By David Swanson Remarks delivered in San Luis Obispo, California, on April 23, 2008
When I started giving speeches about Iraq and impeachment three years ago, I liked to list the major impeachable offenses for Bush and for Cheney, but as the list grew it became rather cumbersome. It got to the point where adding another crime to the list would bring to mind four others I needed to add, and then someone would discover a whole new field of criminality and report it in the news while I was on the airplane to the speaking event. And if I left out somebody's favorite crime from the list, there would be hell to pay. So, I've decided to switch gears. I didn't do this last night down in Ventura, but starting tonight I'm going to give you my top 10 reasons NOT to impeach Dick Cheney.
Here they are, in reverse order:
10. If we just wait nine more months only a couple of more hundred thousand Iraqis and some hundreds of US troops will die, not exactly big news, and what's nine months anyway, just the blink of an eye, just the time a woman is pregnant.
9. In these next nine months we'll probably only launch at most one more foreign war beyond the ones we're running now. It could expand, bring in other nations, and ultimately engulf the world, but it will only be a single additional war, hardly a significant change.
8. Our ongoing actions in Iraq and around the world under the current administration might not provoke an attack in this country during the next nine months, and if such a thing does happen, we wouldn't want a functioning democracy to be in place in Washington, and we certainly wouldn't want to prevent the same people who got us into the disaster from managing our efforts to make it worse. You don't change horses in the middle of an apocalypse.
7. Even starting in 2009, we'll still have several years left in which we can try to reverse global warming if we hurry. And won't it be more exciting if we procrastinate and then have to cram? We might even force a real breakthrough and discover how to refreeze icebergs or re-evolve species. Plus the rap Mars has gotten as an undesirable place to live is not entirely fair.
6. The millions of American families about to lose their homes to foreclosures will only have one more winter to brave and it may be an especially warm one anyway.
5. Right around the corner, a mere 7 months away, a completely unreliable and probably fraudulent election will give us a new president and vice president.
4. If we're lucky, the new president won't be a crazy old senator who wants to stay in Iraq for 10,000 more years. We might get an inspiring young senator who refuses to say how long he'd try to keep us in Iraq.
3. If we're really lucky, future presidents and vice presidents will go ahead and obey laws even though they won't be required to do so anymore.
2. During the impeachment hearings, it would be very difficult to prove that Dick Cheney had sex with someone.
And the number one reason not to bother impeaching Dick Cheney....
1. George W. Bush could become president.
***
Our First Amendment has been locked up in a chain-link Free Speech Zone. The Fourth Amendment is under warrantless surveillance and scared for its life. The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments have been detained without charge. And the Eighth Amendment is presently undergoing waterboarding. Restoring our Bill of Rights would be a positive step, not personal, not revengeful, not backward looking. This is why impeachment is needed. An election might, if we're lucky, get us a president who upholds the Bill of Rights, but what about the next 10 presidents? Will they all remain completely uncorrupted by the knowledge that Bush and Cheney paid no price for violating our civil rights? It is much more likely that one of them will push even further in the direction of tyranny.
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.
I have been very active in the Impeachment movement and have worked with Impeach For Peace for years. I even have Keith Ellison, who you mention in your article as my Congressman. Ellison is on the Judiciary Committee and has done NOTHING to promote Impeachment after signing HR 676. However he and other "progressive" Democrats has and continues to sign legislation to fund this illegal and immoral war. Not to mention the Homeland Terrorism Act.
I have come to the conclusion, based on experience that the Democratic Party have FOUGHT against Impeachment because the investigation would expose their complicity in supporting this war.
I also realize that "progressive" Democrats, such as PDA refuse, flat out refuse to hold the Democrats accountable for their own refusal to hold the Bush Administration accountable.
Quite frankly, many "progressive" Democrats complain about the spinelessness of the Democrats, yet continue to support them. The Dems spinelessness is nothing more than a reflection of your own.
You are fooling yourselves with talk of changing them from within. Sadly, you are bringing others along for the ride. However, as the saying goes "You can fool all the people part of the time and part of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
Some of us are not being fooled anymore by psuedo-radical, wanna be progressives and know that to quote David Cobb (of Ohio Re-Count fame) "the Democratic Party is where progressive politics goes to die."
