W W W?

President George W. Bush has done it once more. He’s taken the Constitution and pretty much shredded it this time. He wiped his backside with it over wire tapping, tromped on it over the Patriot Act and pretty much stuffed it in the trash with his personal war in Iraq. For a man that took an oath to uphold the Constitution before the people on his inauguration as President he sure finds it to be a pesky little thing to deal with. Apparently, none of the photographs showed his other hand that was not on the bible had his fingers crossed. This is not my President, not your President, this man thinks and acts like a damn King!

As a lame duck President he is enacting laws that no matter who is elected the next President will have a difficult situation to change. W is back room dealing to guarantee our military presence in Iraq permanently and without Congressional approval.

Over at the Washington Post they have this opinion piece on it…

An Agreement Without Agreement

By Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway
Friday, February 15, 2008; 4:30 PM

The Bush administration is so intent on securing its legacy in Iraq that it is once again ignoring the Constitution. Without seeking the consent of Congress, it is well on its way toward a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that threatens to deepen the American commitment without the congressional support the Constitution requires.

President Bush's plan to cut out Congress has provoked a growing chorus of criticism, joined by both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In response, the administration has begun to back-track from its vision of a sweeping military and economic agreement. Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the agreement would not contain a security guarantee committing the country to fixed troop levels or permanent bases. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, speaking before the Senate Armed Services last week, stated that the agreement will be "like other Status of Forces Agreements," which deal with the rights and obligations of the military when operating on foreign soil.

Such agreements, the White House is quick to point out, are not usually subject to congressional approval. That is true. But this truth will not suffice, since the administration is still aiming for an agreement that moves far beyond the traditional scope of these limited military accords. We should not allow false advertising to serve as a cover for a constitutional fait accompli.

Snip the Constitution

Worse yet, the administration is keeping most of its plans secret. (Much of what we have learned comes from leaks reported in the press.) Congress has held two hearings -- on Jan. 23 and Feb. 8 -- on the legitimate scope of the Iraqi agreement, and the administration has twice refused to testify. While Gates and Rice have made a few reassuring remarks, they have fallen far short of full disclosure.

This is unacceptable. Sen. Joseph Biden, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is a strong critic of the administration's unilateral approach. But if the stone-walling continues, he should make it his committee's business to sponsor a congressional resolution declaring invalid any military agreement that seeks to go beyond the traditional limits of the standard Status of Forces Agreement. No president has the unilateral power to impose broad international obligations on the nation without congressional support. But it is especially wrong for a lame-duck president to make such commitments about a controversial policy that is at the very center of the debate among the candidates vying to succeed him. - Washington Post

What is next for W? Is he going to annex Canada because he really likes their bacon? Then he moves on to Mexico because he just happens to like taco night at the White House and we all know them brownies make the best tacos. I didn‘t coin that phrase, the Bush family did… (No offense to Mexican American’s intended… I’m on a rant). W will probably next rename Iraq Haliburtonville in one of his notorious “Screw the Constitution Signing Statements” and his buddy Dick Cheney will have a shorter commute to work from the headquarters in Dubai when they leave office in 2009.

One thing that every President of America had in common prior to Bush was faithfully taking the pledge to defend the Constitution. In doing so George Washington built the Presidency from the ground up not as a King but an office based on the greater good. Thomas Jefferson propelled our nation out of a religious based government into a man made government. To which some today think and believe is wrong but isn’t that what Iran and every Middle East government is. How’s that looking lately? Abraham Lincoln divided but united our nation in the midst of a states rights issue that cost hundreds of thousands of lives but his integrity and place in history is sound because he believed in the greater good for all. Read any news report and you can clearly see that President Bush has no intention of legally upholding the office he was elected too. Full speed ahead for Bush and damn the consequences as he lets the chips fall where they will. There is no historical value to any action he has performed as President that is for the greater good. In all of his actions he has turned the people on themselves and not for the same reasons as Lincoln. He is a rogue President and if the Congress will not reel him in then they are a body without power and Bush has succeeded in his mission.

