Hot Potato Mash

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: VINCENT BUGLIOSI: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

On Wednesday, famed Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi spoke to a packed and enthusiastic crowd of more than 350 Angelinos about his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” While Bugliosi’s talk will eventually appear on C-SPAN, you can view it first in its entirety below…

Part 1 (19:45)

In my book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” I present evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to war on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore under the law is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who died so far in this war.

Bugliosi began the evening by explaining to the Los Angeles audience that George W. Bush is guilty of murder, according to the law, if he brought the country to war under false pretenses. And Bugliosi emphasized the legal aspect of the case in order to fend off likely attackers:

So although Bush supporters can argue that Bush should not be prosecuted because they don’t think he did anything wrong, they cannot legitimately say that he should not be prosecuted if he has done what I say he did. To say that is to admit that you have no respect for our American system of justice and democracy and that you would prefer that presidents have the same rights as tyrannical dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein.

Bugliosi had a similar answer for those who simply believe it is impossible to prosecute Bush for murder:

There’s this sense out there among many that prosecuting Bush for murder can’t be done. Which is the equivalent of saying what - that he is above the law. That ordinary laws simply don’t apply to him.

Bugliosi also had some special words for the American Right Wing which has expressed its disapproval with his book:

The third group of people responding to my book is the nation’s right wing. And they of course have contempt for me and my book. But whatever contempt they have for me, I can assure them and I can assure you I have much much much more contempt for them. There are no more repugnant, hypocritical and un-American – and that’s the word I want to emphasize – un-American people in our society today than the right wing.

Bugliosi, however, made clear that this book was not political for him and even said he would have written the same book had Bush been a Democrat. So fair is Bugliosi that he even offers up some mitigating evidence for Bush and his co-conspirators:

And there is one thing that I should probably say in partial defense of these people that goes in mitigation, arguably reduces their moral culpability. And what I’m talking about is that many of these people are incredibly stupid. And they make up for their stupidity by being extremely ignorant. And when you combine stupidity with ignorance that’s a toxic combination.

Finally, Part 1 ends with the law:

If a conspirator, or anyone for that matter, deliberately sets in motion a chain of events which he knows will cause – that’s the key word – cause a third party innocent agent to commit an act, the defendant is criminally responsible for that act. Bush, in invading Iraq, caused Iraqis to kill American soldiers in much the same fashion that a person causes a gun to fire a bullet that kills someone by pulling the trigger.

Part 2 (17:54)

Part 2 begins with Bugliosi explaining the only way Bush might be innocent of murder:

Bush can only wash his hands of culpability if he did not take this nation to war under false pretenses. If he did, which the evidence overwhelmingly shows, he is criminally responsible for the deaths of all those American soldiers who have died fighting his war in Iraq.

The main issue would be whether or not George Bush went to war, as he always claimed, in self-defense – the so-called pre-emptive strike. Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, alleged as so, therefore he was an imminent threat to the security of this country so Bush had to strike first in self-defense. If the war was not in self-defense but one that the prosecutor can prove Bush took us to under false pretenses than all of the killings of American soldiers in Iraq become unlawful killings and therefore murder.

While Bugliosi's animus was mostly reserved for Bush and his co-conspirators, he did find time to also criticize Ken Starr, The New York Times and the Supreme Court:

I seem to be getting more angry and acerbic and caustic and that’s because I am always in a state of rage. How can I help but be -- the monstrous, grotesque, obscene Ken Starr almost destroyed the Clinton presidency over absolutely nothing while being totally and completely supported and funded by the federal government. They funded his seven year, seventy million dollar effort, the federal government. And the so-called liberal media, The New York Times savaged Clinton on a day to day basis, supported this monstrous, grotesque, obscene figure – one of the most reprehensible figures in American history – Ken Starr.

The US Supreme Court 2000, stopping the recount in Florida which was specifically authorized by Florida law, taking the election away from the American people and appointing George Bush president, one of the biggest crimes in American history.

