Cheyenne

Here are some things that distinguish the Republican party, as it exists now:
Republican Senators and Congressmen (and women) are expected to blindly follow the Republican president, no matter how outrageously anti-democratic his behavior. And they do. This includes going to war without even having hearings on the issue first, parroting the administration's lies and distortions, and resorting to insincere and transparent excuses for the administration once its lies have become apparent.

A heirarchial structure in which there is no other power center in the party other than the White House, making the President's wishes tantamount to party policy, no matter how misguided, ignorant, or destructive.

A right wing which has made the devil's bargain of doing anything to win, thus removing ethical, democratic, and moral considerations from their standards of behavior completely. Never before in history has a US Congress refused admission to conference committees charged with resolving the differences in the two bodies' versions of a law, to minority members of either body. Never before has a vote been held open for over four hours in defiance of the rules, to permit the deciding votes to be rounded up by the leadership. Never before has a vote on an omnibus federal title been taken only hours after the dictionary-size briefing documents on the law have been distributed. The Democrats certainly have enjoyed their share of the graft over the years, but they never did any of these stupid, arrogant, or anti-democratic things.

But most damning of all, the Republican Congress has allowed the President to abrogate the right of habeas corpus, a right which, in addition to being specifically named as inviolable in the Constitution, goes back to the Magna Carta. They have allowed him to lie to them, saying no wiretapping without warrants was going on, and then when the lie was exposed, they voted him the power to go on doing it, again in direct and illegal violation of the Constitution. These people have no morals. They do not value democracy. It is time for them to fall.

Mike Guyot

Cross posted at http://www.wyomingnetwork.com/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=6

In case anyone forgot to mention it to you, your father’s republican party is dead. What is left of it has succumbed to the likes of Pat Robertson, Lou Dobson, or party line lemmings.

While I understand the majority of you GOPers never envisioned it quite like this, now is the time to face facts. The executive branch, lead by Cheney/Bush, and Congress have been feeding like hogs at the public trough of tax dollars for years. Cheney was worth an estimated $20+ million dollars when he entered office as VP; when he leaves office it will be an estimated $180+ million . Halliburton has accomplished some great things…for Cheney. Lil Bush? Don’t worry. His dad’s been raking it in with the Carlyle Group with the Bin Laden family , and good ol’ Neil Bush , his bro, has been making a killing with some crappy software for No Child Left Behind. All done with the Savings and Loan industry , Neil?

Anyway, your wonderful party leaders understand exactly how to count on you to keep them in office; they push your magic buttons!

Magic Button # 1 – Immigration. Oh middle-America working class people, you love to respond to this one. “Defend the Border!” is your rally cry to drive you to the polls in record numbers. The GOP will save your borders. Yeah, right.

The truth you will never hear from the little man behind the curtain in your OZ (Rove’s office to the rest of us) is this: the corporations providing the demand for illegal labor are GOP contributors . Your leaders puff up and declare with bravado that they will end this flood of illegal aliens. The truth: rich republicans will continue to use this cheap labor, regardless.

Magic Button # 2 – Taxes , Death Tax . First clue, you don’t make enough money to be affected by the death tax. Plus, after Bush Co. is finished bankrupting the country by borrowing against your kids’ future, how exactly do we pay this debt off? Remember NAFTA and CAFTA? The jobs have gone to other countries. The only people making out gangbusters in this economy own utilities, oil, military weapons, or belong to Dick Cheney.

Taxes redistribute wealth (economics basic principle) government intervention is bad for business (another principle), unless there is external tampering with the market (really good principle). So now the Uber-rich have sucked up all our tax dollars, how do we get the money back? The GOP will do nothing to address this problem. Any tax break you received went right back to the GOP in the form of donations from Enron, Exxon, you get the picture… How many billions of your tax dollars disappeared in Iraq?

