|
CAUTION: Another novella that started out as a couple hundred words. Read at your own risk.
... and most of those who do know don't give a rat's ass one way or the other. Which is exactly how congress feels about their constituents on all days but one, which comes around every two years or six.
Look, if they really wanted to bring these bastards down, they would have begun impeachment hearings by February of last year.
And if they were serious about compelling testimony from these criminals, they would have issued citations for INHERENT contempt, sent the Sergeant at Arms and a posse of US Marshals to round them, arrest and cuff them on the spot, transport them to the Capitol building, lock them in the famous cell(s?) in the basement and bring them up one by one to see if they really want to act like made men under the code of Omerta and rot in jail just to protect the Slimebag in Chief and his puppet master. Or maybe the arrogant pricks might want to start talking for a change.
If congress were serious about turning investigations into formal charges, that's a good place to start. But they're obviously not serious people, and their actions betray their intentions.
So rather than assuming that their fightin' words are at all related to what's actually going on, I think they do this posturing for a few less obvious reasons -- none of which has much to do with the implied or stated purposes.
First, they have to do something to justify their jobs, salaries and perks, not to mention their multiple reelections, and they can only vote to designate so many National Attention Deficit Disorder Weeks or name so many post office buildings after dead white guys nobody's ever heard of. Sooner or later, they have to appear to be involved in the process of governance.
Second, if they intend to continue running as progressive democrats, as Waxman and Conyers seem to be, they need to show their credentials off for their campaign "donors" once in a while. These investigations give them that opportunity without the need to produce any real results. And the dollars roll in and take care of buying enough votes for reelection, so as long as the bucks keep flowing, it's almost automatic that they'll keep their seats and continue to trumpet their pride as tireless justice seekers and staunch opponents of the very same people they let off the hook just the other day.
Third, almost all politicians come standard with decent sized egos and enjoy throwing their weight around in public displays of power and influence. Even though observers would say they're getting nowhere with these hearings, they get to hang out in a paneled committee room, they get all that pomp and ceremony and sense of history, they occupy positions of obvious authority sitting at one of those raised inquisition platforms -- water carafes and microphones and a squad of assistants at their beck and call -- and they get to preach and bloviate and practice their campaign stump speeches for the C-Span camera(s).
All sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Mark Twain used to say, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Same shit, different century.
I think it's become obvious over the past 14 months that the house and senate dem leadership are members in good standing of the same club of money and privilege as are the targets of these alleged investigations. It's just not polite or particularly sensible to go after the same people you'll be dining and drinking and sailing and vacationing and traveling with in other circumstances.
There are several notable exceptions to the above insults: a few members really seem to want to nail these swine and aren't constrained by cozy relationships with the perps. In the House, there's Kucinich, Wexler, most of the SF Bay Area reps (with the shameful exception of the congresswoman from San Francisco) and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, to name just about all of them. There's Bernie Sanders in the Senate; Feingold, Kennedy and a few others at various times on various issues.
As to the rest, there's blue dogs and closet wingnuts and timid freshmen and conflicting agendas and corporate bribes that keep true progressives to a small minority while preventing democrats from presenting a united front. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with avoiding lockstep and groupthink. But it would be nice if every now and then they could rally around some big issue and do the right thing at long last.
The FISA bill and their refusal to grant immunity to BushCo and their co-opted telecoms was a pretty good first step. A year late for spinal implants, but at least they got it right for once. Reid will, of course, make sure immunity is back in the combined Senate/House version, but he's a known tool and about as useless in the struggle to restore democracy as sending an F-16 to shoot down mosquitoes.
So using the FISA vote as a springboard, what comes next? Can they turn their sorry record of enabling BushCo around and finally get after the bastards -- particularly now that an attack on Iran seems likely. What would make them give enough of a damn to step in and stop these madmen before they manage to kick off WW III? These lunatics have the nuclear launch codes, after all.