The heart of Part 2, however, is reserved for Bugliosi's evidence against George W. Bush. And first on the list was Bush's lies to the country that were contrary to the National Intelligence Estimate:

In George Bush’s first speech to the nation on Hussein and Iraq, October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein was a great danger to this nation either by his attacking us with the so-called weapons of mass destruction or by giving these weapons to a terrorist group to attack us. And Bush said that this attack could happen, ‘on any given day,’ meaning what, that the threat was imminent.

The only big problem for George Bush is that on October the first, six days earlier, the CIA sent Bush its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – a classified top secret report that represented the consensus opinion of all 16 US federal intelligence agencies on the issue of whether or not Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country and on page 8 of that 91 page report it clearly and unequivocally says – and by the way what I’m about to tell you to my knowledge has never been said or never been written or never appeared in any major newspaper or magazine in America – page 8 clearly says that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country. That he would only be a threat if he feared we were about to attack him.

So we know then, not think but know, that when George Bush told the nation on the evening of October 7th, Cincinnati, Ohio, that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, he was telling millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what his own CIA was telling him. Now if we had nothing else at all, and there is so much more, that alone shows what, that George Bush took this nation to war on a terrible terrible lie. Therefore all the killings in Iraq became unlawful killings and murder.

But it gets worse! In fact, it gets evil, perverse, sick and criminal:

But it gets worse. It gets worse. October 4th, three days later, Bush and his people had the CIA release an unclassified summary version of the October 1st classified report so that this October 4th unclassified version could be released to the American public and to Congress. This unclassified version came to be known as the White Paper. And in this White Paper that was shown to the American people and to Congress, in which contained the opinion of 16 US intelligence agencies that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country, that conclusion was completely deleted, completely eliminated. Every single one of these all important words, the most important conclusion in that classified document, was completely deleted from the White Paper. And the question I have of you, is how evil, how perverse, how sick, how criminal can George Bush and his people be?

The next piece of ever damning evidence, according to Bugliosi, is the January 31, 2003, Manning Memo written by Tony Blair's chief foreign policy advisor after a top level meeting in the Oval Office less than two months before the invasion.

He says that George Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction that Bush started to talk about three ways to ‘provoke a confrontation’ with Saddam Hussein. One of which he said was to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft over Iraq falsely painted in United Nations colors and he said if Saddam fires on those planes it would be a violation of UN resolutions and therefore justify our going to war. So here is George Bush telling Americans, telling the world, that Hussein is an imminent threat to the security of this country, but behind closed doors this very small human being was talking about how to provoke Hussein into a war.

Part 3 (15:50)

Part 3 begins with another piece of evidence against Bush. Mainly, how Bush responded to the ever positive testimony of chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix on March 7, 2003, by throwing him and his team out of the country and quickly invading Iraq. Blix had told the UN Security Counsel that the inspectors were getting proactive cooperation from Saddam Hussein and that their investigation would be completed in a few months:

Blix and his people became Bush’s biggest adversaries because if Blix and his people confirm that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that would rob Bush of his main argument for war – a war that he wanted to fight at all costs.

The bulk of Part 3, however, does not concentrate on evidence of Bush's guilt but rather Bush's state of mind. Bugliosi takes great offense to the fact that Bush has often described his days as perfect and that he proclaims himself to be so happy:

Even if George Bush was only guilty of making an innocent mistake in taking this nation to war in Iraq, not murder as I firmly believe, with all of the death, horror and suffering he has caused, what type of a monstrous individual is it who could be happy with his life? What type of a human monster is George Bush?

If I ever killed one person in my life, even accidentally – a car accident – I’d never have another perfect day as long as I lived. George Bush is responsible for the horrible deaths of thousands of human beings and he is talking about having a perfect day. Bush’s plans to have a perfect day right in the middle of all the death and horror in Iraq goes so far beyond acceptable human conduct that no moral telescope can discern its shape, form and nature.

Bugliosi concludes by telling the audience that he will not rest or be satisfied until George W. Bush is prosecuted for first degree murder:

I don’t like to see anyone get away with murder, even one murder. [O.J.] Simpson got away with two murders and I got so angry that I wrote a book - Outrage, the Five Reasons O.J. Simpson got away with murder. If I can get so angry about someone getting away with one or two murders you can imagine how I feel about George Bush who has gotten away with over 100,000 murders and has been smiling and enjoying himself throughout the whole period. It may sound presumptuous of me but I can tell you that while I may not succeed, I’m not going to be satisfied until I see George Bush in an American courtroom being prosecuted for first degree murder.

