Titanic Post

July 13, 2007

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

Impeachment…the word feared and loathed by every sitting president is back. It’s in the air and on your computer screen, a growing clamor aimed at both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.

This week’s news only agitated the clamor. The president acknowledged that someone in his administration did leak the name of a CIA agent to the press, but he said let’s move on — even as he refused to let his former White House counsel testify to Congress about political influence at the Justice Department.

So the talk in Washington was of executive arrogance. All the more so as the Democratic House voted to withdraw US troops from Iraq by next spring despite a threat of veto by President Bush. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group reports that more than four in ten Americans — 45 per cent-favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half -54 per cent — favor putting Vice President Cheney in the dock.

Are these the first tremors of a major shock wave…or just much ado about nothing? First, let’s take a look at the last time a president found himself fighting off an impeachment campaign. It happened less than a dozen years ago. And what was the issue:

Read complete transcript here.

Continued!
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Published on Thursday, March 22, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
A Time For Anger, A Call To Action
by Bill Moyers

The following is a transcript of a speech given on February 7, 2007 at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

I am grateful to you for this opportunity and to President Prager for the hospitality of this evening, to Diana Akiyama, Director of the Office for Religious and Spiritual Life, whose idea it was to invite me and with whom you can have an accounting after I’ve left. And to the Lilly Endowment for funding the Values and Vocations project to encourage students at Occidental to explore how their beliefs and values shape their choices in life, how to make choices for meaningful work and how to make a contribution to the common good. It’s a recognition of a unique venture: to demonstrate that the life of the mind and the longing of the spirit are mirror images of the human organism. I’m grateful to be here under their auspices.

I have come across the continent to talk to you about two subjects close to my heart. I care about them as a journalist, a citizen and a grandfather who looks at the pictures next to my computer of my five young grandchildren who do not have a vote, a lobbyist in Washington, or the means to contribute to a presidential candidate. If I don’t act in their behalf, who will? (more…)

BUSH REGIME AGREES NOT TO BLOW UP NEVADA DESERT

SALT LIKE TRIBUNE - Divine Strake was promised to blow a hole in the earth and create a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert. Instead, it blew open old wounds for Utahns who had been promised Cold War atomic tests would be safe, and the hurt, betrayal and rage that poured out left the Pentagon with little choice but to announce it was scrappingt the test. Michelle Thomas spent the day in tears. “I’ve cried all day long. I just can’t yet grasp it,” said Thomas, a St. George Downwinder who opposed Divine Strake. She has had cancer and suffers an immune deficiency she blames on exposure to radiation. “I just felt such an overwhelming relief,” she said. “You just think, ‘Oh my gosh. We matter.’ ” The memories of Utahns helped fuel an unprecedented flood of resistance to the test, the ignition of 700 tons of explosives planned for the Nevada Test Site from which radiation spread from atomic tests into Utah and other states downwind. “This wasn’t run-of-the-mill public opposition. This was a heartfelt and broad-based public expression, so much so that it would have been impossible for anyone to neglect,” said Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. “I can’t remember the last time we had an issue that had this kind of unified public response. . . . Memories are very much alive and well.”

Today almost every principle upon which this country was founded is being turned on its head. Instead of liberty we are being taught to prefer order, instead of democracy we are taught to be follow directions, instead of debate we are inundated with propaganda. Most profoundly, American citizens are no longer considered by their elites to be members or even worker drones of society, but rather as targets - targets of opportunity by corporations and of suspicion and control by government.

~ Sam Smith

Progressive Review Newsletter

by Sam Smith
Progressive Review

As always happens, as soon as I say something nice about a political candidate, I find myself in trouble.

Part of the problem may be that I think about political candidates differently than a lot of people. Unlike many, I don’t see myself as part of some great collective of St. Peters at the gate deciding who should get into heaven and then, in a strange twist of metaphor, come back to earth and save us. Rather I think of politicians as one more tool in social and political change and the first question that jumps to my mind is: what can they do for us?

I expect them to fail, con, double-cross and desert, but before they betray us too much I would like to get a civil liberties bill or universal healthcare passed. Read more…