Conyers Flip-Flops on Impeachment

Originally posted by seattlelaw
Brimstone, you certainly have the insiders information on the doings at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Very impressive summary. Generally lacking support, and yet compellingly presented. Much of what you contend is unassailable as there is no evidence presented to counter. But do tell us the source from which you conclude that 41 is now back in control of the White House?

While awaiting Brimstone's reply to this, I would say that the Iraq commission that James Baker is co-chairing with Lee Hamilton has 41's fingerprints all over it. Baker is doing it as a favor to an old friend. Some of the proposals are counter to 43's philosophy, and he will be hard-pressed to ignore their findings.

Originally posted by seattlelaw
Brimstone, you certainly have the insiders information on the doings at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Very impressive summary. Generally lacking support, and yet compellingly presented. Much of what you contend is unassailable as there is no evidence presented to counter. But do tell us the source from which you conclude that 41 is now back in control of the White House?

How does the Democrat's landslide congressional victory translate into White House control transferring to an ex-(by 14 years) president?

I like to read.

Alot.

And when you read a lot about World Politics, names keep reappearing over and over again. I mean, when a politician retires - a good one - do you really think he goes home and sits out the rest of his years running a hobby farm?

No.

Not when you're talking about power brokers. Not when you're talking about the kind of money we're talking about here. Middle Class, American midwestern life has virtually nothing in common with these men. Not when they decide the fates of millions of people over breakfast.

Like why the French send peace keepers to Sierra Leone, but not Rwanda.

The entire world doesn't just spin on its own, it's directed by power brokers. Otherwise, it would have been Armageddon decades ago. It's a tight rope act, carefully balancing both sides, and trying to not to fall yourself. Thousands may die in the process, but tens of millions will be saved.

Bush and Baker ran the Carlyle Group. A seemingly innocuous private equity firm, worth an estimated 44 billion dollars. Principal shareholders include the Saudi Royal Family and George Soros. They own majority shares in lots of stuff, everwhere, including defense contractors, oil companies, media companies.

When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran recently visited the UN, he ignored an invitation to meet President Bush at the White House. Why?

Because, he went to Houston to meet James Baker instead.

Shake and bake every politician you know and have ever heard of, and basically, only a handful of them actually run the nuts and bolts, day to day operations of the entire world. The R and the D don't matter when it comes to global politics.

This isn't conspiracy stuff either, this is just how the world works.

Right now, the Iraq war has caused a disturbance in the geo-political equilibrium of the entire world. Primarily, this has been caused by Cheney's disillusionment with the Realist policies, created de facto by the Cold War.

Right and wrong doesn't matter, as long as you win.

And, we won. We were the world's last remaining super power. Because of James Baker. Because of George Bush Sr. Because of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil.

But, then Cheney was taken in by the idealistic theories of the Neo-Cons. Fill the power vacuum created by the end of the Cold War, and launch a series of political land grabs in an effort to give America a new "purpose"

Only with this new purpose would the United States not fall into a state of lazy, decadence. They would remain the world's only super power by having a continued purpose on the world stage - not just ensuring the dollar acted strongly against the yen. This is the notion that seperates Brutal Nihilism (Nazism) and Gentle Nihilism (Liberal Hedonism).

When George Bush Jr. decided that he would run for President, he lacked any kind of international political theory whatsoever. I mean, none.

So, Bush Sr. brought in Condi Rice and the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. to basically school Jr. on how the world really functions.

Well, that didn't work out so hot.

Call it a Greek tragedy. Call it plain stubborness. But, Cheney manipulated Bush Jr. into a new line of politcal thinking. Not realism, but idealism. Eager to out due his own father, who he had been living in the shadows of his entire life, Bush was eager to sign on.

And the rest is history.

Iraq is a disaster. The world is falling apart, and the once carefully constructed line that tethered the world together is splitting in two.

Now, Bush could never criticize his own son's handingly of the war, so he publically aired his displeasure through Brent Scrowcroft. And then he waited. And waited.

And then on election day, the American people gave President Bush an intervention. Because, that's basically what this whole thing is.

One giant intervention.

Right now, the only two questions Americans are worried about are "How do we get out?" and "How do we move on?".

The Baker Group's plan will tentatively get us out. All that's left now is how to move on. And the only way for populations to move on after an event like this, is to have a fall guy. One guy to blame everything on. It's not going to be Bush Jr.

It's going to be Dick Cheney.

And, once he's tarred and feathered and humiliated, the world will pat itself on the back for being right. Americans will trust their government again.

And the geo-political equilibrium of the world will go static again.

The Iranians won this one, because their standing in the world just increased. They'll get to play peacemaker in the middel east.

The big loser here is Israel, for the exact reason above.

As for America, not a whole lot will change. We'll til left for a while, then tilt right for a while. But, our standing on the world stage will bounce back.

We still run things.