This is the reason why Republican’s will not see the White House in the next election. Our so called defender of our Constitution thinks it is just a piece of paper and it is not. In the same respects that our flag is just a piece of cloth, burn it, shred it, stamp your dirty boots on it will never kill or mame the meaning behind it. He hijacked our nation and his own political party to serve his own personal, political and financial gains. AKA Dick Cheney and his net worth going through the roof on a VP’s public servant salary. President Bush does not like our form of government and he has proven it over and over again and still he is not called to task for it. Both political parties should be screaming at the top of their lungs over this sidestep of the Congress ensuring our military presence in Iraq for any time the secret documents will make law. If our President is never to be held accountable then he does in fact have a monarchy. Should that fact alone inspire you to contact your representative in government with your anger?

Our Constitution is our government. That is the foundation of America no matter how we look at it from any perspective. No matter who you are as an American it still starts out with “We the People…”

W, W, W, what are we going to do with you? In less than a year there will be no problem with the door hitting him in the back side as the ghosts of Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington will be the ones slamming those doors on the White House as he exits. Thanks for visiting W. Somebody else will clean up the mess you left behind.

Papamoka

Cross posted at MichaelLinnJones.com and Bring IT ON!

Other folks talking about this issue:

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Firedoglake

Rock the Truth

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Bush Throws Another Log Onto the Pyre of his "Legacy"

By Michael Linn Jones

Ever notice how a word or phrase starts to creep into the language? In listening to Rudy Giuliani endorse Sen. John McCain yesterday, I heard a phrase that has become disturbing. Even more disturbing, it passed by without comment.

Giuliani said that John McCain was the best-qualified candidate to be “the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.” Call me crazy, but I thought the Constitution specifies that the President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States.

I’ve argued for several years now that the semantic placing of the presidency with the word “commander” is a leap into the abyss of strongman rule. It is, in essence, no different than those dictatorships that exist around the world, where the people, like children, need a strong father (or mother) figure to take care of them.

So I come across this in the Boston Globe: Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act.

WASHINGTON - President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them.

“Provisions of the act . . . purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as commander in chief,” Bush said. “The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.”

SNIP,

The Bush administration is negotiating a long-term agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The agreement is to include the basing of US troops in Iraq after 2008, as well as security guarantees and other economic and political ties between the United States and Iraq.

The negotiations have drawn fire in part because the administration has said it does not intend to designate the compact as a “treaty,” and so will not submit it to Congress for approval. Critics are also concerned Bush might lock the United States into a deal that would make it difficult for the next president to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

Obviously I am not an expert in Constitutional law, but it confuses me when someone swears an oath to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States” but then says he’s not going to execute a law of the United States because it would interfere with his ability to faithfully execute a law of the United States. Perhaps I need to further my education, and to borrow a phrase from President Bush, Citizens does learn.

Problem is, the learning curve is sharp and irreversible. This goes way beyond George W. Bush. I have argued with supporters of Bush that this is a constitutional issue, not a political one. Yet in today’s America, the two have become one.

I also was not aware that a president is empowered to declare laws to be unconstitutional. I thought that was what the courts were for. And, that if a president disagrees with a law passed by both chambers of Congress, he or she is granted a veto by the constitution.

This particular signing statement is bogus, and one doesn’t need a law degree to see why. In the statement President Bush says that he needs the latitude he demands in order to “protect national security.” There are laws in existence…been there for decades…that require a careful monitoring of who enters the United States. Yet in over seven years Bush has ignored those laws because they conflict with an agenda that he has never really spelled out.

What IS clear is that in less than one year a new president will be in office, inheriting all of the expansion of executive power vacuumed up by George W. Bush.

Is is said that we “are a nation of laws, not men.”

George W. Bush’s legacy will be proof that the opposite is true.

Originally posted at Michaellinnjones.com

A WALTZ DOWN MEMORY LANE IN 2009

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

I've grown weary of the constant schoolyard buzz whirling about presidential candidates. It has become tedious. And boring. I don't think I can take much more of reading tea leaves to predict who is going to win Iowa, or New Hampshire, etc. It has become so predictable that I've decided to just leap ahead a couple of years.

What my crystal ball tells me is no less accurate than professional pontificators, or any less honest. Well, I'll concede on the honesty part because with this crop of hopefuls outright lying is not beyond the realm of possibility.

