And this will happen to every Democratic president in perpetuity

...because Republicans will never, ever, ever, ever regard a legitimately elected president as a "real" president. George W. Bush, whose first term was handed to him by a partisan Supreme Court, and whose second term was tainted by clear and obvious vote suppression in Ohio (something that Mark Kirk is trying to do in Illinois next month), was regarded as legitimate by Republicans, but Barack Obama, who won with 56 percent of the vote and no shenanigans, is not legitimate -- because he is a Democrat.

And just as Republicans tried to do with Bill Clinton, they are going to try to remove this president from office by ginning up some phony "scandal" once they take over Congress.

Jonathan Chait:

Hear me now and believe me later: If Republicans win and maintain control of the House of Representatives, they are going to impeach President Obama. They won’t do it right away. And they won’t succeed in removing Obama. (You need 67 Senate votes.) But if Obama wins a second term, the House will vote to impeach him before he leaves office.

Wait, you say. What will they impeach him over? You can always find something. Mini-scandals break out regularly in Washington. Last spring, the political press erupted in a frenzy over the news that the White House had floated a potential job to prospective Senate candidate Joe Sestak. On a scale of one to 100, with one representing presidential jaywalking and 100 representing Watergate, the Sestak job offer probably rated about a 1.5. Yet it was enough that GOP Representative Darrell Issa called the incident an impeachable offense.

It is safe to say that Issa’s threshold of what constitutes an impeachable offense is not terribly high. As it happens, should Republicans win control of the House, Issa would bring his hair-trigger finger to the chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Sestak pseudo-scandal disappeared because there was no process to drive the story forward. Had Issa been running the Oversight Committee, it would have been the subject of hearings and subpoenas.

And it is not as if Issa’s interest in the Sestak case springs from some idiosyncratic obsession with the generally common practice of using executive-branch jobs to lure candidates out of the Senate. His taste in Obama-related scandal is catholic. In addition to the Sestak allegations, Issa has called for the investigation or disclosure of matters weighty and not-so-weighty, including the so-called Climategate e-mail controversy, congressional recipients of friendly loans from Countrywide, the methodology behind the government’s statistics on jobs “created or saved,” the Treasury’s prior knowledge of the AIG bonuses, the leaking of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud suit against Goldman Sachs, the District of Columbia school vouchers program, all taxpayer-funded White House trips on behalf of Democratic candidates, the administration’s response to the BP oil spill and its drilling moratorium, National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker’s possible conflict of interest, the “executive branch’s approach to food safety,” potential collusion between General Motors and the Treasury, and the firing of the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, plus many, many others.

This merely covers Obama’s first 20 months in office. No doubt more outrages would command Issa’s attention. Just as a rigorous IRS audit of a taxpayer is bound to turn up something, an investigation by the likes of Issa will eventually produce a scandal. Once you have grasped hold of the investigative machinery, the process drives itself. “We would never go looking for a scandal—they come to us,” Issa explained to National Review. “Typically, it is not the crime but the cover-up. The scandal comes when administration officials try to circumvent, not report, or distort what is happening.”

Obviously, Issa cannot impeach the president by himself. That would take a vote by the House of Representatives. But once a major figure like Issa puts impeachment on the table, it is impossible to imagine the rest of the party failing to go along. A December poll found that 35 percent of Republicans already favor impeaching Obama, with just 48 percent opposed and the balance undecided. That is a large base of support to impeach Obama for literally anything at all.

Once Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the like collectively decide that this or that incident represents an intolerable abuse of power by the Obama administration, the conservative base will go from supporting impeachment to demanding it. At that point, the acquiescence of the House GOP would become inevitable. Since Obama took office, whatever willingness the party establishment had to resist the impulses of its base has been submerged beneath a wave of right-wing primary challenges.

Republicans have NO solutions to the problems we face today. The Republican Party has become the party of lobbyists' checks, of scientific ignorance, of racism and bigotry and selfishness and greed; of theocracy and sore loserdom and utter contempt for the nation they wish to lead, as well as for the rest of the world.

The teabaggers and other morons who think that putting this bunch of lunatics back in charge is going to mean they get to have a job, keep their house, send their kids to college, and in generally sustain the life they've become used to, are in for a big surprise. Because while the Republicans are busy sniffing panties in the White House because they can't deal with the resounding smack they were dealt in 2008, bridges and roads will continue to deteriorate, the middle class will further disappear into the ranks of the poor, endless wars will continue to bankrupt this country, and they will end up presiding over a smoking ruin where a nation used to be.

But that's OK for them -- as long as they have the power, that's all that matters to them.

Here we go again...