The first degree murder of over 4,000 American soldiers:

If justice means anything at all in America, if we are not going to forget about those 4,000 young American soldiers who came back from Bush’s war in a box, I say we have no choice but to bring murder charges against the son of privilege from Crawford, Texas.

"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" (Vincent Bugliosi)

George W. Bush, Ken Starr, Manning Memo, Murder, NIE, Right Wing, Saddam Hussein, Supreme Court, video, Vincent Bugliosi

Axis of Appeasement

Keith Olbermann interviews Hillary Mann Leverett about the Bush administration's craven hypocrisy on North Korea above. For much more on the Bush administration's disreputable foreign policy check out this must read October 2007 Esquire article on Hillary Mann and her husband Flynt Leverett. The article also investigates the “impending war with Iran”.

Technorati Tags: countdown, George W. Bush, Hillary Mann, iran, Keith Olbermann, North Korea

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Dr. William Pepper on James Earl Ray's Innocence, Sirhan Sirhan's Innocence, 9/11 Truth and Prosecuting War Crimes

Dr. William F. Pepper is an internationally acclaimed lawyer who defended James Earl Ray in a 1999 civil trial (supported by Martin Luther King's family) where the jury found Ray not responsible for the MLK assassination. Now Pepper is defending Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a case he says is “an easier one than the assassination of Martin King and the innocence of James Earl Ray”.

Last Wednesday Pepper spoke about all of his projects, including 9/11 truth and prosecuting the Bush administration for war crimes, to a packed celebrity filled house in Los Angeles. Among those in attendance were Ed Asner, Gina Belafonte, Judd Nelson and 9/11 author Professor David Ray Griffin. Videos of his talk follow below... 

Part 1 (6:21) - Introduction 

In Part 1 Pepper talks about his background, childhood and motivation. He also speaks about the time he spent in Cuba playing baseball where he got to know Fidel Castro. According to Pepper, Castro foresaw much of what is happening in the United States today:

“When, in that massive country to the north, the masses of the people ever understand what it is that their ruling class has done to them and is doing to them, there will be such a torrent of opposition. They will rise like never before and then there will be the world’s greatest social revolution, the American second revolution.”

The video concludes with Pepper explaining how he came to work for Robert F. Kennedy and Martin King: 

 

Part 2 (5:36) - Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination/James Earl Ray Innocence 

“Took me ten years to convince myself that [James Earl Ray] was an absolute patsy” - Dr. William Pepper 

In Part 2 Pepper begins with the Martin King assassination and explains how he became involved with James Earl Ray's defense some nine years later. He also goes into detail about the 30 day civil trial against Loyd Jowers, et al, where a jury found Ray not responsible for King's assassination after listening to 70 witnesses under oath. 

Pepper believes that Ray's civil trial should serve as a template for getting out the truth in a wide range of cover-ups including the Robert F. Kennedy assassination and 9/11. He thinks using the courts is an effective way to get the truth into the public record despite the efforts by the mainstream media to prevent its dissemination to the public.

 

Part 3 (9:56) - Robert F. Kennedy Assassination/Sirhan Sirhan Innocence 

“I found from just a preliminary examination of the record that [the Sirhan Sirhan case] on the law, on the facts of the case, was an easier one than the assassination of Martin King and the innocence of James Earl Ray” - Dr. William Pepper 

In the first half of Part 3 Pepper details the startling evidence that necessitates a second shooter in the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. For starters the medical examiner states that Kennedy was shot four times from the rear including one shot about an inch behind his right ear which conflicts with all the witness testimony that Sirhan was always three to five feet in front of the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

Secondly, the analysis of audio recordings from the assassination with formerly unavailable new technology has led to the determination that 13 shots were fired at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan's gun only held 8 bullets. In other words: 

“There had to be a second shooter there” - Dr. William Pepper

In the second half of Part 3 Pepper details the efforts taken by the prison and the Department of Corrections to prevent his legal team from psychoanalyzing Sirhan Sirhan.

