Hey Nancy: The numbers add up now. Pile onto the Blago thing and impeach Dick & W now. And by the doing, tell the whole world that those guys are fair game now.

i disagree. had pelosi been cagey or gone full steam ahead, bush and crew would have been cautious and careful. as it was, he was brazen and bold and cocky as all hell. folks tend to make big mistakes when they’re that cocky.

you are right, tho; the numbers did not add up for the take down, which i’m sure was part of the calculus. but i also think they decided to give the guy enough rope to hang himself. and hope the tide would turn. he did, and it did.

congress will act on this; they already are. give it a bit. there are so damn many ways the bushies could be taken down, no need to clamor for all of them all at once. there is a best way to do things. takes time. and patience.

sheez; hard to know where to begin with all the ranting.

first of all, i was first in line complaining about the lack of impeachment will in congress, but after a while i began to see that it really might not be such a great idea. considering how close the numbers were in the senate (why impeach if you can’t convict? he’d just stay in office and we’d all be made to look like idiots), how unfriendly the media are, how stacked the whole damn deck is, the utterly emasculated doj, the supremes (roberts would have presided; can you imagine how he would have ruled? c’mon), i could go on and on.

at least they would have tried, you would say (since you claim the dems have not even tried). well, what was the goal? impeachment to say they tried? or conviction toward correcting the ship of state? i’d say the latter, and that the former had the deck stacked against it (see previous graf).

nixon was very different. republicans in congress had not held and abused power for 15 years the way this crew had; they became drunk with power and corruption. remember? jeffords may have been the last responsible republican to serve in congress, and he left the party because bush was such a whacko. with watergate, dems had held congress for a while, and republicans then could claim at least some men of integrity. the parties had worked well together, and nixon had even signed off on many dem bills, the epa not least among them. the reason the repugs approached nixon was they knew he was guilty; the tapes proved it. and goldwater insisted that he not take the party down any further. they had foresight, unlike these idiots. they were not complicit like this entire party is. and the dems started impeachment proceedings only after the wapo stories made it unequivocally clear what was going on; it wasn’t like the dems were on this like stink on dog poop. they waited until the press laid out the case for them; surely you noticed that our current media find the notion of impeachment laughable, thanks to the repug fiasco with monica. watergate was a fascinating era, and certainly showed more cahunas in both parties than we see now, but it wasn’t like dems were fighting against any wind. it was completely behind their backs.

which is totally different from what these guys now have faced. totally different. the wind has been forcefully in their faces. a far more dangerous time. these thugs play for keeps, and they play really really dirty. how can you make the watergate comparison when even john dean said these guys made nixon look like a boy scout? it’s so damn true! i lived through that time. i watched all those assassinations (in memphis when king was shot) and the church bombings and the riots and kent state and the hatred for civil rights and anti-war protesters and hippies and all of it. and i have to tell you, as bad as all that was, i was far far far – by a lightning long shot – far more scared of these freaks than i ever was of nixon and his ilk. there were many times over the past 8 years when i really feared we would lose the country, they’d declare martial law, and shove us all into camps. don’t you remember those fears? do you not even notice that they’re gone?? and did that not begin at least a little when the dems recovered congress two years ago? is that not powerful for you?

and yes, despite the fact that i have been frequently frustrated with the dems in congress, i will defend their attempts to stand up to this monster that the republican machinery has become, the monster that is now destroying itself like a scorpion.

how can you say they have done NOTHING?? what about conyers? and waxman? and leahy and whitehouse and feingold? and barbara boxer? she stood up for congresswoman tubb-jones (god rest her good soul; hate she missed seeing obama win) in questioning the OH presidential election numbers. i mean really dude; it’s not as if these people were just sucking their thumbs. granted, in a perfect world, they’d have stood up like the cavalry and charged the enemy. but this was not a B grade cowboy movie (go rent reagan for that thrill, buddy), this was way too surreal/real. these jokers had the entire country hiked up by the beltloops with 9/11 petrification, the media piling on like hiway rubberneckers. the mood of this country was extremely different than it was 35 years ago, and so were the particulars. you can’t even draw reasonable comparisons, it was so different. parallel, but orders of magnitude different in intensity and scope.

and speaking of reasonable, forgive me, but that whole section about seats and power and pork, you’ve got too many pronouns in there without clear antecedents. you lost me. were you saying the dems should have offered the repugs pork to tell bush he should resign? to get them on board for impeachment? were you not paying attention to that crew?? they were more in lock step than the nazis. rove and cheney kept them all in line, with indefatigable support from delay and lott. which is a huge part of why those guys are in so much trouble now (not ok to mix the politics with governance like that); they were all branded and complicit. and they were NEVER interested in governing, they were ONLY interested in maintaining power. period. they’d have laughed in pelosi’s face if she’d approached them about impeachment, even with all the evidence that’s out there. they’d have laughed, and thumbed their noses, just like they’re doing now. but now, increasingly, they look like the asses they are.

