Category Archive

I went to Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s web page today, hoping to find a copy of the articles of impeachment he has submitted to Congress. Instead, I found this, from today:

“WE WENT TO WAR FOR THE OIL COMPANIES” Kucinich Tells Congress
Demands Bush Administration and Oil Company Execs be Held Accountable

Washington, Jun 26 - US Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, in a speech to the House of Representatives today, tied the secret meetings of the Cheney Energy Task Force to the recent award of non-competitive oil contracts in Iraq and said that both the Bush Administration and the oil company executives who participated in those meetings in 2001 should be held criminally liable for an illegal war and extortion of Iraq’s oil.

“In March of 2001, when the Bush Administration began to have secret meetings with oil company executives from Exxon, Shell and BP, spreading maps of Iraq oil fields before them, the price of oil was $23.96 per barrel. Then there were 63 companies in 30 countries, other than the US, competing for oil contracts with Iraq.

“Today the price of oil is $135.59 per barrel, the US Army is occupying Iraq and the first Iraq oil contracts will go, without competitive bidding to, surprise, (among a very few others) Exxon, Shell and BP.

“Iraq has between 200 – 300 billion barrels of oil with a market value in the tens of trillions of dollars.  And our government is trying to force Iraq not only to privatize its oil, but to accept a long-term US military presence to guard the oil and protect the profits of the oil companies while Americans pay between $4 and $5 a gallon for gas, while our troops continue dying.

“We attacked a nation that did not attack us.  Over 4000 of our troops are dead.  Over 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis have perished. The war will cost US taxpayers between $2 - $3 trillion dollars. Our nation’s soul is stained because we went to war for the oil companies and their profits.  There must be accountability not only with this Administration for its secret meetings and its open illegal warfare but also for the oil company executives who were willing participants in a criminal enterprise of illegal war, the deaths of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis and the extortion of the national resources of Iraq.

“We have found the weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.  It is oil.  As long as the oil companies control our government Americans will continue to pay and pay, with our lives, our fortunes our sacred honor,” he concluded.

I have nothing to add right now, except (a) if you haven’t already done so, you should check out Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine, which has just come out in paperback, and (b) I really, really think it’s time Bush and Cheney were impeached.

-jane doe

Okay, going to try to stomach the alleged president long enough to watch the SOTU this evening. As usual, here are my thoughts in more or less chronological order:

• Okay, first, I’m watching the coverage on MSNBC, of course, even though that means listening to Chris Matthews. Because, hey, it also means listening to Keith Olbermann, who, as I have noted before, is a god.
• WTF? Did the Republicans import busloads of frat boys to cheer for the shrub?
• We believe…blah blah blah.
• “Trust people with their own money” = “Let’s privatize Social Security”
• He’s tackling the economy first, and talking up his stimulus package.
• “This Congress MUST pass it as soon as possible.” Yeah, like you’re in a position to demand anything.
• Ooh, shot of the chamber there. Sure is easy to see which side of the room the Republicans are sitting on. One side just gave him a standing ovation (over making the tax cuts from earlier in his administration permanent), while the other side is sitting on their hands.
• $18 billion in budget cuts in the budget. He says they are from “bloated” programs. Like what? Would be really nice to know where these cuts are coming from.
• Oh my god, did you see that smirk? (at 9:16pm EST)
• “We share a common goal, making healthcare affordable and accessible for all Americans.” Yeah, which is why you vetoed SCHIP.
• Eliminating “tax penalties” for those who don’t get their insurance at work. Well, that helps some people, but many of the people who most need insurance are in the lowest tax brackets.
• Oh, jeez, now he is going on about No Child Left Behind. “And today, no one can doubt its results.” Well, newsflash: its results are terrible in urban schools. Jeez, and he wants to strengthen NCLB?
• $300 million “Pell Grants for Kids” to allow inner city kids to attend parochial (sorry, “faith-based”) schools? Rather than fixing the public schools? Yeah, that makes sense.
• “Purveyors of false populism” — which would mean, what, people in developing nations who are trying to make things better for the little guys?
• Chertoff is one scary looking dude. Just a thought.
• NEW-CLEE-ARR. Not nucular. Moron. (I refuse to believe he can’t get that right, and that no one on his staff has tried to correct him by now. He just continues to pronounce it incorrectly to be obnoxious.)
• Wow, lots of “empowering” in this speech.
• Ooh, “ethical medical research”
• Legislation that “bans unethical practice such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life.”
• Whining about judges not being approved fast enough. Of course, we won’t mention how the Republican Congress did that to Clinton (to a much higher degree than the Dems are doing to Bush).
• Mentions “armies of compassion” which sounds positively ominous, even if he is talking about volunteerism.
• Ooh, foreign policy stuff, now. “Advancing liberty” — well, I suppose that’s one creative euphemism for our little war of aggression in Iraq (and the one certain administration officials want to start in Iran). Hey, we’re not invading, we’re advancing liberty!
• Wow, that’s some gross oversimplification of terrorism he is perpetrating there.
• Hey, we’re so successful in Afghanistan that we have to send more troops! Hooray for us!
• Wow, I am suddenly reminded of that classic book, How to Lie with Statistics. He is qualifying the hell out of his assertions that violence is down in Iraq — e.g., “high profile terrorist attacks” are down. But WTF is a “high profile” attack, as opposed to a low profile one? Are fewer people actually dying?
• And again and again, only half the chamber — the Republican half — is applauding.