Magic Button # 3 – Terror. If it was 7 years between the first bombing of the Towers and the U.S. Cole, than how in the hell can the GOP state they are keeping us safe?! Al qaeda methodically plan out these attacks. Being bogged down in Iraq and handing over the ports to Dubai makes us safer. These jokers couldn’t help Americans during Katrina, most of the Gulf states aren’t rebuilt or even close, and the only thing Homeland Security is good at is grabbing headlines for being internet predators?Why are Chertoff and Rumsfield still employed? If you ran a business like this, you’d go bankrupt!

There are a hell of a lot more qualified and intelligent individuals to be considered for these positions. The problem is nobody of caliber wants to work for Bush/Cheney.

This November when you hit the polls in Wyoming, remember, a vote against Cubin sends the message, “I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THE WORST ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS IN HISTORY!”

Three points are always on my mind as we fight the right.

1) It's the money, stupid. Eric Alterman's October 24th lead here , elaborates as to the role of dollars in election success. There's no ignoring it. As Walter Cronkite would say, "that's the way it is."

2) He who controls media, controls message. As fewer powerful interests own papers and the airwaves, not only are few voices heard in the democracy, more information is disseminated without challenge as to truth or accuracy. If you are not already part of Media Matters, check it out. Talk about patriots. Read, participate, and contribute to this wonderful site. The folks at Media Matters are taking on the propaganda machine and the sycophantic journalists who bow to the desires of the administration's talking points.

3) Lastly, it is about language, which George Lakoff so brilliantly indicates here. We of the left need not only to reject the characterizations of the right, but clearly state what we mean and mean what we say. I encourage you to read and give thought to defining our terms and speaking with greater clarity as we refute the Republicans.

by Terry Kenny

I keep trying to find the magic phrase. The one that crystallizes the fact that the issue is the Constitution versus Bush. Bush wants more power. He doesn't want his "hands tied" with mere legalities. He's always asking for "streamlined" authority. That means a quicker way of getting what he wants.

He doesn't like to be bothered with consultations with other people. When he meets with the leaders of the House and Senate of his own party, he, or Karl Rove, talks. Everybody else listens. It's a kind of "streamlined" consultation. At least in his mind. How about, "George Bush--- defending his ego as if it were the nation"?

George Washington famously forbade the use of torture on captive British officers. This precedent wasn't worthy of honoring, in the opinion of George Bush. "George Bush knows better. He always does."

"Bush tortures in your name," comes close. It carries a lot of implications. I am not sure how many of them reverberate in the mind when the phrase falls on the ear. That Bush claims his authority from you. And me. And that if we do not oppose his declared arrogation to himself of the power to torture suspected terrorists, then we are hard-pressed to refute the imputation that we are party to the torture.

I will not be party to torture. I am stating unequivocally that torture is morally wrong, and I do not support its use by my government. Ever.

Remember how, not long ago, during our historic contest with our Great Power rival, the Soviet Union, the soviets used to be damned with the accusation that their form of government was totalitarian? Totalitarian means that the government's authority is total. It can torture and kill whomever it chooses. George Bush has not yet explicitly claimed the authority to kill a prisoner, but we all know how acceptable "collateral damage" is to him. George Bush is "tough". I doubt that if someone were killed in the process of being tortured, even if not deliberately, George Bush would regret having committed the torture. We used to take pride and satisfaction in the fact that our adversary on the world stage was totalitarian, and we were not. Now it's not true anymore.

It's a funny kind of a concept of toughness, though, that thinks itself justified in making decisons that are going to fatally affect other people, without consulting with them, even superficially, before making that decision. That's really kind of like giving yourself a pass, isn't it? It's using the power without taking the responsibility of doing the upleasant work of making a sound decision.

That's the most amazing thing about George Bush: he is convinced that he knows exactly what to do. Otherwise, why would he be so reluctant to engage in dialog with others having a legitimate interest in the outcome of the President's decisions? And yet, his track record is abysmal. "George Bush: making bad decisions one at a time."

How about, "Stay the disastrous course?"

