Is the Bush administration blackmailing the Democratic Leadership?

[Cleita]

Wow! Thom Hartmann is just laying it out. Says they might have been doing it since 2001. I hope he watches his back. However, it sure would make sense of how they have been legislating and rubber stamping everything Bush wants and not touching impeachment or any of those other messy Constitutional issues involving treason. I would go a step further and say they are blackmailing the Republicans too.

[TwilightGardener]

1. I don't think so. I think the Dem leadership might be too involved

in Chimpy's agenda, though, to suddenly turn around and investigate it now. That's why no impeachment. Why implicate yourself? Just let the whole matter drop.

[TooBigaTent]

2. No, the pukes go along with BushCo because they share the same, warped view

of what Amerika should be. They are willing accomplices in the destruction of this country.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Yes. Here is a copy of an e-mail I just received.

I have firm confirmation that Nancy Pelosi is urging the Judiciary committee NOT to go forward with contempt against Rove.

Congressman John Conyers and the Judiciary staff are battling for it but this has become an infight among dems.

Time to burn up the phone lines.


800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 toll free to congressional switchboard



PLEASE CALL. House Judiciary Committee:



Here are the direct phone #'s of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.



They're all democrats, and they're all congressmen:



All their phone numbers begin with 202, next three digits are 225. I will list only the last four digits, to save time:



John Conyers, Michigan - 1-202-225-5126



Howard Berman, California - 4695



Rick Boucher, Virginia - 3861



Jerrold Nadler, New York - 5635



Bobby Scott, Virginia - 8351



Melvin Watt, North Carolina - 1510



Zoe Lofgren, California - 3072



Sheila Jackson, Texas - 3816



Maxine Waters, California - 2201



Bill Delahunt, Massachusetts - 3111



Robert Wexler, Florida - 3001



Linda Sanchez, California - 6676



Steve Cohen, Tennessee - 3265



Hank Johnson, Georgia - 1605



Betty Sutton, Ohio - 3401



Luis Gutierrez, Illinois - 8203



Brad Sherman, California - 5911



Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin - 2906



Anthony Weiner, New York - 6616



Adam Schiff, California - 4176



Artur Davis, Alabama - 2665



Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida - 7931



Keith Ellison, Minnesota - 4755

[Michigan-Arizona]

27. no-hypocrisy

Thank you very much for posting this as I to received it today in my email.

[Richardo]

4. What does he say they are blackmailing them with?

Not sure I get it.

[Cleita]

8. He believes they have been snooping into their private telephone,

email and other communications. If some senators like porn or if say Nancy Pelosi's husband is cheating on her, or so on and so on, things that most people don't want out in public like outing Larry Craig, it could keep them in line if they have the proof from the snooping, which is legal now. He mentioned Herbert Hoover blackmailing Richard Nixon, which is known.

[vssmith]

41. J Edgar Hoover

[Cleita]

43. Right.

Please forgive the senior memory here for name details. You know whom I meant.

[vssmith]

48. I did know who you meant--just coundn't help myself

I know about the senior memory--I am 66.

[Cleita]

51. Oh, that's okay. I liked that you corrected that for

the benefit of those who wouldn't have known. :-)

[groovedaddy]

73. supposedly J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailed himself

something about filming him through a two way mirror having a trist with a boy (or young man?). This was back in the early 50s around the time McCarthy was going bonkers.

[Leopolds Ghost]

80. What do you mean "he believes"? Don't you guys get it? Clinton & Bush I initiated this on EVERYONE.

The NSA domestic wiretap is a global wiretap of all communications.

It's like a search engine. Google has terabytes of archived webpages.
NSA has petabytes of archived phone calls and e-mails.

Bush isn't selectively wiretapping people, he's pulling up info that
the NSA already collected and stored automatically.

Universal wiretapping means the primary purpose of blackmail is
automatically achieved with NO NEED to target individual politicians.

All they need is to sit on the information.

[marmar]

12. Thom said he was talking with a blogger friend.....

.... and among the many things they speculated about was whether BushCo had wiretapped and spied on everyone in Congress and discovered all kinds of info, such as trips to massage parlors, records of phone calls to escort services, X-rated video rentals, telephone calls indicating affairs etc etc. Nothing groundbreaking, but enough to scare a member of Congress into obedience.

