What’s the difference between a true netroots Democrat and an establishment Democrat? The willingness to criticize members of one’s own party when it really counts.
In her latest web ad WA-08 netroots “rock star” Darcy Burner not only sticks it to her Republican opponent Dave Reichert for handing warrantless wiretapping powers to President Bush, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales… she also takes on the 41 Democratic House members who voted with him.
“When Republicans like Dave Reichert give George Bush everything he wants, that’s bad enough. But too many people in my own party aren’t listening either. The warrantless wiretapping bill won’t make us safer, but it will strip us of the rights so many of our families have fought to preserve, including mine.”
This race is about bringing new leadership to the House, not just padding the Democratic majority. No doubt Burner would like DCCC support and the money that comes with it, but anybody who thinks she’s taking her cues from the other Washington, just isn’t listening.
Attacking her own party desperation already? Wow. She is worse at this than I thought.
How many oversea’s call does darcy make a day?
Does she have bank accounts that she may be worried about?
Calvin?? Does stupid hurt? If it does you have my deepest sympathy because you must be suffering from pain that I can not even imagine.
one more thing….. What does she have to hide? If someone want’s to listen to my calls, go ahead. I don’t plan on doing anything illegal.
What are you demo’s so afraid of?
Evidently the 41 demo’s in DC don’t have much to hide. Just maybe they have more EXPERIENCE in this type of WORK than Darcy does.
Wow, you are even dumber than calvin, congrats on that. You must have velco laces on your shoes don’t you?
Darcy is demonstrating she thinks for herself. Reichert has demonstrated he thinks for himself only if Karl Rove gives him permission.
@1 Any Democrat is better than every Republican.
Of course, it’s getting increasingly difficult to find a GOP politician who isn’t in jail.
@4 The fact I don’t want asswipes listening to my phone calls doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong. It means I don’t want asswipes listening to my phone calls. The Constitution says you have no right to do so without a warrant based on probable cause. Which part of this don’t you understand (besides the Constitution)?
Well…………I think this would hold more “independent” weight if the SOH Pelosi hadn’t already announced a fight over renewal in 6 mo…
And there is another angle to the whole “rock star” netroots candidate…. Darcy Burner was unknown, and speaking Dem party, Anti-Bush campaign rhetoric in 2006. Now, voters of the 8th have a clear picture of the FAR left ideology that DB embraces and that will not translate well with the moderates who seem to be the majority on the 8th….IMHO
However, in the interest of equality and fair play, I think when we Democrats are back in power we should eavesdrop on wingnuts, just for the principle.
@10 Campaigning against Bush makes someone “far left”?
The anti-Burner spew from the pigfucking faction is very predictable. They sound like a broken record.
At this juncture, I’d like to ask our troll friends if they think Cathy McMorris should resign from Congress to be a stay-at-home mom?
LOL @ 10, too damn funny to see a right wingnut ever use the term IMHO, you pompous fools wouldn’t know humble if it bit you in the ass.
@4, Wow is showing he has a very poor and stunningly foolish take on the fundamentals of American liberty.
Wow, we Americans don’t want to reclaim the right to not be searched without a warrant (as the constitution says, “To be secure in our persons and papers”) because we have something to hide. We want to reclaim that right – and yes, we have to reclaim it because BushCo. has taken it from us – because we believe in limiting the power of government, we believe in the bill of rights, and we believe that the government should not have the power to search us without a warrant.
Why are you afraid of freedom, Wow? By willingly giving up your freedom, you let the terrorists wind. Why do you want the terrorists to win, Wow?
Wow @ 4:
one more thing….. What does she have to hide? If someone want’s to listen to my calls, go ahead. I don’t plan on doing anything illegal.
I always ask this question when people say things like that:
When President Hillary Clinton is in the Oval Office, will you be concerned about making comments of a critical or political nature over the phone?
How about Attorney General Louis Farrakhan?
