Impeach

Oh The Stupidity: Sarah Palin Wants Obama Impeached For Both Solving/Not Solving The Debt Crisis

Posted by on October 15, 2013 at 12:30 pm. 15 Comments :

America’s own rogue GOPachyderm, Sarah Palin, is such a consistent source of hilarity it seems impossible that she could keep up the pace any longer. But just when you think she’s exhausted her supply of inanity, she posts another Facebook column and reestablishes her crackpot bona fides:

“Apparently the president thinks he can furlough reality when talking about the debt limit. To suggest that raising the debt limit doesn’t incur more debt is laughably absurd. The very reason why you raise the debt limit is so that you can incur more debt. Otherwise what’s the point?”

What Palin is mocking as “laughably absurd” is known to those who have advanced beyond remedial economics as “the truth.” The point of raising the debt ceiling, which Palin goes out of her way to misunderstand, is to pay for debt already incurred. It does not, and cannot, authorize new spending. Only Congress can do that. So if Palin has a problem with the outstanding debt, she needs to take it up with John Boehner.

Palin continues by declaring that “It’s also shameful to see [Obama] scaremongering the markets with his talk of default.” I wonder if she would castigate the sainted Tea Party icon, Ronald Reagan, for saying (video here)…

“Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar.”

But Palin hasn’t even begun to showcase her Olympian idiocy. Her Facebook drivel proceeds with a self-contradictory passage that begins by stating that…

“There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we service our debt first.”

Actually, what the Fourteenth Amendment (Section 4) says is that “The validity of the public debt of the United States […] shall not be questioned.” It is a controversial clause that many interpret as authorization for the President to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling at will. So it appears that Palin is advising the President to take matters into his own hands. But her next paragraph puts an end to that sort of thinking.

“Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.”

Huh? Palin just got finished arguing that the Constitution demands that the President take any and all measures to pay our debts. Now she says that if he does so he is guilty of an impeachable offense. And just to lock in the crazy, she also says that not doing so is likewise impeachable. In Palin’s twisted reality Obama cannot glance sideways without violating his oath of office.

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What is abundantly clear is that Palin wants to believe that whatever this President does is a justification for impeachment. Her perspective is so irreparably warped that it has lost any semblance of rationality. This is something that has been noticeable for quite some time with Palin, but what stands out as utterly incomprehensible is that there are still people who hang on her every word – including in the media. It’s a sad state of affairs, but one that is not irreversible. We just need to provide the proper educational support. So let’s start with something that Palin might be able to grasp.

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Cletus on Debt Ceiling

IMPEACH, IMPEACH: A Frenzy Breaks Out At Fox News

Posted by on August 15, 2013 at 3:43 pm. 11 Comments :

Is it a slow news day, or just another day at Fox News? For some reason Fox is exposing their wacko side (again) over at their community web site Fox Nation (See Fox Nation vs. Reality for an in-depth look at the site’s blatant dishonesty). In two days they have posted two articles about fishy fringe groups proposing phony “Articles of Impeachment” against President Obama.

The first thing to note is that such articles cannot be drafted by citizens. It is a legal process that begins in the House of Representatives. So these charades have no meaning other than as political publicity stunts. Secondly, the allegations must assert criminal wrongdoing that amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Being unsatisfied with explanations about what took place at Benghazi, or opposition to a health insurance law, that was passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, do not rise to that standard.

Nevertheless, Fox News is going all out to promote these absurd spectacles. The first was posted yesterday with a headline that shouted “Black Citizens Group Files ‘Articles of Impeachment’ Against Obama”

Fox Nation NBRA

In fact, the group was actually the National Black Republican Association, a shadowy organization with no visible means of support who exist primarily to advance false claims about the historical relationship of Democrats and Republicans to the black community. For instance, they produced radio ads and billboards declaring that Martin Luther King was a Republican, a claim that is demonstrably untrue.

The Fox Nationalists sourced their story to Watchdog.org, a division of the Franklin Center which is financed by the Koch brothers as an “investigative” journalism service. Both Watchdog and the Franklin Center espouse rabidly right-wing/Tea Party propaganda disguised as news reporting – much like Fox News.

