todays rant

I really think that if Obama manages to win this thing, he has to go ahead with investigating and prosecuting the various questionable actions this administration has undertaken.
Lying the nation into a war is only part of it. The expansion and flexing of unprecedented Presidential powers has been unprecedented. It makes Nixon look like a jaywalker in comparison.

I think Clinton's biggest mistake was that he let Iran-Contra drop in the name of getting his agenda going and making things better. It's vintage Clinton really - he was trying to earnestly concentrate on making things better for people and not worrying about wasting time on finding justice.

Unfortunately, history shows that when you let a bully off the hook, instead of them paying you back by leaving you alone, they take it as license to bully you again.

A lot of the players in Iran-Contra could have been smacked down, humiliated, and kept out of Government for the rest of their lives. Instead, they walked away for a while, walked back in, and commenced going even farther this time.

Since the primary, Obama has worried me with this 'moving beyond partisanship' stuff. I was worried that Obama was going to magnaminously let the Republicans off the hook and move beyond into earnest Governance. Even though his opponent in the primary, Hillary Clinton, was a Clinton, I felt that it was more likely she would pursue prosecution of those lawless bastards. She seemed more angry about it and I thought maybe she had learned the lesson of what appeasement does. Also, though she is married to Bill, she is not the same person. All in all, I thought it more likely Hillary would prosecute than Obama. That's the main reason why I voted for her and endured the ridicule of most of my friends, who were convinced Obama was the progressive standard bearer and that Hillary was on a par with McCain or worse.

I don't know who was right. I'm solidly behind Obama and I think he'll make a good President. He has the desire and intelligence to make this country better. But I'm concerned about the campaign. I think he should be painting the current Republican Party as a cesspool of corruption - as a bunch of compromised, unethical crooks. Not because it could win him the election, but because it's true. Yet he is not slamming the Republicans this way - only Bush.

I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans and Republican politicians that care about this country's future and have a conservative and earnest idea about policies they think will make things better. I used to believe McCain was one of them, but I'm pretty sure he isn't. From Keating through his current lobbyist connections, he has shown that in the end, he will suck up to powerful interests and do their bidding, putting the welfare of the people second.

The major Republican politicians of today are, for the most part, exhibiting a form of 'Governance' that seeks to increase the power and wealth of those that are already powerful while decreasing the power of the average voter. They are anti-democracy, and that's anti-American. There are many, many examples of this. The best one is how they try to get African-Americans and other likely Democratic voters off the voter rolls. They fight tooth and nail against paper ballots and other checkable forms of voting. Another example is the secrecy with which this administration does business. The true goals are always obscured, because the true goals are things which hurt the majority of Americans.

When Republicans complain about progressive tax structures or regulations on business, my reply is that we live in a Democracy. If a majority of the people want to tax rich people more, and you're a rich person, then too bad for you. Move somewhere else if you don't like it. The peoples' will rules in this country, unless that will wants to do something specifically forbidden by the Consitution and Bill of Rights. The rich and powerful will always be at a disadvantage in a democracy, because most people aren't rich and powerful.

A party or politician that represents the rich and powerful is inherently anti-democratic. I think it is clearly demonstrable that the Republicans are the preferred party of the rich and powerful, and that the Republicans enact policies that allow the rich and powerful to make more money and amass more power.

The Republican Party is so dominated by these types right now that to cede ground to them is pointless. They are not looking for compromise and consensus. Those are democratic values. They don't like democratic values. They want the pesky hordes to get out of their way and allow them to operate unfettered. They're never going to be happy with halfway.

They're anti-democracy, they're anti-American, they've gotten to the point where they've committed actual demonstrable and provable crimes, and they need to be prosecuted and removed from Government. To fail to do so would be to enable this sort of behavior and to put yourself in danger.

It's like if someone tries to strangle you in your sleep, but you woke up in time and fought them off you. Are you going to go back to sleep? You'd have to be crazy! No, you find them, and you tie them to a tree with about 8 miles of rope. Then you can sleep. That's the responsible, prudent thing to do. That's how you survive. That's how the United States of America survives.