Shutting Bush Down on Iran: A Word About Strategy

---To use baseball jargon, there will always be home run hitters and singles hitters,... and "power" games vs. strategies based on speed, defense and pitching. It might be unwise to try to oppose Bush's single-minded march to a wider war with a home run hitter approach,.. in effect, placing all our hopes on one action or device. We need to "cover all the bases," and our national democratic legislators can be of incalculable assistance... but only if they adopt a perspective of a broader, more populist opposition front to Bush's one-man military rule,... and then get busy helping to organize and mobilize it. And time is short.

--- The senators, both democratic and republican, who yesterday assailed the Bush "surge" plan in the panel meeting with Condi Rice, did a very good job of THAT component of a "cover all bases" approach. But they're just the home run hitters, and they cannot stop Bush by themselves. They still have to re-visit the issue of the original AUMF, as well as serious constitutional issues attending to checks & balances, etc. But what does Bush care about the Constitution? It is the very outpouring of negativity following Bush's speech which suggests a more promising approach.

--- Democrats now control a majority of governorships. Every governor ought to be making strong statements contesting Bush's misuse of their National Guard units. Every state legislature ought to be adopting resolutions of opposition to the "surge," resolutions reminiscent of the amendment process, itself. I'd personally like to see statements of "prior dissent" where Executive Orders are concerned,... in effect saying, "Go ahead,.. declare martial law. We ain't going along with it." There must be significant involvement at the state level. National legislators may have to spend some time back home to help out with this. A "special" conference of governors would be just spectacular.

--- Impeachment should not be "off the table." In fact, there should never be a day when it is not mentioned in Washington press coverage.

--- The House of Representatives can do a lot. It can cut off funds. It can "condition" the use of the funds it does approve. It can propose windfall or war-profiteering taxes on Big Oil, Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, Carlyle, et al,.. and redouble the investigations into their financial malfeasance. They can raise taxes on the wealthy on the sheer justification of war expenses. In short, they can take all the fun out of this war for those who planned and profitted from it.

--- Statements and news items opposing the war and the surge should be issuing from every office in government,.... VA,.. GAO,...OMB,.."retired" generals,.. you name it. And all simultaneously, too. Where Phil Spector engineered recordings with his "wall of sound" philosophy,.. Bush needs to be confronted with a "wall of opposition" coming at him from every corner of the US,... and not just from Congress. The democrats can organize that. The moment of opportunity seems to have arrived. Bush should be made to feel like Hitler in his bunker. It CAN be done

This team has always had it easy. Right from the start Bush should have snowed under with work, if not challenges. What the leadership was unwilling to contemplate back then is necessity now. Bush's weakness is his personal weakness. He can't handle reality or do the real job. In frustration he has carved out easy tyranny over the graves of his own GOP majorities. very broad opposition that most Americans would not even consider opposition- namely mundane process and routine legislation aimed at the top are just as important as a showdown where Bush maintains his aloof power plays and Congress its uneasy control over vote outcomes and language.

Bush routinely sat back as everyone else scrambles over infighting, MSM spin and even distractions caused by his own brazen crimes, calculated to provide cover for other crimes. Time he was involved and the center of total attention and responsibility other than at his leisure in Readers' Digest fairy tales. Time for payback concerning the Bush tar of demeaning others' mental state or honor. Time for everything EXCEPT sitting back and accepting another single pathed tragic chorus role in a drama written by Cheney as a neocon Comic Epic.

That goes for the tin heart fraud that hides behind the throne too. Early pressure knocked him for more than one loop. Give him more.

Good analysis by Parisle, but I don't think the House has the political guts to cut off funds. However, I heard Rahm Emanuel on Charlie Rose suggest that they might condition the use of funds on the "readiness" of the US forces. Since Bush has wrecked both the Army and Marines, worn out their equipment, and drained them physically, a "readiness" requirement might stop the surge. It would be hard for the Republicans to argue that "unready" troops should be sent into combat.

--- It is the very political tentativeness of federal-level democratic legislators which makes me want to extend the effort to the state level,.. where the people, themselves can be more significantly engaged. But somebody has got to come up with that Constitutional roadblock, too. I'd like to see the Constitutional issues OUT of the hands of rock-star politicians, and put quietly into the hands of a legal & constitutional scholar panel,.... chaired by John Dean, eh? But they would have to work fast.

The Democratic Congress may be hampered by electronic vote counting, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--which places a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists--but Diebold/ES&S don't care as much about rigging local elections, as they do about federal power to manufacture war. Local/state governments may therefore better reflect the anti-Iraq War deluge, and they certainly feel the impacts of the $10 trillion Bush Junta deficit, every day, in deteriorating schools, emergency services and preparedness, infrastructure, medical care and all the things that local/state governments do, and in the difficulties of progressive planning with this Junta in the White House.

Also, four or five state legislatures have had resolutions of impeachment introduced into the state legislature, under Jefferson's Rules, which allow an individual state to submit articles of impeachment to the US House. Such resolutions have priority status. The House must stop all business to consider them. Illinois was the first to see such a resolution introduced at the state legislature level. Also, California and Vermont--and I think Minnesota (and one other?). Only one is needed. But it would best to have several--if not many, or all!

Local towns, communities and cities--and individuals and civic groups--can help this along by pressuring state legislators.

Although Congress is handicapped by being insufficiently representative of the American people (70% of whom want this war stopped now), there is no reason to believe that stopping the war, and impeaching Bush/Cheney if they persist (or for the many other reasons)--cannot be driven from the bottom, from the grass roots. Grass roots democracy is happening--and has been highly successful--all over South America. Why can't it happen here?

But one thing that I think is key to moving any illegitimately elected members of Congress (too many of them!) to stop the war is to keep the pressure on for election reform, so that they know that there WILL be consequences if they shill for war profiteers and the oil cartel. They have had a free ride now since 2002 and the passage of the "Help America Vote for War Act" ($3.9 billion used to fast-track electronic voting controlled by Bushite corporations). They need to know that this unfair and unamerican advantage to warmongers is going to end, and that we are going to start counting all the votes in broad daylight. Very important item, this! The voters showed that they can overwhelm the machine programming when they've a mind to, in '06. They also showed that they're onto the electronic voting scam (huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting this time--ordinary voters trying to figure out a way around the rigged programming). Now we need to demonstrate to the Democratic Party, to our legitimate leaders in Congress, and--perhaps most important--to STATE/LOCAL officials that we will not put up with non-transparent vote counting any longer--and they MUST restore TRANSPARENT elections.

Put the fear of God into the corrupt! American voters HAVE HAD IT!

--- I did not know about impeachment resolutions cropping up in state legislatures, but I am greatly encouraged to hear it. Last year, I wrote the draft of a "prior dissent" resolution for the Vermont state legislature,... under the auspices of the Second Vermont Republic secessionist-minded group up there,...... but it failed to pass. Perhaps another time. And I cannot help but assume that the incoming democrats are going to take steadfast aim at electronic voting deficiencies. I mean,.....they are,..... right? It isn't even Constitutional if a recount isn't possible.

I'm kicking and recommending this one, I hope more people read. :kick: