The practicalities of impeachment

[canetoad]

What would it take?

No, I don't mean the required number of votes in the house and senate. I mean making damn sure your voice is heard loud and clear by your reps and they have no choice to respond. No choice.

From what I read, the calls, emails and letters are not getting the point across. For a while there I believed impeachment was a futile excercise, but I have changed my mind. The only way for the people of the USA to regain their self-respect (and the respect of the rest of the world) is to show they will settle for nothing less than impeachment.

So...a general strike? A march on Washington? Angry riots in the streets? Stop contributing to politicians? How do you get the message over. Is a co-ordinating body needed? If so, who should it be? Who will be the public faces?

I am heartsick for you, but while the world watches and waits, we cannot remove them for you.

[chknltl]

1. All three sound good to me.

If a majority of America is for impeachment and I believe this is the case, if we have been heard by our leaders and I believe this to be the case too, then WE THE PEOPLE need to find a way to take back our government. Can we start recalling our leaders? Here I'll submit one of mine: Patty Murry, Dem., State of Washington. She has gone above and beyond the call of duty here to quell any impeachment uprising in our state. She enlisted Jay Inslee, another Dem from here to aid her in her task... you can have them both.

Did you know that Senator Murry voted with the Republicans to prevent WE THE PEOPLE from purchasing legal prescription drugs by mail from overseas recently? (Funny how that item did not manage to make it into her monthly "horn-toot" she sends out on-line. I am a Democrat. I am proud to say that. I have been behind Senator Murry from the time she was still in her tennis shoes. She still does things for our state that I strongly agree with, especially for us veterans, BUT that does little to get her off my "poop"-list. She responded early on to my pleas for impeachment with reasons like: "Do you want Dick Cheney for President?" Perhaps if we start seeking ways to recall these folks they might get the hint.

I'll join in on a nation wide general strike...that should get the MSM's attention...as long as that day does not coincide with the day that Paris Hilton gets out of the slammer...(like who's gonna wanna miss THAT!)

A march on Washington DC could be expanded to include a march on all of our state capitals too. (Olympia is a bit closer for me...I promise to be loud enough to be heard in DC though). Coincide this with that National General strike day and folks will have an even better reason for skipping work: Party at the state capitol! Further suggestion: call it "WE THE PEOPLE DAY"

Angry riots in the streets:...lets leave that for plan "C"...folks get hurt and property gets damaged and cops get excited and well...(I live near Seattle, I still relive the horror of seeing that Starbucks ransacked when the WTO came to town)...if it comes to it, then I'll join in too but lets try that "WE THE PEOPLE DAY" option first.

I may have added a bit of snark to my response but know this: I strongly believe that WE THE PEOPLE need to do something and do it soon. Maybe a fellow DUer can come up with the right idea...so far I am in favor of marching on all 50 state capitals. Perhaps we can do this more than once, perhaps do the march on the first day of each month so as to potentially build momentum! That will surely get our leaders attention.

[canetoad]

2. Damn good to see some fight

Your reps appear not to be listening to YOU, the people of the USA. I guess the first thing to do is turn the volume up to 11

[chknltl]

3. This make the second response to my response

from the Land Down Under this week! Both favorable too. Not sure what to make of this but not complaining either. I for one would LOVE to have the opinions of those who reside outside North America posted here often. I feel that particular mirror can be of great help! I have suggested to the DU admin that we need to set up a universal translator system to be used in a newly added "Non-English" speaking forum. I want to open the DU up more so non-english speakers can have an uninterrupted voice here. I want to see us English speakers chat one on one with our "victims" in Afghanistan and Iraq and etc.

I think the tech is there for this..it may be state of the art yet but if we had such a forum it would be VERY popular indeed! We Americans tend to get a bit narrow minded, we focus on those problems directly in our field of vision...I would like to increase that field of vision. It does not take a psychic to see that the future will be like this anyway...the advantages are plain for all to see, so I say let's jump ahead of the curve by a year or three and install that translator NOW.

Sorry about jumping off topic a bit...I am often narrow of focus myself. I strongly push for impeachment here in the DU. My primary reason does not parallel the primary reasons of my fellow DUers who also fight for Impeachment...yes, there are many of us who do indeed fight the good fight here.