[Dan]

65. that is why I support term limits.

If the "R" and "D" weren't so damn concerned about maintaining a seat at the table, then we could get this republic working again. Since that seat is so important - and that is how they identify themselves - they can be blackmailed. If a member knew that once elected the longest that he would be allowed a seat at the table was 4 years (House) or 1 term or 6 years in the Senate, it would be harder to blackmail the person. My thoughts...

[Echo In Light]

71. So absolutely and uniformly? seems highly doubtful bordering on wishful thinking, but who knows?

[rusty quoin]

5. It's the only logical reason I can think of for Democrats acting the way they do.

[Sinistrous]

11. Agreed.

Plus, blackmailing would be keeping in character for the cheneybush cabal.

[Sinistrous]

13. Delete (dupe).

[Selatius]

6. It could be that many Democrats simply agree with Republicans on stripping away the 4th Amendment.

It's about money and power.

[Adsos Letter]

46. I tend to agree with you...

I think the Dem leadership would like to be able to make use of those same powers.

I am a progressive, and a Democrat; however, politics seems more and more to involve primarily the appropriation of power and money.

[bdamomma]

75. well, not to be funny we may not have the money, but we have the power

if we know how to use it.

[tularetom]

7. I heard that and he makes a pretty good point

However I can't believe that with that much blackmail going on over that much time, particularly if the incompetent bush gang is doing the blackmailing, something wouldn't have leaked out. They can't do anything else right how is it possible that they can blackmail right?

[Cleita]

10. Not all of the Bush gang is incompetent when it comes to

doing sneaky snooping and stealing. They are only incompetent when it comes to governing.

[Andy823]

9. I wouldn't doubt it one bit.

Bush has been using FISA to tap people phones, and it would not surprise me one bit to find out he had tapped the phones of the democratic leadership in congress to get something on them he could use against them. I also have to agree that they are afraid the public will find out just how much they were in on the lead up to the Iraq war, and that doesn't help them get anything done either.

This is a prime example of the "old politics" that I hope Obama changes, where the "good old boy" system runs rampant, and corruption is used to get the other side to do what you want if you keep your mouth shut. You cover for me, and I will cover for you. It needs to end, and those who are corrupt on both sides of the isle, need to be removed from office!

[leveymg]

14. Not in the conventional sense, but yes, the leadership is culpable on torture, spying and possibly

illegal CIA domestic operations involving al-Qaeda terrorists inside the U.S. before 9/11.

Reid, Pelosi, and the heads of the Intel Committees were notified about The Program in 2003, along with their GOP colleagues. That same year, they were briefed about CIA rendition and torture, and they kept their mouthes shut about this until the NYT first published details in early 2005, after the 2004 elections.

Former Senate Intel Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) wasn't surprised by 9/11, and shortly afterwards remarked that there were several foreign intel agencies involved and that the US people won't learn the truth until the records in the national archives are released in 50 years.

Sure as hell the Congressional leadership have a lot to fear if Bushco were forced to testify about what' been going on, even if most of it's already on the record.

What's really criminal is everyone -- particularly the corporate media -- pretending that all of this is still some sort of national secret.

[Cleita]

17. Yes, he brought that up too.

That investigations would bring out things that they knew before we knew about them and it would implicate them. I'm sorry but in that case I think they should do the honorable thing and come clean about what they knew and let the chips fall where they may. History would view them as true patriots in the end, I believe.

[leveymg]

31. Agree 100%

And I usually don't. :hi:

[many a good man]

37. I have to doubt bushco is using the NSA to spy on Dems

They've always been pretty well fire-walled. Even going back to Watergate days Mark Felt admitted that it was all about stopping the Pukes from invading their (FBI) turf. Same likely applies to NSA.

I don't doubt the Pukes have a richly detailed oppo research apparatus on all Dems, but I'm much more likely to agree with your take, unfortunately.

[Jakes Progress]

42. And now congress is poised to make

it much easier for them to continue by giving this kind of action freedom from any oversight or discovery.