The next impeachment article was posted today in the form of a video “trailer” for a new book by noted birther Aaron Klein. The book is titled “Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Oabam from Office.” It suffers from the same deficiencies of law and logic as the NBRA’s article.

Fox Nation WND
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Klein’s book was published by the book division of WorldNetDaily, the far-right home of the wildest conspiracy theories on the net, many of which are manufactured by Klein himself. In addition to a variety of birther myths, WorldNetDaily is the source of such reputable reporting as terrorists building “boob” bombs (seriously, you have to see the graphic), and Obama using the movie “The Butler” to incite race wars. The site features such distinguished contributors as Ted Nugent, Victoria Jackson, and Donald Trump.

So that’s two articles in two days planting the asinine idea of impeachment in the minds of Fox’s gullible and glassy-eyed audience. Both are from sources that represent the dregs of the uber-rightist conspiracy swamps with no credibility whatsoever. I can’t wait to see what the Fox Nationalists post tomorrow. And Fox wants people to regard them as a reputable news organization? Yeah, sure.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Impeach Obama Rally Causes 10 Mile Yawn

Posted by on June 12, 2013 at 3:41 pm. 6 Comments :

The folks at Fox Nation must be getting pretty desperate for any slime to fling Obama’s way. Clearly the parade of phony scandals has failed to convince the President to resign and join a Muslim monastery, so they are grasping for ever shorter straws in an effort to break Obama’s back.

Today the Fox Nationalists reported that an “Impeach Obama” rally in Southern California organized by confirmed birther had snarled traffic for 10 miles.

Fox Nation
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First of all, anyone who has ever driven in Southern California knows that there are very few 10 mile stretches of highway that are not snarled at almost any time of day. That said, the particular claim in this case was easily disproved by photos supplied by the source for the story. One glance shows that traffic was moving fairly well. It also shows that the rally was a pathetic affair that brought out only six or seven nutcases who were unable to articulate an actual reason to impeach the President. Their signs carried unrelated messages concerning Benghazi, immigration, guns, and something about cults. This also further confirms earlier reports that these Teabaggers have not gained any ground in the wake of recent political melodramas.

The organizer was long-time birther, Roger Ogden. He has been advocating for Obama’s impeachment for years. He continues to believe that the birth certificate the White House posted was a fake. He also defends comparing Obama to Hitler and the Nazis. I’m not sure whether Ogden is a LaRouche follower, but there was at least one LaRouche sign at the rally.

I don’t particularly care what a loser like Ogden does on his spare Saturday mornings, but the fact that Fox News saw fit to feature this non-event on their web site says something about how frantic they are to invent a new controversy. But what made them think that a lame handful of wingnuts on a freeway overpass would have a better chance of stirring up trouble than the pseudo-scandals that have already flopped, I’ll never know.

GOP Calls For Impeachment Of President Hillary Clinton

Posted by on May 12, 2013 at 9:36 am. 33 Comments :

Vowing to get an early start on efforts to remove Hillary Clinton from the White House, Republican leaders in congress have announced their intention to hold hearings on what they claim are the high crimes and misdemeanors that Hillary Clinton will commit once she assumes the presidency in January of 2017.

Hillary Clinton

Although she has not yet been sworn in to office (or elected, or announced her candidacy) Republicans are determined not waste any time in initiating her impeachment. House Speaker John Boehner told reporters that…

“We do not want to repeat the mistakes we made in the previous [i.e. current] administration where we waited too long to get the ball rolling. After all, President Obama was in office for nearly a month before we took meaningful action to remove him.”

Some members of the GOP attribute the failure to impeach Obama on the late start they got on manufacturing allegations of malfeasance and ginning up outrage over imaginary scandals. Consequently, they chased after flimsy accusations of foreign birth and socialist aspirations that never caught on with the public. That left them facing a reelection campaign dominated by impotent sound bites of whether or not small businesses “built that” and desperate rejections of real data including poll results and unemployment numbers. Republican strategist Karl Rove Rove addressed these shortcomings saying…

“We are proud of the fallacies we created and promoted. No one worked harder to invent phony issues than we did. Could we have done better? Should we have connected Obama to Hitler more often, or the spread of the Bubonic Plague? Sure, but it’s always easier to criticize with hindsight.”