My primary reason for wanting impeachment is twofold yet intertwined: First so we can send a message to the Middle East that We The People do NOT condone the crimes committed against them by our run amok government. Secondly We The People must remove the obstructionists and criminal perpetrators in order to get on with repairing the damage in the Middle east that has been done in our name.

I feel that bushco has turned the Middle East into a huge train-wreck! There are people in desperate need of our help if they are to survive. That help can not get there soon enough and yet not only is our Administration thwarting this, (they have all along), they add fuel to the fires of that train-wreck by trying to start further wars! They try to rob the citizens of Iraq of their main resource: oil, they condone the imprisonment of countless thousands of Iraqi and Afghani citizens and worse they condone torture on them! If all that ain't nightmarish enough we are also charged with using WMD in such a way that much of the Middle East may not be safe for habitation by anything other than insects for millions of years! I suppose Saddam Hussein is one of the few figures who fully appreciated just how masterful bushco and his puppeteers really are. Their thinkings and motives have much in common: Power and Greed!

A part of my twofold reason for impeachment is selfish self-preservation. If we do not get that message out soon, we may see that stirred up hornets nest come to a simple conclusion: Revenge! We have earned a lot of justified hatred throughout the world, especially from folks in the Middle East. That "Smoking Gun Mushroom Cloud" Cheney and Rice and their minions tried scaring us with during the run-up to the war may now be a realistic concern! I am not so confident that Osama Bin Laden has not found a way to get his hands on a nuke and/or other WMD. Thanks to bushco he will have little problems expanding his forces from the angry citizens of the Middle East. Finding a disenfranchised Iraqi citizen to strap on an Alquida purchased bomb and setting it off in one of our cities is not something I trust bushco to protect us from.

If I add just a tiny bit of tin foil to my hat: bushco may secretly want this to happen in order to complete his hostile takeover of America. He recently signed the very documents granting himself that very power should a national emergency arise. Another 9-11 should do the trick. Scary huh?

Impeachment may not prevent this disaster...but I feel it is our last best hope!
I guess I chose my name well huh?

Flamers: Tell it to the folks in the Middle East, screaming at me ain't helping them one bit! Scream at your leaders instead!...I am just a messenger, one who hopes with every fiber that I am wrong... I do not share your confidence...or as folks in the Middle East put it: your AMERICAN ARROGANCE. If you flame me and ignore them, you may be doing so at all our peril. thanks for listenin to my rant

chknltl

[canetoad]

4. Aye, that was a rant-and-a-half

Don't know if you are aware of this site. I check it everyday to see what the world press is saying about USA. It's generally not very complimentary. http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml
It has the articles in both English and original language.

While I understand DU is an American board, it is also a gathering place for world people who are interested in a)Democracy in general b)How the decline of democracy in the worlds most powerful nation is affecting the rest of the planet. I like your idea of a translator but fear it will not happen as many American DUers are defensive and protective and I kinda get the impression that people from other countries should butt out. I dunno - I rather enjoy the planet and reasonably expect to spend another 20 or 30 years on it. I'd like it not to be blown up, contaminated or otherwise abused.

I've seen Sicko. There are some interesting points made about WHY Americans are putting up with this crap. I bet you don't think of yourself as a downtrodden people, but that's how many others see you. And yes, I wouldn't put it past Buscheny to seal the covenant with an echo of 911, and it will sneak up on you and there will be no going back without rivers of blood.

Ok, the rivers of blood bit is a bit dramatic, but it won't be without pain.

[chknltl]

5. Thank You for link

I was NOT aware of this link but I can tell you now that I'll be adding it as a primary resource real quick. I found an article supporting another post I made in a chum's thread just moments ago. I'll be editing and updating my post there with it momentarily.

You are quite right that I have not looked upon us as downtrodden. I have told close friends that I feel we Americans are being treated as farm animals and those who tend to us harvest our money and labor. I am not sure this is an accurate assessment but folks like the pharmaceutical industry, the law/prison industry and the food industry give me reasons to feel this way. I confess to feeling used and abused by them and others. The thought that others from outside America may see something similar never occured to me. We are together you and I on not wanting the decline of America to be any more painful to our world than it already has been.

