Impeachy Keen

RIPOSTE

by RIP RENSE

riposte2.jpg (10253 bytes)

IMPEACHY KEEN
(6/21/06)

          Dave Lindorff is not a fun guy. He’s drop-dead serious, always talking about issues and problems in pointed, pithy terms. I mean, he never worries about what Britney Spears is up to, or who will be the next American Idol, or whether Katie Couric will cut it as a CBS anchor. This is, of course, makes him practically un-American.
          Dave is a graybeard investigative reporter from way back, always carrying on about Iraq, New Orleans, health care, corporate larceny, environmental ruination, social injustice, how people suffer needlessly because of blunderbuss government policy.
          At least he is succinct and focused in his points, but hell, that’s about the best thing you can say for him.
          Look. Who really wants to hear about special prosecutors and violations of the fourth amendment and lying about Iraq’s nonexistent nuclear program when Britney’s pregnant and Paul is getting divorced and Oprah’s on and people want to put stone carvings of the Ten Commandments in courthouses? Who wants to listen to rationality and reason when you’ve got Bill O’Reilly saying we should run Iraq like Saddam?And then there’s the World Cup. I mean, come on.

The Rip Post Asks Dave Lindorff Four Questions About Impeachment HERE

          Lindorff’s book is the same way. It’s just not a fun book, not fun at all. It’s one of those serious, considered, carefully supported, solidly argued. . .issue books. It informs, and makes you (urp) think. Doesn’t this guy know a thing about marketing? Dave, two words: Ann Coulter!
          Coulter is fun. Matt Lauer said so, so it must be true. “Always fun having you,” Matty-boy said to Mad Annie, after allowing her to maniacally talk over him for a three-minute “interview.” Coulter’s literary equivalent of apes throwing feces is at the top of the New York Times best-seller list.
          This is what it takes to have an important book today, Dave---saying that the 9/11 widows who dared challenge the administration are primping millionaires wallowing in their husband’s deaths. And calling for the killing---the killing!---of conservative Rep. John Murtha because he sees the Iraq war for the atrocity that it is.
          If you want to be a star in this country---and all the best people do---you have to do something striking. I know this for a fact. When I tried to get a collection of my LTSEWH columns published recently, a bigtime agent told me my “author’s profile” was lacking. I had to get famous, then he’d read my manuscript. See?
          So if I could sing like Connie Chung or scream like Bus Uncle or make a sex video with Paris Hilton or shout at the China prez when he visits Bush or skydive off the Empire State Building. . .I could get published.
          Which leads me to wonder: how in hell did Lindorff manage to get “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush From Office” published? By St. Martin’s Press, no less?
          I can only guess that there are still a few other un-fun people walking around. Not many---you won’t find them on CNN or Fox---and their numbers are dying off faster than Bush’s brain cells. But there are still some moldy types who don't thrive on flaming e-mail and glib-itis and believe in (yawn) abiding by law to take care of business. Even if the business is impeachment of the most redundantly, fabulously impeachable president in U.S. history.
          No, not Warren G. Harding.
          You know how they sentence mass-murderers to “consecutive life sentences?” Adding up to a point where not even a giant tortoise could serve the sentence? This is what Bush and Cheney merit. Consecutive impeachments. If Bush is not impeachable, Frankenstein liked fire and Dracula did his best work in the daytime. If Bush is not impeachable, O.J. and Robert Blake will find the real murderers and Michael Jackson is crazy about vaginas. Bush is to impeachment what green is to brocolli, toothless old hookers are to Jerry Springer, empty rhetoric is to Hillary Clinton.
          So how is it that Lindorff and co-author Barbara Olshansky, the lead attorney for the three hundred “detainees” at Guantanamo (no fun either) are among the few people making any serious noise about impeachment? How is it that their cogent, well-argued book is a blip on Amazon.com? How is it that Democrat House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said that “impeachment is off the table?” How is it that the streets aren't full of people demanding "throw the bums out!"?
          I can only guess that the answer is fear. The mainstream media---often almost a corporate adjunct of the government---fear finding themselves without a nice fun corporate paycheck. And the American sheeple so fear “the terrorists” that not backing our "leadership," come hell or heavy reactor water, is widely seen as cowardly, if not treasonous. Never mind up to 100,000 innocent Iraqis wiped out in the Bush invasion. Never mind 2500 U.S. and 113 British soldiers killed, and 69 journalists who filed their last dispatches from the desert. Never mind Rumsfeld and Cheney's slaughter of the CIA.
          That’s the problem: never mind.
          Never mind that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice fabricated fantastic fun lies in order to justify the invasion. Never mind the fun 104-acre, 5500-employee, billion-dollar U.S. Embassy being built in Baghdad. Never mind depleted uranium poisoning. Never mind dead children. Never mind that Iraq is far worse off now than it was under Saddam. Never mind that this is actually a permanent occupation of the Middle East on behalf of corporate America, Europe, and Israel. Never mind the evisceration of privacy, and colossal spying on all American citizens by the Bush administration. Never mind the Constitution. Never mind Valerie Plame. Never mind the unanswered 9/11 questions. Never mind the sanctioning of kidnap, torture and imprisonment(!) without warrant or prosecution. Never mind all that---there are terrorists out there!
          Or course, there is a bit of an irony. By keeping a lying, Constitution-shredding, quasi-theocratic “Christian” near-dictatorship in power---that's you, George!---terrorists “win.” As it stands now, Uncle Sam is being led around by the nose---by terrorist threat. Every time Bush ups the ante on totalitarianism at home and war abroad, terrorists laugh their turbans off.
          Lindorff knows all this---and it is what prompted him and Olshanksy to do what they saw as their patriotic duty to write this no-fun book. It happens to be a sharp, compelling, meticulously researched document that can leave no objective reader opposing impeachment hearings, if not the speedy removal of Bush---and Cheney---from office.
          If that's not fun enough for you, hey, don’t read it. But if you believe in holding impeachment hearings, as increasing numbers of citizens do, at least buy it. It's the surest way to be make your voice heard. Next to voting out all Repugnicans in November.
          Throw the bums out? Now that sounds like fun.
          Maybe Dave's on to something, after all.