[dflprincess]

55. Hartmann mentioned that and

wondered why the Democrats - and especially Obama - are willing to vote for a bill that will make it easier for Bushco to intercept any communications Obama sends during his campaign.

[kentuck]

15. They just announced yesterday that they are investigating Conyer's wife..?

Whatever that means??

[Cleita]

16. I thought of that when I heard this.

It's this type of witch hunt that they can instigate if Congressional Reps or Senators step out of line. I wonder if writing them and telling them that we got their backs regardless of what mud they sling at them will do any good. They could also be threatening their families.

[MinM]

19. Government-by-Blackmail: FBI investigates Monica Conyers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3534786

[Marr]

18. I love Thom Hartmann, but he's overly optimistic.

He's assuming that establishment Democrats are against Bush's policies. I don't think many of them are.

No need to blackmail them-- they get their pay-offs from Wall Street, same as the Republicans.

[Cleita]

20. Then that would be bribery.

So shouldn't blackmail and bribery be stopped?

[Marr]

21. Of course they should.

But who's going to do that? The Bush (league) Justice Department?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

22. No.

[Occam Bandage]

23. Paranoia runs deep / into your mind it will creep.

[Ikonoklast]

24. No need for blackmail, they've been co-opted

They are complicit with Bush in this mess.

They would need to indict their own support for the erosion of the Constitution.

[madokie]

25. I've been thinking and saying this for a long time now

its the only thing that explains all the goings on up there in dc.

Add: Highly Recommended

[Cleita]

26. It sure helps to connect the dots, doesn't it. n/e

[Occam Bandage]

29. The problem, dear Cleita, is that American (and for that matter, world) politics

is not so much akin to a chain of dots, but rather is an expansive and extraordinarily dense field of hundreds of thousands of dots, in which thousands of dots are being added, subtracted, moved, and merged each day. It is utterly impossible to follow any more than a tiny fragment of this extraordinary ever-shifting mosaic except on the most general, blurred levels. If you chose to, you can connect an infinitesimal portion of these dots to form whatever constellation you like. However, such astrology is, as the saying goes, for entertainment purposes only.

[madokie]

30. So

whats your point except to tell us that we're full of it, I'm just curious.

[Occam Bandage]

32. Theorizing conspiracy is either a fun game or

the neurocognitive result of a brain that would prefer to squelch the notion of a causative system being more complex than can be reasonably handled. My point is that it ought be recognized as such, and hopefully kept to the realm of entertainment.

[philly_bob]

36. Occam Bandage: are you saying Bush has not blackmailed any Dems?

... in simple language, please.

[Occam Bandage]

44. I'm saying that there's no more reason to believe that then there is to believe

any number of any thousands of hypotheses. It's like the religion debate--yeah, sure, there's no reason to outright declare that any particular God does not exist, but there are hundreds of incompatible theories out there, and each has the same amount of evidence behind them.

[philly_bob]

52. Who burned the Reichstag? Who killed Kennedy? How old is earth?

If there's more than one hypothesis, are they all equally probable? Are we unable to sort them out in any manner, are we paralyzed before all the possibilities? Are there any facts at all?

Occam prescribes simplicity, not complexity.

[Occam Bandage]

69. "If there's more than one hypothesis, are they all equally probable?"

Nope. However, with a lack of any sort of evidence in any direction, to suggest any particular conspiracy ought be believed is unsupported. To liken "well, this politician isn't doing what I want her to, so I bet there's a big conspiracy," however obliquely, to the science regarding the age of the Earth is utterly laughable.

Occam does indeed prescribe simplicity. Looking at a politician not launching a futile media circus for political revenge during an election year does not require an elaborate conspiracy of blackmail.

[Dan]

66. Rove...

We have the history of Mr. Rove and how politics was played for Bush Jr. by Mr. Rove in Texas. We should learn from history...

[philly_bob]

70. We have the Spitzer saga. We have Monica Lewinsky. Vincent Foster "murder."

Sexual indiscretions or alleged sexual indiscretions used against liberal politicians.

[Occam Bandage]

87. We have Mark Foley. We have Larry Craig. We have Jeff Gannon.

Were you under the impression that those proved anything?

