Congress' Fourth of July break ended on Monday, and they came back to Washington firing off some fireworks of their own. You have those Republican senators breaking ranks over the war in Iraq (members on both sides have one eye on that big election coming up next year). Democrats in the senate are fighting with President Bush over the issue of executive privilege, and whether or not congress can demand testimony about the firings of U.S. Attorneys. Iraq, immigration, congressional investigations... it could all make for an interesting presidential election in 2008. And at this point, John McCain is having trouble keeping up in the polls and in the bank account. There's so much going on, we super-sized our usual political junkie segment today. Ken Rudin stops by for the main part of the show today. And Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) tells us what he's seeing in the senate. Questions or comments for the junkie? Let us know...
Blog of the Nation
We need to stop calling Iraq's military action a "war". It is an "occupation".
Speaking of the value of listening to the generals, does anyone else think President Bush is doing anything else but shifting responsibility to the generals when he calls for congress to wait for Gen. Petraeus' promised September report? Since when is it good management to allow an executive to evaluate his own plan? This is a conflict of interest. His superiors (BUsh) should be evaluating his effectiveness.
When is it possible for the people of the U.S. to stand up and unite to simply throw Bush and Cheney out of office? The polls are in and Bush should be out. We should do it for the basic moral principles but in addition would be improving our international stature as well, as most other nations agree, basically the whole world agrees we should declare withdraw of troops in the war and withdrawing Bush and Cheney as well...or could Bush veto his own impeachment...
The supporters of this fiasco continue to babble on with the same lies, the same self deception, the same nonsense. All McCain can do is rattle on about Vietnam showing that he learned absolutely nothing from that previous fiasco. They do not want to admit that the choice in Iraq is between bad and worse. We are currently making more enemies than we can kill, spending more money than we can afford and losing too many good people in a cause that, like Vietnam, is misbegotten and misguided. The people in Iraq do not want us there, we should leave.
When is a coup/revolution legitimate? Perhaps when a man is ordering to kill innocent Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands and with the hands of innocent 20-something Americans, also dying by the thousands.
When can we get off our lazy and hopeless duffs and actually start uniting to change our nation? Can we all take some time off to overthrow a corrupt, unjust, and immoral administration? Let's all go to the White House in alt-fuel/green vehicles and make 2 strong statements in one.
Stop using the word 'war'. Start using the term 'occupation'. When you look at the occupation that way, then the question becomes, "How long will we occupy Iraq?" And after you ask it that way, you might ask the same question about Germany and Japan. The answer, if we look to history, is 'forever'. Even the Phillipines, which once successfully forced the US Navy to leave, has been forced to allow our military back on to its lands. The answer is obvious if you look at our history: once our military is in, it's there forever. Do most citizens know that the US 'Embassy' in Iraq is the largest embassy on the planet, a nd will be a city-within-a-city in Baghdad?
We are at 'war' with al-Qa'ida.
The question is, who are "we"? It's not clear to me that US military involvement in Iraq is truly in the interests of all Americans.
The occupation of Iraq is about the oil. The most likely beneficiaries of securing that oil are the multinational corporations that will extract, refine, and sell that oil...to the highest bidder.
I doubt that the interests of multinational corporations are alligned with those of the citizens of any country.
Listening to the "testimony" of another Bushie today answers the question: what would a justice department led by a group of evangelical rightwing "christians", a defense department led by a group of armchair Neo-Con "generals", and a executive branch that is full of clueless political operatives drawn from various "think tanks" and campaign staffs would look like? Not only are they throughly incompetant and venal but corrupt to a degree almost unheard of in American politics. And that is saying something.
Originality of words with catchy cliches only serve to hide your inability to be honestly intimate with trendy sophistication that only hides your inability to be truely creative.
I am sick of seeing the lack of real vision and breaking with the impersonal karma of mainstream media and it's preoccupation with the petty and trivial rehashing of useless, meaningless, trash of society that preoccupies us while we are being flushed down the toilet of history.
We have the worst President in History. Our civilization is about to be thrown into an upheaval unprecedented in History and the media is preoccupied with personalities instead of principles and a vision to help us survive the meatgrinder awaiting us all. Wake up and smell the pig manure!
I don't see anything whatsoever about so-called "executive privilege" in my copy of the Constitution.
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