As to that translator happening: It will be commonplace in the future, eventually it may be something as simple as a program upgrade which is cheep and available to everyone with a computer. It will likely be commonplace first as a business tool...in some respects there already are systems like this available. I suggested it to DU because I want to expand our own horizons. The more informed our electorate is the better....regardless of how controlled we may be.

True, some DUers are so closed minded that they choose not to hear the opinions of others...we are a mix here. That kind of closed mindedness can be easier found over at the free republic though. Most of us here seek change. This means that we are not so stagnant in our thought processes as are our chums over in freeperville. I would have the DU break out of this "provincialness" for our own betterment. I can guarantee you that the bushcons would be against this, against the people of America having open unrestricted dialog with those they would victimize. This fact further inspires me to be even more in favor of that translator.

How nice would it be to have open dialog right now with DUers from Tehran. I know that I am not the only one here who daily discounts what the bushcons would have us believe about them. How much tougher would it be for our government to feed us the BS it does about those folks in Tehran or Syria or wherever when we here in DU can chat with them at will! We sure post enough threads about folks in foreign lands, enough that such a tool could be highly beneficial. I see the world as being just a bit safer if we could do this. I suspect that if our admin felt as I do, (working on it), AND the tech was not too difficult to install, we may indeed find ourselves with a system as I propose.

It is almost 2 AM here. I may not get back in a timely manner to this thread...but I will be back.
My sincerest thanks for that link. Truth be told I want to spend some time there before I shut down tonight. I have been enriched by your link as well as your words...I look forward to more.
c

[KharmaTrain]

6. 17 Repugnican Votes

Sorry to be a bucket of cold water here, but you ask what it would take to get the Impeachment train rolling and that's your answer. That's the number required to convict...to make sure the Impeachment does what you want...to get boooshie out of office...anything less is a futile exercize in political masturbation.

What else would it take? How about some specifically documented and proven charges. We don't have that. Lots of lies, lots of deceptions, but sadly nothing solid...nothing that would pass muster in a court of law, and these charges need to be rooted in serious, proven Constitutional law. While you can impeach a ham sandwich...even easier than you can indict it...convicting is another story. A political impeachement not based on criminal charges would taint the true criminality that's taken place...criminality we're just starting to learn about. Investigations that are just starting to peel away at the labrynth of corruption underneath.

Sorry, you can't have it both ways here...if you're going to bring up Impeachment, then you need to go all the way...follow through...make it happen. You can't just get a House vote and walk away like you've accomplished something...you haven't. Our soldiers will still be dying in Iraq, boooshie will still be in power and Democrats will be labeled as attempted to overthrow an election and totally inept as they weren't able to bring a conviction to the Impeachment. And you wonder why a Congresscritter won't go near it right now? They hear the calls out there, they also see the vote count and their own political liabilities.


As I've said many times, the problem isn't with the Democrats, it's with the Repugnicans. They're the ones permitting this corruption to go on. They're the ones who will convict. If not, then take out your anger by making sure they are removed from office and all Repugnicans with them.

[pat_k]

7. The case is made. Impeachment hearings to present it = 24x7 coverage. . .

They introduce articles (and they just need to pick a few examples to support impeachment on torture and abuse of signing statements). Above all, keep it simple and grounded in treasured moral principles and the stark and simple facts. They convene impeachment hearings to present the case. The media would be on it like fleas. It would get 24x7 coverage. That would be plenty loud and clear.

They are committing their crimes openly. The case is made. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/pat_k/22">They made it against themselves

Articles could be on their way to the Senate in a week.

BTW, Kucinich's "lying into war" is not a charge that rejects the fascist fantasy of unitary authoritarian power and is thus a poor charge to bring to "support and defend." It is the open violations of Our Constitution for which they invoke that fascist figleaf that is subverts.

[mmonk]

8. It will take elected democrats to change their minds.

Is this possible? I don't know.

[canetoad]

9. Yes.....but, but...

Surely there has to be a tipping point, a level at which the groundswell, the incessant DEMAND for impeachment forces the hand of congress. That is what concerns me.

Is it a 500,000 person march? Ten marches? At what point do people say they have had enough and seriously take to the streets?

[mmonk]

10. Wish I had the answer. I'd be working on it.