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.  

Many people have made many lists, as I say it is at the heart of advocating for justice for Bushco. So instead of using time to come up with a new list for every essay, I would like to see us compile a nifty Cut N’ Paste Bushco Scandal List. The top ten(?) scandals should do it, perhaps with a short blurb…and definitely with a link to a story from a major news outlet about that scandal. And of course we want the most devastating link possible and the most damaging blurb possible.

At what amounts to the eleventh hour politically, it seems that impeachment is gaining some traction. Certainly the recent torture revelations are a pretty darn clear path to impeachment, but there are so many others! So if you are into it, pitch in!

Here is a good reminder and primer for your thoughts…Scandalist™ by rickpickett

Take your time, dig in, and let’s see what we can come up with! We can post it on the Dharmapedia for easy access and whenever you go to write about demanding FULL INVESTIGATIONS NOW!!! or IMPEACH!!! You can just C&P in to your essay with no muss and no fuss!

Bonus Fun!!! Post all your best impeach graphics and links! Let’s make this thread an Impeach resource center. I will tag it Impeach List, so we can all access it that way in the future as well as through the Dharmapedia

by angryird

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:

We are in the postindustrial age. We do not need as many of us as we once did. We don’t need us to generate capital, to secure wealth. We are in a transitive period where human beings have lost some of their value. Now, whether or not we can figure out a way to validate the humanity of the individual, I have great doubts…

As for the characters on the program, their lives are less and less necessary. They are more and more expendable. The institutions that serve them and in which they serve are indifferent to their existence.

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to this statement. Other than mirroring the reality I see in this urban area on a daily basis, it also captures the way I feel about affecting our current political situation. As I watch Bush/Cheney or Congress respond to us about issues like the war, it seems clear that we are expendable and they are totally indifferent to our existence.

Here are Simon’s thoughts about a political solution:

And, it is even out of our control in a democratic sense. If you are going to go out and vote at the next election, your vote doesn’t matter. If you thought you were living in a democracy, if you bought into that, you gotta go to the dictionary and look up the word oligarchy, and you have to really think about what it means.

Simon goes on to say…

I didn’t start out as a cynic, but at every given moment where this country has had a choice – its governments, institutions, corporations, its social framework – to exalt the value of individuals over the value of the shared price, we have chosen raw unencumbered capitalism. Capitalism has become our god. You are not looking at a marxist up here, but you are looking at somebody who doesn’t believe that capitalism can work absent a social framework that accepts that it is relatively easy to marginalize more and more people in this economy. Capitalism has to be attended to. And that has to be a conscious calculation on the part of society, if that is going to succeed. Everywhere we have created an alternate america of haves and have-nots. At some point, either more of us are going to find our conscience or we’re not.

Simon ends his speech with this:

The Wire is certainly an angry show. It’s about the idea that we are worth less. And that is an unreasonable thing to contemplate for all of us. It is unacceptable. And none of us wants to be part of a world that is going to do that to human beings. If we don’t exert on behalf of human dignity at the expense of profit and capitalism and greed, which are inevitabilities, and if we can’t modulate them in some way that is a framework for an intelligent society, we are doomed. It is going to happen sooner than we think. I don’t know what form it will take. But I know that every year America is going to be a more brutish and cynical and divided place.

emphasis mine

I think Simon is both prescient and prophetic in his analysis of our situation. He leaves us with a dilema that is at least as much personal, social and even spiritual as it is political. He does not claim to have the answers to this dilema, nor do I. But, as “The Wire” demonstrates, we are creating a jungle mentality in service of this god of capitalism. There is certainly impending doom if we can’t find a way to begin to place human dignity FOR ALL above profit, capital, and greed.

One of the things that season four of “The Wire” dealt with in several situations was the way this dilema manifested personally for various people in law enforcement and politics. Moments came when people had choices to make about whether to maintain their integrity or “go along to get along” so as not to ruin their careers. They could always rationalize playing the game as a way to maintain their position – and therefore their power to have some positive influence. But ultimately, it was their capitulation that allowed the corrupt systems to be maintained. This gave me a sense of what I need to think about and where courage may actually comes into play. Am I willing to risk my ego, my career, my security in order to challenge a corrupt system? Perhaps, when that choice presents itself, I’ll be more prepared to take a risk and make my statement on behalf of human dignity. I hope so.

(ps, I’ll get back to Blog Voices This Week sometime. I just didn’t have much time this week for surfing.)

undercovercalico yesterday – The American Dream: Time to Wake Up:

…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:

(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?  

