Not many surprises in the news this morning, including this non-shocker out of Pakistan:
Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday, ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, thrusting the country deeper into political turmoil as it struggles with spreading Islamic militancy.
Seven Supreme Court judges immediately rejected the emergency, which suspended the current constitution.
There are more than a few folks who expect a similar emergency to be declared by President Bush in the weeks leading up to the November 2008 election… you know, except for the part about the Supreme Court rejecting it.
In my political circles it is assumed that Bush-Cheney will not yield power without playing every card.
And the possibility of an emergency will indeed be played out. Right on Goldy.
You guys really are whackos.
Do you also believe no plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11 and that all the Jews in the WTC called in sick that morning?
@2
Do you really believe that making up statements and putting them in other people’s mouths makes you look like anything but an idiot?
Do you really believe that Iraq had one thing to do with the events of 9/11?
Are you really such a “whacko” that believes attacking Iran is going to have better results than when we attacked Iraq?
Do you really believe that a President is not required to obey the “Rule of Law?” If not, then why was the fact that President Clinton committed perjury an impeachable offense? After all, President Bush and V.P. Cheney are espousing that if the President does it, it isn’t illegal. To carry it out to that statement’s logical illogical conclusion, there is no such thing as perjury in this country and everyone is allowed to kidnap people they suspect might be terrorists and waterboard them. After all, if the President does it, it isn’t illegal and therefore it is legal and therefore everyone can do it.
Are you really going to defend President Clinton doing the same things that President Bush has done? Such as selectively prosecuting Republicans on the flimsiest of hearsay and circumstantial evidence. Are you really going to defend President Clinton when she sifts through all phone calls without bothering to get a warrant?
Or are you going to suddenly have a Revelation that such activities are a significant breach of the Constitution?
Do you really expect the American public is going to have any sympathy for the Republican Party when they start crying foul?
Or are you too stupid to understand how utterly moronic President Bush and Cheney’s power grab has trashed the Republican Party’s brand for the next generation?
Well, the Supreme Court firings would still happen, except that a “retirement age” would be imposed, getting rid of the right-center justices and allow those spots to be filled with young Federalist Society people.
When Hitler had his “Night of the Long Knives” (in which he purged his domestic rivals on the right) in 1934, Stalin read about it and told his closest advisors that Hitler really knew what he was doing. Shortly afterwards he staged the murder of his biggest rival, using that as an excuse to purge the Communist Party of all the communists, leaving only the Stalin loyalists. I bet Cheney is taking notes today.
“When Hitler had his “Night of the Long Knives” (in which he purged his domestic rivals on the right)”
Actually, no. Those purged were the more ‘radical’ and populist elements of the NSP, the brownshirts, WWI vets, and ruffians who brought him to power (Ernst Roehm the most prominent). With this purge, Hitler signalled his peace with the prevailing industrial system and those who ran it (the Krupps, Thyssens, etc.). Thereafter, Nazism was ‘respectable’ among the German upper classes.
Stalin was more indiscriminate, purging enemies both on the left and right.
@3: and well said Michael. It is also important to remind folks that Bill Clinton was never convicted on anything.
@2: It is strange that, after Afghanistan, in our thirst for revenge for 9/11 that we did not attack either Saudi Arabia (the homeland of most of the attackers, the font of Islamist extremism typified by Al Quaida, and the financial backer of nearly all arab extemism we so decry) or Pakistan (a dictatorship, whose intelligence agency supported the Taliban, who actually have nuclear weapons, who were actively engaged in spreading nuclear technology and arms).
But no. We attacked Saddam. Sometimes I feel we did so on a lark, in the willful belief that it would be a “cakewalk”. This made it an easy sell.
But it reveals conservatism for what it is: A hypocrisy wrapped in contradictions, fueled by anger at modernity, hiding nothing less than a naked grab for power, and an covert belief in the “ends justify the means” that is all the more cowardly for their willingness to nakedly lie and consciously cover up this core belief.
Over a year ago, Zbigniew Brzezynski predicted such an “emergency” being declared by WingNutz, Inc.™.
I believe it will.
I think the only response that we can have is to simply ignore their declaration and proceed with the elections.
@PTBAA
Nits, my good fellow. Yes, those rivals did include those that were anti-capitalists & populist, but they were also anti-Jewish and quite nationalist. They weren’t leftists, they were anti-democratic authoritarians and there was no confusion on that score. And yes, those with property and wealth were reassured with him, as they should have been.
Stalin at this point had already cleaned house on both the right & left and had had undisputed leadership for about seven years, but he didn’t have absolute personal power. He felt that fine distinction sharply, and the result was what has come to be known as the Great Terror, as you are no doubt aware.
To all:
I plan on voting for Hillary (I think she’s a lock). I voted for Kerry. I think Bush is a rotten President. (Although, his breaking of the law isn’t quite up to interning for years tens of thousands of American citizens during WWII, an act done by a President I admire… all Presidents tend to think of themselves as above the law at times).
That said, it is the epitome of being a whacko to seriously believe and publicly state that Bush will not leave office peacefully just as every other President before him as done… that is just as whacked as believing no plane hit the Pentagon or that the moon landings were a hoax. That was my point. I guess I should have been more verbose.
