Why is Congress ranked right below Dick Cheney in popularity?
Because nobody has yet polled on the popularity of pond scum.
The day before Congress tossed the Fourth Amendment, and literally five minutes after they took out a $163 billion loan on behalf of my unborn grandkids to kill Iraqis and U.S. troops for another year, I had to give a speech at a university in Milwaukee about peace, impeachment, and elections. I started like this, before breaking the news about what Congress had just done:
Happy Juneteenth! The words that were read to the slaves in Texas are worth remembering:
"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."
If someone would read the recent Supreme Court decision in plain English to the captives at Guantanamo, the words might sound very similar -- shocking to the point of unbelievability.
So, good things can happen, and they can take a long time coming, and then they can suddenly surprise you....
That was my attempt to offer encouragement. Then I broke the news, to lots of moans and groans.
But there's an important catch that I should have stressed more than I did, I think. Good things cannot happen in Congress, because the soulless spineless servile scoundrels running the place would throw their own mothers under a bus for a corporate campaign contribution or to avoid being called names by a pundit on TV or perhaps - we can only speculate - to succumb to blackmail and avoid exposure of the fact that they once tried to have sex with a sheep, and that the sheep - of course -turned them down.
Somebody needs to tell members of Congress, with regard to their jobs, what a CIA torture strategist advised six years ago: If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong. If thousands of people die to enrich your "contributors," YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
Here I am hanging out with my rightwing Midwestern relatives who complain nonsensically about affirmative action and welfare, and they agree with me on all the big things. They want to stop paying for the war. Even the ones who still believe Iraq attacked the World Trade Center still want to stop paying for the war. They do not want to give immunity to lawbreaking telecoms. They do not want to lose the Fourth Amendment. They want the legalized bribery system that we call "campaign financing" shut down. They want the power of political parties curtailed. They want independent non-wealthy candidates to run for office and win. And they want them to serve one term and quit. They want power taken back from the White House and restored to the Congress. They want green energy and no more wars. If you just make clear that they can keep lots of guns and Bibles around, they'll get enough other stuff right to fix the broken system, except that they aren't trying. They're going hunting and reading the Bibles and hoping somebody else will fix everything. They think the only place to effect change is through elections. And they think the electoral system is rotten to the core. So they give up. Just like most East Coast liberals.
But, of course, elections alone have never fixed anything. Movements of people pressuring for change, working for change, risking for change, and sacrificing regardless of how soon - if ever - they can be expected to succeed is what fixes things. If electing people alone could change anything, the 2006 elections would have changed at least some teeny tiny noticeable policy. Instead those elections changed absolutely nothing. Congress Members don't acquire humanity by being elected. They have to have it injected into their hollow toxic souls every single morning by massive public pressure. And then you have to keep them out of sight of a full moon, or they can lose it again.
On June 19th, the so-called leaders of the so-called Democrats in Congress passed an amendment they had carefully drafted and negotiated to assure its passage, dumping another $163 billion into the humanitarian project of liberating Iraqis from their homes and limbs and lives. Most of the votes came from Republicans (188). Some came from Democrats (80), including Hoyer and Emanuel. Most Democrats voted No, including Pelosi, Obey, and others who worked tirelessly to make sure the thing would pass. In fact, every single congress member who voted No did so knowing the thing would pass. And in the days leading up to the vote, not a single one of them publicly lobbied their colleagues or the so-called leadership to vote No or to not bring it up. Almost all of them voted Yes on the Rule, the procedural vote to bring the matter up for a vote. Not a single one of them went to any more effort than pulling one lever instead of another. Not a single one of them risked a broken fingernail. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of Americans have made huge sacrifices over a period of years trying to grab the attention of these living dead fascist functionaries.
Congressman David Obey considers it a law of physics, both that the war simply must be funded even by those who claim to oppose it, and that his own shit doesn't stink. Yet, when Democrats.com commissioned a poll last month, it found a majority of Americans wanting Congress to cut off the money and demand that the president bring everyone home within six months. That's a majority of the citizens of this country, who have heard more about Iraq than any other topic in the news over the past six years. If Obey won't trust us on this one, what will he trust us on? And if he considers a majority of Americans to be "idiot liberals," why should a majority of Americans continue to masochistically employ this arrogant and unaccountable accountant for mass-murder?
In November 2006, I said there would be two things Congress could do in the next two years. Because any good bill would be vetoed or signing statemented, Congress could only usefully stop funding the occupation or start hearings on impeachment. Assuming we don't stop the funding that the House just passed, there will remain only one useful thing that Congress can do. Of course, the "leaders" don't want to impeach, and they especially don't want to impeach for crimes they have been complicit in -- and that's most of the crimes.
But, believe it or not, there is a type of impeachment that a number of congress members in both parties have begun expressing interest in, namely Congressman Dennis Kucinich's 27th article of impeachment: the refusal of the president to comply with congressional subpoenas. Congress Members can't be complicit if they try (and you can be sure they'll try) in a president's refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena. And an impeachment hearing on that abuse cannot take a lot of time. The president simply has refused to comply with numerous subpoenas, not to mention contempt citations. It's an impeachment hearing that takes under an hour, requiring zero staff time or expense.
DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.
THank you David Swanson! You are so wonderful. I think I can safely speak for others by saying that we all appreciate your passion, your ethic and your conviction, not to mention your work for the good of mankind. Bravo!