The point is not to disparage any of these people. Administrations come and go. Sometimes they have people we like, sometimes people we dislike, and sometimes they have people who scare us to death.
I do not oppose warantless wiretaps because I hate or fear GWB or any of his little helpers. They do worry me a bit, but that’s not the issue either. Like you, I’m a boring white guy who has very little worth listening to going on in his life. When you grant that power to the executive, you are, in essence, granting it in perpetuity to whatever left-wing or right-wing nutjob holds that office into perpetuity. I see no constructive reason whatsoever to grant the State that level of power, and I see a lot of ways where it could potentially go wrong.
@16 He’s not willing to give up his freedom, but he’s willing to give up your freedom. That’s how these assholes operate.
Then why did 41 democrats agree to it ??? That is my point?
@ 19
That’s my point?
Hm… With a question mark. This guy wants us to tell him what his point is!
I’d like to remind my fellow liberals that before you get too enamored of Ron Paul’s anti-war conservatism, you should learn more about just how far right this guy is. E.g., he wants to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, and public education. And while no one can quite nail him down as a racist … militia groups, white supremacists, and neo-Confederates like him a lot. Read Dave Niewert’s analysis at http://www.firedoglake.com/200.....orld-order
@19 Some of those 41 Democrats are recycled Republicans whose own party is too crazy for them. I’ll take ’em. Half a Democrat is better than a whole Republican.
While I’m not happy with the 41 Democratic votes for FISA, I can live with it as long as they align themselves with the Democrats for purposes of choosing the Speaker and committee chairs. That’s still a hell of a lot better than having a Republican majority pass (or block) all the legislation moving through the House.
So much for the HA program of actively editing comments to stay on topic….
Roger the king of the highjack…
@14 completely off topic @21 Not only off topic but a clear highjack attempt.
Guess the new “rules” don’t really apply.
Hm… With a question mark. This guy wants us to tell him what his point is!
Reminds me of Mary Matalin. When she was asked her opinion of Mark Felt, who had just been revealed to be Deep Throat, she replied “I don’t know what the talking points are yet.”
Authoritarian cultists through-and-through.
@24 There is only 1 topic on HA:
REPUBLICANS SUCK
and my comments are always on that topic.
Mark Felt is the real deal, a genuine American hero.
@19 because they, like you, don’t understand how freedom is supposed to work or how precious it is. They, like you, are willing to give up freedome because they’re scared, they’re like little frightened children. “Daddy, protect me from the big bad wolf. Here are all my freedoms, I’ll willingly give them up in exchange for security!” But of course, all that happens is that we end up with neither liberty nor security.
Again Wow, I ask you, why do you want the terrorists to win? Why do you hate America and American freedoms?
Hey why hasn’t global warming been in the news lately???? Is it hot enough for you dems? Hehehehehhe
You know, it’s not too early to start taking stock of what authoritarian kultists like Wow are saying now about basic rights. Anyone who remembers the 90s knows they will return to the same paranoid bullshit the second a Democrat is in the White House, attacking the same anti-Constitutional BS they can’t imagine being a problem now…
Wow and others will turn 180 degrees on 2009.1.20, no doubt about that.
As for me – unlike most whiny chickenhawks, I lived in NYC on 9/11 and I witnessed it from my livingroom. Unlike whiny chickenhawks, there is not one additional freedom I will give up to gain a little false security. Unlike whiny chickenhawks, I know for certain that some rag-tag Islamists do not have a snowflake’s chance in Lindsay Lohan’s crotch of taking down our great nation.
Destroying America is a privelege left to scaredy-cat conservatives begging for Big Daddy DC to save them from scary bad mens.
Preserving America is a privilege left to those of us who will not sacrifice our Constituional, Creator-given, inalienable rights to boogeyman-of-the week.
The GOP has made it clear where they stand; when Osama says jump, they jump as high as they can, and tell the nation to jump higher.
hgunited says:
@19 because they, like you, don’t understand how freedom is supposed to work or how precious it is. They, like you, are willing to give up freedome because they’re scared, they’re like little frightened children.