Is that really what we mean by "tough"? The inability to defend your ideas in the public forum? The inability to create consensus on even the most crucial issues, and therefore the need to deflect even the possibility of discussion of the nation's policy by refusing to allow even the physical presence of dissenters? So it's reasonable to exclude people from the President's presence? How about excluding Senators of the minority party from conference committees?

The President is afraid to publicly confront the mothers of Iraq KIA's who wish to criticize his policy. Instead, when one manages to insinuate herself into his presence, he has her ejected by his guards. This is "tough"? "Bush: tougher than anybody's mother."

"Bush: it's his country, not yours."

I really don’t think a lot of blame can be placed on the media in Wyoming. I mean, after all, we have a huge state here. Geographically speaking, it’s a lot of space to cover without a hell of a lot of revenue from advertising sales.

Blame for what, you might ask. Blame for allowing Cubin to run a silent campaign. The Cubin campaign isn’t foolish; they certainly understand Cubin can’t run on her record. Nope, she has to hide behind the R next to her name and cross her fingers.

Cubin hopes things stay quiet.

So, its’ up to Mike and me to help remind our readers exactly what Cubin stands for:

1) Government intrusion into private lives.
2) Gross misuse of tax dollars.
3) Creating a record deficit.
4) Legislating a perverted view of Christianity.
5) Illegal wire-tapping and spying on U.S. citizens.
6) Eliminating Habeas Corpus from the Constitution.
7) Allowing war profiteers, energy companies, insurance companies, credit card companies, HELL! You name the corporation, and as long as they’ve been making big bucks off the federal government, I bet they are in her corner. Anyways, she allows them to profit obscenely off U. S. tax dollars.

You see Cubin’s taking a page out of the Enzi book. The only difference is Enzi is below the radar and quickly becoming a future Dick Cheney. How in the hell does the junior senator from Wyoming move up so quickly in the power rankings? God help us all…

My grandfather always used to say, “There’s nothing like the belly button hitting the backbone to motivate people to the voting booth.” The older I get, the more I tend to believe it. How far do we have to go as a nation before people realize what has happened? A loved one locked up in a secret prison for years because they expressed an opposing point of view? Four bucks a gallon for gas? Another 30% increase in electricity and natural gas? Another 3000 U.S. troops killed because of lies?

So, its up to you and its up to us to continue to drive home the fact: Cubin is bad for Wyoming and the United States!

The basic consideration in this election between Cubin and Trauner, as in almost every other congressional race, is this: Cubin has been faithfully enabling Bush throughout his incredibly destructive administration.

Cubin has been voting with Bush in the high nineties as a percent. She will do anything he says. Even though you may be a Republican, surely you can see by now that George Bush is a nut. He has delusions of grandeur. He doesn't know how to make a plan, he doesn't know what should and shouldn't be done, and if he is a conservative, it certainly isn't in the fiscal sense. Bush is driving this country broke. He is spending money in Iraq faster than the treasury can print it.

Iraq is nothing other than a rerun of Vietnam. Just Bush indulging in a little revisionism. After ten or twelve bloody years, (depending on how you count), America finally reached the consensus that we should stop pouring our national treasure and the blood of our brothers, cousins, sons, and friends down the endless sump-hole of Southeast Asia. So we brought our troops home and ended the war. It was that or fight there forever.

Then along comes Bush. He has to fight a war because he CAN! He's got this great military left to him by Ronald Reagan and his daddy AND (gasp) the Democrats. Might as well do something with it. It's like this huge untapped asset just sitting there. And he thinks of a way to work it so that right before the crucial Congressional elections which are going to make or break his Presidency, he can announce that Iraq has nuclear, excuse me, nookuler weapons and that he HAS to be given power to "use force" against Iraq, and the decision HAS to be made by the Congress BEFORE the election, and anybody who doesn't vote with him is soft on terrorism and a coward.

So he gets his vote. He hasn't asked for a declaration of war, which of course the Congress would have to debate (we wouldn't want any debate) or even for the authority to use military measures. He has only been given the authority to "use force", but he's a wartime President, just looking for the scenario that will allow him to take his place with Truman and Churchill (!), so it's "shock and awe".

