Letters to the Editor
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@ ondelette
Mirth? Oh my yes, and especially when preparing a tasty palaak panir. (It helps lift the spirits after all that tedious cheesemaking.)
Mmm.... Are we on the right thread here, or am I just slow on the uptake, as usual?
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ondelette
Actually, I'm more than OK with congress issuing contempt citations and have been for quite some time, as they're clearly not only warranted but essential. It is only impeachment that I view as pointless, premature and likely counterproductive now (but not necessarily later, depending on how things unfold). In fact congress cannot really do much else at this point that could meaninfully move things forward without issuing them. Anything else would be either a lateral or backwards move, or simply standing still.
I'm not sure what kind of contempt citations congress should issue. Personally, I'd like them to issue all three, if possible, or at least start with the most common kind, criminal, then move onto civil (if that's lawful), then inherent. Force a legal if not constitutional showdown. Force many of them, round the clock. Wear them down and make the public realize that something very serious and historic is going on that they might want to change the channel from Inside Edition to watch. Call their bluffs (and many of them are bluffs, as they have been in the past), and just hack away at them without letting up.
When in a crisis, you do what you can and which shows some promise of accomplishing something, and try your best. Getting angry, while justified, isn't going to get you anywhere by itself. Rather, being smart, determined, tough and persistent is the way to go. Some of the exhoratations I've come across recently that "Congress needs to do something NOW!!!" just strike me as understandable but unhelpful. Do what, exactly? Impeach? How would that work?
This reminds me of a time in my youth when I "saved" a drowning person. She was a hysterical scuba diver who was out diving alone (a HUGE no-no for obvious reasons) near where I was snorkeling (also alone, but not a no-no if you stay on or near the surface) and thought that she was drowning or sinking (which she wasn't) and yelled out for help. So I swam over and "rescued" her, which basically consisted of calming her down and holding onto her as we swam to shore 40 feet away.
The point being, when in a crisis (whether real or in your head--the present one being of course all too real), do not panic, do not flail, and don't expect others to "save" you. Calm down, use your head, decide on a course of action, and persue it as calmly and confidently as possible. To do otherwise is to make failure more likely. No solution is guaranteed to succeed, but to focus on what's wrong rather than on finding a way to fix it is a sure path to failure. Not sure if this is very coherent, but I'm just trying to say that the sort of panicky, hysterical exhortations I've been coming across lately (especially on DKos) just aren't helping.
And as for impeachment, people can push for it as much as they want, and have obviously been doing so ad nauseum. And who knows, maybe that will help. But if someone is really serious about it, they should also push congress to aggresively go through the preliminary steps it needs to go through for impeachment to actually be possible, before putting it back "on the table". Because it simply won't, until it feels that it can, and should.
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So what's next?
[Glenn, from the post]: Just contemplate what that actually means. One of the primary, defining attributes of a civilized society that lives under the rule of law is prosecutorial independence. Without that, political opponents of those in power can be prosecuted for political rather than legal reasons. And worse still, our most powerful political leaders are free to break the law with impunity because they control the prosecutorial process, which -- in this warped view of our republic -- means that presidents have an absolute power to block criminal prosecution of their subordinates who break the law, provided it was done at the President's behest.
Well, as the RW sycophants and apologists keep saying, in defending this view, there's always impeachment if things 'get out of hand'. Let's get moving. As someone famously said: "Bring 'em on...."; are we going to let some ragheads in Iraq show more spine (and more success) than Congress????
Cheers,
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@Kovie
Yes, it's a fait accompli. The time to have acted was in 2000. Or we could have fought and worked harder in 2004. There is nothing to do now but ride it out. What's really amazing, and you have to give them credit, is how well they pulled it off. At the time, you had guys like Paul Craig Roberts running around calling Democrats Nazis over Gore v. Bush! Four years before anyone ever thought to call Bush a Nazi. Look what that dumb putz is saying now. Idiot. People who said, "Wait a second!" were ridiculed and told to put their tin foil hats back on. But that's the beauty of it. Here they do it without any violence at all. They tried it in Venezuela, with minimal violence, and it failed. Short of another coup d'état, or some other less acute deus ex machina, he'll be there until the president is sworn in on Inauguration Day in 2009.
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@ Arne
Well, as the RW sycophants and apologists keep saying, in defending this view, there's always impeachment if things 'get out of hand'. Let's get moving. As someone famously said: "Bring 'em on...."; are we going to let some ragheads in Iraq show more spine (and more success) than Congress????
Cheers,
-- Arne Langsetmo
Maybe that's another reason he wants to keep the bulk of the nations ground forces overseas... Ya think?
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Good God! What is wrong with those Venezuelans?
Don't they realize they live under a brutal, authoritarian dictator? According to this, they are the happiest country on the planet:
SOURCE
World Values Survey
DEFINITION
Proportion of people who answered the survey question: "Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?" by stating that they were "Very happy".
Lifestyle Statistics > Statistics > Happiness level > Very happy (Latest available) by country
#1 Venezuela: 55%
#2 Nigeria: 45%
#3 Ireland: 42%
#4 Iceland: 42%
#5 Netherlands: 40%
#6 Philippines: 40%
#7 Australia: 39%
#8 United States: 39%
#9 Turkey: 39%
#10 Switzerland: 38%
#11 United Kingdom: 38%
#12 Belgium: 37%
#13 Sweden: 36%
#14 Denmark: 36%
#15 Canada: 32%
#16 Dominican Republic: 32%
#17 Mexico: 31%
#18 Austria: 30%
#19 Chile: 30%
#20 Norway: 29%
#21 Argentina: 27%
#22 Ghana: 26%
#23 China: 25%
#24 Japan: 23%
#25 India: 23%
#26 France: 23%
#27 Brazil: 22%
#28 Uruguay: 21%
#29 Finland: 20%
#30 Spain: 20%
#31 Bangladesh: 18%
#32 Poland: 14%
#33 Italy: 13%
#34 Portugal: 13%
#35 Hungary: 11%
#36 Slovenia: 11%
#37 Azerbaijan: 11%
#38 Georgia: 11%
#39 Croatia: 8%
#40 Bulgaria: 7%
#41 Armenia: 6%
#42 Romania: 6%
#43 Russia: 6%
#44 Ukraine: 5%
#45 Belarus: 5%
#46 Moldova: 4%
#47 Lithuania: 4%
#48 Estonia: 4%
#49 Slovakia: 4%
#50 Latvia: 3%
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_hap_lev_ver_hap-lifestyle-happiness-level-very-happy
Obviously, the Nigerians are very happy (#2) because so many gullible and greedy Americans send them money.