Edwards makes no attempt to be more Republican than the Republicans like Clinton. He doesn’t seek to get along like Obama.
Edwards is not appealing to the mythical middle class of the DLC. He is talking to the people. People don’t count for much these days.
Edwards is not the plutocratic candidate with money to burn. He doesn’t have the glamor and the backing of the two that occupy the front of the stage. Most polls don’t even bother to record the horrendous drubbing Edwards would deal the Republicans.
Thought someone here might like to know before Edwards is banished forever from the scene.
ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey said dozens of its warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel targets as deep as 60 miles inside northern Iraq for three hours Sunday in the largest aerial attack in years against the outlawed separatist group. An Iraqi official said the planes attacked several villages, killing one woman.
In the nighttime offensive, the fighter jets hit rebel positions close to the border with Turkey and in the Qandil mountains, which straddle the Iraq-Iran border, the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its Web site. It said the operation was directed against the rebels and not against the local population.
As many as 50 fighter jets were involved in the airstrikes, private NTV television and other media reported. Turkey has recently attacked the area with ground-based artillery and helicopters and there have been some unconfirmed reports of airstrikes by warplanes.
It is the heart of any call for investigations or impeachment. It is intended to bring the ire of every person reading to the forefront and spur them to action. It is intended to refresh the memory and to sharpen the focus. It is intended to never let the crimes die…or the criminals rest…
It is The List.
Impeachment/Investigation essays are emotional to some people, they react to the meme or the ‘current political reality’ and not to the larger reality of what has occurred over the last seven years. The List is a reminder to FUCK the current political reality and push for justice and principle.
I just heard from a colleague who spoke with a senior staffer at Wexler’s office. In her words here is the explanation:
Okay, just got a call from a senior staffer at Congressman Wexler’s office. They, indeed, were aware of the problems with the counter yesterday. I am pretty much a moron when it comes to website technical issues, so the best way I can explain it is that they were having a huge spike in traffic and having issues with the server. They actually had to switch servers as a result – twice – and in the process had to reset the counter which caused the error in the numbers. They way he described it and the timing and the actual numbers he provided matched exactly what we were witnessing – the sudden jump to over 100,000 and then the drop to 83,000. Later, there was another jump and subsequent drop when they had to repeat the process.
But, he is confident that it is all accurate now and running smoothly again. I know everyone is excited (and concerned) and while I think it’s good to keep an eye on things, the constant refreshing and checking most likely is putting strain on the system. They are using a reliable professional database and have multiple backups for the data. He explained as well that he personally scanned the list of names/email addresses and didn’t note any glaring discrepancies or duplicates and, again, is confident that the number currently displayed is accurate.
Bottom line, Congressman Wexler is committed to this and no there is no conspiracy or sabotage.
We spoke as well regarding Rep. Wexler’s interest in impeachment and he will be addressing the issue and providing more information on his plans this Thursday so stay tuned. They understand the challenge we are facing with the “media” and urged us to keep doing what we’re doing. He assured me that as far as the congressman is concerned, this is not going to fade away next week. So, keep putting it out there, encourage others to sign up.
Last count of the “night.” Something strange is going on with the site because the count was higher at 7:27p – 90,235 – than it is now. Not sure if the site is under attack. Be curious to see what Wexler’s office has to say in the morning.
At 5:27p the count was 88,953. Two hours later it was 90,325. That’s 11.43 signers per minute.
I don’t have time to calculate, but it looks like the votes are increasing by over 20 a minute. The site is also loading faster again. I called Wexler’s office and they said they had done server upgrades over the weekend. Maybe they did more today. At this rate it will be 100,000 easily by morning, maybe sooner.
Wow! I told somone last night around 1:30a that I expected it to hit 70,000 by mid-day today. This happened overnight!! Wexler must be overjoyed. I heard last night that the response to him personally for doing this has been overwhelming. He is being treated like a rockstar!
Update: I saw Dave Lindorff and John Nichols on a panel this afternoon in NYC at a presentation of The Culture Project’s “The Question of Impeachment.” Dave was awesome, but Nichols stole the show when he said that there will soon be 6 Dems calling for impeachment hearings! So all of the forwarding and cajoling we are all doing with this petition will have an impact. Our goal is to convince the entire Judiciary Committee this is imperative. Liz Holtzman emphasized that for impeachment to work it must be bipartisan so please do not hold back from contacting your Rep even if s/he is Republican.
The message that I got today was that IMPEACHMENT CAN HAPPEN, but it will take a lot of work and it doesn’t happen overnight. Holtzman who has been through it before remembered that things really started to happen February – July. So let’s gear up and get ready to make it happen in February!
They will have a podcast of this afternoon’s performance up sometime tomorrow. I strongly recommend it – this panel was amazing – Dave Lindorff, Liz Holtzman, Scott Horton, Marjorie Cohn, and John Nichols.
