Puppet Dance

During the 2000 Presidential campaign, George W. Bush pledged to "restore dignity to the White House", a not-so veiled reference to Bill Clinton's impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice charges. Ha. Ha.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich today introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors. Kucinich has been working on this for years and it's a pretty good case...wiretapping,torture, kidnapping, perjury, obstruction, starting a war under false pretenses...it apparently took five hours for the House clerk to read it. The resolution got so much domestic attention that I was forced to link to the Belfast Telegraph for an article.

There's no chance of an actual impeachment , there is neither time nor political will. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, following the 2006 election that left the Democrats in charge of Congress, that impeachment was "off the table". I hated hearing that.

Pelosi and other Dems claimed that pursuing impeachment hearings would distract them from the truly important issues such as the war in Iraq and the troubled American economy.

Well, they sure did a great job of ending the war and fixing the economy. Can we have the impeachment now, please?
In my opinion, Bush should have been evicted from the White House in 2001 for allowing Henry Kissinger to once again darken the doorstep- and there certainly wasn't any reason to invade Iraq, ever. Remote-controlled unmanned drone airplane that would drop anthrax on Kansas? That was considered a "threat" despite the fact that Iraqi air-space at that time was the most heavily monitored airspace on Earth- half the country was a "no-fly zone"...when I tried to explain this to my fellows, they'd just say "9-11! 9-11!" and ask me why my Honda had no flags on it.

To make the case for the war they craved, the GOP sent Colin Powell to his doom at the U.N., ordering him to present a laundry list of weapons and bio-warfare facilities allegedly in Iraqi hands...the list turned out to be outdated and exaggerated, to put it mildly. It was debunked, and harshly.
Eventually, Powell took the fall for that speech but the war had already started.

General Powell, a man who once enjoyed bipartisan respect, resigned from his job as Secretary of State and was replaced by Condi Rice, who once had an oil tanker named after her. No kidding- Chevron was so happy with her ten years of service on their Board that they named a goddamn oil tanker after her. Think about that next time you fill up.

Powell, had he not been humiliated and retired in disgust after acknowledging that there were no WMD in Iraq , would have made a pretty good Presidential candidate...he had impeccable military and Cabinet-level credentials and his personal politics are moderate and thoughtful. (Pro-choice, for example).

I desperately hope that America is "ready" for a Black President. I don't know if we are ready or not, but I do know that the Republican Party is not ready for a black, pro-choice, moderate Republican nominee no matter how qualified he may be...the current GOP thinks John McCain is too centrist, fer chrissakes...if I were the paranoid type, I'd be compelled to think that the GOP set Gen.Powell up in order to head off any political aspirations he may have had.

How about that Global Warming bill? What bill?
The anti-pollution one that failed to get enough votes to pass the Senate and the inevitable Bush veto. This is another example of the kind of important issue that Pelosi and Co. decided to pursue instead of following up on the impeachment resolution. Good job on losing out to a filibuster...even as the majority party, the Democrats can't get shit done...if I didn't know better, I'd swear the two parties have more in common than at odds with each other...nah, that's just crazy talk.