What freedoms are you talking about. I define freedom as marginal tax rates. Thirty five percent is more free than 39.6 percent. Freedom to a democrat is never free.
@30 They’ve never said they’re willing to live under the rules they make for others.
@31 And zero is more free than 35 percent. Republicans want to pay zero taxes so they can get everything free. Republicans are F R E E L O A D E R S .
The only true measure of freedom for any country is taxes. The lower the tax rate the more free the county.
Roger Rabbit says:
@31 And zero is more free than 35 percent. Republicans want to pay zero taxes so they can get everything free. Republicans are F R E E L O A D E R S .
I am for a strong military which would cost 15%. No more than 20% tops to run the entire federal government. State and local taxes no more than 10% combined. I can see why you would be for high taxes Roger, you were a guvmint hack lawyer all your life.
@31, I’m just a wee tad bit more concerned with re-instating the bill of rights that the rightwingers have carved up than I am about taxes. Are you saying you’ll take tax cuts in exchange for the bill of rights? If so, I ask you the same question I asked Wow; why do you hate America and American freedoms? Why do you hate the bill of rights? Why do you want the terrorists to win?
My standard of freedom is nudity.
Naked people on TV? More freedom. Naked people on beaches, in public parks, anywhere people sunbathe? Freedom. Nudity equals sex offender status? Not free.
The most racy thing on TV is “Walker, Texas Ranger”? You might be living in China.
And pot. Pot is equal to a parking ticket? Sorta free. Pot posession is a felony? Not very free. Drunks are more obnoxious, end of story.
Participation in politics. Requires money? Not free. Available for any idiot, but political system lets idiots marginalize themselves? That’s real freedom.
People have basic rights, like not being abducted and tortured? Free. Can abduct people and torture them without court review? Not free.
Right now, the USA is not earning it’s claim to be free. I find that to be disgusting and the GOP in America right now to be the least patriotic political faction since the pro-slavery secessionists.
Fuck them. I’m for freedom.
@31, I’m just a wee tad bit more concerned with re-instating the bill of rights that the rightwingers have carved up than I am about taxes. Are you saying you’ll take tax cuts in exchange for the bill of rights? If so, I ask you the same question I asked Wow; why do you hate America and American freedoms? Why do you hate the bill of rights? Why do you want the terrorists to win?
First of all I don’t believe our freedoms are being taken away. The only serious assault on freedom is coming from the left and the reinstitution of the fairness doctrine. Yes, I do believe that taxes are a perfect measuring rod of freedom and yes, I believe we pay way too much in taxes. I would love to see taxes lowered to a max of 20% . If you are offended by the guvmint listening in on your international phone calls to enemy nations then that is your problem.
They call someone far left because they think it will marginalize someone they fear.
That’s how these far right wackos are.
Well I guess “Dan Rather” does no international business, or he’d be very concerned about the government listening to his phone calls and giving tips to his business competitors, who may have donated more to the “correct” political party than he did.
Because no matter what he thinks, the new law says they can, and there is no judicial review, so basically whatever the executive branch says is good enough!
Remember the right wing furor over the White House Christmas list during the Clinton era? This current FISA bill, by comparison, is 1984 vs middle school party invitation politics.
Just remember, fools like that poster will spin like tops the second the next President is sworn in. He has not the slightest respect for a single American value. He values power. Period.
I’m ignoring, of course, the idiotic assertions that flat taxes are in any way in keeping with American values dating to the Revolution, or the idea that using public resources for private profit benefits the general public, or any other such idiocies he can’t defend because they are indefensible.
Oh, no! Run for the hills! The ‘fairness’ doctrine is on the loose.
Do you realize how that plays with the constituency that you COUNTED on not to understand what was really meant by the ‘Patriot’ Act and the ‘Clean Air’ Act? I know these people — very well — and they are baffled by the reights hatred of a doctrine that proclaims fairness.
Go ahead. Shout it from the rooftops.
