Author: Brendan Skwire

UPDATED BELOW
Today is the August 8 Money Bomb: the date was chosen in honor of the day Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for crimes against the Constitution.

With this Congress, Nixon would have been given a medal. Just look at the horrors that have been allowed to happen under the watchful eye of Steny Hoyer, Nancy “You Are Advocates We are Leaders” Pelosi, and Harry Reid: blank check after blank check for Iraq; refusal to rein in the President; even more belligerence toward Iran; permitting subpoenas to go unanswered; allowing the Republicans to filibuster silently and without consequence; and worst of all, the theft of our Fourth Amendment Freedoms and a get-out-of-jail-free card to lawbreaking companies like AT&T and Verizon.  It is time for Accountability.
In short, the Congress and Senate we elected has ignored public opinion, and deliberately spit in our faces, daring us to do something about it. What’re ya gonna do, vote for McCain?

Well, no: instead we’re going to punish you and make sure that there is always a consequence when you don’t dance with them that brung ya.  Dig deep Tribbers, and donate now to the money bomb.  It’s 10:00 AM EST: so far 446 donors have raised $33,330 and counting.  

UPDATE: So what’s the money going to be used for? Glenzilla says:

Grounded in the premise that the Democrats are going to control both houses of Congress for the foreseeable future — a premise virtually nobody disputes — the primary objective has to be to alter the behavior of those who control the Congress.

Increasing the Democrats’ margin of control doesn’t achieve that goal. It does the opposite. Conveying to Democrats that you will support all of them no matter what they do, no matter how egregiously they trample on your values, only ensures that they will ignore your political priorities and values even more… Only by attaching a serious price to their enabling of these extremist, destructive policies will their behavior change.
[snip]
In the last couple of months, we have done the following as part of our campaign, in several instances in partnership with Color of Change, the African-American grass-roots group devoted to compelling greater responsiveness among the Beltway class:

* newspaper ads in every newspaper in Steny Hoyer’s district, along with a full-page ad in the local section of The Washington Post, exposing to his constituents his lead role in engineering the Bush-enabling FISA bill;

* a massive robocall campaign in Hoyer’s district, narrated by respected Pastor Lennox Yearwood from that district, exposing how Hoyer’s work in Washington is so out-of-step with the political values of the constituents on whom he relies for re-election;

* an ongoing multi-media campaign — involving TV, radio and newspaper ads — aimed at vulnerable “Blue Dog” Rep. Chris Carney, who worked with Doug Feith at the Pentagon to disseminate pre-war “intelligence” and now is one of the most vocal pro-Bush Democrats in Congress;

* a full-page ad in the “A” section of The Washington Post, the day before the Senate’s approval of the new FISA bill, demonstrating what a profound assault on the rule of law the Congress was waging, and how it further cements the two-tiered system of justice the political establishment enjoys;

* donations to 12 members of Congress and Congressional candidates who, at political risk, vigorously opposed the new FISA bill;

* newspaper ads aimed at vulnerable “Blue Dog” Rep. John Barrow, who proudly runs for re-election by denouncing “cut and run” Democrats and who supports one radical Bush measure after the next, despite representing a +2 Democratic district.
[snip]
We will spend the entire $350,000 already raised for the Blue America fund between now and November by targeting selected, vulnerable Democratic members of Congress who supported this FISA bill and who generally have enabled Bush radicalism.

The August 8 Money Bomb is intended to be used to fuel a long-term campaign and an enduring organization devoted to changing the behavior of the political class with regard to these issues. We intend to begin now actively recruiting and promoting credible primary challengers against the likes of Steny Hoyer and other key culprits; to target for defeat those members of Congress who continue to support policies of this sort, Democrat or Republican; and to find ways to affect the public discourse on these issues, which are jointly distorted and ignored by both the so-called “liberal Beltway establishment” and the crux of the Republican Party.

We’ve raised more than $55,000 in just a few hours. donate now, if you can!

This Thursday, Accountability Now sets off a money bomb, which will target democrats who side with the Bush Administration and the right wing Republicans on matters of civil liberties, like FISA and immunity for lawbreaking telecoms, to health care, to ending the war in Iraq. At the same time the money will be used to help Democrats who vote to protect our civil liberties, who support universal health care and renewable energy, and who are working to end the war.  Greenwald:

Grounded in the premise that the Democrats are going to control both houses of Congress for the foreseeable future — a premise virtually nobody disputes — the primary objective has to be to alter the behavior of those who control the Congress.

Increasing the Democrats’ margin of control doesn’t achieve that goal. It does the opposite. Conveying to Democrats that you will support all of them no matter what they do, no matter how egregiously they trample on your values, only ensures that they will ignore your political priorities and values even more. Working to expand the margin of control Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel and Harry Reid already enjoy — further entrenching them in power — only ensures that they will be less responsive and accountable. Only by attaching a serious price to their enabling of these extremist, destructive policies will their behavior change. If they are rewarded with greater control and greater comfort for doing what they’ve been doing, then it’s just guaranteed that they’ll continue to do the same thing. Only if they suffer losses and have their power threatened from this behavior will the behavior change.”

As a first step, they’re launching an ad campaign demanding that Congress open an investigation into the verrrrrry fishy “suicide” of Bruce Ivins, the government scientist accused of being the Anthrax mailer, instead of the Iraqi terrorist ABC claimed at the time, the source of which demonstrable false claim ABC refuses to reveal.

If you support this strategy like I do, please dig in and pledge. I don’t often ask people to pony up, but this is something I think is truly worth it.
http://www.accountabilitynowpac.com/.

The big day is Thursday: that’s 2 days, so if you were thinking of pledging, I hope you’ll choose to annoy the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Harry Reid, and the rest of the enabling disgraces in Congress! And please pass this along to all your friends!

Cross-posted at Brendan Calling

Talking Points Memo reports that Nancy Pelosi is calling George Bush “a failure”

President Bush has been a “total failure” in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.

Pelosi shot back in unusually personal terms.

“You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject,” Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for “challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again.”

Nancy Pelosi is so full of shit, her hair and her eyes should be brown. Oh wait…

The fact is that President Bush has been highly successful in getting what he wants.  It is unfortunate, dreadfully so, that everything he has wanted has been so incredibly damaging to our country.  Let’s look at the record.

On FISA, warrantless wiretapping, and the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment, it’s not Bush that failed: it’s Congress.  In fact, they failed on purpose: the bill was dead in February, and Steny Hoyer brought it back to life.

On war funding with no strings attached, Bush is no failure: Congress failed. Repeatedly.

Ignoring subpoenas and diminishing Congress to the point of meaninglessness?  I think we can agree that Bush succeeded at that, unless “sternly worded letters with no consequence” count as oversight.

Legalized torture? Score another one for Bush, who got that out of congress too.

S-CHIP?  Another Bush win, because the Democrat-led Congress couldn’t manage to override his veto.

They won on overriding Medicare cuts, and even then just barely.

Am I missing anything?

“A failure”.  Please.  I’d laugh in your face Nancy, but you’d probably have me tortured.

On Olbermann tonight, Jonathan Turley said:

“we now know that the democratic leadership knew about the illegal surveillance program almost from its inception…they were aware of an unlawful surveillance program as well as a torture program. and ever since that came out the democrats have been silently trying to kill any effort to hold anyone accountable because that list could very well include some of their own members.

Turley is correct: see my post from December 2007, citing the Washington Post:

    In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique[ly illegal and unconstitutional?] CIA program designed to wring [torture] vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the Bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites [gulags] and the harsh techniques [torture] interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

    Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill [not to mention the US military**]. But on that day, no objections were raised.

    With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods [torture] during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

So now you know why impeachment is off the table, and why the telecoms will get immunity. It’s old news, yet no less a vile and disgusting state of affairs, and I encourage all of you to take action and contribute to actblue to run ads targeting these disgusting self-serving sociopaths who have no respect for law or morals or humanity or anything other than their own skins.

Throw the bums out.

UPDATED BELOW

Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald have the goods on the FISA Amendments Act that Stainy Whore is trying to ram through Congress. It’s a disgusting, but well-known story: Stainy, who’s up to his ears in nearly $100,000 in telecom funds is pushign a bill that extends retroactive immunity to AT&T, Verizon, and all the other usual suspects who willingly broke the law to tap our phones.

I think we know what Stainy’s motives are: what we need to do is stop him. And so far, the loudest voice possible, has been nearly completely absent.

That would be Barack Obama, who not only has yet to take action, but has supported Blue Dog and FISA fascist John Barrow in Georgia. The time has come to call upon Obama to TAKE ACTION and live up to his rhetoric that “We are the Chnage We have Been Waiting For”.
I called Mr. Obama’s campaign offices this morning at 866-675-2008, and it was well worth my time.

Tyler (the phone rep) googled greenwald while we were on the phone, and then went to strange bedfellows.

I told Tyler that while I liked Obama and had planned to vote for him, if he let the Stainy Whore FISA Amendments Act pass, it would be a dealbreaker.

“My Fourth Amendment Rights are more important than any individual politician, and we have already raised nearly $200,000 to get Steny Hoyer and anyone else connected with this. Oh and the Ron Paul money-bomb people? The guys who raised $6 million in 24 hours? Yeah, they’re on board with this too: we’re gonna raise a HUGE chunk of change and start running ads in Hoyer’s district and Barrow’s district: we already have them on the air in Carney’s district.”

“Obama has said a lot of stuff about “change we can believe in”, and I was very disappointed to see him record an ad for Barrow, who believes in gutting FISA, when there’s a great progressive, Regina Thomas challenging him. I know that as our nominee, Obama could take Steny Hoyer and John Rockefeller aside and put an immediate stop to this, and I would like to see him do so. Obama says he’s a candidate for change, but all those words mean NOTHING without action.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention: I’m reading the Greenwald piece as we speak,” said Tyler.

“From what I understand they may vote on this as early as tonight or tomorrow,” I replied. “Obama wants to lead the country, well let’s see him lead on our Fourth Amendment rights! He will look strong for standing up to business-as-usual in defense of the Constitution.”

The guy was very responsive and said “We have an excellent messaging system, and I’ll make sure this goes to Policy right away.”

So call: it’s free and it’s worth it. 866-675-2008.

The more we call, the more of an impact we can make. CALL NOW.
866-675-2008: Obama’s Campaign
(202) 224-2854: Obama’s Senate Office
Make Stainy Whore cry at the Majority Leader’s Office 202-225-3130, and at his Congressional office, 202-225-4131.

In an indicator that Stainy’s feeling the heat, the Majority Leader’s office has now scrubbed the phone number from their site: only email is available now, but I saved the number.

UPDATE: Glennzilla has the bill, and worse than you thought:

The provision granting amnesty, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: “Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.” Section 802(a) provides:

[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was —

(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States” and

(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.

So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

Wish I could get me some special rights like that.
It’s time go beyond calling Obama: call your representative and let them know in no uncertain terms that if they vote for this, they will be facing well-funded ads in their districts.

Let’s kick some fascist ass!

Via digby

HOUSE CHAIRMAN OPEN TO REPUBLICAN COMPROMISE ON FISA

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat disclosed late Tuesday that he is ready to accept a Republican-brokered deal to rewrite the nation’s electronic surveillance laws, signaling that a long-running congressional impasse could soon be coming to an end.

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes told CongressDaily that he is “fine” with language offered by Senate Intelligence ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond and other Republicans to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Notably, the GOP language, which was offered a day before the recent congressional recess, would leave it up to the secret FISA court to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have helped the Bush administration conduct electronic surveillance on the communications of U.S. citizens without warrants.

Digby adds that this smells like a cover-up, since it’s not about money but about discovery.

Silvestre Reyes can be reached at (202) 225-4831.

It’s also a good idea to give Pelosi, Hoyer, and the rest of leadership an earful, as well as your own rep.

I will be reminding Mr. reyes about how the netroots took out Al Wynn and what we’re doing to Chris Carney.

When George W. Bush decided to sink to the depths and insinuate that Barack Obama and the Democratic party are the equivalent of 1930s Nazi appeasers, that was bad enough.

But to see John McCain slither out from under his rock to lob the same accusations at the Democratic candidate was too much… and also opened the door to some fun at the candidate’s expense.  

Riiiing… riiiiiing
“Hello, Senator McCain’s office.”
“Hi there.  My name is Brendan Skwire.  I’m a Republican calling from Pennsylvania, and while I have already expressed my outrage with Senator McCain to my Senator, Arlen Specter, I felt I needed to get a message to the Senator himself.