I am amazed that so many people think it would be difficult to make an impeachment case against Bush stick. After lying the US into an illegal war, tearing up the Constitution, and signing orders to circumvent the intentions of the legislature whenever it suited him, you'd think Bush would have more than enough rope with which to hang himself.

Here is a short summary of one possible avenue to take in impeachment proceedings, as envisaged by Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor with more than twenty years' experience.

The Supreme Court has defined the phrase "conspiracy to defraud the United States" as "to interfere with, impede or obstruct a lawful government function by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement "between two or more persons" to follow a course of conduct that, if completed, would constitute a crime. The agreement doesn't have to be express; most conspiracies are proved through evidence of concerted action. But government officials are expected to act in concert. So proof that they were conspiring requires a comparison of their public conduct and statements with their conduct and statements behind the scenes. A pattern of double-dealing proves a criminal conspiracy.

The concept of interfering with a lawful government function is best explained by reference to two well-known cases where courts found that executive branch officials had defrauded the United States by abusing their power for personal or political reasons.

One is the Watergate case, where a federal district court held that Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, and his crew had interfered with the lawful government functions of the CIA and the FBI by causing the CIA to intervene in the FBI's investigation into the burglary of Democratic Party headquarters. The other is U.S. v. North, where the court found that Reagan administration National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Poindexter's aide Oliver North, and others had interfered with Congress's lawful power to oversee foreign affairs by lying about secret arms deals during Congressional hearings into the Iran/contra scandal.

Finally, "fraud" is broadly defined to include half-truths, omissions or misrepresentation; in other words, statements that are intentionally misleading, even if literally true. Fraud also includes making statements with "reckless indifference" to their truth.

Conspiracies to defraud usually begin with a goal that is not in and of itself illegal. In this instance the goal was to invade Iraq. It is possible that the Bush team thought this goal was laudable and likely to succeed. It's also possible that they never formally agreed to defraud the public in order to attain it. But when they chose to overcome anticipated or actual opposition to their plan by concealing information and lying, they began a conspiracy to defraud -- because, as juries are instructed, "no amount of belief in the ultimate success of a scheme will justify baseless, false or reckless misstatements."

There's plenty of room to impeach.

More importantly, however - will the Dems repair the damage to the Constitution and restore Habeas Corpus? If that's not on the agenda, something is seriously wrong.

Yeah, I have to agree - it would be pretty simple to impeach this guy and his VP. These guys were buffoons. They violated their oaths of office if nothing else. They directly violated the Constitution on more than one occasion. How easy would it be to nail these guys to the cross? A great deal easier than it was with Clinton, that's for certain.

Brimstone, you claim that the Carlyle Group - with about as much value as my neighbor Bill Gates has personally (and which does not include the cash my other neighbor is sitting on - Paul Allen) holds sway over the internal workings of the world? C'mon man, you've got to be joking. I would agree that they have influence and a great deal of it. But recall that 41 was opposed to invading Iraq when he had the troops over there. If 41 and the Carlyle Group didn't have that kind of sway with his own son (to prevent the impending debacle) what the heck kind of power do they have?

Either the Iraq invasion was desired by 41 and all his buds, which would support your thesis, or it was not which would weaken your position. I agree that regardless of whether 41, 42, Carlyle, etc., were involved a fall guy is necessary to satiate the public's recently expressed dissatisfaction with Iraq. But that only shows that these guys are not all that powerful. We still retain a representative government (although there is much evidence of election fraud - just not enough).

What I will say is that these idiots did actually believe they were all powerful. The hubris has been dripping off them for the past 6 years and we've been drowning in the watery stench. To watch Bush squirm is fantastic but it's not enough. The pol's are awakening to the fact that the polity still controls the politics - at least at the congressional level. I do believe that with the electoral fraud in various states including Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, etc., we can expect another Republican president in 2008 without dramatic changes in the state to state voting systems.

But they cannot yet control everything. This is the breath we have to take back control. If we are satisfied with this temporary correction in the balance of power we are doomed. For these reasons we do need to make these people accountable in such a way that the fraud peddlers, the anti-constitutionalists, the fascists, crawl back into their corporate holes or are forced into one of the thousands of jail cells they've been constructing in recent years for as yet unfathomed criminal behavior such as suggesting aloud that a sitting president is an oaf.

I am not satisfied with this temporary reprieve from corporate oligopoly but control will ultimately vest in whoever understands that it is he (or they) who control the voting process (the count!) who controls the country. And the count is still very much in jeopardy.

It's quite easy to impeach, quite another to prove. If you intend to use the "He lied us into Iraq", you'll lose because he was working on faulty intelligence. That's generally accepted. If you intend to use the Patriot Act as evidence that he is "tearing up the Constitution", you'll have to explain why it passed the Senate with a 98 to 1 vote.

I think it would be foolish to openly announce intentions to impeach before this Congress is in office.

There will be investigations and possible criminal charges, but first you have to have subpoena powers.

Right now it seems that Cheney is Bush's insurance policy, so I would guess they'll go after Cheney first
looking for kickbacks from military contracts in some sort of private business or account.

