Do you refer to such appeasers as a President Obama?

Short of staying home on election day and withholding money this late in the campaign, we need to compile a Shit List of the members of Congress who voted for this abomination and the MCA. Primary their asses and make their lives hell. Heckle them at public meetings and if necessary, run 3rd party candidates to make sure that even if you can't win, they will lose.

There's a reason no member of Congress will cross the gun and Israel lobbies. Anyone who does so has a load of bricks dropped on them.

MAKE 'EM PAY!

Because in political terms it'll add to a useless heap of compost.

In an era of such marked authoritarianism, maybe the Democrats are going with the submissive angle as the party to choose this fall. Is it a full acceptance that the times we live in are so dangerous, only authoritarian power structures are valid options? Are they trying to flip the coin of power relationships and trading the controlling tops of the Republicans for an even more fully subservient Democratic version? Maybe a "post-partisan because we won't stand for anything except what you tell us we stand for" strategy? Another victory for private interests and capital, the bedrocks* of the American Way Of Life, responsive to those legal persons who spend the most free speech and offer the best post-government conflict-of-interest-free incentive packages? Is this another step toward an ownership society where government is as impotent as Grover Norquist dreams it can be?

And besides, what are you going to do if you don't like it? Vote for the party of incompetent, corrupt, fear-mongering, ALLEDGED** war criminals headed up by septuagenarian right out of a Dr. Strangelove script? Vote for the progressive third option that has the political profile of a mail box? No, I think the Democrats are calculating that the least odious option for enough voters is to hold their noses, vote Democrat and watch them try like hell to guess the safety word. It obviously isn't "telecom immunity".

For any other political option for the public, people would have to get politically active, politically informed, cut the apron strings to the major parties and get off their ever-distracted asses. For any semblance of that old-fashioned idea of democracy, to truly hold officials accountable and to provide feedback at the ballot box that was something other than Skinnerian responsiveness to advertising and spin.

Maybe that's the ultimate lesson of the Democrats "Graceful Bowing" strategy: it reflects the political bondage of the American electorate that doesn't pray for the Rapture to hurry up and get here or that eats out most nights on an expense account.

*Let's face it, the democracy thing was always a little hollow and a little shaky.

**That's for you Shooter, ya dumb twat.

Folks need to crack open the Church Committee Report and get aquatinted with the abuses the Dem lead Congress just legalized.

Here ya go:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm

Look, practically speaking most of the countries in the world routinely spy on their citizens with no legal restraint at all. You're always saying we're the worst of the worst. So there you have it.

It isn't Yoo's. It's Nixon's, based on what he said to David Frost: "If the president does it, it's not illegal."

Amen!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/10/bush_pardon/

Beware Bush's preemptive strike on torture

Constitutionally, neither Congress nor the courts can prevent President Bush from signing such a pardon. It would, however, be the first preemptive pardon in U.S. history for war crimes. And because of his own possible criminal role in approving the torture program, Bush effectively would be granting a self-pardon -- something Nixon seriously considered but no president has ever done. As he ponders his historical legacy, Bush might just decide that this is a pardon better left unsigned.

Not quite sure what in the historical record of this administration prompted the author to write that last sentence. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking, something that we can ill-afford at present.

At least in the short term.

And believe me, the DISGUST I felt when I saw that same headline was at least as much as anyone else felt. And the same story was run again later with a more offensive headline, I might add.

But in the end, it means that you should vote Democrat.

Both parties are very poor at the role of "oppostion to the administration", or the role of "getting rid of something that the other established by an administration". The Republicans were able to use the compliant media to harass Clinton, but were buffoons when it came managing a sustained opposition, despite, indeed, having almost the entire mainstream media as an unofficial propaganda arm. (And that last statement isn't paranoid. I happened to see ABC Nightly Vote for Iran-Hatin' Hero John McCain Because Obama is Both Effete and a Gangsta Rapper News last night.)

It is exceptionally difficult and time consuming to get rid of policies that were pushed in by a sitting presidential administration. That is ALWAYS true in the US. Sucks, but it's reality.

This works both ways. The Republicans have not gotten rid of social security, the Civil Rights act, the EPA, OSHA, etc. They can put hostile, obfuscating bureaucrats in place temporarily, but that's the best they can do.

What's critical to understand is that overall, the Democrats initiate far fewer harmful policies, relative to the status quo they find.

And since the way the US system works, and I've been saying this for years, overwhelmingly the best defense against harmful policies is to prevent them from being promoted and enacted in the first place, that makes the choice between the two parties very easy.

One might compare the country to a wagon. One might compare the Republican party to a giant dead elephant unremovably attached to the back of the wagon, which impedes forward progress and pulls the wagon backward toward a cliff when unopposed. One might compare the Democrat party to a stubborn, annoying, timid donkey that can just barely handle the weight of the elephant, but that at will at least slow down the backward pull, and will occasionally, if in an especially good mood, pull the wagon a few inches forward, and will rarely, in unusual circumstances, take a serious step forward.

You may not like the donkey. Its timidity and surliness may infuriate. But if you unhitch it, the elephant, which you cannot unhitch, pulls you backward and over the cliff.

That's the way it is right now.

Always vote for the most progressive or least reactionary candidate who can actually win the election you're voting in and it may get better.