Impeachment goes mainstream, and a modest proposal

When the NBC's (next batch of crooks--ha!) come in to office, they will turn on the republicans and you will see a lot of legal reviews. Just not the ones you want. Congress with change the rules by which it operates to favor the Democrat majority...in the same way that the Republicans have done in the past...You will see a few members of the previous administration hauled before a special prosecutor, but most of that will be for show. Expect them to use things link the Fairness Doctrine to wage a little private sector war on their conservative eneimes. It'll be a busy and messy decade.

As per my published work, this will be the most important decade of the century. If the majority of people decide to roll over and take it, we might (might) see a few scattered revolts, but nothing more. If the majority has decided that its had enough...things get "interesting." I hope to be wrong. I want to be wrong, but it's not lookin' like I'll get my wish.

[edit on 23-7-2007 by Justin Oldham]

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
When the NBC's (next batch of crooks--ha!) come in to office, they will turn on the republicans and you will see a lot of legal reviews. Just not the ones you want.

That's why I emphasized the "we're watching you" part for each Branch...The People need to make it absolutely clear that Congress' job would be to review the existing laws for Constitutionality...Only according to the Constitution, not party-loyalties (such as they are). And that's what'll be watched.

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
When the NBC's (next batch of crooks--ha!) come in to office, they will turn on the republicans and you will see a lot of legal reviews. Just not the ones you want. Congress with change the rules by which it operates to favor the Democrat majority...in the same way that the Republicans have done in the past...You will see a few members of the previous administration hauled before a special prosecutor, but most of that will be for show. Expect them to use things link the Fairness Doctrine to wage a little private sector war on their conservative eneimes. It'll be a busy and messy decade.

As per my published work, this will be the most important decade of the century. If the majority of people decide to roll over and take it, we might (might) see a few scattered revolts, but nothing more. If the majority has decided that its had enough...things get "interesting." I hope to be wrong. I want to be wrong, but it's not lookin' like I'll get my wish.

Well at this point the fairness doctrine isn't going to do much; the MSM is so concentrated and so well-trained that it's almost beating a dead horse. I'm more worried about the attacks on the web, the last free-speech zone, but you're right there, the march to control will go on.

And yes, it all hinges upon if the public has an "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" catharsis, or rolls over with a whimper. There's every reason for the Dems to play to the latter, try to keep things just dragging along, and then do their show trials to release some of the pent-up anger. The GOP on the other hand is in a desperate corner, and they might just go down fighting--after all, they've proven to be not such rational players so far--and provoke exactly the backlash the Dems are horrified of. Well within their MO.

I forget who said it but, "Your curse will be to live in interesting times." Indeed.

As i developed my book, the hardest thing for me to do was to admit and portray that we as Americans would...decide to....just live with it. I lost sleep over it. Many many re-writes. That particular truth was painful, and it was h-h-hard to make my fingers move over the keyboard to construct the words. Democrats and Republicans alike across the spectrum feel the same way. I know that, but it still didn't make it any wasier to discuss even in a techncal writing situation.

The only way we reach that moment of catharsis is for the politicians to actually do it. Once they go too far, they'll do it deliberately and with all the hopes they can muster that we'll just...live with it. It may earn me a place behind the wire, but I don't plan on shutting up for as long as I can stay in this without having to move on to other things because of some unforseen necessity.

Justin such a post should not go unanswered. That you should have had to write that at all is simply staggering, if you have any memory, and thus perspective, at all. Our current situation is so perilous, and the dread among sentient beings is thick enough to cut with a knife. I look back over a full century and see this as the endgame.

Fukayama was right in a way, this is the end of history. Or at least politics as we were led to believe it was played. I can't help but think, as so many do, that all those takings and all those executive orders are not just being done for nothing. They are the tools of conquest. Like in a film, you show a gun, it is bound to go off. The curtain on "politics as usual" in the broadest, deepest sense, is about to come unmoored, and we'll get to see behind the scenes. This is what we all dread. The end to our MSM spoon-fed delusions. God help us all.

Our opinions may differ on the "when," but none of us who post here are at odds over the "how." We know what's coming, and we WANT to do more than we already have to prevent it.

I recently had a chance to chat with a fellow who had discovered my work. "Loved your book, but don't you think it's a little bit late for stuff like that?" No, said me, it's not too late for anything we can do. then I asked him what he had done to "chip in." His answer? "I'm buying this book."

Was I mad? No, and I'll tell you why. Public opinion can be influenced in many different ways. It's that conversation you had with a friend on the bus...that got overheard by the few who cared to listen. It's a book written by an average guy who has had bad luck with publishing. It's that essay you wrote in your blog that you think nobody sees. It could even be what your child says to another child after talking with you. Public opinion is a vast and powerful force, but its not easily motivated.

The simple fact of the matter is that no contribution is too small. Remember that ATS goes out to the world wide web on RSS feed. Even the smallest trivial thing you say can be the answer to somebody's google search. You reach others even if you don't know you're doing it, each time you start typing to post on ATS. As long as you keep on doing, you'll never know how many people you've influenced. You'll never know who they are, where they live, or what they themselves are capable of...but you will know they are there be-cause you will eventually notice....things.

Justin, no offense (because I find your contributions quite worthwhile), but it seems like every time you post you are promoting your book. Go back and re-read your last several posts. It may be just me but it takes away from what you write here. By now we all know you've written a book. Maybe you could just buy a pop-up ad on the site?

I apologize if I did offend anyone. I won't say any more about that.

^

I hope for more urgency than that, or at least a real awakening, because I think that for the really big picture, public pressure through traditional political means is ineffectual. Politics has been so detached from actual power for such a long time, two generations now, that normal responses are the political equivalent of pushing the panic button--it's not hooked up to anything that's going to get a response. For smaller things yes, but not the stuff that counts.