Part 4 (4:59) - Robert F. Kennedy Assassination (Continued) 

In Part 4 Pepper continues the RFK assassination discussion and his efforts to clear Sirhan Sirhan whom he says is innocent:

“The problem we face is if we get our client clearly innocent of the killing of Bob Kennedy – which he is, clearly innocent of that killing – he has five other counts of attempted murder” - Dr. William Pepper

In addition to the belief in Sirhan's innocence Pepper believes the case is important because it is representative of a larger problem facing the country:

“Each of the things I’m talking about are symptomatic of a pervasive sickness in this country. This is not the country we were all led to believe it was or should have been. This is what has emerged because we have had a small group of criminals grab power over a period of time following the orders of the people in the shadows who really do dominate life and justice and the injustices that exist in the society.” - Dr. William Pepper

Part 5 (8:36) - 9/11 

“The 9/11 matter is, in my lifetime, the most traumatic assault on democracy and the safety of this Republic.” - Dr. William Pepper

Part 5 is dedicated to finding out the truth about 9/11. Pepper supports two different ways for accomplishing this goal. First, he backs an effort to create a new commission to investigate 9/11 by New York state referendum. Volunteers are currently trying to get the necessary 30,000 signatures from registered New York voters to get the measure on the ballot.

The second approach is to once again file a lawsuit in the courts. Pepper is leading this effort on behalf of the Jersey Girls and plans to sue, among others, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is widely believed to have sent $100,000 to lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

Part 6 (8:03) - War Crimes 

“I’m determined that what I saw in Vietnam and what is happening in Iraq will not go unpunished. Absolutely determined that that’s the case. What that means is this entire gang of war criminals in Washington are going to have to be prosecuted” - Dr. William Pepper

Part 6 covers what Pepper believes is his most important project -- the prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, Doug Feith and Richard Pearl, et al, for war crimes.

Pepper plans to accomplish this monumental task by following the precedent set in the case of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. In that case, a Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant for Pinochet whose charges including 94 counts of torture.

Ultimately Pepper hopes for a conviction in absentia of the American war criminals which would prevent the guilty from ever stepping foot outside of the United States.

NOTE: To order a DVD of the night's entire programming, which includes a lively Q & A session with Dr. William Pepper and a talk by Professor David Ray Griffin on new 9/11 evidence, please contact Kathleen at quantumysticKFR@gmail.com to request a copy.

“An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New and Updated Edition” (William F. Pepper)

“Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr” (William F. Pepper)

Technorati Tags: 11, administration, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Dr. WIlliam Pepper, Fidel Castro, George W. Bush, iraq, James Earl Ray, Jersey Girls, Martin Luther King Jr., puppy, Robert F. Kennedy, september11, Sirhan Sirhan, torture, war crimes

THE BADA BING CLUB - ABSOLUTE MUST WATCH - SERIOUSLY

The first video is the ABC News investigative report, “The Principals”, which tells the story of how the highest ranking Bush admin officials - Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell (not such a good guy after all), Rice and Cheney - had meetings in the White House where they literally choreographed how prisoners would be tortured.

The second video is Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviewing constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley who was fairly clear about what all of this means:

“Well this is one meeting of principal, they are not talking about the Ali kind. And what you have is a bunch of people talking about something that is a crime for those of us that look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is. This is like meeting at The Bada Bing Club. These people are sitting around, regularly talking about something defined as a crime. And you even have John Ashcroft standing up and saying, ”Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at the White House“. Obviously that is quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far, it was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved at the very highest level. And it goes right to the President's desk.

And it's notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this and they found those lawyers in people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo and those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee's case he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.”

All of which makes Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Cheney - WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS!

Technorati Tags: bush, cheney, CIA, fascism, interview, national security, olbermann, rumsfeld, torture, video

REPUBLICANS ARE THROWING JOHN MCCAIN UNDER THE BUS

Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?

The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.

Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.

Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:

• Old vs. Young
• Old vs. New
• Old vs. Good looking
• Anti-hope vs. Hope
• Plain spoken vs. Articulate
• Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
• Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
• Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
• Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner

So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.