Com’on – does anyone with an ounce of brains seriously believe that come Jan 23, 2009, Bush won’t ride off into the sunset???? Please.
@3 “Do you really believe that a President is not required to obey the ‘Rule of Law?'”
Actually, he isn’t, and presidents figured this out long ago. Bush is absolutely right in believing the Constitution is a scrap of paper that can be trampled on at will — unless and until you have courts willing to enforce it (presidents customarily deal with this by packing the courts with their own underlings), and/or an opposition party in Congress unwilling to impeach presidents who trample on the Constitution and ignore the nation’s laws. When was the last time we had a Congress willing to impeach a president for anything besides lying about a blowjob?
The Democratic Party establshment and Democratic pols are complicit in what’s happening in this country. They are fucking cowards, the whole lot of ’em. We have seen Reagan and Dubya get away with gross malfeasances because gutless Democratic politicians didn’t stand up for the Constitution or rule of law when it mattered. Folks, we have a problem within the Democratic Party that we need to attend to before we can ever expect anything from the Constitution or the laws on the books.
@3 (continued) “Do you really expect the American public is going to have any sympathy for the Republican Party when they start crying foul?”
Now, here is the rub. Hillary Clinton clearly is going to be the next president, whether we like it or not. And, when she takes office, should she fuck with Republicans? Damn right she should! She has to, for the same reason a Mafia family whacks one of your guys after you whack one of their guys, and for the same reason a baseball pitcher hits one of your batters after your pitcher hits their batter. It’s a necessary deterrent, it maintains discipline, it sustains law and order. If you don’t retaliate, things get completely out of control.
I’m a strong believe in the principle that if a Republican whacks you on the shin, you must kick him in the nuts! If a Republican steals from you, you must raise his taxes! If a Republican sends your job to India, you must make him pay for your retirement! This discipline is necessary to prevent anarchy.
Here is the appropriate message to send Republicans: Eveything you’ve done to us, we’re going to do back to you, with interest!
So, put your swimming caps on, pubbies, and prepare to get wet.
4, 5 It’s simpler than you guys realize. Hitler got rid of the independent thinkers. His goal was to make sure only the “yes men” survived.
Roehm, you see, wasn’t killed over ideological differences. Roehm was killed because he had the audacity to assert autonomous authority. He ended up dead because he wasn’t a good bootlicker. He had to be liquidated because, in a word, he didn’t understand that an order is, well, an order.
@10 “Com’on – does anyone with an ounce of brains seriously believe that come Jan 23, 2009, Bush won’t ride off into the sunset???? Please.”
I sincerely believe there won’t be any problem come Jan. 23, 2009, if Bush and every other Republican in the country knows that liberals are armed.
Liberals must arm! Without guns, you have no rights, and the Constitution is a scrap of paper. Signed, Second Amendment Rabbit
@9 Mark C,
Nits? To be sure. However to characterize those disposed of on that night as “the right” was, I believe, a bit of a mischaracterization or, yes, a quibble. Perhaps the terms themselves have little meaning when discussing the la-la land that was 1930’s nazism as an “ideology”.
In their populist anger and their homophobia as prostylized by a group with what appears to be a rather significant amount of practicing homosexuals, the followers of Ernst Roehm have a lot in common with today’s “grassroots” Republican Party, but I wouldn’t push this analogy too far.
Regards,
There’s something else we need to do, and we need to do it BEFORE January 2009. Remember how the RNC bussed thugs to Miami in 2000 to stage a riot at the canvassing board? We need to anticipate they’ll do that again, and we need to prepare to meet that possibility. In other words, next time we’re going to KICK THE LIVING SHIT out of their guys! The next time a bunch of RNC staffers storm a vote counting office, they should be met by a crowd of Democrats armed with pitchforks, baseball bats, steel pipes, bricks, and buckets of hot tar and sacks of chicken feathers. I’m not saying we’re going to do anything, all I’m saying is let ’em see what we’ve got, then let them make a decision about what THEY want to do. Enough of this “rule of law” bullshit; when there is no rule of law, when they don’t respect the law, you have to deal with it at their level and that means kicking ass if they don’t have enough sense to back off. The next time a gang of Republican thugs overthrows an election by brute force, there should be Republican blood on the floor.*
* Just kidding! This kind of humor makes big bucks for Ann Coulter, and I need the money as much as she does!
@18
Please take your medecine Roger. You embarass yourself.
“I sincerely believe there won’t be any problem come Jan. 23, 2009, if Bush and every other Republican in the country knows that liberals are armed.”
Well if the HA Liberals had their way. None of us could be armed….
This is a wake up call and an example of why unstable islamic regimes should not have nuclear weapon capability.
Reading THE PRINCE made me a believer in the 2nd Amendment. This leftist, thinks who thinks that Lenin was a disaster for our side, will nevertheless quote him, from STATE AND REVOLUTION: “The nub of the matter – which is true also, by the way, for the question of the state (namely is the oppressed class armed?)”
The other side is funding, training, and gathering experience already for their Blackwater troops. Like Bush, the Right now believes that the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper.
21
No. It’s a wake up call and an example of why bat-shit crazy tinhorn dictators shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere. Especially here.