame in the  
right terms why the forgoing are truths.
Andrea

On Mar 10, 2007, at 10:03 AM, JamBoi wrote:

> 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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