And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, cheney, christianity, CPAC, democracy, Democrats, election, foxnews, Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee, iraq, Jeb Bush, McCain, Mitt Romney, New York Review of Books, Newt Gingrich, nytimes, Politics, Wisconsin, religious_right, republican

VIDEO INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE: Peace Activist Start Loving

Start Loving is a peaces activist and humanitarian who finds the spread of empire through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq immoral. As such, he feels a duty to wake the conscience of the American people. And in an effort to draw more attention to his cause, Start Loving is now camping out 24/7 in front of the House Office Buildings across the street from the Capitol. When I interviewed him on October 22, 2007, Start Loving was three weeks into a hunger strike.

Part 1 (1:49)

Start Loving: “There needs to be a shift on Capitol Hill from a focus on stuff to a focus on people. We in these Houses [Congress] couldn't really care less about the 50,000 lives of our children of the United States that have been destroyed in Iraq so far. I mean some tiny sliver of each of the Congressmen cares but it is certainly not at the forefront of their minds and that's a crime of humanity. The two million people in Iraq that have been killed, before the war and after the war, should be central to our agenda -- figuring out how to ameliorate that, but it's sideline. So, I'm here to be a vote that our priorities need to shift from stuff, careers, corporate profits to a focus on what's priceless which is human life.”

Part 2 (4:54)

Start Loving: The third unmentioned party is the group that I think are the true patriots of this country, the men and women in uniform, that have been brainwashed into thinking that they're fighting for freedom and democracy in Iran and all they are fighting for are corporate profits for Cheney, Bush and their cronies. My proof of that is who would doubt that if people on Capitol Hill, to keep the war going, had to send their children to the war, it would stop in a nanosecond. Or, the other proof, I think, most people would agree if they thought about it, if the war corporations were told they could continue supplying armaments but there would be no profit - all their profit would be stopped - it would stop in a heartbeat. This is not a patriotic war, this is a war of profit and greed.“

Part 3 (3:09)

Why does Congress care so little about our troops in Iraq?

Start Loving: ”Whereas nobody understands the phenomenon exactly, it's fair to say the human being can become intoxicated on things other than substances. That the spirit of empire, the spirit of power, the sense of power, the sense of power over others, is tremendously intoxicating and like any intoxication it changes your mind. It disables certain parts of your nervous system and empowers other parts. It disables conscience, humanity, heart, compassion and it empowers self-engrandizement, and lust, and desire for more more more. It really dehumanizes us, the spirit that dehumanizes us. Our culture is optimized for that because that is how you get people to buy stuff, by ignoring people in need benignly, of course, thinking that we are great people. But, in fact, ignoring people in need and more and more looking out for me and hiding behind the rationale that I'm taking care of my biological children. But that's really just license to ignore everybody else.

And it took me a long time to understand this about people like Dr. King. He was always as pained about the agony of the oppressor as of the oppressed. And if they ever woke up, he seemed to think and realize, to their inhumanity, they would be horrified and they would never want to be that way. Well, that's how I think it is with Congress.“

Part 4 (1:58)

Why haven't the American people galvanized to put a stop to the Iraq war?

Start Loving: ”The analogy of how fire starts. It starts with a match but it can become a huge blaze. And to start that blaze you need dry wood. I think that the American populous may be going from being really wet wood, just totally in the grip of empire and selfishness, may be drying out a little bit. With the issues that are confronting them.“

Part 5 (3:05)

Would you label yourself an optimist or a pessimist?

Start Loving: ”Facing the truth of your current situation, and if it's a horrible truth facing that squarely, and at the same time developing a vision of how things should be and need to be. And if you can hold both of those within you, it is the ultimate release of energy, and power, courage, commitment.

