Washington D.C.--You think? The majority of Democratic and Republican incumbents would know, they've rubber-stamped every request for additional-funding for the war, and will continue to do so even after this president is gone after January 21st, 2009. Why? Because they share the same overarching objectives and values--if you want to call them that--as this criminal administration. That makes most of them co-conspirators, or aiders-and-abettors if you wish, in the maintenance of a dying Empire.

Will Yarmuth's comments amount to anything substantial? Of course not, that's not what this is about. Creating appearances are everything. But the Democrats and the monied lobbies they serve need an edge in the elections, even if it isn't a real one, so they pushed Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky in front of the microphone for the weekly address from the DNC. The last thing mainstream Democratic incumbents want is a complete pullout from the Middle East, not by any stretch. They're hawks and believers in the Imperial Presidency.

It's all rhetoric during an election year, and the Democrats are trying their best to paper over the fact that they've enabled the White House to start an illegal war--and that's not counting rendition and torture practices by the CIA and private contractors. Unsurprisingly, the American public has already figured this out, as is the usual case. We're almost always ahead of them, even without the access to classified information they have.

The politicians--consciously avoiding the truth--act "amazed" and "surprised," yet they were the first to know. They all have security clearances up on Capitol Hill, and the public doesn't. Yet, "surprisingly," they contend that they were "lied to." This is in-fact, a lie. The GOP are hardly any better, and in fact, are significantly worse. Maybe that's because they're not intelligent enough not to get caught.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania--If we had a healthy political culture, Ralph Nader would be on the ballot of every state in the Union, but he isn't. In fact, Nader's independent candidacy for president cannot be found on the ballot of any state at the time of this writing. In his speech at the historic Constitution Center in Philadelphia last Saturday, the candidate hit on the fact that all three of the current contenders for president are essentially the same in their views and voting behavior on social issues, and that our political process is being held-hostage by a "duopoly" by the Democratic and Republican parties.
But they aren't the real power according to the noted activist attorney (and anyone with eyes and ears that still work), it's corporate America, our de facto government. Good luck refuting his contention, you'll need it.

In recent weeks, Ralph Nader has asked the three contender campaigns of McCain, Obama, and Clinton to promise to adopt at least three-points of his progressive campaign's platform--not one of them accepted even one out of roughly fifty that address social issues important to the American public. What are they afraid of? Being pushed to do what's right, one would imagine. As hopeful a candidate as Obama appears, he's no Ralph Nader, and by accepting even one progressive point of his--or that of any other progressive third party candidate--he would have tipped-his-hand to the fact that politicians can be pressured by the public to start delivering. If Obama had agreed, it's likely that several "super delegates" would have abandoned him. Those are known as "handlers," incidentally.

South Bend, Indiana--No presidential candidate has visited the city since the appearance of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 at our local Democratic Club. Since then, there was no reason. Many Hoosiers in Indiana's 2nd District and the rest of the state were dead-set on voting against their own interests by voting Republican since that pivotal year. Now the fruits of that foolish behavior have been borne-out, and the reality behind the last few decades of political rhetoric are being seen for what they always were: a way to disenfranchise the general public on-all-fronts, and the dismantling of a civil society with a regard for the social contract.

But that changed with the 2006 midterms, when a historical-shift in voting behavior in the state upended expectations. Once an easy domain for the GOP, Indiana is now going to determine who the Democratic president-elect will be. It cannot be repeated enough that this change in voting-patterns was unexpected. Bigotry and racism are extremely entrenched in Indiana, and the 2nd District is no-exception. Yet, even many of the holders of these attitudes are having a change-of-heart. The message of the civil rights, social justice, and labor movements of the 20th century are beginning to sink-in.

Washington D.C.--WTOP's Neal Augenstein has a new piece--published yesterday--that states U.S. federal district Judge James Robertson (who is rumored to be the NSA surveillance whistle-blower) has rejected the prosecution's motion to quash Republican Senator David Vitter's subpoena that orders him to testify in the trial of Deborah Jeane Palfrey (aka "The DC Madam). It's safe to assume that he's not the only name, and we can presume to expect other--and bigger--names to be dropped during the trial.