“Why” you ask “is XXXX, who has been a lifelong Democrat, who got beat up working for McGovern, who started working in campaigns when he was 6, and who has been  a generous donor in the past, insulting us?”

I am insulting you because you are insulting me.

Indeed, you are insulting not only me, but the Democratic Party and the entire United States.

“How,” you may ask “can we get him back on our side? How can we get him to donate generously again? How can we get him to ask his friends to donate, and to write diaries extolling us?”

I’m glad you asked.

It isn’t hard.  I have a seven point plan for you.  And I’ve gone to the trouble of making all the points win-win.

1.  Impeach Bush

2.  Defund the war

3.  Repeal the Patriot Stolen Freedom act

4.  End NCLB

5.  Pass an inclusive ENDA

6.  Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Invasion

7.  Repeal all the changes Bush made to the tax code.

I hear you screaming “We don’t have the votes!”.  I don’t like to curse, so….. BALDERDASH!  Leaders lead.  They GET the votes.  Lyndon Johnson didn’t have the votes for Civil Rights…. until he got them.  

But you, evidently, are not leaders.  So, I will help.

1.  Impeach Bush.   This is easy.  Bush says criminals belong in jail.  Bush is a criminal.  QED.  Oh, although Bush and his conservatives don’t like the insanity defense, I’ll grant it, provided it’s public and provided he spends the rest of his life in a publicly funded mental institution.

Phrase to repeat: Criminals belong in jail.  

2.  Defund the war.  That’s right.  Democrats support the troops, Republicans support the war.  How is it ‘supporting the troops’ to let more of them die? How is it supporting the troops to fail to send them into battle underequipped and undertrained, and welcome them home to scam artists and inadequate care? How is it supporting the troops to send them to war with too little armor?  How is it supporting the troops to send the national guard to do work they did not sign up to do, or to hire unsupervised mercenaries?  The troops belong at home.  With a hero’s welcome and lifetime support.  

Phrase to repeat: Democrats support the troops.  Republicans support the war

3.  No patriot could pass that act.  It’s reprehensible.  It’s unAmerican.  It violates the constitution.  It’s stupid.  It’s costly. And it’s ineffective.  To allow the government to run rampant over the rights of all Americans in order to catch terrorists would be wrong; but this isn’t even that, because the Stolen Freedom Act does not work.

This act puts 4 year olds on ‘no-fly’ lists and lets people carry weapons onto planes.  This is the act that lets the government spy on anyone it feels like, and never tell anyone.  This is the act that makes borrowing a library book a suspicious act.  

Might terrorists change their names?  Get books from foreign libraries? Use throwaway cell-phones gotten from illegal sources?  Of course they might.

The Republicans  may say these laws are necessary.  I quote William Pitt (the younger):

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.  It is the argument of tyrants, and the creed of slaves

Phrase to repeat: Bush wants to be a tyrant, but we will not be slaves

4. No Child Left Behind should better be called “No child learns bull****”.  I am a psychometrician by training, and I can tell you, this act is abusing tests, forcing the creation of low-quality tests, misusing the results of tests, and testing the wrong things.  It seems to have been primarily designed to support companies that provide the tests and texts (and Bush’s family is involved in some of these companies…. coincidence?)

Phrase to repeat: Let teachers teach

5. A truly inclusive ENDA.  To remove transgender people from this bill was a travesty of justice.  But the problem goes much farther than that, and this bill, even including transgender people, does not go nearly far enough.  There’s a better bill, and it’s an easier sell.  Make it illegal to make any workplace decision about a person based on anything other than how well or badly he or she does the job.  Not sex, not gender, not sexual preference.  Not race or ethnicity.  Not disability or learning disability.  Not political opinion or religion.  Just how well they do the job.  Simple, right?

Phrase to repeat: Reward performance

6. Eliminate the Department of Privacy Invasion. Has this department done anything to keep us safer?  Well, if it has, they won’t tell you.  It’s a secret.  Has it done anything illegal? It won’t tell you, it’s a secret.  Might it be spying on Rep. Pelosi? They won’t tell you, it’s a secret.  Has it cost us a lot of money? Oh yeah.  That’s not a secret

Phrase to repeat: If it’s not wrong, why is it secret?

7. Repeal the Bush tax idiocy. This was a boondoggle for the rich at the expense of young people and our children.

KOSSACKS and DHARMANIACS: ANYONE HAVE SOME GOOD NUMBERS HERE?

Phrase to repeat: You can’t balance the budget by stealing from our children