How can they turn around that dismal mid-teens approval rating they so justly deserve for constantly getting intimidated or snookered by the stupidest, most arrogant, most contemptible swamp rat ever to occupy the white house? Maybe even score some points for the upcoming elections? I have an idea; maybe they could start taking those investigations and endless hearings
Maybe they could publicly, loudly and unrelentingly question the sanity of continuing to fund the pentagon at unprecedented levels while authorizing even more money for the war machines through supplemental spending authorizations to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations. Maybe they could point out that a war machine designed to contain the USSR -- which hasn't existed in almost 20 years -- is maybe not the most efficient use of money to combat international terrorism (assuming the dems want to keep playing along with the manufactured terrorist threat that's been so effective in getting Americans to abandon their rights because the Bushies tell them it's good for them).
And they can't keep putting up with this "they don't support the troops" bullshit the GOP and Fux Noose dishes out. Keeping troops over there, getting them killed or maimed or driven completely insane isn't supporting the troops. They need to create a new mantra: supporting the troops means removing them from harms way immediately, and anything else is a lack of support bordering on treason no matter how many god damned little made-in-China flag pins they've got stuck on their lapels.
If the dems can't make an entire month's worth of talking points out of that, they're even more inept at PR than I thought.
What they really need to do is link the Bushies and their spectacularly failed policies with McCain, who insists on running as Bush III and should suffer the consequences. McCain tied to wars of imperialism gone bad, which the public may eventually realize aren't just excuses to stick little magnetized flag ribbons next to the gas filler door of that 2008 GlutcoWerks SuperSecs V-16 AutoErotix All-Terrain Aggressivo 4-MPG Combo SUV/Armored Troop Carrier with optional mini-cannon or machine gun turret.
Then they can move on to McCain's role in helping rob the treasury such that there's now a total lack of federal money for anything at all in the US, no matter how urgent, a deteriorating economic picture that's really starting to get people's attention, the almost complete absence of jobs that pay well and include benefits, the predatory policies of lending institutions along with that hideous bankruptcy bill that the Bushies gleefully inflicted on the American people, Bush's lust for privatizing SS and what that would have done to people's retirements now that Wall Street has done its usual periodic implosion. So many malicious attempts to transfer wealth from bottom to top they're almost uncountable.
Honestly, unless the GOP manages to steal another one, I think it would take an epic screw-up by dems to lose this presidential election -- not that they're not trying very hard to blow it. The marvelous Hillary can't shut up about what an incompetent lout Obama is and how McCain's experience would make him a better president than Obama. Then there's that hit piece email her Iowa campaign manager sent telling the entire world that Obama's a Muslim, took his oath of office on a copy of the Koran and (hint, hint) he's probably a closet terrorist who hates America. A real class act. You'd think she might consider going after McCain rather than another Democrat, but that's one of the things that makes Hillary so extremely unlikable, I guess.
Nor should Dems have much trouble increasing their numbers in both houses, given that something like 22 or 23 GOP incumbents have decided to take early retirement and the rest are about as popular as stage four colon cancer.
If they'd just stop speaking in this candy ass weasel word vocabulary they've adopted in their mania to be inoffensive to all and start speaking the language people want to hear -- with actual heart and a lot of goddamned anger at the bastards who've spent the past seven-plus years stealing everything in this country that's not bolted down.
The whole damned country seems furious about something, and much of that rage is currently directed at the Bushie slimebuckets. Dems have an opportunity to channel that rage, place the blame precisely where it belongs, remind voters that McCain's at least as crazy as the Bushies and stop sucking up to this lying war monger. If they can just find the heart to go after BushCo with all guns blazing, they'll win this thing and get congress too.
All this assumes a couple of prerequisites: BushCo allows elections to take place and they're not stolen again.
I think the odds are at least 50/50 on canceling elections using some rational-sounding pretext, like maybe economic breakdown and growing unrest among the plebes, to invoke the continuity of government script under NSPD 51 and shut the Constitution down.
And if that doesn't happen, I think it'll be because they're absolutely sure that the systems are in place to steal another one. Of course, I may also be a paranoid loon with no grip on reality. However, there are certain indicators...
That's today novel/essay/diatribe and, gosh golly Mable, what's fer dinner?
wp
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