This is not to say that there weren’t zealous attempts to plunder the Obama presidency. Republican politicians, with the help of Fox News and the Koch brothers, worked feverishly to construct controversies designed to hobble the administration. They labored over “Fast and Furious,” Solyndra, Bill Ayres, and ObamaCare, which they unsuccessfully took all the way to the Supreme Court. Each of these affairs, and several more, were alleged to be “Obama’s Watergate,” but none of them gained any traction with a populace that proved to be smarter than the Tea Party – admittedly, not a very high bar.

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The latest episode for which conservative muckrakers are crying wolf (or Watergate, as the case may be) is the tragedy that took the lives of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. However, even with the help of near blanket broadcasting of Benghazi hysteria by Fox News, the utter lack of any compelling evidence of wrongdoing has turned the whole affair into a mushy smear campaign notable only for the tacky theatrics of the accusers. Even the specter of a cover-up fell flat when the proponents of that theory could not explain what exactly was being covered-up. “We forgot that little detail,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Tea Party-UT).

Rather than risk a similar fate in the event that Clinton runs for and wins the presidency in 2016, Republicans are casting their lots now. Since it doesn’t matter whether the object of their scorn has actually done anything unlawful, why wait until the former senator and Secretary of State is in office to try her for the crimes they are planning to pin on her no matter what reality ultimately serves up. It’s a strategy that they believe conserves a great deal of political energy that would otherwise be wasted on honest politicking and the responsible stewardship of government.

Senator Mitch McConnell, who declared shortly after Obama’s first election victory that his primary legislative goal was to “make him a one-term president,” is devoting the same measure of commitment to the effort to pre-impeach Clinton. In remarks to the GOP caucus last week he reminded his fellow Republicans that their priorities ought not to change just because the complexion and gender of the person in the White House does.

“We have spent five years obstructing everything this president has attempted to do, from passing bills, to appointing judges and cabinet officials. This is not the time to let our guard down and be distracted by the burdens of actually governing or helping the nation recover from adversity.”

Asked for a comment when Clinton was told of the Republican campaign to impeach her, she said incredulously “What the fuck?” And walked away laughing uncontrollably. Her office later followed up with this statement:

“We have always known that these clowns were certifiable, and now we are seeing some of the best evidence of that. The Secretary has not yet made a decision as to whether or not she will run for president, but if she does she expects to campaign vigorously and appeal to the hearts and minds of the American people.

She also expects to face dipshits in the Republican Party who, with their pals at Fox News, will manufacture insane theories and conspiracies, and she plans to wipe up the pavement with their lame asses.”

How Stupid Are The Fox/Tea Party Nuts Who Want To Impeach Obama?

Posted by on January 10, 2012 at 12:59 am. 26 Comments :

In case anyone is still wondering how stupid the Fox News/Tea Party crowd is, they have announced that they are trying to raise money to fly a banner over the Super Bowl that will say “Impeach Obama.”

Fox Nation Impeach Obama

That’s right. The Super Bowl, over which it will be illegal to fly. The Super Bowl, which will be held in a covered stadium. These geniuses are plotting to hire an airplane to fly in restricted air space, pulling a banner that no one in the stadium would be able to see, that advocates a criminal procedure for which there is no legal basis. And presumably there are dimwits willing to donate to this quixotic scam.

The video above was posted with their pitch for contributors. It proudly displays a prior banner overflying of the Rose Parade which, due to weather and a late takeoff, they missed all but the last half hour. That ought to convince their victims, I mean donors, to dig deep.

I’ve gotta come up with a really dumb idea to fleece these morons. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing a rare opportunity to bank some coin before the Tea Party is over. Any suggestions?

Bush League Justice Under Investigation At MSNBC

Posted by on December 10, 2007 at 6:02 pm. NO Comments :

Dan Abrams will be hosting a series of programs this week focusing on the abuses of the Bush Administration, particularly with regard to the Department of Justice. This is an important subject that gets far too little play in the press, but impacts everything from civil rights to political corruption to First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion, and so much more. The article announcing the program, penned by Abrams, covers all of these issues with the indignation of someone who loves the law and the fair administration of justice. Here are some selected excerpts:

“‘Bush League Justice’ is a series (airing Monday-Thursday at 9 pm on MSNBC) that stems from my increasing frustration and outrage over how the Bush Administration has politicized the usually apolitical Justice Department.”