But the President has been listening to all those Republican revisionists for far too long. They say that Vietnam was lost because of the press, because of the demonstrators and because of the (shudder) liberals. We could have won, if only we hadn't been "weak". These folks have never grokked the difference between the war and the occupation. They just don't seem to understand the forces of history. Because the United States did not lose the Vietnam war. We won the war. Then we tried to occupy the country in order to impose our idea of democracy on it. And we couldn't do it.

The mission wasn't accomplished when President Bush took his Top Gun turn on the aircraft carrier, but the US decisively won the second Iraq war.

But we are no more able to occupy the country and impose our form of democracy there than we were able to in Vietnam.

So how come if President Bush is such a smart man that he's entitled to decide to take the entire nation to war without consulting with the people at large, the experts on the region, our traditional allies, our trading partners, the Congress, or even most of his own cabinet, he's not smart enough to look at Vietnam and understand that if we keep fighting in Iraq until the whole country is pacified, we are never going to be able to stop?

Now Cubin is Bush's lapdog. You cannot vote for Cubin without voting to enable Bush.

If I were a conservative, I would do this: I would say, "The Republican Party has gotten away from its basic identity. Republicanism is not about preemptive war and the torture of military prisoners. Sure, we believe in a strong nation, but we need a smart nation too. It's the responsibilty of the Federal government to get top value for the dollars it spends on everything, and the Iraq war is not top value. In fact, it's a huge waste and a drain on the nation's vital resources. George Bush was a neo-conservative, not a real conservative. It's time the Republican party got back to its roots. That government is best which governs least, sure, but when it's absolutely needed, it's got to be there."

Ya'll Republicans need to rescue your party from the Neocons. Expel them. Go back to being sensible conservatives who don't condone firing people because they tell you truths you don't want to be true. And please start by expelling Barbara Cubin. She is never going to help to put a leash on Bush, because she's already on HIS leash. Let her just go back to Lander, or wherever she's from, and forget her. Get a better candidate in two years.

Mike Guyot

In late-breaking developments, the Speaker of the House tried to explain his failure to fire himself after it was proven that he knew about the complaints from House pages about Mark Foley.

The Speaker, Dennis Hastert, Republican from Illinois, was asked, "In view of your statement, and I quote:"
"I didn't think anybody at any time in my office did anything wrong," Hastert said. But he also issued a stern warning: "If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs." , and in view of the fact that House Majority Leader John Boehner told the press that he informed you "months ago", and yet you did nothing, how can you not fire yourself?"

The Speaker's chief of staff, whose job is hanging by a thread, tried to explain the Speaker's position. "Technically, since he doesn't supervise himself, the Speaker has no authority to fire himself, so even though when he said "they", he was referring to whoever knew, he didn't mean himself," the aide explained. "As for doing wrong," he went on, "since, after the Speaker was informed that there was a late-middle aged sexual predator sexually harrassing underage minors, he did nothing, he could not have done anything wrong. Only something can be wrong. This was nothing."

"This was really nothing more than a prank," said a prominent neo-Nazi clergyman. "These boys were just trying to embarrass Mark, and when he razzed them back, they got scared. Them being underage minors and the House standing in loco parentis is really more of a coincidence than anything. The thing to keep in mind, though," he went on, " is that Mark never touched any of them. How can it be sexual harrassment if nobody's touching? As far as cybersex goes, that was all strictly consensual, and I don't believe for a minute that Mark would actually do it in the House Chamber."

Hastert's spokesman went on to say that the Speaker has always been known for his consistency, and that nothing he may perviously have said is in any way in conflict with what he is saying now. "Is it true?" the spokesman asked rhetorically. "You can't prove that it's not true. You can't prove a negative. I wouldn't say that Boehner is lying. No. I would not say that. Maybe Boehner told Denny Hastert what he said he told him, but the speaker just wasn't listening at that moment. I mean, he's got a lot on his mind, you know? So no, I don't believe that Boehner was lying, even though what he said about the Speaker being informed wasn't true."