“I’m speaking of course of your boss’s despicable attack on Senator Specter, using Obama as a distraction.  This is what he said:

‘It does bring up an issue I will be discussing with the American people, and that is why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?…
‘What does he want to talk about with, with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad who said that Israel’s a stinking corpse, who said that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, who’s sending the most explosive devices into Iraq, killing Americans? The point is that peace through strength is the way we achieve peace in the world. That’s the point. I will debate this issue with Senator Obama throughout this campaign.

‘I think Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terror that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans and wants to wipe Israel off the map and denies the Holocaust.’

Now listen: Senator Specter has worked very hard in the service of Mideast peace by traveling to Syria to meet with the Assad government at least 17 times, and Pennsylvania Republicans don’t take kindly to the Senator attacking his service using Obama as a surrogate.  Arlen Specter has been in the Senate 26 years, I think that’s a bit longer than John McCain.  Does Senator McCain really think that Arlen Specter is a Nazi appeaser? Well?”

“Umm… thanks for your call?”
“Are you going to pass my message to the candidate?”
“Ummm….”
“And by the way, this nonsense about not negotiating with terrorists? Maybe Senator McCain has forgotten, but our greatest president ever, Ronald Reagan, negotiated with terrorists: he ended the Iran Hostage crisis by trading arms for hostages, and then using the money to help the Freedom Fighters in Central America…”

But by then she’d hung up the phone.
Reality bites.

Booman had an excellent and hilarious bit this morning about my potential role in the “pinching the squid” incident.

While I had NOTHING to do with that one (oh how I wish I did, because “pinching the squid” is my new favorite euphemism), I had the unique pleasure of calling Patrick McHenry’s office today (this by the way is cross-posted at brendan calling).

Via Atrios, it looks like we have another example of supporting our troops from Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC, oted closet case and possible murder suspect):

   We spent the night in the Green Zone, in the poolhouse of one of Saddam’s palaces. A little weird, I got to be honest with you. But I felt safe. And so in the morning, I got up early — not that I make this a great habit — but I went to the gym because I just couldn’t sleep and everything else. Well, sure enough, the guard wouldn’t let me in. Said I didn’t have the correct credentials.

    It’s 5:00 in the morning. I haven’t had sleep. I was not very happy with this two-bit security guard. So you know, I said, “I want to see your supervisor.” Thirty minutes later, the supervisor wasn’t happy with me, they escort me back to my room. It happens. I guess I didn’t need to work out anyway.

God knows how many years the “two-bit security guard” has spent in Iraq, while 32 year old, able-bodied chickenhawk Patrick McHenry has been drawing a substantial salary and A-plus health benefits in the House, so I made a call.

Riiing.  Riiiiiiiing.

“Hello, Representative McHenry’s office.”

“Hi, My name’s Brendan Skwire.  I heard Representative McHenry’s regrettable “two-bit security guard” comments today, and I’m calling because I have several friends serving in Iraq.  One of them is on his third or fourth tour of duty, he’s left behind a wife and two young children.  No one knows when he’s coming back, but his marriage is strained and there’s been talk of divorce.  So I did a little poking around and I noticed that Mr. McHenry’s only 32 years old.

“So I’m wondering why Mr. McHenry, who seems to be able-bodied, isn’t serving in the military? I mean, the military has extended the enlistment age and lowered its entry standards because they’ve been going through troops so fast. Maybe he can serve his country in a really helpful way, instead of shooting off his fat mouth about the soldiers he sent off to Iraq.”

“Sir,” the woman answered, “I assure you that Representative McHenry is serving his country in the best way he knows how.“

“Oh, I’m sure he is,” I responded. “Could you tell me how much money Mr. McHenry makes compared to your standard soldier?  Could you tell me how much time he spends away from his family?”

“Sir, I understand your feelings. My father is in the military…”

“Ya know,” I interrupted, “I did a lot of research on your employer and found a number of unflattering things about him on the internet, something about a murder, and something about him being a closeted homosexual. So I have some problem with Mr. McHenry attacking members of the military which he can’t even join if he wanted to.”

“Murder?  Wh– Oh my god.  Oh my god,” the woman said. “Look, they were unfortunate comments, I have to go now.”

And she hung up the phone.

Promoted by Steven D

From my pal Tim:

I don’t know if you knew or remember this guy, but Jay M., Mark M’s little brother (both of whom worked at Christie’s for a while with Joe Kelly, Bobby Cocktails, etc.), is dead.