“…this President has flipped the goals and mission of the [Civil Rights] Division and allowed it to become a tool of the radical right […] almost half of the new hires in that department who had ‘civil rights experience’ had ‘experience’ only in defending employers or -fighting- affirmative action.”

“The President has effectively declared the right to disobey more than 750 laws. From the interrogation of prisoners to torture to investigations by U.S. officials in Iraq, President Bush has added a caveat that says, ‘I will only enforce this if.’ So he is effectively telling Congress thanks for your advice on this law, but I reserve the right to ignore this law.”

“Maybe the most obvious betrayal of the public trust has been politically motivated prosecutions. A University of Minnesota study conducted this year shows that for every elected Republican investigated during this President’s tenure, there were seven elected Democrats investigated.”

“This series is long overdue. The scandal with the firings of the U.S. Attorneys under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales exposed the underbelly of this administration’s penchant for putting politics over objectivity and qualifications.”

The tone set by Abrams is both surprising and promising. He does not have the reputation of a firebrand activist, but he is clearly expressing something heartfelt in these comments. He was trained as a lawyer and his father, Floyd Abrams, is one of the most respected First Amendment attorneys of the 20th century. So perhaps Dan’s genetics are kicking in.

These issues are desperately in need of a champion, someone who can do for justice what Lou Dobbs does for immigration. And the protection and preservation of our Constitutional liberties is far more important than the racist scapegoating that demagogues like Dobbs engage in.

We’ll see, as the series unfolds, if Abrams’ passion for the law results in a broadcast that forthrightly exposes Bush’s contempt for fairness and equality in the administration of justice. There is a cornucopia of criminal misconduct to explore produced by both intent and incompetence. The scandals of the Alberto Gonzales era at DoJ have fallen from the media radar, but they are just as toxic to our nation’s future as ever. The political firings of department attorneys, the distortion of the mission of civil and voting rights prosecutions, the hiring of more than 150 lawyers from Pat Robertsons Regent University, the justification for torture, the disrespect for Congress and the doctrine of equal powers, the debasement of the Supreme Court – all of these matters need to be remembered and acted upon if our democracy is to endure.

An honest presentation of the record is indeed long overdue. An honest presentation should put to rest the question of whether impeachment ought to be on the table. I hope that these programs will finally provide what has been sorely lacking from a somnolent media for the past seven years: an honest presentation.

Bill O’Reilly: Censorship, Lies And Plunging Popularity

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

A couple of days ago Bill O’Reilly again demonstrated his aversion to free expression as well as his penchant for dishonesty. An op-ed that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a paper that O’Reilly regularly castigates as “far-left loons”) laid out a case for Impeachment: If not now, when? The column was accompanied by a political cartoon that had Bush and Cheney dressed up for their mugshots.

That was more than enough to set O’Reilly off on a rant that amounted to a call for censorship (YouTube):

“Look at this. This is ridiculous […] It’s based on nothing […] I want you to excoriate them. Let them have it […] It’s wrong though for them to do it. Don’t you think that showing a mug shot of a sitting president, a sitting vice president is irresponsible?”

O’Reilly is outraged that anyone would exercise their First Amendment rights to express an opinion about the criminality of this administration. He believes that such open expression “diminishes intelligent conversation,” (as if O’Reilly ever engaged in one) and his response is to shut down conversation entirely. Note that O’Reilly is complaining about the cartoon, not the content of the article. Although he does say that the cartoon is “based on nothing,” despite the fact that it is attached to a well-documented column that enumerates specific justifications for investigating the President and his administration.

After once again calling the paper “loons,” (an example of his idea of “intelligent conversation”) O’Reilly attacks the paper’s credibility by smugly declaring that it has lost 40% of its readers in the past ten years:

“Almost half of their readers have said ‘We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to read you.'”