Asked whether the Speaker would consult with the President before ultimately deciding whether to fire himself, the spokesman said this: "Why should he talk to him? He's not from the Speaker's district. The Speaker doesn't work for the President. He works for the people of his district, or their duly elected corporate representatives, as the case may be. Besides, Karl Rove told him he didn't have to."

Mike Guyot

So it turns out there really were weapons of mass destruction all the time. It's just that they were in North Korea, instead of Iraq.

There was rampant speculation at the time of the Iraq invasion that the President had misspoken himself and meant to order war with Iran. Iraq, Iran, who can tell the difference. You mean, not all Muslims are the same? People also said that it was as if when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR had invaded Mexico. This confusion about which country is which seems to be fairly routine for the Bushies.

Recently several commentators have pointed out that we are not well-placed for another war, such as with Iran, since our Army and Marines are overcommitted and running short of materiel. But does he know that? You know, the George Bush who won't listen to anyone else's opinion unless it has been proven conclusively to accord with his own? Does he actually have that much judgement? Or will he delude himself and the nation into another catastrophic war?

Can the man recognize facts? I have seen no evidence that he can. He appears to believe that locker-room optimism and blind confidence work some kind of magic which alters reality. But the magic is gone. The tricks and the illusions have all been used up. The fascination worked, but now it's worn off. And George Bush's bargain with the Devil is about to come due.

God knows, the quality of his advisors certainly isn't reassuring. Condosleezza Lies would swear that the sun rose in the West if it would make the reporters go away, even for a little while. Dick Cheney, a man whose values are so inverted as to be reminiscent of Satanism, is obviously quite mad, whether we classify his disease as psychiatric, or characterize his condition as having a black hole where his conscience should be. When the years of America's dominance are written by History, Dick Cheney will be remembered as America's Caligula, a man driven to egoistic frenzy by his unquenchable lust for power.

And of course, Henry Kissinger. We've recently been informed that he sees the President every couple of months or so, and advises him on the war. He's got a lot of experience dealing with quagmires. No wonder this war seems so familiar.

Will George W Bush, first American Dictator, reeling through another one of his delusions of grandeur, staggering drunkenly from one disaster to another one, determined to prove his will supreme and to conquer reality, no matter how costly that may be, try to start another pre-emptive war according to the doctrine which bears his name?

If Republicans control Congress, who's going to stop him?

Mike Guyot

I think it is highly instructive that George W Bush is always talking about his "gut". He makes all of his evaluations, and more importantly, his most critical decisions, based on his "gut". I'm sure that there are administration sycophants who are willing to assert that "gut" is a metaphor for some sort of intuitive process, maybe even one guided by God, but I think it's clearly a Freudian slip.

After all, Bush's gut, in the literal sense, is his alimentary canal, and all of his decisions are based on his appetites. Which, unfortunately, are severely twisted. Bush's actions are based on one criterion only: what he wants. He tries to get what he wants. Considerations of the feasibility, respectfulness, collegiality, common humanity, or even the moral acceptibility of his behavior are not permited to contribute to his decision-making process. What George Bush wants, George Bush gets, or he is going to know the reason why. Again unfortunately, he seems unable to recognize the reasons when they turn up.

Bush thinks that making decisions based on his "gut" is a good thing. That it somehow shows his integrity. What it really shows is his inability to control his appetites by resort to reason. When someone makes decisions with his "gut", the decision is being made at an unconscious level, never a good policy for decision-making.

Appetite is clearly a very important factor in Bush's personality. He has a pronounced appetite for control, which is why he will not allow anyone whose status is below that of a Congressman, and whose opinions differ from his own, to approach him, on pain of arrest. Remember the incident of the KIA soldier's mother who shouted at him while he was making a speech and then was not only bodily removed, but also arrested and charged with harrassment? Bush has been known to require signed loyalty statements from prospective members of an audience, even at fund-raisers.