Vitter is found in the records of Pamela Martin & Associates covering the years 1999-2001. His attorney has said that the senator is going to plead the Fifth amendment, which isn't going to help his reputation. It's also going to be an unpleasant ride for the GOP before the national elections. With the current state of the economy, and more bad news to come, this trial could be that one-two punch we've all been waiting for. The GOP has had it coming for over 30 years.

It's possible that the entitled Vitter will be a no-show--an act that will earn him a contempt citation and cast even more of an appearance of guilt on the wily Republican from Louisiana. That might work for individuals like former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and former White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and it might fly in Congress--but not in a federal courtroom. That Congress, she's such a pushover, she's so easy. Apparently, Judge Robertson is looking forward to what will be an "educational" trial. Aren't we all. Viddy well, bruthas, viddy well.

WTOP news, yesterday:
http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=596&sid=1381009

"The Name Game," The Blog of Legal Times, yesterday: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2008/04/the-name-game.html

“They never gave us any meaningful news. They told us the day that Martin Luther King was shot, they told us the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, but they never bothered to tell us about the moon shot. So it was certainly selected news.”--John McCain, emphasizing his indifference to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1987, when he thought it was safe to.

The United States of America--I was just about to be born when Dr. King was murdered by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, that tragic day of April 4th, 1968. What the media won't be telling you is that over 200 American cities were on fire the next day. Buildings were burning just two-blocks from the White House. There were meles between the Black Pather Party for Self-Defense in Chicago and other cities. Often, the Panthers were baited into it by police intelligence units. Military helicopters were doing flyovers above almost every major American city for days. Smoke billowed from the blazing-ruins of storefronts. It looked like a second civil war was coming.

Indeed, the war in Vietnam was coming home, and the violence was returning to those who had initiated it. The repression afterwards was ghastly, and things only got worse under Nixon, which could have been predicted. The "greatest generation ever" murdered Dr. King. The targets of assassination were on the Left, not the right. As we know, only two major right-wing figures on the cultural landscape were assassinated during the "1960s" (1964-1974): they were John Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party, and George Wallace, the former segregationist governor of Alabama. Wallace lived. Scoundrels frequently live to old age. Good men and women who join the struggle for social justice tend to die young. Dr. King was one-of-many murdered during that storied era.

Capitol Hill, Washington D.C.--It happened today! Get down there and join the fun! Impeachment time is now, and it's time to correct the bloodless-coup of 2000. With the release of the existence of the "torture memo," the excuses are over, done. To all patriots, and all winter soldiers: it's on, it's time to DEMAND impeachment.

The release of information on the "Yoo memo" (former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, back in 2002 under AG John Ashcroft, writing to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales) confirms the criminality of this administration and her allies inside and outside of Congress:

John Yoo, the former Bush Administration lawyer who now teaches at UC Berkeley's law school, authored the torture memo that cleared the way for the U.S. military to begin torturing suspected Al Qaeda members in Guantanamo and black site prisons, as well as Iraqis in Abu Ghraib.

Perhaps less well known is that Yoo also wrote a legal opinion blessing the president's targeting of American citizens for wiretapping, a memo that even members of Congress have not seen.

There have been clues before in the administration's defense of its wiretapping program. For instance, the Justice Department said (.pdf) the Authorization to Use Military Force and the president's war making powers in the Constitution.

But in the Yoo torture memo (.pdf) which was just released and declassified yesterday, Yoo himself seems to clue us in... ("Yoo Torture Memo Says Fourth Amendment Doesn't Apply in War on Terror," Wired.com, 04.02.2008)

The Bush administration must be made persona non grata. Keep it legal, keep it non-violent, but do what you feel you must do. The time has come to do what should have been done in 2000. With the knowledge of the "torture memo" out there, the excuses are over. The laws of the land have been broken. Yoo must be fired from his teaching-post and prosecuted along with his co-conspirators in the White House and Congress.

