“One hour.”

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

(dying a horrible death on Daily Kos)

NOTE: After reading yesterday’s C&J, I decided to embargo this until today. Obviously, I originally intended to post this at 11 ET yesterday morning…but I couldn’t make myself do it. I just COULDN’T be a buzzkill on that Day of Days.

One hour from now, Barack Hussein (and f you if you don’t like it) Obama will drop the “elect” from his title, and become the 44th President of the United States.

We’ve worked like hell to get to this point, kids. We’ve tangled with Republicans in general as well as “birthers”, PUMAs, racists, Paultards, Fox News, Larry Johnson, (oh wait. I already said PUMAs. But he’s special. He’s a FloBee PUMA.) and on and on and on.

But more importantly, and more to the point, to reach the point at which we arrive in One. Fricking. HOUR……we’ve gone through eight years of hell.

And THAT, my friends, is the point of this dairy.

And I’m here to remind you

Of the mess you left when you went away

It’s not fair to deny me

Of the cross I bear that you gave to me

You, you, you oughta know

Sub folda.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today. Barack Obama

What do you suppose that work entails? We all have priorities we’d like to see atop the pile. Health care reform, a working fix to a national economy basically laid waste at the hands of Republican mismanagement, an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a resolution to the situation in Gaza, euqual pay for equal work, equal marriage for equal people, and on and on and on and on….

But none of this – NONE OF THIS – means as much if it is not accompanied by that which I see as being critical to restoring the nation to what she once was, a nation of laws and not of men, one that EMBODIES the ideals she is said to stand for rather than simply PREACHING them:

ACCOUNTABILITY.

All of us wish to go forward. But going forward, at this point, means rebuilding that which has been damaged, and making clean again that which has been profaned.

And much, my friends, has been profaned.

George W. Bush and his cast of neocons have succeeded in prostituting and profaning everything – EVERYTHING –  that should be sacrosanct and separate from politics.

Patriotism, religion, our righteous desire to be secure in our homeland, our will to defend our nation….all have been politicized and soiled by the machinations and the filthy hands of George W. Bush. Richard Bruce Cheney, Karl Christian (oh! t3h IRONY!) Rove, Perle, Wolfowitz, and the entire cadre of neocons whose signatures can be found affixed to the infamous letter to President Clinton called, “Project for a New American Century.”

Whores, liars, and murderers, the lot of them.

It is all well and good to be euphoric at the end of the criminal Bush regime. It is understandable to be elated at the long-awaited end to their calumny and their crimes.

I respectfully submit, however, that we have not reached the end until investigations are completed and those responsible for crimes against the law, the Constitution, humanity, and simple decency are held to account.

They must pay.

If we are to once again be a nation of laws and not men, they MUST PAY.

Wiretapping our communications without warrants. An American citizen, apprehended on US soil, a civilian, held in a military facility for years without charges, trial, or access to counsel. The politicization of the Department of Justice. The outing of a CIA operative as political revenge against her husband, and the subsequent destruction of her network, with its human cost that we will never know. The yellowcake lie. In fact, the whole damn Iraq war lie. A once great city left to fend for itself in the wake of unprecedented natural disaster, still festering like an open wound, its poorest residents left to die on the roofs along its flooded streets, or in some cases, shot down in those same streets like dogs by their fellow men, based mostly on the color of their skin.

Torture.

Torture.

Torture, torture, and again, torture.

And in a LARGER sense: torture.

The torture these rotten bastards have inflicted on ALL of us for the last eight years, as everything we’ve come to believe made this nation great was shit on, swept aside, profaned, twisted and perverted, or washed away in flood waters.

The attempts to whitewash the record, predictably, are already in full force, from the top down, and the bottom up.

Here’s a bottom feeder.

This is an excerpt from a piece that originally appeared in my hometown newspaper end of last month, written, naturally, by a GOP hack: a past chairwoman of our local Republican party.

The title,in all its emetic glory, is:

“A Panegyric To The President.”

Here, then, is a small excerpt:

History should judge President George W. Bush as one of America’s great Presidents. His record of accomplishment in foreign policy, his grace in the face of unrivaled malevolence, his courage in the face of dreadful pressure, and his vision of a world made free are the stuff of greatness.

Ri-iiiiight.

Are you willing to permit this? Are you willing to permit that this be what the pages of our history speak of the last eight years, and the excreable excuse for a human being who led us through it, him and his henchmen?

I, for one, am not.

I object.

I FORBID it.

Hat tip to David Swanson this morning…

Obama Supporters in DC Want Bush Arrested

By David Swanson, January 19, 2009 at 07:33:58

Sunday evening I spoke on a panel in Washington, D.C., about war crimes, and in walked a group of spirited activists led by Laurie Arbeiter wearing “Arrest Bush” sweatshirts and carrying “Arrest Bush” signs and they were absolutely dumbfounded by what they had just experienced. They’d spent the day at the train station in D.C. and on the streets of D.C. as excited Obama celebrators poured in by the tens of thousands, andthey’d been unable to walk a dozen steps without people stopping them to have their photo taken with an “Arrest Bush” sign.

It’s worth remembering that Bush is approved by 22 percent of Americans and a smaller percentage of non-Americans. It’s hard to get under 20 percent in any poll in this country. More people believe in UFOs than approve of Bush. The media meme that prosecuting Bush would cost Obama political capital has not been proven false, but it is absolutely baseless until someone produces something to base it on.

So we had a little strategy meeting Sunday night and produced hard copies of an already running petition asking Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor. We got clipboards and pens and identified teams. As I write this Monday morning we are preparing to gather at Dupont Circle for a rally at 11 a.m. followed by a march to the White House where we will throw shoes at the outgoing war criminal. On Tuesday we have a permit for the whole sidewalk in front of the FBI Building along the parade, and we’ll let you in if you have a sign that says “Arrest Bush.” No other ticket required. At these and many other events and all over the city in the next two days, we hope to add many thousands of new people to the petition and collect their contact information to integrate them into the movement to get tough on (the biggest) crime.

If you’re not in DC, you can sign the petition yourself or print out a PDF to collect signatures in the real world at http://convictbushcheney.org

This is not a fantasy, boys and girls. The New York Times’ Scott Shane and Attorney General Mukasey agree with me that prosecution is now going to be hard to avoid. When even Nancy Pelosi has figured out where we’re going, you know the winds of change are blowing strong. That’s the dangerous thing about telling people that anything is possible: they’ll end up insisting on what they really want. And they want lots of new laws, but they very dearly want us to start enforcing the old ones too.

…………………………………………………………………………………

So, know that, after you throw your shoes today, that son of a bitch and his entire contemptible gang are going to laugh at you, and ride off into the sunset.

If you let them.

It is the responsibility of each of us to see that former President Bush does not become elder statesman Bush, but rather, defendant Bush, and then, inmate Bush.

Him, and all his rogue mob.

Today, celebrate.

Tomorrow, or sooner……

DO SOMETHING.

For the sake of us all.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Thomas Jefferson

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Barack Obama

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, “Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Ottawa” (August 21, 1858), p. 27.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Thomas Jefferson