[philly_bob]

88. What's your explanation for Democratic capitulation to Bush, Occam?

I'm tired. Your empiricism -- is that what it is? -- has worn me down.

So if you don't agree there's evidence for blackmail as an explanation for Reid/Pelosi capitulation, what is the explanation?

Do you say "We have no way of knowing", "I have no explanation."

Do you say "All politicians are the same"?

Do you deny the capitulation?

[Occam Bandage]

94. It's easy. There are 51 Democratic Senators, including Lieberman.

Since the Republicans have set an all-time record in obstructionism by filibustering more times than any previous Senate minority party has, we effectively need 60 votes to get anything accomplished. That means we need nine GOPers to vote with us to get anything done--and we need fifteen if there's a veto. That's pretty hard to get in a party as unified as the Republicans.

I have to hand it to them. The Republican strategy of getting the Democratic base to blame their own party for Republican obstructionism is a resounding success.

[Leopolds Ghost]

81. Unlike your "conspiracy theories" Occam, it ALREADY SAID IN THE PRESS Bush is wiretapping everyone.

That constitutes proof.

"Everyone" includes you.

Don't believe me? Get an IT job in the Nation's Capital.

Educate yourself on how the NSA operates.

[Occam Bandage]

86. Yes, I think I can see how we can draw a line between FISA and blackmail. Oh, wait. Wait, you can't.

[starroute]

40. It's really a lot more focused than that

You know those social network diagrams, like the ones you can find at NameBase? There may be a hundred names all interconnected, but some of the linking lines will be much darker and heavier than others -- and some of the names will clearly be central nexuses.

Those kind of diagramming methods have been applied to a whole range of networks -- from who exchanges email with whom in a large corporation to which scientists cite which other scientists' papers -- and the result is always the same. It invariably turns out that no matter how many individuals belong to a network, just a small number of them are right in the thick of things, moving information around and giving others directions.

No doubt, if you charted DU to see whose posts get the most comments and links, it would be the same.

To take it from the other end, human beings naturally tend to organize themselves within small groups of a dozen or so individuals who know each other well. That's how we learned to do it back when we were australopithecines, and most of us have never figured out any better alternative. It's only a small minority among us who have developed the ability to reach out of their own small group and make contact with similar individuals in other groups -- and those few are the glue that holds together all larger human social organizations.

That's the way it always works, and 90% of the time, you wouldn't even call it conspiracy theory. But occasionally, instead of being open and to everyone's benefit, these larger connections are covert and self-serving and even criminal in nature. That's what we're talking about here. And though their covert nature can make it difficult to tell exactly what these conspiracies are up to, identifying the relatively small number of people who keep them going is reasonably obvious and by no means an illusion.

[Occam Bandage]

45. And that last part's the problem, now isn't it?

You can easily identify the people involved with, say, FISA, of course, and with very little effort; a brief read through one AP article will tell you that much. Nobody is going to doubt that Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush are key players here. At the same time, suggesting any sort of particular "covert" relationship between any persons without any particular reason is misguided. There are, again, hundreds of thousands of recorded interactions and events involving the key players here. Claiming a working relationship of some sort is obvious (as they're both Washington politicians); claiming a deliberate and conspiratorial relationship is an unsupported leap, and claiming a particular manner of a deliberate and conspiratorial relationship is into entertainment-purposes-only territory.

[bdamomma]

76. and we have been connecting the dots for a very long time

and we know what kind of shady things are being done, and to hell with us.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Stranger]

33. That would actually be comforting. There is simply no explanation for their turning against their

own the way they have. It is unforgivable.

[Pacifist Patriot]

34. Wouldn't surprise me in the least as I have thought that for many years now.

[philly_bob]

35. Blackmail is the simplest explanation.

Explains Democrats caving in. Remember Bush is a guy with unchecked wiretapping power -- and whose father was head of the CIA -- easy for him to get dirt on people.

God, I'd just love it if one of the Dems said, "Look, I had a sexual affair four years ago that I regret, but some members of the administration have been using their knowledge of that affair to try to get me to change my vote. It's called blackmail." It's probably what happened to Spitzer. Why did we have such a good time jumping on him, giggling over pictures of the prostitute?