CONSERVATIVES HATE FAIRNESS!
@34 “The only true measure of freedom for any country is taxes. The lower the tax rate the more free the county.”
Hey klake, why are you still here? Freedom is waiting for you in these tax havens:
Bosnia
Hong Kong
Saudi Arabia
Lebanon
Singapore
@36 Let’s buy him a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia. There’s no taxes there.
@38 “If you are offended by the guvmint listening in on your international phone calls to enemy nations then that is your problem.”
If you think that’s all they’re doing you have your head terminally up your ass.
@40 Klake (aka Dan Blather) would have fit right in with the Third Reich.
Roger Rabbit @ 42
You left out Somalia and Afghanistan
Yo Hoo
There were 41 demo’s that voted for this, now what do you have to say about your party????]
I don’t make any phone calls overseas, and if I did, who cares if hillary listens to them.
Talk about being paranoid. You people (ne(u)troots demo’s)think the government is out to get you all!!!! Get a grip on reality.
BTW….Do you think you are important ENOUGH to be spied on? hahahahahhahahahahahhaha
@47
Back in the Nixon years, they spied on Martin Luther King Jr. The lesson that those of us with an IQ over 30 understand is that it’s not a power you give to any executive branch without oversight. Not to the Democrats. Not to the Republicans. Because they will assuredly abuse the power for their own ends.
Lee @ 48
I completely agree with your point. However, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while Richard Nixon became President starting on January 20, 1969. Nixon did more domestic spying than his predecessors, of course, but it isn’t like he was the one who started it.
@49
You’re correct. In my defense, I was born in 1975. :)
I think Nixon spied on John Lennon, if I remember correctly…dangerous terrorist, that one.
First of all I don’t believe our freedoms are being taken away.
Then you live in Fantasyland. I’ll continue to ignore the dispatches from Deep Inside The Head Of The Guy Who Thinks He’s A Newsman Except When He Thinks He’s A Dog, since you have just proven there is no link between wherever you are posting them from and reality.
47
Are you SURE you don’t make any phone calls overseas?
Are you SURE when you call from Seattle to Spokane, it isn’t routed through Vancouver?
Are you SURE that when you call your bank’s help line that that “Sam” on the other end isn’t actually named Shavinder and located in Bangalore?
Are you SURE that when your modem dials the phone the packets it sends out aren’t going to be rerouted through a data center in Ireland on their way to someone, somewhere?
Are you sure enough that you want to bet the freedoms that your forefathers fought and died for on it??
Even if you are, I’m not.
47
Being important enough to be spied on isn’t the point. Aren’t you the least bit worried that when you discuss that kinky stuff you do with your significant other, the Batman costume, the jar of Skippy peanut butter, the German shepherd and the CD of Liberace’s greatest hits that some government official might just be making it an unintentional menage a trois??
I don’t know about you but the thought that someone, even if they’re listening for something else, might be listening in on my private conversations with my banker or my doctor or my sister doesn’t sit well with me. I guess it’s just that whole Fourth Amendment “secure in their persons” thing we patriots and defenders of the Constitution are so uptight about.
50
On the other hand, Nixon and Elvis were buds.
Still another point missed by the wingnut-of-many-names is that it doesn’t matter whether he has or hasn’t done anything wrong, doesn’t matter whether he does or doesn’t have anything to hide. Because, under the Bush/Gonzales rules, the government can simply decide that he’s an evildoer or an enemy combatant or a terrorist, and haul him away if it wants to.
Without telling him why they’re doing it. Without a search warrant. Without an arrest warrant. Without allowing him access to a lawyer. Without habeas corpus. Without showing him any of the “evidence” on which they base their arrest. Just poof, you’re disappeared.
That idiots like these don’t comprehend the potential danger we’re all in is both sad and frightening. That they revel in their smug idiocy is just plain scary as shit.
LIB RADIO IS DEAD!!! Long live King Big Pants and His Royal Highness Price D. Monson. Just a sign of what is to come at the ballot box! Brace yourselves for 8 years of Rudy…suckers!