But I digress from my digression. Assume for a moment that the year 2008 has come and gone, and we find ourselves a few months into 2009. Here I offer a small collection of what-might-as-well-be's:

President-elect Hillary Clinton stunned experts by naming her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as American Ambassador to Monaco. Relations with several European countries were strained upon learning that Bill Clinton "got to know" a number of female members of European royalty as well as the wives of prominent politicians. Republicans in Congress were also outraged that a special Presidential aircraft was permanently assigned to the "First Bubba" for his exclusive use. Demanding an all-female flight crew was the cherry on top for the opponents of the Clinton(s) administration.

By February 2009 it became fashionable (and required of White House reporters) to refer to the new president as "Hillary The Great." By March, President Hillary had issued more signing statements than former President George W. Bush had in his entire eight years of tenure. Some of the over 900 Presidential edicts are listed below:

Tax on cigarettes to be $150 per pack.
Possession of cigarettes to be a federal felony offense.
Frowning prohibited in public.
Any woman with a better physique than the president barred from federal employment (this resulted in a severe shortage of employees, solved only by a then-illegal data-mining of the Lane Bryant customer base.)

Tom Brady stunned the sporting world by simultaneously dating both Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. This might explain New England's 2-14 record after their Superbowl win the previous January.

Former President Bush was named as honorary President of Baylor University in recognition of his extraordinary grasp of economics. The university subsequently filed for bankruptcy. President Bush finally fulfilled his promise to sit on the porch of Trent Lott's Katrina-damaged chalet in Mississippi. The FEMA-financed cottage had somehow expanded into a 14,000 square foot monstrosity with a final cost of $18.7 million. Former President Bush observed that if it hadn't been for that Kelo decision the costs would have been much higher in running off all those poor folks whose land Trent needed.

Many were surprised that two hours after her inauguration, Hillary The Great ordered the arrest of Karl Rove and had him placed in Gitmo as an "enemy noncombatant." In a special signing statement, HTG announced that "enemy noncomatant" was anyone she didn't like, calling Rove a "fat slob" who needed "to be taught a lesson." Rove was released after 7 weeks, in large part due to the efforts of his supporters, who had purchased and established THE KARL ROVE PRESIDENTIAL ASSISTANT LIBARY (not a mis-spelling, that's the way they say library) in Tickturd, Texas. The library is a simple structure built in the middle of 40 acres of bull manure-infested pasture. "Seems kinda right to me," quipped one of the site workers.

With the total collapse of the home mortgage market in 2008, along with a number of large banks and corporations, the administration decided to take immediate action by using government funds in the oil commodities market. Citing the president's luck in cattle futures in Arkansas, the thought was that funds could thus be raised to bail out destitute speculators on the government's dime. This was known as "No Greedy Pig Left Behind."

It was not forseen (except by about 298 million Americans) that the price of oil would skyrocket. By March 2009 a barrel of oil peaked at $275 . President Clinton Her Ladyship pointed to the positive effects: with so few people actually having jobs or the money to get to work, the number of traffic deaths and injuries had plummeted. Al Gore was enthusiastic, noting that the atmosphere now looked a lot cleaner from the cabin of his private jet.

62 bridges collapsed in 2008, primarily caused by overloaded Mexican trucks. A Dept. of Transportation official said that a weight limit of 34 tons was being ignored, with many Mexican trucks topping 50 to 60 tons. However, this was cited as another example of the success of NAFTA. (???)

The Clinton adminstration blamed the infrastructure shortcomings on the Bush adminstration, who immediately placed the blame on the Clinton administration (no, the first one I mean), who immediately blamed it on the Bush administration (the first one, again), who immediately blamed it on Jimmy Carter. The Houses of Bush and Clinton finally agreed to blame everything on Jimmy Carter.

As we all look forward to 2010, we can thank our lucky stars that our leaders are looking out for us almost as much as they look after themselves.

Well, it's nice to think so, anyway.

Happy New Year!!!!
**********************
Cross-posted at Michaellinnjones.com

Bush “InteliGate” World Tour Debut

Over at the White House they are starting the process of cleansing themselves and the full administration of any evidence that they condoned any crimes. The latest news is that video tapes of severe torture cases were destroyed to protect the identities of the CIA in-terror-gators.