His appetite for leisure is amazing. This is what has led him to become the President who is perpetually on vacation. By some accounts, Bush has taken more than twice as much vacation as the average modern President. It is probably also what leads him not to read crucial briefing documents.

His appetite for raw power can hardly be overstated. It is not enough that he is already thought of as the most powerful man in the world. He must also be allowed to do whatever he wishes, regardless of the law he is actually signing, the constitution, moral considerations, and basic human decency. Not only must Congress give him these powers, but they must do so at once, without research, hearings, discussion, or deliberation. His appetites demand immediate satisfaction.

No wonder that Bush's "gut" is so pathetically inadequate to make decisions. It is unconscious. It is uninformed. It cannot reason, it can only demand.

Now the more interesting part of this rationale of decision-making is that God has chosen Bush to be President, and is telling him what to do. This belief is held by many people who, as they like to say among themselves, "claim to be Christian".

Curiously, Bush has not protected the weak. He has not visited the sick, although he has visted the wounded. I might mistake this for some acknowledgement of responsibility if Bush did not so consistently reject responsibility. (It is always the fault of uninstructed underlings, of those who brought the inconvenient facts up, of things "no one could have forseen", or of "bad information" that Bush makes his blunders.)

He has not sheltered the widow and orphan. He has not shown humility, or charity, or mercy. He has certainly not borne up the downtrodden. He has talked incessantly of faith, but never of love. This man is not a Christian. Can you imagine a man who modeled himself on Christ striving to institutionalize torture? How is this reconcilable with "inasmuch as ye have done these things to the least of these, ye have done them to me"?

One other disastrous quality of a "gut": it is incapable of learning from its mistakes. Somehow Bush can never see any of his "gut's" decisions as mistakes, no matter how forcibly they are refuted by events. What was digested yesterday is not the concern of the "gut". It is only important that it move on from here.

Mike Guyot

Here are a few of my favorite Republican jokes.

How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

I don't know, but when the lights come back on, the ladder is missing and you're 9 Trillion dollars in debt.

How can you tell when Donald Rumsfeld is lying?

His lips are moving.

How can you tell when George Bush is lying?

Dick Cheney's lips are moving.

One day, Donald Rumsfeld comes in to the Oval Office to see the President.
"Mr. President," he says, "I have some bad news. Yesterday in Iraq, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"Oh shit!" says Bush. "Can we draft enough to replace them?"
"Mr. President," says Rumsfeld, "We don't have any Brazilians, and besides that we don't have the draft anymore, remember?"
Bush puts his head down on his desk and starts to cry and bang his fist on the desk.
"Mr. President, why are you crying?" asks Rumsfeld. "You never get upset when the troops get killed."
"I know, but it's never been this many before," says Bush. "How many is a brazillion, anyway?"

Stop me if you've heard this one.
George W Bush is riding on an airplane with Karl Rove, Pope John Paul, and a high school kid, when the nose of the plane gets shot off by a missile.
"Sorry, guys," says Karl Rove, "but a movement is nothing without its Mastermind, so I'm gonna have to use one of these three parachutes here." So saying, he jumps out of the plane.
Bush dives for a parachute. He shrugs into the shoulder straps and turns to the Pope and the kid.
"Karl always claimed to be the Mastermind," the tells them, "but the real Mastermind is me." He jumps out of the plane.
John Paul turns to the boy. "Well, my son," he says, " I'm an old man, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for your death. You take the last parachute."
"Don't worry, man," says the kid, handing the Pope a parachute. "The Mastermind just jumped out of the plane wearing my book bag."

The real joke, though, is that, according to an article in yesterday's Washington Post by Alan Cooperman, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR200610...
78% of White Evangelicals voted Republican in 2004. Why? Because George Bush told them he was a Christian, in fact, a born again Christian. He has inimated that he is being directed by God, and apparently many of them believe him.
The joke is that the inventor of pre-emptive war pretends to be serving the Prince of Peace.
Mike Guyot