The F-B-I--Bwa-hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhehehehehehe
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hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe--GASP!-hah! Well, not really, and they didn't really get Dillinger either. Eleanor Roosevelt correctly described them as "America's Gestapo." They were bumblers too.

"From what I understand, they were considered pretty good kids. ...But we have to take this seriously, whether they were serious or not about carrying this through, and that's what we did." --Theresa Martin, spokesperson for the Ware County school system. (AP)

Waycross, Georgia--The only difference between most of us who were in the same situation as these kids is that we didn't make the attempt. Yes, you read it correctly. If you can remember back to being an eight-year-old, you'll recall the bad teachers who got-away with emotional abuse of their pupils. Educators cannot legally hit children any more--something that ended in this country during the 1980s from a rash of lawsuits--but that doesn't mean many of them aren't still tyrants. By-all-accounts, these are good kids without any previous indicators for this kind of behavior. As many as nine of them were so outraged by the behavior of this educator that they plotted to hurt her. All were boys.

Police say a group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward.

The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said Tuesday.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know." ("Cops: 3rd-Graders Aimed to Hurt Teacher," AP, 04.01.2008)

It's hard to say if they really wanted to "hurt" the woman, because eight-year-olds aren't developed enough mentally to even understand the possible outcome of such a plot. Luckily, they stopped hanging children in Georgia a few decades ago, that honor is reserved for 13-and-up.

The Diseased Mind of American Womanhood--Once you got the vote in 1920, you voted for a Republican named Warren G. Harding, because he was a former college football player with the I.Q. of a chicklet™ (funny how some things never change with GOP candidates). That ensured that we had a decade of Republican control of our federal government without proper regulation of the economy. We know what happened on "Black Friday," October 25th, 1929. Well, I do, but that's because I actually read occasionally. This is "Black Thursday," Friday hasn't hit yet.

The same has happened with Bush in many respects (granted that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen), and now it's going to happen again. I only expect a tiny-minority of American women to fess-up to their share of the current mess we're in, but this has to be said: most of you are mindless consumerist nincompoops. You're no more capable of accepting the responsibility for your actions and stupid decisions than the nearly worthless American male.

Most of you live-down to the sexual stereotypes because you have no more credibility than your male peers in America. The choice has always been yours: be a real adult and stop living the lifestyles you've been chasing, or face the inevitable consequences. Push back all you want, but Hillary Clinton is the the next-to-worst choice in 2008. John McCain tops it. This isn't to say Barack Obama is going to be wonderful either, it's just that he's the best we've got to choose from if we don't want this country to fall over the cliff it made for itself.

If you're going to vote for someone simply because they're Black, a woman--whatever--then you're making a very stupid mistake. But, being a philosophical revolutionary who wants to see this system fall, go-right-ahead. I'm enjoying the show right now, it's going to be especially entertaining to watch the scrambling, the finger-pointing, the riots, and watching millions of well-heeled jackapes being declassed.

Amurka--It should be law that every single politician holding office in the United States of America be required to have a monthly drug-test, and for all illicit and pharmaceutical drugs that can be abused. Period. Also, all corporate executives should be tested every three-days, since cocaine tends to leave your system. The corporations would be required to foot-the-bill for their own tests, and couldn't use their own subsidiary-firms to do the drug-testing in any. No exceptions, no loopholes.

Also, everyone working at a drug-testing firm would have to be tested every week, especially the executives and shareholders. Outside of dangerous jobs, and vocations that absolutely require an individual to be clean and sober (like airline pilots, machinists, surgeons, etc.), the public should be completely immune to drug-testing.

Secretaries, clerks, and people who man cash registers aren't posing any threat. The President of the United States should always be tested for pills and booze, particularly if they're a Republican. It doesn't matter. Soon, there won't be money for anything, they're even pulling-the-plug on the war on drugs these days. Such are the ways of a a declining empire. And that brings us to the death of the month of March, 2008.