He was a smart, loveable fuck-up a couple of years younger than us who lived for years in Newport (they grew up in Fall River) who had some issues with drugs (who fucking didn’t?) and got into some trouble, but later woke up, grew up, and as part of his efforts to turn his life around and get on the straight-and-narrow, joined the US Marines. He ended up being shipped off to Iraq. He was living somewhere down south and had been back from a recent tour of duty (probably more than one, given the way the regime ruining/running the country has been abusing its American service people) and apparently had been suffering severe PTSD. A few weeks ago, he took his own life by throwing himself in front of an eighteen-wheeler on a highway. It had to be PTSD, because that guy, even in the depths of his drug problems, loved life and was too fucking cerebral to remotely fit any profile of a suicide case. Pauly told me a couple of weeks ago that he’d heard a rumor about it, but at the Fu Manchu show, Joe Kelly confirmed it. Joe, his wife, and Mike Livingston were up in Cambridge for the show, and he filled me in at the merch table. Joe still hangs out with Mark (“I’ve been making a point of spending as much time as I can these days,” he said), so he had, sadly, the best access to the truth.

It’s fucking awful, and as I said to Joe, it’s not Jay’s fault and it’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. I am not religious but at times like this I really hope there is a just god and a place more horrible than any existing human conception of eternal hell for the criminal warlords like Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. to burn and suffer for the countless worthwhile lives like Jay’s that they have and will continue to ruin. What a sad, sickening mess. Words fail to capture it.

I called up Clinton’s campaign in Pennsylvania and read them this email.  They told me they were sorry for my loss, urged me to have a wonderful day, and hung up the phone quickly.  Arlen Specter’s office put me on hold, and never returned to the phone.

Why should they care?  It’s not their kid.  It’s not their friends…

As many of you know, i’m not a big supporter of either of the Democratic candidates for President.  The fact is my guy was Edwards, and he dropped out, so I’m left with what I like to call the Clintoon and Oblahma.  

Having lived through the Bill Clintoon (th-th-th-there go your jobs, folks), and jumped off that bandwagon in 1996 after NAFTA and the PRWORA, it was still more difficult than I expected to support Obama.  

I honestly don’t get the soaring rhetoric about his “soaring rhetoric”: I’ve heard some of his speeches and they strike me as fairly standard policital mumbo-jumbo. “Change!” “We are the power!”  Whatever dude, whatever works for you.

However, there is no way I can support Clinton. not after her husband’s policies, which she claims as part of her 35 years of experience. Not after the failures of the DLC, which lost elections and hurt Americans, and who a Clinton restoration will return to power.

Today it got a lot easier.  Surfing the blogosphere, I read one too many stupid, inaccurate, and downright offensive posts about Obama and his supporters.  It included all ingredients sure to make me want to pick up my computer and hurl it across the room. Cultist and his followers? Check.  False comparisons? Check.  Right wing frames that are easily disproved with 5 seconds on google? Check.  Dismissing his supporters as freaks, lunatics, and ignorant selfish children who don’t know any better? Check and double check. Obama supporters are sexists? Check.

So I emailed BMT poster Luam, co-chair of Philadelphia’s Obama campaign. “My annoyance = your guy’s gain” was the subject.  I’m volunteering some time to phone-bank, and may knock on doors as well.  I probably won’t give money (that’s in short supply these days, and I have a 4 year old boy to feed, clothe, and entertain), but I think the legwork will make up for that.  I’m certainly going to get a bumper sticker and a poster for my living room window.

And it’s all out of spite.  If the Clinton campaign and its supporters want to tell me that I don’t count, that the campaign that promises to more closely meet my demands is the equivalent of Ken Starr, that Rove-style dirty tricks (ie, NAFTAgate in Ohio) are OK, that tearing down her opponent in a way that helps the Republican is fine strategy, and that actually having some tiny little last remaining hope for change is foolishness, well that’s their business.

My business is to say “DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE ASS ON THE WAY OUT” and work to make sure the candidate I don’t support loses, and loses big time.  You want to tell me I don’t count?  To turn a certain someone’s chant upside down, “No, you can’t.”

I’m going to show you I DO count, just to spite you. And yes, I can do that very well.