See the facts at http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/.....t-78875172
FOOLISH LIB’s! Your message can’t make it in the market place now can it!
4
Let’s see…Bush administration listens in on Darcy Burner’s phone lines…Al Gonzales reports the content of her conversations to Dave Reichert….what could be wrong with that?
If Osama calls, maybe he dials the wrong number and gets one of these wingnuts.
Here comes those men in black ready to take the gullible wingnut to Gitmo.
re 56: No, it can’t. That’s why we need to get the marketplace’s money out of politics.
The marketplace’s message can’t make it in the emergency room. You don’t relly consider the electorate to be the marketplace, do you? Because with real people the Progressive message wins 70% to 30% — the 30% being the segment of the population with IQ’s under 100.
Can anyone remember back to the Good Ole Days when the 41 dems would have been called Dixiecrats ?
Just took a look at the right wing screed and their bullshit responses to this post.
1) They deflect – Rove playbook 101
2) They lie – they can’t help it – their Publicans
3) They are AFRAID of Darcy
4) They’re only concerned about staying on topic when it suits them – sort of like they only care about true conservative issues when it suits them or rule of law when it suits them – and it never suits them that the rules should apply to them
5) The righties want to try to spin facts on this and any issue because they’re always on the wrong side of the facts
Won’t be changing stations when when the “best of all” are not on. Simply won’t go to KIRO to begin with. After 40 years. Would have gone at the advent of nasal-twanged, hypocritical,self-glorifying,bait-mongering, Monson, but meerely turned the dial. Remained with KIRO for Ron, and the community needs more civic activists like Vinnie.Would love to see Ron reappear as our Washington US Senator when one or the other currently titled steps down.
Very poor decision on the part of KIRO. RIP.
Dan Blather is one of those idiots that believe in THE RAPTURE, which is certainly permitted in this country, (though his party WOULD require that it be taught in public schools).
Who cares what his religious beliefs are, but it certainly boggles the mind that he expects people to take him seriously.
He probably thinks the good fairy would make a great constitutional expert.
He probably thinks that the spoiled little rich kid in the oval office who runs the country like his personal toy is a great leader, too.
I would guess that he’s not gonna like Hillary.
I wonder if people who are raptured enter heaven with smooth genital regions, like Ken and Barbie?
57 What’s he doing, whacking off?
Are you suggesting that Dan is Ken? Or Barbie?
If he’s Jane Balogh’s Dog at the time, it must mean dogs will be in the rapture.
It’s easy to see Dan going to the dogs, but the rapture going to the dogs is a hoot.
17 JSA, unfortunately the argument about “What happens when the other side takes control and has all those extra powers?” is completely lost on the True Believers. They’re planning on this being the beginning of the Thousand-Year American Reich, and are possessed of sufficient hubris that the possibility that they’ll fail is beyond their comprehension.
ArtFart @ 67:
The whole nature of the argument is sort of lost on me.
The FISA courts which grant warrants for these wiretaps in the first place are designed to move quickly, and they are very government-friendly.
The purpose of FISA courts being in place is not to create some sort of a debate club to talk about whether terrorists who are not citizens or residents of the US should or should not have their phones tapped. That’s what God made Sunday morning talk shows for.
It is a final level of oversight to make sure that the power of the State is not abused by any member of the executive for personal purposes.
Republicans say they want the government to run like a business. Well, in any grownup business with shareholders, there are controls put in place to make sure that the boss, the managers, and the employees don’t get to pull money out of the company purse at will. That’s how it works at the company I’m at now, that’s how it’s worked at 80% of the places I’ve been at over my career. The rest were either very small privately-owned shops where the boss was God Incarnate, or they were disaster areas. The federal government is too large to tolerate a God Incarnate, and I’d rather it not be a disaster area.
I fail to see why this sort of common-sense oversight shouldn’t apply to the Executive Branch just like it applies to the executive suites.