Thank God for Ralph Nader and my candidate, Cynthia McKinney.
by
Michael Cavlan (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 181 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 11:03:42 AM
The movements for Impeachment, peace, and health care have been growing. People work on the issues part time as they can. These global giants lobby our representatives 24/7/365. The Military Industrial Complex is in all 50 states. Health Insurers have been allowed to become giant monopolies - United Health Care and Wellpoint, Inc. to name a few.
Our Politicians, despite what they say, line their pockets from these blood suckers.
How - do we build a movement that cannot be ignored? Where we are present 24/7/365 - and the issues are not spun or bent so far that they become ineffective?
For example, National Health Insurance is much different from Single Payer Non-profit Health Care, that is not charity, but paid for by everyone including corporations and people according to their means and received by all according to their need.
Two very different things, yet none of the candidates are speaking about the latter.
Then there are things like the "economy". The number one issue. But the Global transnationals are still raking in profits. They have outsourced US jobs, gutted the middle class, robbed pension funds and closed good paying jobs in the US to outsourced poverty wages. No candidate is speaking to the "common mans" economic plight.
So I ask, what do we do when once every four years we vote, then for the next four years we get robbed? When we write our Congress Person and receive a form letter that says, I appreciate your position, but. And the CEO of Enron is having lunch with our Congress person?
We are struggling to fill up our gas tank, pay our power bill and they are receiving record profits, RECORD PROFITS?
Congress is so corrupt they are part of the problem.
I feel the energy of an incredible movement being created, but its slow. They're data mining, using plants to create conflict and dividing us and reshaping the issues.
If net neutrality is compromised - not sure what will happen.
by
August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 387 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 6:31:36 PM
Yes There Are Candidates Speaking About Single Payer
You are right about Universal (corporate HMO friendly) healthcare being different than Single payer healthcare.
You are wrong about there being no candidates speaking about it. There are indeed none of the corporate sponsored and vetted candidates such as John McCain, Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are. In fact, it is the fact that the corporate interests which own our democracy that are not sponsoring them that makes them "not viable." Or at least so we am told by those who support the corporate parties and their corporate candidates and by the corporate media.
There seems to be a pattern developing here. Corporate branding.
Don't believe the hype.
by
Michael Cavlan (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 181 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 8:33:21 PM
The vast majority in Washington are all bought and paid for agents of the Militery-Industrial Complex, they are worthless co-conspirators. I am sure now that the only hope of turning America around, is what is inevitable anyway; the collapse of our economy. After enough people feel the pain of this second Great Depression; which will include stagflation, massive unemployment, homelessness, rioting, starvation, the breakdown of our families and the infrastructure across the country. Bank failures and the collapse of the monetery system. Then and only then, when we can no longer afford to drive our cars, fly anywhere, the truckers will stop driving, so nothing will be moving. It'll be like the Mad - Max movie; outright civil unrest. Then we will turn off our tv's, stop believeing change will come from Washington and the two-party system. We will wake up to the reality that we are being shafted by the Federal Reserve, and their lacky's in Congress and the Corporate MSM. Then my fellow Americans change will come. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; and the day of reckoning is close at hand. Be brave. These greedy fascist don't have enough FEMA prisons, or Blackwater mercinaries to handle 300 million patriots. The second Revolution is at hand. God Bless.
by
ronheri (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 98 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 8:59:51 PM
It's time for a real revolution, can't fix it through the corrupt electorate, too many people still sleep walking. Hardworking common folk know it's coming. My immigrant parents and immigrant friends can feel it.
My Uncle went through the depression, he's stocked up and planting. So is my Mom, they keep saying, it'll be ok, just stay close, we've been through it before.
I think they know. My IBM Exec brother points to the stock market and says, "first quarter earnings" aren't half bad in most of the fortune 500. I suppose that's because they all are profiting on the backs of outsourced poverty level jobs.
Nice system we have, the corporate elite steal out tax dollars, force us into perpetual national debt and then flee the country.
There ought to be rules that they require US jobs.
Even "Bank of America" is outsourcing many of the behind the scenes jobs. Nice corporate ethics.
by
August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 387 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 10:21:36 PM