We also have to see what happens after the first time Bush uses his veto powers to kill an important
bill.

In my opinon, theres a whole lot more to the Iraq Study Group than meets the eye.

The Bush Dynasty seems the be circling their wagons to prevent any actions against Bush Jr. and Cheney.

In a normal court of law, it would be very easy to convict Bush and Cheney. In the senate, needing 16 Republican votes, it's going to be necessary to get registered republican voters nodding their head for impeachment too so that Senators know they have to sacrifice this administration to save their own skins.

That's doable, because there are plenty of Republican senate seats that have to account for their behavior in 2008, but unless the Democrats present such a case that the Republican voters will be put out with their senators for not voting for impeachment, the party will try to protect itself from the spectacle of such an extraordinary loss of power (afterall, if they can remove Bush and Cheney and stave off an appointment in between the two, then it's gonna be President Pelosi... wonder how Hillary would take that one)

Because the stakes are so huge, I don't think we can underestimate just how far the Republicans will go to defend their albatross. If they can make it a straight party line vote, they will. If they can't, they'll acquit him by one vote. Because of the role partisanship will play, the Republicans will need to be placed on some exceedingly large horns of a dillema for impeachment to work.

The way things are going, there actually is some possibility that the Democrats can threaten the Republicans not just with defeat, but with anihilation as a political force. If those are the stakes of defending Bush, the Republicans will readily accept a few years of standing in the corner and thinking about what they've done before they do that, because a new party will take 12 or 16 years to gain traction- and that's if a Lincoln shows up to press an issue whos time has come.

Originally posted by seattlelaw
Brimstone, you claim that the Carlyle Group - with about as much value as my neighbor Bill Gates has personally (and which does not include the cash my other neighbor is sitting on - Paul Allen) holds sway over the internal workings of the world? C'mon man, you've got to be joking. I would agree that they have influence and a great deal of it. But recall that 41 was opposed to invading Iraq when he had the troops over there. If 41 and the Carlyle Group didn't have that kind of sway with his own son (to prevent the impending debacle) what the heck kind of power do they have?

Either the Iraq invasion was desired by 41 and all his buds, which would support your thesis, or it was not which would weaken your position.

Congratulations, you know a couple billionaires.

So do I, and you know what? Put ten of them in a room together, and they're going to talk about how they can run things better. It doesn't impress me at all.

Also, I think you misread what I wrote. 41 and company were against the latest invasion of Iraq. The very fact that 41 didn't have control over 43 is what caused the problem. You can be one of the most powerful men in the world, but a son's spite is still a son's spite.

That's why I said it was Greek.

43 stepped completely off the reservation, bucked every trend, and basically dumped on Washington conventional wisdom. He wore hillbilly armor, and tried to do things his way, without the global mechansims his father had used.

I mean we're talking about the son who spent his entire life getting bailed out of trouble by his father. Living in father's shadow. Used to foward an agenda that's the complete antithesis of everything the father believes. It would be heartbeaking; if a 150,000 people hadn't have died in the process.

You don't need a tin foil hat to see that opposing alliances have been made within the administration, and boder conflicts are being acted upon. Nobody's one big happy family. And slowly, we're seeing the elimination of Cheney's supporters within the White House, replaced by suppporters of 41.

Did you see Bush that following morning after the elections?

Now there was a guy who had his wheaties shaken, right down to the bedrock. Right down to the foundation. He looked scared. Now 41 is back to rescue his son, put right what he did wrong, and return order to a world in chaos.

Before something really terrible happens.

And I'm convinced that to settle this, they're gonna use Cheney as the fall guy. It's the only viable option.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
What in the world happened here, Mr. Conyers??

Well, I'm not in the least bit surprised by this turn of events.
But maybe that's because I live in Michigan and have been closer to his activities than most of the country.

Methinks this anti-Bush stuff was an effective way to get voters out. Lord knows Michigan is suffering from an overabundance of democrats in office. :shk:

I agree that Cheney is certainly made for the role of patsy. But 43 is akin to Fredo in "The Godfather" and my concern is about what he might do with his last two years. He's a proven loose cannon. Both the public's reaction to 911 and its blind support of war against Saddam will not soon be forgotten. There's plenty of time for Dubya and the architects of doom to construct another 911 to be followed up by another invasion of ... Iran or Syria perhaps. He knows the country loves him as a wartime president. The difference with Iraq is that after 3 years of spending without results the public knows that war is over.

Nobody likes to lose - especially this silver spooned baby. 41 couldn't control him for the past 6 years and 41 will not ultimately be able to control him for the next 2. Mark my words, this sociopath will come out swinging before April. He'll bitch and moan about the Congress and he will create another international disaster both to deflect what problems he has already created and to consolidate his power. In his last radio address 43 remarked on the recent elections by noting that the world should be impressed that elections even took place during wartime. Next time they won't allow elections. Then what?