Views from the Cyberhenge

The time for being polite is over. It’s no longer a matter of left or right, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or Independent. George W. Bush, the man who called the Constitution “just a goddamn piece of paper,” has violated his oath of office a hundred times over. Illegal wars, torture of prisoners and other violations of national and international laws, multibillion-dollar no bid contracts for his friends, exposure of CIA operatives for political gain, the deaths, maimings, and rapes of thousands of American servicemen and women, and many other crimes committed by this Administration demand that our representatives and senators actually do something instead of just sitting on their hands like cowards.

People of all political parties and none can and will vote our supposed representatives out of office. No incumbant is safe. I don’t care how big your corporate warchests are. I and millions of other American citizens will no longer listen to the same old excuses. We will spend the millions of dollars necessary to put honest men and women into office. We will not be “good Germans” while our nation’s rulers commit war crimes and atrocities in our names. I, along with millions of other Americans, am sick to death of our senators and representatives making excuses for not impeaching the criminals who have violated not just the basic human rights of millions of people at home and around the world, but the supposed conservative principles they claim to serve.

Sen. Schumer, Sen. Clinton, Rep. Engel: swear now to impeach the criminals or look for another job.

(Above is today’s letter to the New York Times, which they won’t print. However, a copy was sent to the Senators and my Representative.

Some useful political memes have occurred to me recently as “candidates” to be spread about the political memepool.

The corporate Democrats have been fuming about the challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman from Ned Lamont. Since it looks like Lieberman will lose the Democratic primary, he’s going to run as an “independent,” which could conceivably split the Democratic Party in Connecticut and elect a Republican Senator to replace Lieberman. New meme: “How would replacing Lieberman with an official Republican change anything?” Whining Joe Lieberman has voted repeatedly with the Republican Party and the Bush Regime for the last several years on almost every important issue, including Operation Iraqi Looting and the Traitor Act. Connecticut already has a Republican Senator named Lieberman, so a different Republican might actually improve things.

Who knows, it could be one of those moderate, fiscally conservative Republicans one finds in the Northeast. Which leads me to another useful meme: “the Republican wing of the Republican Party” or the “real Republicans.” Just as non-corporate Dems are calling themselves the real Democrats and the party’s Democratic wing, spreading around the counterpart meme could help to separate out the sane Republicans from the neocons and the theocons. Minimal result? We split the Republican vote the same way progressive candidates are (supposedly) splitting the Democratic vote. Maximal result? We encourage sane people of all parties to vote against the corporatists and lunatics now running Congress.

Gee, what would happen if progressive candidates in the Democratic Party primaries were to arrange televised and/or webcast debates with Goldwater Republicans running in their primaries, plus Greens and Libertarians, leaving the corporatist candidates out of the show entirely? We could call them “the Not-for-Sale Candidates’ Debates.”

And how about an Al Gore/RFK Jr. ticket in 2008? I got that idea from my dear friend Joy Williams of Fancy Pants Elitist and it’s got a bit of a ring to it…

“The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned. ”

If existing laws were enforced, 9-11 terrorists would have been deported before they could have done what they did.

Law enforcement agencies are not supposed to draft legislation — they’re supposed to enforce/support existing laws.

I expound on why I say the following here.

From an emotional perspective, the (1) escalating hypervigilance of the government compounded by (2) abuses/imbalance (including but not limited to imbalance of powers) and (3) failure to protect feels eerily like (drum roll) … my abusive ex.