[FreepFryer]

38. Yes, open secret inside the Beltway. 'Hardball' has been played since Cheney/Bush took office.

[starroute]

39. Blackmail is an old and widespread tradition

Blackmail is common in times of war. During World War II, the OSS was trying to come up with blackmail materials to use against the Germans. Seymour Hersh has written that some of the Abu Ghraib photos were meant to be used to blackmail the subjects into spying on the insurgency.

BCCI is widely said to have engaged in blackmail. P2 in Italy was actively blackmailing people in the 70's to increase its power, and the Turkish deep state has done the same.

Blackmail is also an irresistible temptation for anyone who finds themself with embarrassing facts in their files. In the 50's, J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailing everybody he could, which some say is why no president ever dared fired him -- and allegedly the Mob was blackmailing Hoover. (For that matter, a book I just read on the Mob in Cuba in the 50's claims that they set up a private orgy for John Kennedy in 1957 and later were kicking themselves for not having filmed it for blackmail purposes.)

The CIA and FBI were supposedly involved together in blackmail operations in the 60's. There are even allegations that in the late 70's, US Special Forces were deliberately spying on politicians and others to get blackmail material to protect the drug smuggling and other irrregularities of that period..

There is a long tradition of parties with call girls being set up for politicians with blackmail in mind. Allegedly Brent Wilkes, Dusty Foggo, and Bill Lowery were involved during the 80's in luring members of Congress on Latin American junkets, providing them with prostitutes, and then blackmailing them.

Similar stories circle around Reverend Moon's associates during the 70's and 80's. Rumors about highly-placed pedophiles also tend to involve blackmail or the threat of blackmail.

In addition to sex, it's possible to blackmail people on financial grounds -- or, if there are no financial grounds, to create some by opening up a Swiss bank account in their name and blackmailing them over that. Some have speculated that Jack Abramoff was also blackmailing the people he was bribing.

If there are no reports of blackmail in the 90's and 00's equivalent to those in the 70's and 80's, that seems more likely to be because the history still hasn't come out than because the practice ever stopped.

If the Bush administration really is blackmailing members of Congress -- whether Republicans, to keep them toeing the line, or Democrats to keep them cowed -- it would only be the logical outcome of all this earlier history. The only difference is that it would mean CIA-type methods have been brought into domestic politics to an unprecedented degree.

But then, hasn't that been the hallmark of the Bush administration all along? We've heard about trumped-up prosecutions brought against Democrats by loyal Bushie US Attorneys. But how many people might they have investigated -- using the full resources of the FBI -- and then decided it would be more useful to keep them under control through blackmail?

[Uncle Joe]

47. At least three dynamics support that hypothesis, opportunity, motive and dysfunctional behavior.

1. Opportunity - Via illegal wiretapping going around judicial review, apparently up to approximately six months prior to 9/11 and maybe sooner as per Qwest.

2. Motive - Cheney/Bush were determined to attack Iraq regardless of their involvement in 9/11 how else could they get an opposition party to support trusting an administration that came to power under a such a cloud and with all the contradictory evidence for Iraq as a culprit of 9/11 being so obviously suppressed or twisted, sexed up as the British put it.

3. Dysfunctional Behavior- An opposition party that walks on egg shells around a pRresident; whose low poll rankings with the public have broken historical records and whose administration obviously betrayed the nation by outing one of our covert CIA agents and by extension her company; whose job apparently was keeping track of nuclear proliferation, the very reason cited for going to war with Iraq to begin with. Throwing the Republican Party a bone with more Big Brother government by the latest FISA legislation, in spite of evidence, the Republicans are paying a heavy price for their betrayal against their constituencies that believed the Republicans stood for less government, why does anyone think Bob Barr left for the Libertarian Party? Why can a minority Republican Party in Congress successfully filibuster global warming climate change legislation, delaying it until next year, whereas the majority Democratic Party can't filibuster FISA until next year? Is it a lack of conviction, a fear of the corporate media or are they being blackmailed?

P.S. It almost seems as if some of the Democrats in power want to bail the Republicans out, when as one Republican stated "If our brand; meaning the Republican Party were dog food, it would be pulled from the shelf".

