Hillary has to do a little MORE than cast some token vote that gets "covered" by some other Senators on the blood-for-oil team. I need to see her FILIBUSTER some really huge war appropriation, regardless of whatever window dressing comes attached to it. NOTHING LESS! And It has to be a three digit -- $100+ BILLION appropriation. I am getting more, not less, pissed. I HAVE HAD IT WITH THIS BULLSHIT! NO MORE BLOOD-FOR-OIL-MONEY -- PERIOD.

The Brits have cut their losses. And MI6 must know something. I have lost all patience with this procedural merry-go round!

This is mostly from a comment I posted on the The Ron Paul REVOLUTION entry. I am hopping mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore. Hillary Clinton's vote for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which labels Iran's military as a terrorist organization, is a clear go-ahead for Bush to launch a new Middle East War! If you will not see that, we have nothing to argue about, because my mind is 100% made up. This will not stand!

Nader Rides Again

CNN
Source: Gore thinks Clinton unstoppable
October 12, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A source involved in Gore's past political runs told CNN that he definitely has the ambition to use the peace prize as a springboard to run for president.

But he will not run, because he won't take on the political machine assembled by Sen. Hillary Clinton, said the source. If the senator from New York had faltered at all, Gore would take a serious look at entering the race, the source said. But Gore has calculated that Clinton is unstoppable, according to the source.

Let me put it this way. I started my blogging career at a long-gone website called "repentantnadervoters.org". I held the position that voting for Nader in 2000 was very mistaken, but understandable.

Times have changed. In particular, Hillary Clinton has just now signed on to the Shiite hatred enabling Kyl-Lieberman Amendment:

Washington, DC - "Earlier today, I voted for a non-binding resolution that designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Guards are deeply involved in Iran's nuclear program and  have substantial links with Hezbollah.

More war? Maybe it's time to dust off Ralph Nader.

Unless somebody comes up with one hell of an argument, I will go to City Hall and register in the Green Party on Monday morning.

(X-posted on a couple of sites)

International Herald Tribune
By Doreen Carvajal
Published: October 7, 2007

Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful

The daily Web log, or blog, of the former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, vanished after Murray's British Internet provider received a flurry of ominous legal letters demanding the removal of "potentially defamatory" information about Alisher Usmanov, a mining mogul with a rising stake in the English soccer club Arsenal.

Two weeks later, Murray is not blogging, but his blistering opinions are about to surface again through a Dutch Internet provider that offers refuge to controversial bloggers in the United States and in England, where libel laws are more lax. And with that journey, Murray has stirred support and a common outrage among bloggers and Internet service providers who complain that chilling demands from companies are becoming more frequent in a number of countries.

"I'm personally predicting that the next growth area is not censorship of bomb-making Web sites," said Richard Clayton, a computer security researcher at Cambridge University and part of the OpenNet Initiative that tracks Internet filtering around the world, "but complaints about defamation and civil suits."

[....]

More letters followed and by the fourth complaint, Fasthosts simply deactivated the Web site - along with two other servers, shutting down more than a dozen other sites, including that of a British member of Parliament.

Craig Murray -- Writer and broadcaster

Murder in Samarkand - by Craig Murray

We can all see where this is going, eh? If you can get a few high-priced lawyers, you can shut down websites?

I haven't yet read enough about Craig Murray to know his political position, but he certainly is against any Iran war.

Are we going to let this continue? I just sent a message to the UK firm Fasthosts, informing them that all of their URLs are now blocked by my firewall.

This is merely an e-mail I set out to everybody I know.

I just don't know how else to say this:

Something rather big is now happening in Florida. This guy named Charlie Grapski who ran for office in the Florida House of Representatives alleged vote fraud, and now has been tossed in jail, and was severely beaten up. He is now on a hunger strike.

In an exclusive interview with Florida House of Representatives candidate Charlie Grapski - arrested after he filed a lawsuit alleging voting fraud against Alachua County City Manager Clovis Watson, RAW STORY learns of corruption allegations that can only be described as not seen since the days of Boss Tweed.

Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

Links:

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do;j sessionid=8B93B6DBEE9B52B4E956A8B98CE820 7E?diaryId=18403

And:

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/e xec/view.cgi/61/20448

I have never seen it like this.

This is an experiment. I did try to do this once before, but I made a few mistakes, and folks around here apparently did not see the point I was trying to make. However, I believe it to be an extremely important point indeed. I am trying to develop a new method to evaluate where you readers stand regarding a certain set of Democratic candidates. So this will be a very limited "election" of sorts. Here's the method:

In its first phase, I will use the approval voting method to determine which candidates you find most acceptable. I will ask you to give just one vote to as many Democratic candidates as you find "relatively acceptable." (This means you should give one vote to each candidate you consider "the cream of the crop." (But they don't have to even be candidates, just Democrats.) For example, you could give one vote to one candidate that you like, or you could give one vote to 10 that you like.) To avoid ridiculously long lists, you must choose not more In 10 candidates.

In order to avoid a variety of difficulties and misgivings, the current 3 most prominent contenders are excluded; so you cannot vote for Hillary, Edwards, or Obama. However, you can give a vote to any other Democrat, whether they are actual current candidates or not.

In a day or two, or when I have 10 or more responses, I will count them up, and announce the two who have won the most votes. In case of a tie, I will wait a little longer for the tie to be broken, or as a last resort, do a coin-toss.

Then I will conduct an "election" between the two who had garnered the most votes in the previous approval voting "election." With this method, since there will be only two contenders to vote for, a third, or fourth (etc.) "spoiler" candidate could not be present to spoil the voting.

Let me lay down some tracks and let you readers see the territory that lays just over the horizon. No, I am not a "hater" (but I won't cry if I'm called that). Please note that these are not my opinions, but merely observations. Maybe they will go some way toward explaining certain progressive's ambivalence regarding a certain candidate. Just go and read the articles through the links, and ask yourself if the candidate's approach to our future is one that you would prefer.

Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan was born on July 10, 1957. She will become the next President of the United States. And why not? Who has given more for this nation? Who has had the courage to speak openly, unscripted, with infinite passion? The time has come for all decent Americans to simply forget about partisan allegiances. Principles and courage are all that will save us now; all else is sheer vanity.

Let's forget about our latest crop of sell-outs and elect someone with heart and courage and determination. In 2008, I am going to vote for Cindy Sheehan for president. If you are a real US Citizen, you will do likewise!

Even if prosecutors and judges refuse to uphold Congressional subpoenas sent to the White House, Congress can still put White House staffers in jail if they refuse to testify under oath before the House and Senate. I see no need to elaborate on this, as I believe the references I cite below tell the whole story:

The New Republic

House Arrest
by Jeffrey Rosen  
Post date 11.13.06 | Issue date 11.20.06

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061120& amp;s=rosen112006

Even if the Supreme Court eventually ruled against Congress in Conyers v. Gonzales, Congress could always enforce contempt citations on its own. In a little-used procedure, Congress has the power to punish recalcitrant witnesses for "inherent contempt." As Morton Rosenberg of the Congressional Research Service points out in an invaluable 1995 report on investigative oversight that House Democrats are now heavily consulting, the defiant witness can be brought before the House or Senate by the sergeant at arms, tried, and locked up in the capitol jail. (In 2004, a citizen-activist was sentenced to a six-month term there for "disrupting Congress" by demanding to testify at a judicial confirmation hearing.) This inherent contempt procedure hasn't been invoked by Congress for more than 70 years, because a cumbersome trial for contempt has the potential to grind Congress to a halt. But, if the White House is obdurate and the courts are unsympathetic, congressional Democrats might decide that a contempt trial--unlike a presidential impeachment--would be good politics as well as good theater. And, of course, the House is always free to impeach Gonzales for his refusal to cooperate, which might be less politically risky than an impeachment of Bush.

Venable LLP

Point of Order:
An Insider's Guide to Surviving Congressional
Investigations
By: Raymond Shepherd 1 and Don R. Berthiaume 2

http://www.venable.com/docs/pubs/1631.pd f