Q&A: DAVE LINDORFF ON IMPEACHMENT
Rip Post: Give me some sort of comparative analogy for impeaching Clinton vs. impeaching Bush. . .

Lindorff: It’s like having your dog put to sleep for drooling on your sofa, and then turning around and paying the full bill to a corrupt contractor who used beach sand in the concrete of your house foundation and substandard lumber on the framing, so that the whole thing collapsed right after you took possession—and then hiring him again to build you a second house.

RP: Why aren’t more Americans interested in discussing impeachment?

Lindorff: From all the evidence I can see, the American people WANT to discuss impeachment, but the media are afraid of it. The Zogby and Ipsos polls on the impeachment question both show a majority of all Americans to favor impeachment, and as many as 80 percent of Democrats favor impeachment at this point. But the mainstream media just treat the story like a wacky out-of-the-mainstream idea. It makes no sense, unless you assume, as I do, that the media are frightened of the power of the administration, and its retaliatory ability to affect licensing decisions, etc.

RP: Why are Democrat leaders like Pelosi saying they will not pursue impeachment?

Lindorff: I think that the Democratic leadership for the most part is composed of people who are afraid of a) their own shadows and b) the rank and file. It’s incredible that they would actually say they don’t support impeachment as a November campaign theme because they fear it could “energize the Republican base.” What about doing something to “energize the Democratic base”? That’s something that the Democratic Party leadership hasn’t tried in, what? A quarter of a century? And look at the stunning results of their cowardice! If the Democratic Party were to make impeaching Bush a centerpiece of the 2006 elections, they’d have record turnout in November, they’d sweep their House and Senate races, and Bush would be out on his ass.

RP: Is there a fear that impeaching the administration will “weaken” the country and make it more prey to terrorist attack?

Lindorff: Only the wilfully ignorant believe that Bush is doing anything to make America safer from terror. What Bush has been doing for five years is dividing this country against itself on every issue. If that’s strengthening the country, I give up. If we weren’t spending $200+ billion in Iraq each year, we’d have plenty of money to spend on buying tipsters inside Al Qaeda, on checking all containers that enter the U.S., and on foreign aid to the countries that are producing the next batch of terrorists—with some left over to pay for education, healthcare, dykes around New Orleans, environmental protection and maybe even publicly funded elections.

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