Oh criminy… Here I thought the troll problem on this site had been solved… foolish me. FYI, for people who actually give a f%*# abut the future, Bush will be in Smellvue on the 27th, at the Hyatt Regency. What are your plans for resistance? How will you defend your freedoms? Will you help shut Bellevue down? If your not ready for direct action, you are part of the problem.
Samdinista,
Nobody would like to pelt Bush with a few eggs (or tomatoes — canned ones — in 16 oz cans) more than me.
That being said “shutting Bellevue down” is stupid.
What on Earth do you think you are going to accomplish by doing this? Will Bush notice or care? Maybe. That would be nice, but I don’t think you’ll get the satisfaction of seeing him with a terror-filled look in his eyes as he gazes down at the peasants with their pitchforks and torches 20 stories below.
What you WILL do is scare and piss of a lot of people in Bellevue. You know, nice ordinary citizens like you and me. Many of them are voters. Many of them don’t like Bush very much. NONE of them will appreciate angry mobs blocking the street, yelling, and keeping them from getting where they’re going.
Public gatherings are fun for the people who are in them, but they don’t get covered by the media, or they get covered in a bad light. They freak out voters, and they get ignored by our delightful leaders.
It’s time to be constructive. This is not.
You unabashed liberals are so cute when you start bashing your own. Moron Bush, as the former Mike Webb called him over and over, has again beaten you Kos-tards at your own moronic game.
Your institutional Democrats, who gave Bush more war than he should have had, have now given him more power than he asked for. Amazing, since only the day before yesterday Bush’s “breach” of FISA was going to start your slam-dunk rush to impeachment.
And Paris Burner is going to bravely buck institutional dementia? When she’s at least as loony as the emplaced fringe of leftist lunacy? She’ll fit right in.
Ah, a troll. Thanks for playing. Now bye.
jsa @ 70
OK, I’ll bite.What is “constructive”? I submit that history shows that only when people unite in some kind of resistance does “constructive”, substantive change occur. The American labor movement did not win their battles in the ’20s and ’30s worrying about alienating the priviliged class, i.e. voters. They won because they organised, went on strike and took on the Pinkertons when it was called for.They knew they had no place “in the system” from which they could effect change, so they wisely went “out of the system”.If this were 1920, I suspect you would be as uncomfortable with their tactics as you are with mine.
When African-Americans began their struggle against Jim Crow and segregation in the late ’50s and early ’60s, they too realized that they must create disruption and ruffle feathers to get their grievences heard.They were often derided for their tactics by the “liberal” whites who were supposedly their allies for the same reasons you think shutting down Bellevue is “stupid”. I suspect that if this were 1963, you would do a lot of hand-wringing over the “negro problem”, but wouldn’t want to actually get your hands dirty doing something about it.
There are too many reasons for the necessity of direct action to list here. If you have any doubt that we now live in a fascist police state, consider these two recent news stories. In Indianapolis, the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security set up random check points at public bus stops in the downtown core, and demanded that people entering the busses show ID and submit to searches. It is part of a program called VIPR. In Charleston S.C., a man who had been documenting evidence of EPA violations by a company with direct ties to the Bush family had his home invaded without a warrant by agents of the Department of Homeland Security and had his cameras and computers confiscated and destroyed. Examples like these abound.
If you can, please discuss an instance in history when substantive change has occured without direct action, civil dis-obedience or some form of revolutionary activity. Good luck in that endeavor.
Wow! A real, thinking answer.
1963 was different. Not because of the rightness or wrongness of civil rights vs Bush now.
1963 was different because the fight was city by city, county by county, state by state. Martin Luther King called a bus strike in Montgomery which was visible, affected whites and blacks in Montgomery, and effected change in Montgomery after months of sustained direct action.
School integration was forced city by city by sustained direct action.
The problems in this country are not in Bellevue, WA. They are in Washington, DC. If you want to pester the administration every day, you need to do it there. Good luck with that, by the way.