Today President Bush stated that he had no recollection of the tapes and their destruction. That is when you take a whiff to the air and ask yourself if you are near a cow farm full of bulls because something just does not smell right.

Over at the Washington Post they have this story on it…

Bush Does Not Recall Learning of Destroyed CIA Tapes
Senate's Second-Ranking Democrat Calls for Justice Dept. Probe

By William Branigin, Dan Eggen and Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 7, 2007; 3:14 PM

President Bush does not recall being informed before yesterday morning about the existence or subsequent destruction of video recordings showing harsh CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects, the White House said today.

The recordings, which CIA Director Michael V. Hayden disclosed yesterday had been made in 2002 but destroyed three years later, set off a furor on Capitol Hill today, with the Senate's second-ranking Democrat demanding a Justice Department investigation.

Snip and tuck…

The tapes were made to document any confessions the two men might make and to serve as an internal check on how the interrogations were conducted, senior intelligence officials said.

All the tapes were destroyed in November 2005 on the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the CIA's director of clandestine operations, officials said. The destruction came after the Justice Department had told a federal judge in the case of Moussaoui that the CIA did not possess videotapes of a specific set of interrogations sought by his attorneys. A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the request would not have covered the destroyed tapes.

The tapes also were not provided to the Sept. 11 commission, which demanded a wide array of material and relied heavily on classified interrogation transcripts in piecing together its narrative of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. - Washington Post

For some odd reason all I can think of is the Valerie Plame outing where good old George claimed no knowledge of the leak from inside the White House. He did however state that the person or persons responsible would no longer be working in his administration. I’m wondering if he and Dick ever laughed so hard in their lives? Now I’m wondering if they both went on vacation after he made that statement? Maybe he was telling the truth after all!

President Nixon only had the guts to delete a few minutes of his secretive tapes, George is bulk erasing everything he can get his hands on over at the CIA in Langley. This could be a huge job so our nation must sacrifice for the sake of the Presidency. The amount of electricity needed to delete all the crimes they have committed will take sixty eight waste to energy plants, 32,328 wind turbines, Niagra Falls power generated for six months, 1.2 million roof top solar panels and four D batteries (for Dick Cheney’s flashlight). Frankly, you have to admire his green energy initiative to get this critical job done.

This at least explains the amount of times the lights dim in your home or place of business. I’d of preferred that Nancy Pelosi would have started the impeachment process rather than having my lighting resemble a strobe light.

Papamoka

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An Indecisive American People

In America today there is a strong and growing movement of people that once thought their voices did not count when it came to the policies of our government. There is some truth to the message that if you do not vote then you do not count but it is not the entire truth. Being an American does not mean that you have to vote, it simply helps the process of putting like minds in the offices you vote for.

Even if you do not vote, your government is still your government as a citizen. Your voice is still very important. Your life and your opinions matter. You are in fact a very important person in the ongoing experiment that is the United States of America. There is only one downfall to our form of government and that is when people believe that our government is not about them. That is the beginning of the end to our democratically elected servants to our republic. Or dare I say the beginning of an elitist government and society led by the needs of the few at the cost of the many.

As Richard Nixon tore down the respect of the political office of the Presidency, so has George W. Bush. Past lessons have been forgotten and the future of being respected as an American President will be up to future office holders to defend. Deciding what laws apply to the President alone when signing laws into effect is wrong and elitist at best. No American is above the law and never should be. We are a land of laws and rules that apply to all. Without them, we have anarchy and that is not a part of the American experiment.

In my mind, the office of President is not just about the power that comes with it. Being the President is about all of the people and sometimes it is about what the people want that is not to your personal liking. Yet it is the people that own the office and not the individual sitting behind the desk. If that was not the case then the descendants of George Washington would be a living and ruling Monarchy today. Am I wrong?

Get off the damn cell phone, computer, email or whatever seems more important and write or email your Representative in Congress on issues you care about. Tell them how you feel about any given issue. Be heard and wash, rinse and repeat.

Not doing that, then yes, special interest will walk away with our nation of laws that only apply to you. They get a waiver and walk away clean as a new born baby.

As an American you need to decide what you want from your leaders and more importantly what you do not want.

Papamoka