I don't know what it's going to take for Barack Obama to realize that Republicans are never, ever, ever in a million years going to ever believe that any Democratic president, no matter how nice he is to them and how much he capitulates to their demands, is legitimate. For the rest of recorded history, until Americans become smart enough to realize just what Republicans are, we will go through this again and again and again, every time a Democrat is elected President.

This is what we have to look forward to if the GOBP takes Congress in November:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the conservative firebrand whose specialty is lobbing corruption allegations at the Obama White House, is making plans to hire dozens of subpoena-wielding investigators if Republicans win the House this fall.

The California Republican’s daily denunciations draw cheers from partisans and bookings from cable TV producers. He even bought his own earphone for live shots. But his bombastic style and attention-seeking investigations draw eye rolls from other quarters. Now, he’s making clear he won’t be so easy to shrug off if he becomes chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2011.

Issa has told Republican leadership that if he becomes chairman, he wants to roughly double his staff from 40 to between 70 and 80. And he is not subtle about what that means for President Barack Obama.

At a recent speech to Pennsylvania Republicans here, he boasted about what would happen if the GOP wins 39 seats, and he gets the power to subpoena.

“That will make all the difference in the world,” he told 400 applauding party members during a dinner at the chocolate-themed Hershey Lodge. “I won’t use it to have corporate America live in fear that we’re going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing.”

In other words, Issa wants to be to the Obama administration what Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) was to the Clinton administration — a subpoena machine in search of White House scandals.

We have an economy that is still not producing private sector jobs other than overseas, despite the fact that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are still in place. We have an ecological disaster the long-term consequences of which are still unclear in the Gulf of Mexico. Our troops are still mired in Iraq and Afghanistan with no clear mission. But does Darrell Issa care about this? Do Republicans care about this? No, the only thing they care about is regaining power By Any Means Necessary....unless those Means involve having some kind of a better plan. On that they're utterly clueless.

UPDATE: As mandt point out in the comments, Darrell Issa was charged in 1980 with faking the theft of Issa's Mercedes Benz sedan and selling it to a car dealer for $16,000, according to court records. The case was never pursued. In Darrell Issa's world, innocent until proven guilty only applies to Republicans.

Because in Pakistan, their Constitution still matters

Unlike in the U.S., where Congressional Democrats and Republicans have decided that gross violations of the Constitution don't matter, and that presidents are allowed to set their own laws even if they violate said Constitution, in Pakistan things are different:

Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced he would resign Monday, ending nearly nine years as the head of one of the United States’ most important allies in the campaign against terrorism.

Speaking on television from his presidential office here at 1 p.m., Mr. Musharraf, dressed in a gray suit and tie, said that after consulting with his aides, “I have decided to resign today.” He said he was putting national interest above “personal bravado.”

“Whether I win or lose the impeachment, the nation will lose,” he said, adding that he was not prepared to put the office of the presidency through the impeachment process.

[snip]

Mr. Musharraf has been under strong pressure in the past few days, as the coalition said it had completed a charge sheet to take to Parliament for his impeachment. The charges were centered on “gross violations” of the Constitution, according to the minister of information, Sherry Rehman.

The rhetoric from the coalition mounted over the weekend, but the leading politicians wavered on an exact date for bringing the charges, thus leaving a window for Mr. Musharraf to leave.

In his speech, Mr. Musharraf tore into the coalition for what he called their failed economic policies. He said Pakistan’s critical economic situation — a declining currency, capital flight, soaring inflation — was their responsibility. In contrast, he said, his policies had brought prosperity out of near economic collapse when he took charge in 1999.

He then gave a laundry list of his achievements, ranging from expanded road networks to a national art gallery in the capital. Although Pakistan’s literacy rate hovers around 50 percent, and is much lower among women, he took credit for new schools.

The army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan, stayed publicly above the fray in the past 10 days. But in remaining studiously neutral and declining to come to Mr. Musharraf’s rescue, the new leader of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani, tipped the scales against the president, politicians said.

So in Pakistan, we have a general who took power in a bloodless coup, and yet that country's coalition government was prepared to impeach, while here in the U.S., that beacon of democracy for the world, our so-called opposition party leader announced right after an election which put her party in power, that impeachment was off the table, and that a president who has committed crimes that make Nixon look like George Washington, should have no accountability for his crimes.

The irony makes the mind reel.

It's the accountability, stupid!

Today, as we savor the fact that one year from today, our long national nightmare of the Bush/Cheney regime will at last (we hope) be over, someone needs to give Nancy Pelosi a clue that impeachment is no longer about removal from office, it's about documenting for the sake of history (and to prevent forgetting the past):

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’s drawing heat from fellow Democratic lawmakers as well as people across the nation for refusing to move to impeach President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I go through airports, and people have buttons as if they knew I was coming,” Pelosi said with a smile, mimicking a protester pointing to an “Impeach” button on their chest.