i suspect pelosi knew this about them. in fact, i’m quite sure of it. and it just might be that the leadership made a calculated decision to give bush all the rope he needed to hang his sorry self. you’re right, he got all cocky. when idiots like him get cocky, they also get careless. that calculus makes sense to me now. better to let the tide turn on bush because he is so adept at bringing it on, idiot that he is. and they had to believe the tide would turn. hell, they could only hope – HOPE – it would. and it has. still is. it is still unfolding, this change.

maybe you’re just too cynical to see it, but there is such a remarkable shift, and so much is changing already. but there is such a thing as shifting direction too quickly. i sense that obama is keenly aware of this. it is pure wisdom. if you want change that is deep and holds and lasts and that destroys only the disease and not the patient as well, you have to move with great care and finesse.

forgive me, perris, but this IS the congress we elected. deal with it. and it ain’t so dreadful as you think. try being grateful for the good that is there. keep their feets to the fires, but recognize their efforts toward correcting an enormous mess. try avoiding so many negative hyperboles and remind yourself of the completely different direction we’ve taken. bush gets in office, and there are immediate tax cuts for the rich and religious fanatics get orgasms without condoms, while cheney locks in secret profits for oil. it only went downhill from there; hell, we were attacked on their watch!! if you can’t see the remarkable differences now, in this congress, in obama, then all i can say is you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

you are right about one thing, perris; we are going in circles.

but you are not right that going gangbusters would have been a safe thing to do. the time has not been right. the whole zeitgeist has not been right. you talk as if the election system is not rigged to high heavens. you talk as though the polls were showing enormous leads for obama and all the dems. it was tenuous, fragile, delicate. and that had everything to do with the media and the monstrous machinery that was in place. these things did NOT exist with such power with nixon.

and if you think the dems could have approached the repugs with all the evidence against bush and convinced them to impeach bush, all i can say is you are truly nuts. certifiable. i mean, look at those people!! they’re even nuttier than you for seeing the very same evidence you and i do, and likely more, and they have been adamantly protecting and defending him all along. until now, when he’s gone and they’re scrambling for their very existence. and the reason is they were deeply complicit. they not only went along, they propped the whole thing up. they knew all along what they were doing was wrong, illegal, unconstitutional, and yet they forged ahead, believing rove’s agenda of a permanent republican majority.

none of that existed in any way shape or form with nixon. he was a paranoid man (altho there is evidence the cia wanted him out, and there is that piece; but it doesn’t support your argument) who didn’t even trust his own party members. bush and his crew grew a mafia in our midst, and all those guys were willing and eager members. agreeing to impeach him would have been like impeaching themselves, and they knew it.

they still know it. and look where they are. look at who they elected to lead him. look at their nominee and his veep, for chrissake! and the campaign! sheez. they’re a mess, a complete mess. but the country was unable to get a picture of just how bad off they are until the contrast of obama could take hold. and that happened extremely quickly. it’s been pretty breathtaking, actually. the differences are startling, but folks are so unable to see those things until they’re slapped in the face with it.

that would include you, my friend. forgive my bluntness, you sound a bit like a princess at the beginning of recovery from the plague. all she can do is complain about all the bodies, missing the point that their numbers are rapidly decreasing.

and speaking of numbers, you are just dead wrong on that point. the numbers were NOT there. not in congress, and not in the public. it’s only this week that polls show support for investigation of questionable activities, but there is still not that much strong support for prosecutions. you mistake your fervor, and that of your comrades, for the entire public’s. obama won, as did his fellow dems, because people are just fed up and they’re really pissed at the economy. issues of illegality were not anywhere near the top of the list of reasons for voting dems in. not for the majority of voters.

you also strike me as likely quite young. you don’t seem to have lived through the times you were so eager to compare these with. i’ll say it again, though parallel, they are wildly different. that’s easy to forgive, and hopefully with time you’ll learn the importance of forgiving our brethren for their humanity. it’s utterly key to healing. that’s not to say we let these suckers go scott free, but we can’t hang the entire democratic party because you’re offended. wouldn’t that sound a bit more like a dictatorship than a democracy to you?

and i’ll say this again, while i appreciate your principled stand, please be careful of where that passion can take you. passion over reason carries us away, no matter what the principles might be, no matter how ‘right’ they might be. without the measure of reason to guide us through such fragile times, we’re doomed to the same fate that awaits the repugs and their fundamentalist fanatics. and it ain’t pretty.