Washington D.C.--This is an unsurprising effect of the high price of oil and the snowballing effect it's having on the American economy and the price of nearly everything. What's amazing is, prices have been high for some time, but we're now even seeing the upper middle-class taking some hits.
That's right, Ed McMahon is going into foreclosure on his home, and has been for several years now. What if he got something in the mail from himself? The irony should be leavened with him winning. How did he spend it all?
Never mind him: CBS has conducted a poll--released today--that has George W. Bush at the very top...of the most unpopular presidents in American history. In a sense, you have to love it, and many of us are getting to enjoy some payback for all of the gloating in 2004. Gloating over another stolen election is perverse, incidentally.
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it, and get it good, my humble curse. In the spirit of this political moment, GOP presidential candidate John McCain is going to take his own hits over his support of the Bush administration and their overall agenda in his bid for the White House.
According to the CBS poll, Bush stands at a 67% disapproval rating (the highest for any standing president), and a 25% approval rating. Who are the 25%? Many of them are that past-crop of millionaires, billionaires, old money, tech money, the defense contracting sector, very stupid small businesspeople, the energy and financial sectors, and all of the rest of the middling-types and petty bourgeois who service them.
Forget the poor, and forget the so-called threat of international terrorism--these people are a threat to the rest of human civilization, and marvel at the fact that many of them are being enriched by the current excesses of the White House and Congress. Jail is for those who have no connections, the losers who don't own a representative or a few judges. Of course, there is that percentage in the "25%" who are so racist, so lockstep nationalist, so homophobic, so warmongering, and so religiously insane, that they're going to vote against their interests until they kick it.
And yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee's chairman Jay Rockefeller(D-Wv.) said upon the release of their report on the lies that led to the war in Iraq (their fourth-release on the issue of statements without the backing of valid intelligence data):
“The tragic fact is, on issues of war and peace, which should require the most meticulous and the most precise adherence to the truth, the administration was too often careless with its words, including in some cases making presentations that were not substantiated by the available intelligence — or worse, directly contradicted by the available intelligence,” Rockefeller said. “The administration went well beyond what the intelligence community knew and what it believed.”Rockefeller said Democrats would not formally prosecute the point against the administration because doing so would automatically shut down relations between the legislative and executive branches.
“It would mean nothing else, whether it’s clean air or FISA, would get done,” he said. “It’s like pressing for impeachment. It’s a grand act with only five or six months to go. It’s a futile act and it’s a wrong act, because we do have business to do. Should it be done in the wide sweep of history? Yes. Should it be done by us, now? No.” ("Citing new report, Dems rip "heinous' pre-war rhetoric," The Hill, 06.05.2008)
And yet, the Democrats were too soft on the Bush administration, and there were no solid-commitments towards punishing the White House for lying to the American public. Quite the contrary. There should be immediate calls for impeachment hearings based on the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they should be done as swiftly as humanly possible.
If this means a complete shutdown of relations between the Congress and the White House, that's to be expected and accepted as part of the process of checks and balances that is the responsibility of the legislative branch. It's a responsibility that the Democratic Party has long given-up on, making lame excuses that have no merit constitutionally.
The problem in Congress is a Senator like Jay Rockefeller (or Joe Lieberman, Dick Lugar, et. al. ...), a representative who's beholden to AT&T, as well as the Bush administration itself. It's representatives like him that have given Congress the lowest approval-ratings--lower even than the current president--in the history of the Republic. But what Rockefeller is most beholden to is protecting his own interests within the structures of American Empire. Recall that the Rockefeller dynasty owns Chase-Manhattan Bank, their interests being broad:
It's also worth pointing out that the Jay Rockefeller who today accuses the Bush administration of inventing the threat posed by Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration once saw "a substantial connection" between the two and warned about the consequences of leaving Iraq to pass its WMD to Osama bin Laden. On February 5, 2003, Rockefeller said: "The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer
and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda."It's also worth pointing out that the Jay Rockefeller who today accuses the Bush administration of inventing the threat posed by Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration once saw "a substantial connection" between the two and warned about the consequences of leaving Iraq to pass its WMD to Osama bin Laden. On February 5, 2003, Rockefeller said: "The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda."("Jay Rockefeller's Amnesia," The Weekly Standard, 06.05.2008)
Watch Jay Rockefeller bend-over-backwards for retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies in the lawsuits filed against them for their participation in the White House's warrantless surveillance program. His close relationship with AT&T surely has something to do with it, yet he wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney (keeping his own sealed-copy to cover himself for later) over his concerns with the legality of the program during its early-days.
It seems Senate Intelligence Committee chair Rockefeller was "in-the-loop" with the neoconservatives then and now, and has made his bed with the most storied administration in our nation's history. He should recuse himself from further work on the committee, and he's hardly alone. Michael Moore's site is calling Rockefeller a "spineless Democrat." That's inaccurate: he's complicit with the Bush administration's criminality, along with most of the current incumbents on Capitol Hill.
And this is why Jay Rockefeller's begging-the-question over impeachment proceedings. He's a dishonorable and disingenuous criminal of the highest order, and should be facing impeachment himself. But what do you expect from the descendants of an oil robber baron who was instrumental in giving us our current petrochemical crisis?
One word: ATTICA--because being a Rockefeller means being on the wrong side of history.
"Jay Rockefeller's Amnesia," The Weekly Standard, 06.05.2008: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/181kczhv.aspToday's CBS Poll on President Bush's Historic Disapproval Ratings: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/0608econ.pdf
The Iraq Report on Bush administration statements during the runup to our current war: http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/phase2publicstatements.pdf
Senator Rockefeller's page that leaves-out statements the public disagrees with him on (the impeachment issue): http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298774
What Senator Rockefeller REALLY said at the release hearing: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/citing-new-report-dems-rip-heinous-prewar-rhetoric-2008-06-05.html
No comments:
Post a Comment