Bush's War Comes Home

[cenacle]

Bush's war comes home
by Sidney Blumenthal

Published Thursday May 26, 2005 by the UK Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858, ... 77,00.html

President Bush's drive for absolute power has momentarily stalled. In a single coup, he planned to take over all the institutions of government. By crushing the traditions of the Senate he would pack the courts, especially the supreme court, with lockstep ideologues. Sheer force would prevail. But just as his blitzkrieg reached the outskirts of his objective, he was struck by a mutiny. Within the span of 24 hours he lost control not only of the Senate but temporarily of the House of Representatives, which was supposed to be regimented by unquestioned loyalty. Now he prepares to launch a counterattack - against the dissident elements of his own party.
Bush's wonder weapon for total victory was a device called the "nuclear option". Once it was triggered, it would obliterate a 200-year-old tradition of the Senate. The threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate of his appointments to the federal bench would set the doomsday sequence in motion. The Senate Republican majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, would call for a change in the rule, and a simple majority would vote to abolish the filibuster. Bush's nominees would sail through.

Unlike the House, the Senate was constructed by the constitutional framers as an unrepresentative body, with each state, regardless of population, allotted two senators. Currently, the Republicans have 55 senators who represent only 45% of the country. The Senate creates its own rules, and the filibuster can only be stopped by a super-majority of 60 votes. Historically, it was used by southern senators to block civil rights legislation. In the first two years of the Clinton presidency, the Republicans deployed 48 filibusters, more than in the entire previous history of the Senate, to make the new Democratic chief executive appear feckless. The strategy was instrumental in the Republican capture of the Congress in 1994. By depriving the Democrats of the filibuster, Bush intended to transform the Senate into his rubber stamp.

For many senators the fate of the filibuster was only superficially about an arcane rule change. And shameless hypocrisy was the least of the problem. (Frist, like most Republicans in favour of the nuclear option, had enthusiastically filibustered against Clinton's court nominees, 65 of which were blocked from 1995-2000.) If Bush succeeded he would have effectively removed the Senate's "advice and consent" on executive appointments, drastically reducing its power.

Over the weekend, two elders, Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, pored over the federalist papers, written by the constitutional framers, to refresh their thinking about the inviolability of the Senate. On Monday, seven Republicans and seven Democrats signed a pact that preserved the filibuster under "extraordinary" circumstances and allowed several of Bush's appointments to be voted on.

The mutiny is broader than is apparent. More than the seven Republican signatories supported the accord, but they let the others take a public stance without revealing themselves. Bush's radicalism offended their conservatism. Eisenhower would be their preferred model for a Republican president. These Republican senators are the equivalent of the Republicans on the supreme court, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, who are conservative but operate without ideology, and hold the balance against the aggressive rightwing justices.

The day after Bush was frustrated by Republicans in the Senate, 50 Republicans in the House deserted him on the issue of stem cell research. His policy limiting scientific work is a sop to the religious right that views the stem cell question as an extension of abortion. Debate in the House was marshalled by Republican majority leader Tom DeLay, who argued that Bush's policy must be supported because "Jesus of Nazareth" began life as an embryo. Bush promised to veto the stem cell bill passed with massive Republican defections, the irony of his opposition to the filibuster unmentioned.

The compromise pact in the Senate on the filibuster hardly postpones the coming storms. The White House intends to push judicial nominees that the Democrats are almost certain to filibuster. With the elimination of the nuclear option, the filibuster may also be used against Bush's supreme court appointments. Evangelical religious right leaders denounce Republican senators as sell-outs. One of the most influential, James Dobson, has cursed one of the silent compromise supporters, Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican majority leader from Mississippi, as a Judas, and Lott has called Dobson "quite unChristian".

Meanwhile, the conflict has focused attention on the Republican presidential succession of 2008, pitting Bill Frist - positioning himself as the darling of the right - against cantankerous John McCain, one of the Republican magnificent seven. Within the party, metal is scraping on metal. But the more the resistance, the more Bush presses forward. His unilateralism abroad has been brought home, with a vengeance, to his partisan wars.