But the California Democrat said she is sticking to her position that trying to remove Bush or Cheney would be divisive, and she added, most likely unsuccessful. If the House voted to impeach Bush and Cheney, a two-thirds vote would be needed in the closely divided Senate to oust them.

That's not the point, and she should realize that. As far as trying to remove BushCheney being divisive, that's the biggest insult of all, and it goes a long way to explain why she has caved to the Bush Administration in absolutely everything -- because she doesn't want to be "divisive." Well, divisiveness where today's Republican party consists of anything that varies one iota from marching in lockstep with the most insane elements of the party.

A two-party system is sometimes going to be divisive, especially where issues in which the parties are so far apart are concerned. If she's so afraid of divisiveness, then let her step aside for someone who has the guts to do the right thing for the country and the Constitution.

Barack Obama, take note.

Does anyone actually believe the impeachment of Cheney will go through?

So much for the crazy aunt in the attic, eh? But before we go dancing in the streets at the impending removal from office of Dick Cheney, let's not underestimate the iron will of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer -- but only when it comes to political expediency. When it comes to some kind of lame political calculation cooked up by consultants and guaranteed to be wrong, they dig in their heels. If it's about what's right for the country, they crumple like a Yugo.

I've been fighting off getting the viral bronchitis that has levelled half my department at work, so I've had little energy to do much other than go to work, come home, make dinner, clean up, watch Olbermann, and crash. So I haven't really had a chance to dig into this and give it the attention it deserves. So I'm going to kick you over to our friend and colleague jurassicpork, and Group Newsblogger Jesse Wendel, who have.

The I-Word

Time for the I-word again.

Impeachment.

I'm tired of feeling like a helpless, scared-to-death passenger trapped in the back seat of a speeding car as a boozy, coked-up Bush careens blindly towards the abyss. Melodrama? God help us, I don't think so.

We already have more than enough reasons: Katrina, Iraq, an economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and flat-earth bozos tossing copies of Origin of Species into trash cans. Yadda yadda yadda. It's goddamned terrible. It's gonna take years to fix this shit. But it can get much, much worse. Before January 2009, a lunatic, I-Don-t-Give-A-Fuck Bush still has the time to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two and--ready?--start dropping nukes on Iran. Can this country survive World War III? I don't think so.

Melodrama? I don't think so.

Impeachment is the only check and balance we have left, and threatening to use it with no intention of doing so is like waving a cap gun in Tony Soprano's face: it can get you killed.

It's not a political choice anymore. It's survival.

Thankfully, there is a reluctant but ever-growing awareness in the United States about how batshit crazy the bozo in the White House is.

It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten. (Don't you hate when that happens?)

As the old saying goes, "Nothing focuses a man's mind like an imminent hanging."

Thank the Goddess for enlightened self-interest. It ain't pretty, but it works. Sometimes.

"Playing"

But everything in Captain Codpiece's life has been about "playing", hasn't it? Playing macho roles to cover up the frightened, angry, spoiled four-year-old inside: Playing at being an Ivy Leaguer. Playing at being a soldier and not even showing up for that. Playing at being a wildcatter. Playing at being a baseball owner. Playing at being a governor. And for the last six years, playing at being president, then for the last four, playing at being a "war president."

Keith:

And there it is, sir. We’ve caught you.

Your goal is not to bring some troops home — maybe — if we let you have your way now;

Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal;

You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

[snip]

“I'm playing for October-November," Mr. Bush said to Draper. That, evidently, is the time during which, he thinks he can sell us the real plan, which is “to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence."

Comfortable, that is, with saying about Iraq, again quoting the President, “stay... longer."

And there it is. We've caught you. Your goal is not to bring some troops home, maybe, if we let you have your way now. Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal. You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

Everything you said about Iraq yesterday, and everything you will say, is a deception, for the purpose of this one cynical, unacceptable, brutal goal: perpetuating this war indefinitely.

War today, war tomorrow, war forever!

And you are playing at it! Playing!

A man with any self respect, having inadvertently revealed such an evil secret, would have already resigned and fled the country! You have no remaining credibility about Iraq.

And yet, yesterday at Al-Asad, Mr. Bush kept playing, and this time, using the second of his two faces.

The president told reporters, “They (General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker) tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces."

And so, Mr. Bush got his fraudulent headlines today. “Bush May Bring Some Troops Home."

While the reality is, we know from what he told Draper, that the president's true hope is that they will not come home; but that they will stay there, because he is keeping them there now, in hope that those from his political party fighting to succeed him will prolong this unendurable disaster into the next decade.

But, to a country dying of thirst, the president seemed to vaguely promise a drink from a full canteen -- a promise predicated on the assumption that he is not lying.

