Republicans continue to push tyranny

Achtung!

Wiped out in two general elections, Republicans still haven’t learned that Americans don’t want your stinking tyranny!

Yet there they go again. 18 Republicans in Congress, including 3 from California, are pushing to pass a new bill that would extend Soviet tyrannies they passed when they were the majority in Congress.

It’s H.R. 1467, the “Safe and Secure America Act of 2009.” A better name: The SS Amerika Akt, or Amerika Akt.

It extends parts that soon would expire from the 2003 USA PATRIOT ACT, which Congress passed in a panic after the 9/11 attack, and which would be better termed the USSR TRAITORS’ Act. It repealed our sacred liberties and turned American into a tyranny.

Three of the co-sponsors are from Kalifornia:  Reps. Dan Lungren, Duncan Hunter, and Elton Gallegly.

Hunter ran a risible campaign for president last year.

Lungren is notorious as an enemy of American liberties. In the early 1980s he authored the Lungren Law, which allows the government to seize your property for any reason — even if you’re innocent — without a trial. A senile Ronald Reagan signed it. It’s a total violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” He’s still at it, getting Congress to pass a new seizure law. Herr Lungren belongs in the Reichstag in 1939, not the U.S. Congress in 2009.

So long as Republicans keep proposing, and imposing, the Amerika Act and similar tyrannies, they should lose every election — and deserve to.

To Our Masters in Government, we’re just smelly “tourists”

Our Masters in Government hold us in total contempt. That’s understandable, given what we let them get away with.

But it isn’t often Our Masters in Government actually tell us what they really think of us. Senate Commissar Harry Reid actually did so, concerning the new Capitol Visitors Center, which is designed to make sure the citizens don’t get too close to Our Masters in Government.

When I first went to Washington with my family in 1972, there was little or no security in Congress. You parked your car near the Capitol, just walked in, maybe got you bag searched, then went to your congressman’s office, where his staff greeted you with smiles, a copy of the Constitution, and a lot of lies. If you got lucky, the congressman would pop out of his office and shake your hand. At least they seemed to like their constituents.

Nowadays, Congress is set up like an armed camp.  The Capitol Visitors Center keeps citizens even more remote from their “representatives,” sort of like touring Lenin’s Tomb outside the Kremlin.

The Center, of course, is way over budget:

Initially conceived in the early 1990s and projected to cost $71 million, the CVC has become an example of out-of-control government contracting and mismanagement. After costs ballooned and construction schedules spiraled out of control, the three-level, underground monument to congressional excess finally came in at a whopping $621 million and three years behind schedule.

That’s a 775% cost overrun. Probably a bargain given most government programs, such as the ongoing $7,000,000,000,000.00 bailout. Maybe we should consider the Center’s waste an economic stimulus program that anticipated the new depression by a decade.

Anyway, when asked about the new Center, Commissar Reid said:

My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.

That’s how Our Masters in Government really look on those who pay their immense salaries and keep them rolling in luxury, even during a Depression they caused. You’re not a valued citizen, but a smelly tourist who has to be kept from stinking up the perfumed halls of Congress.

You’re not free, but a slave. And don’t get close enough to your Masters’ mansion that they smell you.

Congress is making blood money off of our troops

There’s plenty good money to be made,
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade.

— “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag,” by Country Joe and the Fish

It remains curious that a Democratic Congress elected in November 2006 specifically to end the Iraq War, hasn’t. More U.S. troops are in Iraq now than before that election. So much for “democracy.”

Here’s the reason. AP reports:

Members of Congress have as much as $196 million collectively invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq war, according to a study by a nonpartisan research group….

The study found that more Republicans than Democrats hold stock in defense companies, but that the Democrats who are invested had significantly more money at stake. In 2006, for example, Democrats held at least $3.7 million in military-related investments, compared to Republican investments of $577,500.

And Bush and Cheney, of course, are up to their necks in Halliburton and other firms that profit from war.

This war isn’t about exporting “democracy,” or stopping terrorism, or ousting Saddam, or finding WMD. It’s about war profits.

Patriots fight and die; chickenhawks stay home and collect the cash.

All the tears by the chickenhawk Bush administration and the just plain chicken Democratic Congress for our dead and wounded troops are crocodile tears.

As the character King (David Keith) says in the movie “Platoon” about the poor doing the fighting:

Ever’body know, the poor are always being [expletive deleted] over by the rich. Always have, always will.

Democrats again betray voters, continue Iraq War funding — as the troops begin to revolt

13 months ago voters put Democrats in charge of the U.S. Congress with a clear mandate: End the unconstitutional, unjust, and deadly Iraq war.

Democrats repeatedly have betrayed that mandate. They have betrayed the voters. They have betrayed the troops who keep dying.

Democrats just approved, again, further funding for the war. If this were a free country, instead of funding the war, Congress would impeach Bush and Cheney for continuing the war without a declaration of war, as stipulated by the U.S. Constitution. Or at least Congress would end the funding and bring the troops home.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops in Iraq are getting fed up with the folly of Bush the Unready. Some are beginning to mutiny. The Army Times reports:

…. 2nd Platoon had gathered for a meeting and determined they could no longer function professionally in Adhamiya — that several platoon members were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.

“We said, ‘No.’ If you make us go there, we’re going to light up everything,” DeNardi said. “There’s a thousand platoons. Not us. We’re not going.”

They decided as a platoon that they were done, DeNardi and Cardenas said, as did several other members of 2nd Platoon. At mental health, guys had told the therapist, “I’m going to murder someone.” And the therapist said, “There comes a time when you have to stand up,” 2nd Platoon members remembered. For the sake of not going to jail, the platoon decided they had to be “unplugged.”

Three months ago, William Bloom predicted that, because neither Bush nor Congress would end the war…

Only those fighting the war can end it. By laying down their arms and refusing to kill anymore, including themselves. Some American soldiers in Iraq have already refused to go on very dangerous combat missions. Iraq Veterans Against the War, last month at their annual meeting, in St. Louis, voted to launch a campaign encouraging American troops to refuse to fight. “Iraq Veterans Against the War decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do,” said Garrett Rappenhagen, a former U.S. Army sniper who served in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005. The veterans’ group has begun organizing among active duty soldiers on military bases. Veterans have toured the country in busses holding barbeques outside the base gates. They also plan to step up efforts to undermine military recruiting efforts.

Shouldn’t the troops follow orders? Not if the orders are immoral or unlawful. At a minimum, the whole Iraq War is unlawful because, again, there never was a declaration of war by Congress.

If Bush, Cheney, Pelosi, Hillary, and other chickenhawks like this war so much, let them go over there and fight it themselves.

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Please! Shut down the government!

One of my happiest days was when the U.S. government shut down back in 1995, during the brief “Gingrich revolution” in Washington. But Gingrich didn’t have the guts to go all the way, maybe because at the time he was cheating on his second wife with the bimbo who would become his third wife.

President Clinton started shutting down popular government activities, such as the national parks, in what came to be know as “Washington Monument Syndrome.” Citizens hollered, Gingrich relented, Bill took up with Monica, you know the rest of the comedy.

But now, government might be shut down again. Even if it’s just for a brief time again, it is to be welcomed. The Hill reports:

Congress has been brought to a grinding halt by hardening Democratic and Republican stances on taxes and spending just days before lawmakers begin leaving Washington for Christmas and New Year’s.

The two sides are, in some cases, refusing even to speak to each other about the massive omnibus and an Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) bill.

Bring it on.

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