[Super Soaker Sniper]

49. I think the Democratic Leadership

is this inept and worthless on their own and no one is blackmailing them or forcing them to do anything. We have been blessed with the leadership and representation we elected and we should let this be a lesson to us.

[Individualist]

50. No!

http://bp3.blogger.com/_jkySfZbMIPg/R1-H_R9tu8I/AAAAAAAAAUo/nhfpEO1T9oc/s400/PELOSI,+PEARLS+and+SMILES+for++bush...jpg

"The Democratic Leadership Council's agenda is indistinguishable from the Republican Neoconservative agenda," Dennis Kucinich

[suffragette]

53. I think there are a couple of levels to this

One is the complicity. Some key Democrats have been put between a rock and a hard place on this stuff, with the Bush administration claiming they were briefed on classified areas from torture to NSA spying. Some have tried to dispute that.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/07/harman-not-fully-briefed/
Since this stuff is classified and whatever they were or weren't told is not only secret, but this all occurred when the Democrats were the minority party and could listen, but could not act, that puts them in a bind.

Then there's the blackmail part. The illegal wiretapping and amassing of data has been going on a long time and appears to be widespread. That's a lot of monitoring and with it the ability to collect info on those they chose to target. It doesn't even have to be used as directly as blackmail. As I said in another thread, they can use whatever info they've found through "electronic surveillance" to put someone and/or their family through the wringer. They don't even need to have something that's really actionable, just enough to create bad impressions, start cases and put people through hell. And that in itself is a threat strong enough to make people think twice about whether they want to pursue certain actions. They don't even have to show the hand, just threaten that they have the cards.

[deaniac21]

54. Bush has no juice.

[Octafish]

56. Explains why Democratic leadership protects Smirk, Sneer and Associates, B.F.E.E.

With the NSA doing its Total Information Awareness spying on the Democratic leadership from Day 1, Bush and his cronies have enough dirt for 535 Spitzers.

PS: And they knew a helluva lot about Sen. Paul Wellstone, too.

[Cleita]

57. Somewhere, someone and preferrably more than one are going to have to do the honorable thing and

fall on their swords to bring this out into the open. I can't see any other way out of it.

:hi:

[Swamp Rat]

58. Yes

y peor.

[Marie26]

59. No, they're just on the same side. The corporations'. nt

[Skittles]

68. THANK YOU

THEY ARE ALL CORPORATE WHORES NOW

[stevietheman]

74. Correct. If corporations strongly want something, political leadership wilts. n/t

n/t

[Mind_your_head]

60. Bill Clinton talked about "Mega" ..... back in the day.

an illegal eavesdropping "undefined" entity (back in the day when ALL eavesdropping was illegal ~ unless court ordered ~ REMEMBER THAT!!!!)

How low we've gone. Sub-standard.

I digress.....

Anyone, besides *me*, remember the references to "Mega"?

[Mind_your_head]

61. Here's one reference.......

<snip>
The latter involved reports that a high-level Israeli agent was operating within the Administration, who was often referred to by the code-name "Mega." A prime candidate for the designation as "Mega," is Leon Fuerth, who was Vice President Al Gore's long-time foreign-policy mentor and his National Security Adviser. This is not exactly a secret: the Washington Post reported in mid-1998 that "some officials in the State Department believe he is the conduit by which inside information is passed to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu."
<snip>

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2809marc_rich.html

(don't anybody 'snipe' at me b/c you don't LIKE the source. There's PLENTY of references out there, go find them if you dare, it's not that difficult......and I'm off to bed now b/c I've got to pay for that $4-5.00 gas and then go 'put food on my damily ~ i.e., 'd*mn family' ;-) )

Peace & Prosperity to the 'good' people of the world (and down with the crooks!),
M_Y_H

[Redneck Socialist]

62. Nah, they're just lame. n/t

[Mind_your_head]

63. SI-LENCE

(is not always 'golden'.....the truth needs 'air')

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

64. What is the party leadership's stated rationale for siding so often with Bush?

Is it some sort of idea that the Democratic majority can be solidified by not alienating independents? I don't understand how it helps the party to expand its base, if it's at the cost of becoming Republicans. I want a strong opposition party in this country. I don't think this wishy-washy deal-making attitude wins very much respect with anyone.