Yet you are lying, Mr. Bush. Again. But now, we know why.

Video at Crooks and Liars.

Military meltdown

I don't ever want to hear that blowmonkey in the White House talk about supporting the troops ever again. Because while he's living in his little fantasy world, surrounded by people under strict orders to only tell him what he wants to hear, real people are dying in Iraq for no fucking good reason:

Facts matter. They especially matter to those with some sense of responsibility at the Pentagon and in the military. That became abundantly clear when McClatchy News reported that the military won't make a single recommendation to the president on what course to pursue in Iraq. The story, detailed by my friend and VoteVets.org Vice Chairman Brandon Friedman here, has two very key quotes:

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.

Jeffrey White, a military analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president's decision, not what commanders agreed on.

In short, those on the ground aren't seeing progress, and don't want to suggest a policy that would be based on the premise that progress is being made. They're not seeing progress with their eyes, and they don't see it in the statistics or facts.

The result is a Department of Defense and military that is going to speak with multiple voices. If you're a soldier on the ground, that's not what you want to hear.

And finally, yesterday the Washington Post reported that the president was going to request another $50 billion for efforts in Iraq. Today, his own Defense Secretary Robert Gates said to FOX News, via his spokesman, "That's news to me."

The president, in losing control of the war in Iraq and clinging to what he wants to see, and not the reality, now has nearly a full-scale revolt in his own military that just isn't willing to go along for the ride anymore. The GAO surely interviewed a number of people on the ground for their report and got messages that didn't support the administration. The military can't come to an agreement on what to tell the president other than that this is his problem now. And the Secretary of Defense, who has strayed from the White House message a number of times, learns of administration war funding proposals from the Washington Post.



I take no joy in seeing this happen. Our troops are the best in the world. As they are fighting and dying in 130 degree heat, they've had to look to the East to see an Iraqi government that didn't care and went on vacation. Now, they look back to the West and see their department falling apart like a neglected Pinto, because this president is stubborn.

Maybe this president doesn't care because his administration is over. But I care. And I'm going to continue to care long after this president rides off into the sunset to clear brush for the rest of his life.

The weaselly Democrats are too fucking frightened to take on this lunatic, even if it means that thousands more American families receive the knock on the door that no one wants to hear. No price in American lives is too much to pay for them to keep their jobs and not have to expend the effort to explain to the Fox Noisebots in their districts what's really going on. God knows the Republicans won't do it; they're too busy getting off -- and making money -- off of the war effort.

That leaves the military. We know that Congress won't live up to its Constitutional duty to remove this guy from office before he can do any more harm to the Constitution and to our country. We are now left with only the hope that the military will rise up and say "Enough."

A military coup -- that's what it's come to, folks. Because that's the only thing that will rescue us form the clutches of this monster.

Where is the next generation of Jimmy Breslins?

When I think about journalists, I usually think first about the kind of hacks we see today -- people like Judith Miller, Adam Nagourney, and the editorial board of the Washington Post. Then my eye turns to television and I think about David Gregory asking a few tough questions so maybe we won't notice him dancing onstage with Karl Rove or smirking while Katty Kay talks about Hillary Clinton. I think about Chris Matthews' mancrushes and obvious misogyny. I think about Willian Kristol being taken seriously anywhere.

Then I think about the guys I used to read in the New York Daily News when I commuted into New York every day -- guys like Mike Royko and Lars-Erik Nelson and Pete Hamill. Reading these guys was like reading a kind of cigar-chomping dub poetry. Even Nelson, with whom I often disagreed, was a fine writer.

Royko and Nelson are dead, and Pete Hamill is mostly off writing books. But there is still Jimmy Breslin:

I am walking in Rosedale on this day early in the week while I wait for the funeral of Army soldier Le Ron Wilson, who died at age 18 in Iraq. He was 17 1/2 when he had his mother sign his enlistment papers at the Jamaica recruiting office. If she didn't, he told her, he would just wait for the months to his 18th birthday and go in anyway. He graduated from Thomas Edison High School at noon one day in May. He left right away for basic training. He came home in a box last weekend. He had a fast war.

The war was there to take his life because George Bush started it with bold-faced lies.

He got this lovely kid killed by lying.

If Bush did this in Queens, he would be in court on Queens Boulevard on a murder charge.

He did it in the White House, and it is appropriate, and mandatory for the good of the nation, that impeachment proceedings be started. You can't live with lies. You can't permit them to be passed on as if it is the thing to do.

...and he goes on from there. Go read it. Now.

Here are your high crimes and misdemeanors

Josh Marshall tells us why George Bush giving the order for Harriet Miers to not testify tomorrow is a felony.