And I also wanted to add a special "thank you" for exposing the voting record of Congress members. I have been calling for more articles of the same topic as a way to get bad apples tossed out of Congress: Thank you so much for helping to get the facts on the public radar. It will work! Truth wins! It may take time, but in the end the wrong-doings of others will come back and be their own undoing. The Iron Curtain fell and Hitler fell. So will these guys! Chin up, tally ho, on we go! Thank you all and thank you, again, David Swanson! We really appreciate you!
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Kathryn Smith (85 articles, 2 quicklinks, 35 diaries, 323 comments)
on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 5:45:16 AM
David, Excellent article and thank you for your vigilance on Impeachment. You're right, in November 2006 there were two issues most Americans agreed on:
Ending the Iraq War (or at least ending the funding of it)
and Impeaching the President or more specifically, the majority were in favor of having hearings and investigations to determine if there were crimes committed by the President and or members of his administration. Most favor investigation by a strong, independent investigator and hearings so that the information is public.
But Congress has long ago stopped Representing the people. They have become the kings and queens of spin. Selling prepackaged legislation back to the people. When the people complain, they make minor adjustments and then use PR to sell the idea that they "resisted" and "worked hard" on behalf of the people and that this is a "better bill".
Take the telecom immunity - it's not better - it's an expressway to immunity for all corporations, not just in the telecom industry. This will be used as a back door way to grant immunity to any corporation that has gotten some kind of Federal "permission" to commit crime. Drug companies will say that the drug was "FDA approved" even though the FDA is broken and primarily run by corporate insiders. Their Federal authority will be used to provide a shield.
We have become a fascist state. Corporations are entrenched in our governments. They are insiders in our Insurance Commissions, our EPA, our FDA - they are getting whatever they want, they even write most of our laws (think Medicare Part D - a windfall for insurance anc Big Pharma).
They raid the national treasury and then claim there is nothing left for social programs and programs that support the general welfare. That's also constitutional breach too.
The laws have been gutted and entrenched to create precedent that will be tried, and entrenched and then used for an even faster erosion of the rights of people.
You mention that there is a lot of buzz surrounding these new articles of Impeachment. I sure hope so, but frankly, I don't see it.
The democrats in my opinion are worse then the Republicans. We expected to be sold out by the Republicans, the voting record of the Demcrats is worse.
I like your idea of a one-term Congress - maybe even a larger Congress, that is truly Representative, where people actually can participate through a local town hall process, watch the votes and hold their Congress person to task. Then 6 years later, someone else from the local town hall gets in.
This system, where the people are so far removed from their Representatives, that they do not know anyone - can't possibly be Representative.
This so called Democracy - fails at Representing the People.
I may hold my nose and vote for a Democrat in November, but I no longer consider myself a Democrat. They have failed the people far worse than the Democrats. I have held them to a higher standard and they have failed.
Here's three things they should be doing:
1) Ending the War Funding - no more votes on appropriations bills - they have that power.
2) Immediately ending all funding for the Iraq war contractors. Close down that mercenary army and supplemental army.
3) Begin Impeachment Hearings immediately. Let's end the Executive privilege, review all the documents, hold public hearings and then file charges against the domestic evil doers.
Those are the most important items on my National to do list...
And Congress is busy crafting legislation to give away our civil liberties.
Thanks for nothing Congress - we would be better off without you.
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 428 comments)
on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 11:34:37 AM
If there were anything that was going to help to mobilize the base and keep them at work for the Democratic Party it was going to be a Democratic Congress willing to do the bidding of this newly energized base. Yet, in her supreme wisdom, Madame Speaker has heard not one word that anyone has said and continues in her cowardly and stupid course. She is as tone deaf as our current president when it comes to the will of the people. If it were legal, I would threaten to cut off her salary for her gross mismangagement of Congress.
I listen to her speak and it is as if she has no other reference point than the chambers of Congress. Does she never step out doors? Has she not seen how upset and angry everyone is? This kind of crass disconnect is comparable, in my mind, to Donald Trump's new phallus he is erecting in Soho, in New York City. It is nothing but a huge mirror of his own making. It offers nothing to the area in which it is located, it is ugly and stands out like the prick it is supposed to be and when the world comes crashing down again because we cannot heat and cool and power such ugly monstrosities, he will walk away as uncomprehending as always.
With an unfortunate number of powerful people, their characters are stuck in mud and they have no way to change. It is their fate to be so stuck and ours to have to endure their reign over us.
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Deborah Emin (13 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 6:26:42 PM
I'm glad somebody actually came out and SAID IT. It's an embarassment to say you belong to either party these days - they are on the same side (not ours).
I sent a letter to my so-called Democratic Senator and Democratic Representative to plead with them to back both the Cheney and the Bush impeachment requests. What did they do? They both wrote me a nice letter saying that the Senate has so many other things to do that are important and that impeachment wouldn't be a good use of time. Next thing I know, instead of working on ISSUES, one goes on vacation and the other is off running around the US working on Barack Obama's campaign. WHAT???
What in the world could be more important than exposing these criminals? I mean after all, they ARE responsible for thousands of DEATHS. I'm so disgusted I could scream.
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Deborah Wells (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 34 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 2:53:57 AM
" But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security ".
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Keystone (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 90 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 3:13:44 AM