For example, what forestalled (not stopped) the immigration bill was apparently some very threatening lobbying. Congress frankly got scared, and begged off. But this just means it will be dealt with in some other way. NAU, most likely. the steamroller goes on.

I think most of the martial law, gut-feeling terrorist warnings flooding us right now are being perpetrated as psy ops. They want to get us scared, worked up, literally expecting Armageddon, so that when (ostensibly) nothing comes of it, the cry-wolfers will be discredited, and the agenda will be able to continue to go forward as it has so far, in incremental steps. The frog in the pot simile is perfect, they'll cook us slowly and we'll never see the single defining event to cause real mass resistance. 9/11 put them over the hump.

That is, unless the neocon/Strangelovian faction loses it and can't take its lumps and bide its time and does something monumentally stupid. And frankly, seeing their hubris and impatience and stupidity so far, that is a real possibility.

Originally posted by gottago
The curtain on "politics as usual" in the broadest, deepest sense, is about to come unmoored, and we'll get to see behind the scenes. This is what we all dread. The end to our MSM spoon-fed delusions. God help us all.

Hmmm...I remember running across a new website about this very recently. From what I've been able to gather so far, the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) has been getting degraded to the point where it now takes several years to process any requests for information; You can get further info about FOIA & how to use it at gwu.edu.
As a response, what some of the FOIA Staff has been doing is trying to get legislation through Congress to Amend the FOIA for greater strength & more authority to cut through for better accountability. You can check out those efforts at Open the Government.

Originally posted by jtma508
...but it seems like every time you post you are promoting your book. Go back and re-read your last several posts. It may be just me but it takes away from what you write here.

...Or perhaps Justin keeps referring to the book so he doesn't wind up having to re-write it all over again just to post it here for our reference...

[edit on 28-7-2007 by MidnightDStroyer]

Why is it that people keep claiming "the wmd of iraq were a lie perpetrated by the U.S. government"?....

Even after years of delving into this and after years of posting the statements from most world leaders all who believed Saddam had wmd, you still get people trying to claim "the Bush administration came up with these lies"....

It is being repeated so many times that soon enough everyone will forget what "all the world leaders were saying, and the real reasons why half of the world didn't want to go to war with Saddam's regime"...

I have noticed that as time goes by, the "mob rule" is what influences most of what is being reported as "truth" these days.... The truth does not matter anymore for many, only what is "en vogue" these days is what matters... Shame really.

Many polititians have noticed this trend, and are using it to further their own political goals.

BTW, Barbara Boxer is the same senator who claimed "Communism is dead even in Cuba"....but people want to think she is the pinnacle of truth...

[edit on 29-7-2007 by Muaddib]

Muaddib

Yes you're right in one sense, Steven Colbert's "truthiness" has largely taken over.

However, by the time of the invasion Hans Blix had very clearly stated that Iraq had no WMDs and this was totally ignored. So it cuts both ways. The administration was happy to ignore what was truthful, on-the-ground intel by the chief UN WMD inspector in Iraq.

Originally posted by gottago
Muaddib

Yes you're right in one sense, Steven Colbert's "truthiness" has largely taken over.

However, by the time of the invasion Hans Blix had very clearly stated that Iraq had no WMDs and this was totally ignored. So it cuts both ways. The administration was happy to ignore what was truthful, on-the-ground intel by the chief UN WMD inspector in Iraq.

As i remember Blix did not say that until the war was well on it's way, after he had been claiming the contrary for months before and even a bit after the war started.

My memory could be shaky, but that's what i remember.

Even former President Clinton told the PM of Protugal that he still believed Iraq had wmd, even after the war had been going on for months and some were claiming there were no wmd in Iraq.

www.spacewar.com...

What about the statements made by Putin himself that the Russian intelligence services were giving information to the U.S. since 9/11 and up to the beginning of the war in Iraq that Saddam had been planning to make terrorist attacks on U.S. soil?

Everyone back then thought that Saddam had wmd, half of the world just wanted for the sanctions to continue, so they could keep making money meanwhile 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 had already died because of the sanctions alone (and that's not counting the people murdered by Saddam's regime and sons), the other half of the world wanted to oust Saddam and stop it once and for all.

Originally posted by Muaddib
Why is it that people keep claiming "the wmd of iraq were a lie perpetrated by the U.S. government"?....

Even after years of delving into this and after years of posting the statements from most world leaders all who believed Saddam had wmd, you still get people trying to claim "the Bush administration came up with these lies"....

It was because the Bush administration was selecting intelligence that supported their case for war. The whole WMD strategy was an angle they felt the public would support, which they did, but for every piece of evidence that said Saadam had WMD’s there was more evidence to suggest he didn’t and this was being kept from us.

www.usatoday.com...

Originally posted by Muaddib
I have noticed that as time goes by, the "mob rule" is what influences most of what is being reported as "truth" these days.... The truth does not matter anymore for many, only what is "en vogue" these days is what matters... Shame really.

When I first read “mob rule” I first thought you meant the Bush administration. I had flash backs of the movie Godfather, with Dick Cheney sitting behind a desk saying “Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

Seriously, public opinion has changed with good reason after all the previously mentioned information came to light. People like Richard Clark, George Tenet and Colon Powell have talked about how intelligence was manipulated.

Something tells me that you already know all this but refuse to admit you were wrong.

Even still, were WMD's enough of a reason to invade Iraq?

There are plenty of rogue countries with WMD's. There are plenty of countries that oppress their populations and torture. Darfur, anyone?

Why did the Bush Administration select Iraq to invade instead of a dozen other countries?

We all know the answer is Oil.