[DireStrike]

67. Either they are, or...

There are a lot of powerful politicians giggling behind their hands as this perception spreads. Democrats among them.

[bdamomma]

72. the bush regime has been wiretapping

before 9/11 not only us but the Democratic party too. I wouldn't put anything past cheney and *.

[lonestarnot]

93. So if everyone threw their dirty shit out the window at one time, no one would know who's is what.

Guttless assholes even if it's true. Take your sucker punch you yellow bastards, and don't throw the country the rest of the way into the toilet.

[Dreamer Tatum]

77. Give me a fucking break

Let's see...in order for blackmail to work, there has to be something with which to blackmail everyone. Something
that each Democrat would do anything to keep hidden.

In order to accept that the Dems are being blackmailed, we would have to believe that that one or more of them
is selling out their country because they went to a massage parlor, or burned a doob. Please.

We would also have to believe that most Dems in power have actually done something blackmail-worthy, and I'm sort
of surprised to learn that people here think that's possible. For example, there are a few people here who would
have a hard time believing that John Conyers defecates, let alone commits sins that he prefers to keep hidden.

The real answer is probably more painful: the Dems, when it comes time to sticking their neck out to defend principles,
become all too human and do what is most likely to get them re-elected.

[onenote]

82. you are, of course, right

And it seems to be working. Despite howls from some here at DU, Pelosi just got 89 percent of the primary vote in her district. So if the idea of the blackmail is to make her take positions that leave her with 89 percent of the Democrats, then I guess the blackmail is working.

[Individualist]

90. In regard to the "blackmailing" excuse,

Echo in Light explained it pretty well earlier today: "Let's say a friend/relative of yours is charged with involvement in a crime w/others
It's human nature to seek to trivialize your friend/relative's involvement by any degree you can, even if they're guilty. In my estimation, this is the psychologic impetus fueling the 'coincidence/blackmail' belief."

People don't want to face up to the fact that some Democrats are willingly complicit, so they offer up the blackmail excuse.

[Leopolds Ghost]

78. Clinton and Bush I initiated the mass surveillance of all Americans using auto filtering technology.

Bush II just began to use it for blackmailing purposes in 2001.

He didn't invent it.

Wake up, people, this infrastructure was approved by Bush I
and installed using billions of dollars by Clinton. It dragnets
everyone, all you have to do to target a politician is to look
them up in the NSA database and you can download their private
phone calls and e-mails. No special authorization required.
Total deniability.

You think Bush II just magically discovered "we have the technology"???

[MrCoffee]

79. No, and it's absurd to suggest it.

[electropop]

83. Either anthrax or the wiretaps.

Or both, depending on the individual case. Some respond to one kind of fear, some respond to another.

[Evoman]

84. The problem is that all of them are rich fucks who feed from the same trough.

Their children go to the same schools, their money comes from the same corporations, and they all have great cushy jobs. They laugh at you while your struggle to make ends meet.

It's the difference between a guy who ignores the homeless man's plea for food, and the man who kicks him while he passes by. One may be more bad than the other, but it's only by degrees.

[redqueen]

85. Weapons-grade, government-manufactured anthrax, anyone?

[PerfectSage]

89. I'd bet on it. It would be right up Karl Rove's alley.

[MasonJar]

91. I think that they are threatening their families. It is the only logical

explanation.

[Postman]

92. Maybe the "blackmail" story is a cover for their complicity...

Was impeachment ever on the table?

[blues90]

95. it's either one of two things

They are being black mailed or they are part of it willingly , that may depend on who it is so it could be both. Who would ever know?

[helderheid]

96. Daniel Ellsbeg basically said so.

[cayuga]

97. When you are being blackmailed, it because of something you have to hide.

If they are being blackmailed, it's because they have done or are doing something they don't want us to know about. Who would want that type of leadership?

If they are not being blackmailed, they are profitting from the asses of evil in DC.

Either way, if they are not doing what they were elected to do, they have to be replaced. NOW!