I neither try to see things worse than they are or better. I want to see the truth of how they are so that I can mobilize myself appropriately. And it's a horrible phenomenon, I was just talking to my friend Rick about how I used to be a devotee of NPR, I can barely stand listening to them anymore. The poor guys have been destroyed by right wing elements I think. But all they want to talk about is pablum and they want to talk everything in cheery voices and how nice everything is... Well, it's not nice. Half the world is living on a dollar day. People in Palestine have been in basically concentration camp conditions for thirty-forty years. Four million people killed in Congo so that we can have cheap electronic parts. You know, Haiti, just a horror. And on and on and on and on. I don't suspect I come across as being depressive. I'm not, I'm very much alive. And that life comes from this needn't be, this shouldn't be. And I want to pay whatever price I can with my life to wake us up. Because none of us want it to be this way. None of us, if we could be awakened from our inhumanity.“

Part 6 (5:41)

What is the significance of the three crosses on your head?

Start Loving: ”The cross in the middle is the name I've adopted because nothing else I could call myself is relevant, which is 'Start Loving'. And the two on either side are 'stop starving' - and it's the active verb - it's starving others of AIDs drugs, of education, I mean, how do we have our military today? We starve these poor and middle class children of the opportunity to go to college, of decent education, so that there only option to climb is to go into the military. We've starved people around the world of AIDs drugs and other basic resources. And when that doesn't work we kill them. So the other one says 'stop killing.'“

Part 7 (1:47)

How long will you continue with the hunger strike?

Start Loving: ”Things will only change in this country when the populous stands up. If there is an honest history in the future, if we have a future, it will not blame congress and it will not blame Bush and Cheney for what's going on. It will blame the American people for being so apathetic at such a horrible time of need.“

Cheney's Chief Of Staff David Addington Is Today's Worst Person In The World

IMPEACHMENT FRIDAY: Bush Is Delusional

The delusional one speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday, August 22, 2007:

We have overthrown two of the most brutal tyrannies in the world and liberated more than 50 million citizens. In Iraq are troops are taking the fight to the extremists[s] and radicals[s] and murders[s] all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than one thousand five hundred al-Qaeda terrorists[s] and other extremists[s] every month since January of this year.

How much you wanna bet that the 1,500 terrorists[s] line becomes the new, “we've taken out 75% of al-Qaeda's leadership” line that we heard so often during the 2004 presidential campaign? It seems to me that Bush is actually arguing that his strategy is failing miserably.

And the gall that Bush has to claim that he has liberated 50 million citizens. At a minimum his line should read:

...and liberated 50 million citizens from tyrannical rule and delivered them to hell.

Clearly we have two DICK's in the White House. Why not throw them both out? Impeach.

FOX 'NEWS' WANTS WAR WITH IRAN

Do something to stop it.

Cheney Then vs. Cheney Now

Cheney in 1994

CNN video analysis

How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Quagmire? Suffice to say, the Vice President is really a Dick.

UPDATE: Here's Keith Olbermann and John Nichols take...

IMPEACHMENT MONDAY: DUMP DICK VIDEO CONTEST

The Dump Dick Cheney Video Contest finalists...


The History of Nixon and the Future of Cheney

Ghost of Nixon

 
Dick Cheney's Jury

Nancy calls for impeachment

 

The Real Reason Wingnuts Hate YearlyKos & Progressive Blogosphere

Game, set and match to Beggars Can Be Choosers:

Once upon a time, it was easy to be a GOP propagandist.

Bill O'Reilly Equates DailyKos with Nazis and KKK

Up until the mid-1990s, Republicans could spew out lies all day long and rarely had to worry about any watchdogs holding them accountable. Oh sure, there were a few obscure leftist print publications here and there, but they had tiny circulations and were often difficult to come by.

Back then, the GOP propagandists certainly didn't have to worry about the corporate mainstream media keeping them honest. Indeed, the likes of CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and even The New York Times were quite happy to carry the GOP's water.

Bill O'Reilly attacks DailyKos again

With the dawn of the Web, it began to dawn on the GOP propagandists that they were no longer able to spew out lies without being challenged.

Suddenly, anyone could set up a Web site for relatively little cost and effort and instantly have a potential worldwide audience.

GOP propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly soon discovered, to their horror, that they could no longer peddle their daily lies and bullshit and have no one to challenge them.