In federalist paper number 69 (perhaps re-read by Byrd and Warner), Alexander Hamilton concludes his examination of the differences between the "qualified" powers of the US presidency and the "absolute" powers of the king of Great Britain: "The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism."

[Mok]

If we're going to view politics as a kind of conceptual shift akin to animism, I would wonder about the other animist-type entities, as in, corporate america (corp clan?) as a whole, corporate america's individual emergent personalities, their trends as a group (herd movements, gestalt personality characteristics), not to mention the different planes of existence, gender gestalts, religious, political, and geographic topographies...


Anyway, what's their role in this issue?  What does corporate america get out of this?

[TooStonedToType]

"If we're going to view politics as a kind of conceptual shift akin to animism"

I don't understand this.  Can you explain?

[VajraPirate]

Their role is to be of benefit to the new government and to benefit from it. I don't think government and corporations can even be seperated at this point. They're a team, a team to beat down the public and destroy the freedom of our people from within.

At this point I would consider any company that outsources anything as a traitor. They're removing what little good they have done our country from it and shifting it to another, to which they will provide even less improvement in the daily life of it's citizens.

Corporations exsist for one reason only, to make money and as much as possible as quickly as possible. The government has and will continue to support them in any way they can. They're brothers in corruption.

Wouldn't you help a brotha out? :lol:  :lol:

[laughingwillow]

Corporations exist with the sole purpose of turning a profit. Many concentrate on what is profitable in the short-term, ignoring long-term ramifications for immediate shareholder gratification.

I believe the american people need to be protected from the natural, predatory practices of big bidness to the same extent as we see a separation of church and state. Big bidness has no bidness meddling in a gubmint of and for the people.

Can I hear an A-men?

lw

[dergheist]

Amen Brotha  :lol:

[laughingwillow]

Step right up into the tent, young fella. I know for a fact that you have the inside track on the behind the scene dealings of the monied elite running this here country. Word is you resented and then relented and repented the sinful monied ways of your fore-parents. Its time to testify! hehehe........

lw

[Mok]

Animism is, I believe, the belief that there is a larger "spirit" associated with the individuals that make up the corporeal representation of that spirit, like the difference between Deer and "a deer", and The Republican Party and "a republican".  Just like The Republican Party seems to have personality characteristics distinct from those of similarly sized gestalts (The Democratic Party) thus separating the two, just as Deer may have a different personality than Turkey.  Instead of physical form delineating the various spirits and personalities being attached afterwards, it is now the personalities and associations themselves that do the separating.

At least in my opinion.

[dergheist]

Hey, LW I think that I am going to have to take Mok's sig and say, "Doo What Naw" ??  :?

[laughingwillow]

I understand the term animism being used in a context of spiritual attributes as described above for Deer and Turkey vs an individual deer or turkey. However, I'm not sure how that translates to a senator, versus the U$ Senate, as the Senate exists on the physical plane as do the senators.

As for pigeon holing those inclined to vote for dems or republicans into neat little slots, I'm guessing the real world isn't really that black or white.

lw

[Mok]

Do the senator's ideas and personal characteristics exist on the physical plane?

Of course it's not black and white, everything is a very intimate mix of the two, but at the same time that is true it is true that they have their own distinct characteristics that emerge through the average.  

As I type here, my ideas are being translated imperfectly into the medium of text.  The reason this is so is because the background from which I speak is not being transmitted, nor is it capable of being so.  It may appear to another person with a dissimilar background to be incorrect or even flat-out wrong, but that does not make it so in the truth that exists outside of the two individuals.  Understanding this will help you communicate more effectively with others and prevent conflict.

So, instead of looking for reasons why someone is wrong, try looking for reasons why someone is right.  You and I each have a brain full of previous experiences and hypnotic suggestions that affect the directions of our communications.  Our awareness of these artifacts of past interaction is the degree to which we are aware of the true substance of the other's words, as opposed to unconscious and illogical reasoning that may hinder true communication.



So there.

[laughingwillow]

LOL The Senators actions and physical characterictics exist on the physical plane. His or her feelings reside in his or her head. "Deers" actions/feelings occur in your head. Thank you for attempting ot explain your position on thsi issue.

I'm not really interested in your deconstruction of the act of personal communication, though.

lw