What O’Reilly leaves out is any actual context that would enlighten his viewers. The truth is that almost all major newspapers have suffered sharp declines in circulation over the past ten years. But more to the point, in only two years (Sept 2005 to Sept 2007) Bill O’Reilly himself has lost 33% of his total viewers and a whopping 59% of viewers in the all-important 25-54 age group. That’s more than half of his viewers saying, “We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to watch you.”

This brief exchange reveals much about O’Reilly. It shows that while he is vociferously objecting to the free speech rights of others, he will use his own platform to misinform his viewers. No wonder they don’t like him anymore.

The Next American Fuhrer

Posted by on July 23, 2007 at 4:43 pm. 9 Comments :

Befitting a nation that prides itself on its entrepreneurial creativity, the United States is preparing the way for a uniquely American innovation in governance: a democratically elected dictator. And neither politicians, nor judges, nor journalists, are rising to oppose the coming tyranny.

This ominous prophecy of political thralldom is not a product of party or partisanship. Personalities are irrelevant. The threat hovers over the office of the presidency as it has been defined by the current occupant.

George Bush, aided by puppet master, Dick Cheney, has blazed a trail of executive power that is unprecedented. Together they have reshaped the presidency into a virtual monarchy. The founding fathers strove mightily to craft an executive that was accountable and vulnerable to the counterbalancing of coequal branches of government. They would certainly not approve of the measures that Bush has employed to demolish their long enduring work.

By consolidating power in the White House, BushCo is advancing an interpretation of American government that is openly hostile to the Constitution. This is more than a theoretical exercise. The principles advocated by all the President’s men and women have already been put into practice and their issue reads like a draft for Articles of Impeachment. As the founding fathers might say…

“Let Facts Be Submitted To A Candid World.”

  • Falsifying evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify an unlawful war of aggression.
  • Directing the exposure of a covert CIA agent in time of war.
  • Using presidential signing statements to circumvent laws passed by Congress.
  • Illegal wiretapping and surveillance conducted against American citizens.
  • Extraordinary rendition and torture of detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
  • Illegal suspension of the right of habeas corpus.
  • Destruction of executive branch records whose preservation is required by law.
  • Unlawfully terminating U.S. attorneys for political purposes.
  • Employing executive privilege for the purpose of obstructing justice.
  • Suborning perjury by administration officials.
  • Threatening to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act for reporting government wrongdoing.
  • Dereliction of duty and failure to faithfully execute the office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This administration behaves as if there are no other branches of government, and no public opinion either. They espouse a philosophy that views the President as a “unitary executive.” In this view the President is not subject to Congressional oversight; laws are complied with on a voluntary basis; every act or document produced by the executive branch is regarded as privileged and secret; and the courts function as rubber stamps for the de facto despot.

This behavior is contrary to the values of a free, democratic society. Left unchecked it will lower the bar of governance and serve as a precedent for future administrations. The one sure way to vacate that precedent is to vacate the president – that is, to impeach Bush and/or Cheney. Many people may consider that to be a fanciful pipe dream. Congressional leaders have all but rejected the notion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is “off the table.” Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate, says that even a censure would be a waste of time.

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?
7/5/07 Favor Oppose Undecided
All Adults 45% 46% 9%
Voters 46% 44% 10%
Democrats 69% 22% 9%
Republicans 13% 86% 1%
Independents 50% 30% 20%

The American people, however, have a completely different take on the matter, as reported in a new poll by the American Research Group. When asked if they favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush, 45% are in favor, 46% oppose. Those numbers include wide majorities of Democrats and Independents. The results are even worse for Cheney for whom there is an outright majority in favor of impeachment (54%/40%). In either case, there is clearly a sufficient measure of dissatisfaction to warrant the commencement of committee hearings to ascertain whether credible grounds for impeachment exist. Not to do so would be a dereliction of duty and failure of representative government.

The foregoing notwithstanding, Congress may well neglect their duty, ignore the public will, and decline to initiate hearings. Should that occur, the injury to the Constitution would still be an open and festering wound. While remedies like censure would be better than nothing, there is another path that ought to be explored which, as yet, has not been discussed in broad-based media.
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