Letters to the Editor
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Indeed it was an absurd year
Happy Holidays everybody.
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Just another absurd year
...in an entirely absurd decade.
This country hasn't been quite right in the head since the election of 2000.
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it's been absurd for longer then that...
I would personally mark the absurdity starting with the impeachment of Clinton. As soon as the "moral majority" took over congress we were led inevitably down the path of self-deluded hypocrisy; the kind of people who are so full of themselves that they literally think they have the capacity to unerringly judge who is "going to hell".
The world seems much simpler in Black and White: a polarizing narrative and literal demonization of the outgroup seems to solidify the ingroup identity and play towards half of the electorate's theatrical sense of drama. -
Dear Salon,`
I don't mean to tell you your business, but would it be too much trouble to post a larger image of this cartoon?
The text in Cheney's word balloon is too small to read! Does it say "Belsen?" I'm filling it in a posteriori, so it's just a guess.
Have you noticed how big they print "This Modern World" at Working for Change? It would be great if you could do that.
Thanks,
UncommonSense
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It's OK
It's "As in Bergen". It's just illustrating that he's playing ventriloquist.
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"As in Bergen"
Yeah, but it's too small to read. That was my point.
Thanks, though.
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If only
If only this past year had been as bright and witty as Tom Tomorrow' summation of it! Let's hope for better news in 2007.
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Yes, it was absurd to impeach Clinton
...but they didn't convict him. And his popularity actually went up, based on the fact that he was a smart and competent president.
Now we have a president with popularity at the bottom of the barrel, who every day reveals himself to be ignorant, arrogant and quite stupid, a president who's lost both a war and an American city, and yet none of it seems to matter, somehow. You'd think the cries for his impeachment or resignation would come from every corner, but not so. We're just waiting for him to figure out what to do next, and he'll tell us about it when he feels like it. Now that's absurd.
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and on November 10
On November 10th Fox news reported that Iraqi insurgents were delighted with the new Democratic Congress, because the previous day there was a memo instructing them to be on the lookout for these statements, which confirms the existence of the statements. Otherwise we wouldn't be looking out for them, right?
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Nerdham the difference between Bush and Clinton
Is that where as Bush is incompetant, incompetance is not a crime.
Clinton was seemingly competant, but did commit purjury, which is a crime.
Impeachment is not removal from office, it is to formally accuse a siting political figure of a crime.
Hence Clinton was impeached, but was not removed from office. He was accused of a crime but the congress felt that the facts of the case did not warrent removal from office.
Bush hasn't committed a crime, but has simply made disasterously bad choices. In some states a recall election can be called to remove disasterous politicians, however no such mechanism exists on a national scale.
For contrast if Bill Clinton had simply plead the fifth when asked on the stand about Ms. Lewinski he would not have been impeaced as he would not have committed purjury.
Now, you can argue that Bush has committed war crimes, or some other atrocity, that the United States may have a statute on the books forbiding, and thusly Bush could be formally accused of this crime, and likewise impeached. However if no strong evidence is provided to show that Bush's involvment in these crimes was more than just incompetence, congress will not be able to remove him from office.
Thusly, you have the worst of all worlds, a slim Democratic majority ravaged by brining a frivilous case against the sitting duly elected president, which can drum up sympathy for said president, harm the majority, and elect another republican as a result to the whitehouse in two uears.
So relax, hold congress to the fire on real issues, Bush can't do anymore real harm in two years, and then we can elect a large democratic majority and a president.
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It reminds me of an email I saw
with a picture of Dubya and the text: "WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE THIS MAN A BLOWJOB SO WE CAN IMPEACH HIM?"
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UncommonSense has a point
Years and years ago I remember a Bloom County strip where the main characters were playing members of the (original) Enterprise crew. Capt. Kirk (Milo) was ordering engineering to make the comics smaller so that newspapers could have more space for Dear Abby. By the end, they had managed to reduce the size of the entire comics page (except for Doonesbury, which wouldn't budge) to a point of singularity or "artwork so incredibly compressed, not even legibility can escape!!"
Comics are hard to read in the paper -- it's not that I'm getting old and need reading glasses of course :) But given how dense TT's strips often are, and that fact that there's no need to create space for Dear Abby, it would be nice if Salon could publish larger versions of their strips. Or provide a larger version to click on, for those who aren't bandwidth challenged.
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To "What more harm can he do?"
You have your facts largely backwards. It's Clinton who was guilty only in the popular arena, and Bush in the actual, legal one.
Clinton did not technically commit perjury. I don't have a link handy, but I have seen the conclusions of legal experts that his wordsmithing gambit to play around with the definition of "sexual relations" etc. did in fact succeed.
Rather, it was when he shook his finger at the cameras that one time, saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." that he really lied. That's because he was speaking to the American People that time, and the redefinition games don't work there.
So if lying to the American People as Clinton did warrants an impeachment, Bush most certainly deserves it, a thousand times over.
But of course, it's not necessary to try to pursue that angle -- Bush has in fact committed real crimes. Take the NFS wiretapping program, for instance. The only legal theory he has even put forward that would allow him to flout the law like that is that the President can disobey any law he wishes to, if he can argue that doing so is for the purpose of national security. Which means anything he wants. That's an idea that is clearly anathema to every ideal that the Founders were pursuing when writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Because it would mean that the President is literally King.
Here's another, technical lawbreaking instance: the Authorization to go to war (you know, the one that Kerry and most of the other Democrats signed along with the Republicans) did not give Bush immediate authority to invade Iraq. Rather, it said that he can only do so after presenting evidence to Congress that Saddam's regime was an immediate threat.
The only "evidence" Bush submitted, just before launching the invasion, was a statement that was filled with cloudy language, and which ultimately referred back to the Authorization bill itself as the evidence that Saddam was a threat. Which means that he really didn't meet the requirements of the Authorization, and so invaded Iraq illegally.
Those are just the two examples off the top of my head. I'm sure others can remember more.