Sorry, folks, that’s all I can stomach. I just can’t sit through the last fifteen minutes of the speech. The hypocrisy and the doublespeak is just making me gag.

- jane doe

• Oops, had to add something, because he is saber rattling on Iran again. “We will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf.” Okay, but what does that actually mean?
• Plus, he’s going on about terror again. Ah, here it is. He’s finally getting around to FISA now. We must pass FISA or we’re all going to die.
• And BTW, how is stopping terrorists on par with providing immunity for the telcos for laws that they have clearly broken with respect to American citizens? Can someone please explain that for me?
• Wait, I missed that — what is he saying about a “new war”??? I’m sorry Mr. President, but you can’t start any new wars until you finish the ones you’ve already got going.

Seriously, how many debates have the political parties had at this point?

At least they’re getting down to a semi-manageable number of participants at this point. Tonight we have Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Giuliani, and Ron Paul. The real nutjobs have mostly dropped out of the race, with one or perhaps two exceptions. Which is kind of a shame, because the nutjobs keep the debate entertaining, but whatever.

Anyway, I’m going to watch this for as long as I can stomach. Past experience suggests this will be somewhere around seven and a half minutes. Here in more or less chronological order are my thoughts as I watch this fiasco:

• Ooh, Brian Williams’ tie is certainly purple.
• Romney makes me very nervous, but I can’t pinpoint what it is that makes me think that. Maybe it’s just residual nausea induced by big business types in general.
• On the economy questions McCain only seems to want to talk about the “bridge to nowhere” and making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
• Giuliani looks like he spent a little too much time at Mystic Tan. McCain, on the other hand, looks like he needs to schedule a visit (at least on my TV screen).
• Giuliani is talking about major reductions in spending on the “civilian” side. Translation: social programs will be cut, but the military will still get a blank check.
• McCain also looks like he has too much concealer below his eyes.
• Dammit, Huckabee is actually making sense on the economic issues. He points out that money for the stimulus package is probably going to be borrowed from China, and to the extent that the package puts money back into consumers’ pockets will be spent on products that were made in China. So whose economy is being stimulated by it? (I say dammit about Huckabee, by the way, because he actually kind of scares me on some of the religious issues.)
• Romney is talking about his experience in business, again. Because we’ve done so well with the current president, who ran on a campaign of bringing business expertise to the White House.
• McCain, here’s a clue: the Republicans didn’t lose in 2006 because of a few pork projects. You lost because of Iraq and other Bush administration misdeeds. (It would be nice if a few Democratic politicians remembered that as well.)
• Ron Paul is speaking the Libertarian party line. As usual. (And out come the Ron Paul supporters to leave me nasty comments about how he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Forget it, guys, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, you aren’t going to change my mind about the man.)
• Giuliani is asked about the big bankers going abroad to get cash to stay afloat, so naturally, he turns the discussion to 9/11.
• Russert just asked a killer question on the economy — pointing out where we were in 2000 as opposed to where we are now, then asking the candidates why the voters should trust the Republicans on economic matters going forward?
• McCain just mentioned the famous “bridge to nowhere” for the second time so far in this debate.
• Romney again touts his expertise in the private sector. Of course, he obviously did pretty well there, since he can apparently afford to run for president largely out of petty cash.
• Romney just claimed that Republicans “ARE the party of fiscal responsibility” (or words to that effect). He also mentions the bridge to nowhere.

Sorry, folks, that’s as much as I can handle for now - though I’ve set a personal record by sitting through nearly 30 minutes of Republican posing. I can’t take anymore, though — McCain is going on about how we are succeeding in Iraq. If I want my television to be in working order tomorrow, I’m going to have to turn it off right now, before I’m forced to throw something through the screen.

Of course, it goes without saying that nothing I saw tonight changes my belief that Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached.

- jane doe