If you go to Bellevue for one night, kick shit over, and make a mess, you will go home the next day, and nothing will happen. President Bush will go home the same night (he doesn’t like anything that keeps him from sleeping in his own bed) you won’t be there the next day, and nothing will happen.
It’s a very different problem than the 60s. The issues are national and international, not local. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t.
One night of chaos in Bellevue is NOT the answer. Have a street party in your own neighborhood. Bellevue sucks anyways.
You make it sound as though the battle against Jim Crow was a local initiative. It wasn’t. It was a fight against a national policy of discrimination, waged in many local venues by a large and politically diverse community.
I disagree that the problem is not in Bellevue – the problem is in Bellevue, and Akron,Sacramento,Tallahasee and any other american city you care to mention. I think you inadvertantly strengthened my arguement…Like the civil rights movement, it is important to engage in struggle in every town and city.
Further, you did not engage my point about the labor struggles of the 20’s, which were often violent and brutal, but with out which we would not enjoy a 40 hour week or the right to collective bargaining.
Thanks for the answer, I am enjoying the conversation.
Glad you’re having a a good time. It’s nice to take a break from yelling now and then.
Labor struggles were again sustained actions caused by groups of workers walking off the job, causing direct and local discomfort to company owners. The effects of the labor movement were national, but the individual actions were local. I’m in Vancouver, BC now, where all of our city services including the trash collection, pools, and libraries have been shut down for the last 4 weeks by a labor dispute, so this might not be the best time to get my opinion on this subject.
Same with Jim Crow. Local actions made those communities better. What worked to improve one place was quickly copied and applied in another place. If it was a judicial decision, so much the better, because you could use precedent. Sometimes these actions succeeded, sometimes they didn’t. There’s a fairly new book out by Jason Sokol called There Goes My Everything that focuses on a lot of the minutiae of this struggle. It’s worth a read.
Bellevue is only problematic in that a number of the voters there are complicit in electing Bush president, and not even a majority of them as memory serves. It’s not my favorite place, but what are you going to do? Legislate against voting for Republicans? It’s a democracy, we can’t do that.
Now more to the point, tell me what you are going to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that to make Bellevue a better place. The place has been socially engineered to keep the poor out (We forgot to build affordable housing here! Sorry! Our bad!), but righting that wrong will take pretty major dollops of cash.
Likewise, most of the things that I think are wrong with the place (not enough transit, too much developer-driven growth, too many covenants of trust keeping the neighborhoods boring) are not glaring social injustices. They just make the place sterile and uninteresting. You are welcome to run people for city council to change the tone of government and encourage the oppressed proletariat of the cul-de-sacs (many of whom are now millionaires on paper) to throw off the chains of their covenants. I don’t know if that’s the sort of change you’re looking for.
My point is that the national, executive-driven decisions of Bush and his friends are scary indeed. However, these decisions and the remedies to them are being made in the Congress, in the courts, and by voting Republicans out of office. What change do you think you will effect by shutting downtown Bellevue down? I don’t see it.
I will start with your last statement;
Nearly half of the electorate would like Bush impeached. I am one of that half.
It is a simple matter of numbers. He would be impeached in the House, tried in the Senate, and the votes to remove him from office would come up short. That’s politics. It sucks. I would bet my last dollar that Speaker Pelosi is watching how many people in the Senate would consider impeachment. When that number hits 66-70, expect papers to be drawn up. She’s 20 votes short now, and you don’t waste time on lost causes when you’re that far down.
On the legal side, an impeachment is a trial like any other, except that the target is a high member of the executive branch. I can not drag someone’s ass into court because I don’t like them, or I have a feeling they’ve done something wrong. I have to have done due diligence, connected all the dots, and have ironclad, watertight proof, beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused has knowingly committed the crime of which they are accused. That process is ongoing, but all the pieces are not in place yet.
Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to mobilize the constituents of about 20 senators in states where we don’t live. Unfortunately, I don’t have any close friends or relatives in these places to pester, and I’m busy in Vancouver this week. Walking off my job to protest in Boise would be detrimental to my continued employment. Taking lunch off to protest in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery would be possible, but useless as fuck, because Canadians don’t get to impeach presidents.
I have never said we shouldn’t engage the beltway. But the only way to move the political discussion in America to the left is to engage in direct action. I think history supports this thesis, and you have not engaged that. You also have not engaged the broader problem of the imminent creation of a fascist state. You’re lucky you live in Canada… wish I could.
I don’t live in Canada. I work here. I will return to the US at some point when this job finishes. As such, I take this matter very seriously. The day I take permanent residency here is the day I kiss this blog goodbye.
You may also not like being here very much. It’s a perfectly nice place, but the same underlying problems exist. A small clan of very wealthy people own this country, and they use the two major political parties here to help themselves to the majority of the pie. The fact that they have struck a social contract which benefits ordinary people somewhat more is more testament to where Canada’s wealth comes from than anything else. Canada is a resource-based economy, not a manufacturing or service-based one. If you feel your “business conditions” are unfavorable (i.e. the workers want too much or the government taxes you too heavily), you can throw a snit in the United States, take your ball, and go somewhere else. You can move a factory, you can move a call center. You can move a garment shop. Good luck moving a forest, a farm, an oil well, a salmon run, or a mine. They don’t move so good.
Now, maybe I didn’t explain myself clearly, but here are my problems with direct action:
1) For direct action to work as it did with labor or Jim Crow, you must engage the injustice that is being committed head-on. Stop riding buses which force you to the back. And keep not riding them until they let you sit where you please. Sit at lunch counters which expect you to only get your food from the take out window and confront them head-on. Leave an oppressive boss’s factory without workers, and if he brings in strike-breakers, deal with them.
The oppressors in this case are not factory bosses or small-town Southern rednecks. It is a very small group of people in Washington, DC. They are unfortunately quite well protected, and hard to impact directly. You can take their money away, but that’s personally very risky, and you’d have to get a LOT of people to stop contributing money all at once before they’d notice.
You can use direct action to sway public opinion, but how in the fuck do you expect to do that? March in the malls, and the security guard will tell you you’re on private property and make you leave. If you stand and wait, you are not exercising your right to free assembly, you are trespassing, which is seen by the courts as a rather different thing. Stand in the streets, and most people (in their cars) will not see or hear you. They’ll just know something’s blocking traffic and get pissed off.
If you’ve ever watched how the TV people cover a protest, they’ll make the most decent folks you’ll ever meet look like sixties holdovers, anarchists, or worse. You need to get your message out to people who only see you on TV, and after receiving their spin, won’t like you very much.
The places with public squares already don’t like Bush very much. It’s nice to stand at Green Lake, but you already have your audience. The places where he has any support at all have fairly limited access to information. The line of bullshit that comes from the TV makes perfect sense if you don’t have anything else to frame it against.
Your first problem is information. Once you’ve solved that, direct action is your second problem.
Since you like direct action so much, you may want to study the history of the IWW as a failure of very aggressive direct action. While IWW members usually blame the federal government pushing back hard on them, they did the same with all the other unions. The IWWs failure was much more fundamental.
The AFL and CIO (before they became one) organized skilled and semi-skilled workers. When masons or carpenters organized and withheld their services, you had a tricky problem in trying to round up yokels who could lay bricks straight or work wood properly. The IWW focused on the rights of the most downtrodden, unskilled workers. Unfortunately, when you take away one group of unskilled workers, the boss just rounds up another bundle of them from somewhere else. Your one and only respite is violent action against the company, and that doesn’t take you very far.
The administration has not been able to do what they’ve done because of lack of action. There have been huge protests against Bush, he knows they’re all in places that hate him, will never vote for him, and gives not a whit.
The problem is that you haven’t been able to convince Mr. and Mrs. America that the stuff they’re pulling affects them. Until you do this (good luck!), you can smash as much shit as you want, nothing will change.