Read the entire post at Beggars Can Be Choosers

(h/t The Existentialist Cowboy)

IMPEACHMENT TUESDAY: The VP Has Run Utterly Amok & Must Be Stopped

From the ultra-conservative Constitutional Law specialist, Bruce Fein, who wrote one of the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton:

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Take the vice president's preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney's bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue.

But where Fein's Op-Ed gets particularly good is in reviewing Cheney's record of abuses and excesses. Here's a taste:

The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.

And Fein is only getting started. If anything, Fein's piece is a great reminder of what these sick bastards have done in our names. Do people really want to live the rest of their lives with the burden of knowing that they condoned such atrocities? Impeachment would signal to the world that our leaders acted illegally, beyond our laws and without the consent of the American people, thus diminishing our own culpability.

Without impeachment the country faces long term psychological scars similar to what Germany experienced after WWII. Impeachment should not be an option as it is necessary to ensure the long term health of the country.

Read the Bruce Fein Op-Ed at Slate

Watch Bruce Fein discuss impeachment on Bill Moyers Journal

What's Wrong With This Picture

Maureen Dowd has an interesting Op-Ed today about how many of her Republican family members are finally disgusted with the Bush administration and some are even ready to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate (as long as it's not Hillary). Here's a part of the column about Dowd's sister:

“W.’s loyalty to Cheney has hurt his presidency,” she says sadly. “When Cheney picked himself as vice president, W. should have said, ‘Bug off.’ He could have made his own banquet instead of choosing leftovers. If only he had dialed his father or listened to Powell instead of Cheney and Rumsfeld on Iraq. Not only has W. brought himself down, he’s brought down John McCain, who I wanted to support but can’t because of the war.

”I grew up in the shadow of Walter Reed and was used to seeing servicemen without limbs. But recently after watching a special on soldiers coming home from Iraq with brain injuries, I picked up a picture of my four nephews and I know how I would feel if they had fought in Iraq and came home without limbs or in body bags.

“We are spending billions on this war, and yet veterans and their children are practically getting nothing. I’m no longer a Republican. I’m an American, and I will cast my vote for the person I believe will start the process to get out of Iraq — unless, of course, it’s Hillary.”

Well, better late than never, right? Except, here's the catch which comes by way of the last sentence in Dowd's piece: “My sister still has her picture of W. up. But Cheney is face down in the laundry room.”

WTF people! Wake the F up. Hello disconnect. This just boggles the mind but it is also typical of diehard Republicans. Many will admit major screw ups, incompetence, criminality, the death of innocents and that our country is far worse off today than the day Bush took office. But, at the same time, they keep Bush's picture up on the wall and call you crazy if you even whisper the word impeachment.

Crazy is the right word but it's used in the wrong context. Crazy indeed.

Go to Dowd's Op-Ed in the NY Times

In The Event Of A Terrorist Attack...

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive that was signed on May 9, 2007 is a scary document and we don't know the half of it because

(23) Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into and made a part of this directive.

we really don't know the half of it. The part we do know basically places “all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish[es] the checks and balances in the Constitution” in the event of a “catastrophic emergency” like a

or a

This has led many on the internet (and here, here and here) to fear the worst which is understandable considering that our

very funny, but I meant

thinks he is a

With this back drop, Congressman Peter Defazio (D-Oregon) who serves on the Homeland Security Committee and has clearance to see secret documents figured he'd take a looksie at the classified parts of the Directive. Only he was amazingly denied access to the confidential parts of the Directive by the Bush administration. DeFazio was none too pleased stating:

“I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack...

We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America. I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee.”

Legal scholar Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute concurs, stating that he could not “think of one good reason” to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.

Well, since there appears to be little we individual citizens can do to learn the government's plan in the event of a catastrophe, it would be prudent for all of us to have our own plans. Should Bush/Cheney declare Martial Law and start locking up Americans by the bunches, what will you do? Can you make a run for the border? Do you have a passport and is it current? How 'bout a Republican Party card with your name on it (I'm not kidding)? Cash on hand?

Maybe peoples worries about the Directive do not prove out. Maybe nothing happens and Bush turns over the reigns of the country to the next elected president. Maybe. And maybe people are right to worry.

Read more about Congressman DeFazio in The Oregonian