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They will have a podcast of this afternoon’s performance up sometime tomorrow. I strongly recommend it – this panel was amazing – Dave Lindorff, Liz Holtzman, Scott Horton, Marjorie Cohn, and John Nichols.This is a drive by diary, but I hope I will be forgiven because I am busy organizing an impeachment event in NYC for Wednesday (more on that later). I am hoping everyone here has signed Rep. Wexler’s petition and if you haven’t please go to Wexler’s Web Page and read his powerful oped and watch his video and SIGN. We hit 50,000 just before midnight last night – Wexler’s goal was 50,000 – let’s multiply that tenfold and show his colleagues what the American people want. Wexler needs our help to help us. I have seen skepticism and cynicism that he is doing this as a campaign ploy. I can’t tell you how I know, but I can verify that he is 100% committed to this and has been working on it since November 7th, the day after Dennis Kucinich introduced his motion of privilege. Please do whatever you can do to gather signatures on this significant petition. This is what will get us impeachment hearings.
Also, if you can please go orange for a moment and recommend Dave Lindorff’s new diary, we should be able to build this further if it remains on the recommended list for the afternoon. Dave is participating in a performance of “A Question of Impeachment” at The Culture Project today and I doubt he will be able to babysit the diary. The Culture Project is an amazing series that has been happening in SoHo. Check out the podcasts of the panel discussions – some really great stuff by incredibly knowledgable people.
I am wholly pessimistic about American society. I believe The Wire is a show about the end of the American Empire. We are going to live that event. How we end up and survive, and on what terms, is going to be the open question.
David Simon, creator of “The Wire”
This week I spent every evening watching the dvd’s of the fourth season of HBO’s “The Wire.” I know that Armando plans to write about the fifth season that starts January 6th, so I thought I’d give some background about how the creator has envisioned the show and its purpose since it seems to echo so many of the themes that we talk about here.
The quote above is from a speech David Simon made over a year ago at Loyola University. If you’ve got half an hour, I’d highly recommend watching the three segments of this on youtube here, here, and here. I’ll summarize some of his main points. But of course, I can’t do the whole thing justice in a few words.
Simon explains the reasons for the end of the American Empire this way:
I am not reposting this now because I think it is great. I’m reposting this now, because I wrote it when we still had habeas corpus and to support Wexler’s Call for Cheney’s Impeachment.
(Condemn- to state that something or somebody is in some way wrong or unacceptable)
What would our forefathers say about the state of the nation today?
I imagine if they were alive now, they would say something similar to what I have written after they read this, at least.
“In the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. Nearly 4 in 10 of the rejected cases were scrapped because prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime.”
…the persistent and pervasive belief in the American dream is what undercuts both serious talk about class and it acts as a safety valve to protect our current system against peaceful but radical change.
It’s called a dream because… you have to be asleep to believe it:
UCC closed with
Until ordinary Americans can be pried away from the American dream and encouraged to formulate a new one, they will always view progressives with fear and distrust and our ability to build coalitions will be hindered. Ordinary Americans aren’t stupid or unaware. They know something is wrong. They suspect long held deals have been trashed, but articulating an alternative requires them to reject long held notions.
Anyone who’s read most of my comments knows that they all boil down to one thing: trying to remind as many people as possible that they are not powerless, that each of us, working together have the power to turn everything around, or from the politicians in Washington’s view – upside down.
You’ll know that I think, from the kind of comments that Democratic Party apologists post, such as this one for example, that one of the first steps we need to take en mass, is to make it as subtle as a ball peen hammer or a club between their eyes that we are no longer listening to them… that it is them that need to listen to us, or lose their power and position.
The election system is not yet broken and corrupted so badly that it cannot be used as that club…
They need to be terrorized into doing their jobs, or marginalized out of political existence if they will not.
There is still almost a year before the 2008 elections. And I know I repeat myself often, but I believe that the Congressional leadership and senators and representatives who are up for reelection next year, and Democratic presidential candidates, need to be placed in stark cold sweating terror of losing their congressional majority, and of not winning the White House, before they will feel motivated to make any substantial and fundamental changes at all…
As long as they remain confident that they will have the votes they need without doing what they were hired to do, they will continue to ignore the peasants, the, in their minds, “stupid ignorant fucks who don’t understand” real politics. The rabble who just are too dumb to get that “If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.”
They – democratic candidates – need to be told, and they need to be told NOW, they need to have it made as clear and forcefully as you can make it NOW, that they will have your support, that they will have your volunteer work, that they will have your money, you contributions, that they will have your vote next year.
But not just by promising to do something. ONLY by doing something.
Do what? Each candidate needs to be told that they must pressure the democratic leadership in Congress to do the things you want them to do, and they will have your vote WHEN those things have been done, and not before.
A radical concept? Vote for RESULTS. Not for PROMISES.
I’m talking to you here – not just the collective you of all readers – but YOU – the single person reading this right now… and I have two questions for YOU:
What is there to be afraid of?
Can things get any worse if you stand up for yourself when they call or knock on your door?
Don’t HOPE they’ll do what you want. TELL them what to do. And MAKE them do it.
(to kossacks and dharmaniacs – I’d like your help with this)
To whom it may concern:
You recently asked me for money. You do that a lot. This time, I gave you some. Very little. Some of my friends on blogs like dailyKos and docudharma will be wondering why I gave you anything at all. You, on the other hand, may be wondering why I gave so little.
The reason I gave so little is the same reason I might leave a tiny tip in a restaurant with really horrible service: I intend it as an insult. Why?
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.
The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted.
A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination – which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment – is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.
