13.  Stunned at assassination of President.  Broken heart, awakening of political self.

14.  Inspired by new Dem Pres taking leadership, promising a "Great" Society.

16.  Inspired by Dem Pres promising economic development to halt starvation and disease killing millions of children around the world.

17.  Aware of war on daily TV and radio news.

18.  Sudden realization that "progressive" Dem Pres has blown it on war.  All of it.  Broken heart for LBJ's betrayal.

19.  Seymour Hersh and CBS break news of My Lai massacre.  State of shock.

With a million others, occupy Washington D.C. for 3 days, surround government buildings, candlelight "March Against Death".  Back from demo, mail 2-S student deferment card back to draft board, and, later, the ashes of the 1-A card...

http://www.youtube.com/...

Murders, unapologized, uncompensated, unavenged.  Forty years later, Learning unlearned.  Nations learn nothing, at least at a level that changes anything.

I think it grows on me, as we go through the seventh year of this dictatorship, how courageous they were, to resist what we now consider the greatest political monstrosity in history.

Imagine yourself as von Stauffenberg, walking into that conference room, sitting at the table with so many murderers.

Wonder if you might have decided to "sit this one through," by staying in the room, to be sure of the detonation!

And we quibble over the politics of impeachment.  (I know -- it's worth discussing strategy, tactics, possible outcomes, and being sure rather than impulsive about timing.  Be better planners than your opponents.)

But -- think of it...

Spend some time reflecting, while enjoying the excellent Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Conspiratorial groups planning a coup of some kind had existed in the German Army and the military intelligence organization (the Abwehr) since 1938. ... Plans to stage a coup and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939...

HEADLIGHTS ON!  Bush-Cheney RESIGN.

Please send this action idea to the top and keep it there with your recommendation.  Please help develop, cross-post and promote this idea, and others similar to it.  It is simple, and only a simple idea is likely to be spread widely.

In the end, if we do save our Republic, which began in the time of the Boston Tea Party with other simple actions, this will be accomplished again by simple, comprehensible actions that any citizen may join in.

On the curve of possible actions and impacts in the present time, this stands out as having the greatest potential benefit for its ease of participation.

HEADLIGHTS ON.  Bush-Cheney GONE.

They should have been gone long, long ago.  Their wars, their corruption, their anti-America and world-destroying agenda.  This coup by a business faction against our Republic and Constitution.

We are the majority, and we are right.

The majority wants them gone, by resignation or impeachment.

They intend to continue as if we didn’t exist.

(The rest of the story...)

You know that the voice of Dr. King deserves to be heard today, and deserves your recommendation.

Audio Link:

http://www.africanbynature.com/...

and Text:

http://www.husseini.org/...

April 30, 1967: The Ebenezer Baptist Church heard America's foremost moral voice stray "off the reservation" of Civil Rights, and weigh in against the other moral crisis of his time.

At this celebration of his birth, hear him sign his own death warrant, as he stands firmly against the ruling White Racist Empire that "America" had become, and continues to be.  It is clear: They could not permit him to continue, and still rule.

Spend the entire 44 minutes steeping in this unequaled voice, and ponder just how much ground we have lost in the past 40 years of ignoring his warnings about our impending "spiritual death."

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

More...

We blog on hour after hour discussing the sources and directions of Power in our divided country.

But it is indisputable that the current Regime rules only by the Power that WE provide it.

In the absence of our support, it dries up and blows away.

Aren't YOU ashamed today to have paid for some U.S. soldiers to go to Iraq, rape a girl, murder her family, and burn the bodies in a cover-up attempt?  

How much more?  How much more?

We have allowed this MADNESS to continue long enough.

From the point of the Schiavo insanity onward, there has been no shred of legitimacy to this government from any major political viewpoint, and it has merited only that we each turn our backs to it, until it resigns.

Of course, we will make our best efforts in the coming elections.

But, in parallel to that, and especially following another stolen election, or a continued weak Democratic opposition to Bushism, we must prepare our Plan B.

(FIRST DRAFT -- I have to get to work today... ;-)

Briefly,
I am neither a Lawyer, nor a Legal Scholar.

Merely a snowball rolling down a long hill, collecting this and that, some of which you may find useful to add to your own snowball.

This essay is presented, in development, for your consideration and contribution.  Its intent is to contribute to, not to monopolize, something which belongs to us all.

It is intended not to end in the swamp of some intellectual archive, but to lead to, and indeed, to invoke, Action.  It intends to lead irretrievably to a conclusion that no other course but Action is warranted.  And it intends to imply what that Action may be.

The Body of Law by which we live -- and mediate our disputes -- contains injunctions both affirmative and passive. Some of these distinctions take place along the dividing lines between Civil Law and Criminal Law.

For example, if a drunken driver kills my sister, ...

I knew something about all this was jogging a synapse or three, such as are left after a year and then some of Republicans imitating bad fiction, and leaving me feeling like their icon St. Teri, on a bad day.

Quick music parodies issued today, such as that of Aerosmith: "Cheney's Got A Gun", left me with aching sides most of the day.  I needed to journey back, back, way-y-y-y back into the history of my Medieval forebears.

And so I googled my way (when does Google begin its Kleenex defense?) to:

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/...

where I could read the Halliburton-like story of London's four-time Lord Mayor, Dick Whittington, and the graft, lying, bribery, and money-laundering that associated itself with high office (and the name "Dick") even in such enlightened times as 15th century Britain.

While Harry Whittington probably did not have to protest "I'm not dead yet" in the Pythonesque mode of "Bring out yer dead!", his strange experience makes me ponder more his entanglement in Dick Cheney's bad karma, than their respective places in history.

(Ye mun flippit here)

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf:

"Of course, there will be another war. One doesn't need to read the papers to know that. And of course one can be sad about it, but it isn't any use. It is just the same as when a man is sad to think that one day, in spite of his utmost efforts to prevent it, he will inevitably die. The war against death is always a beautiful, noble and wonderful and glorious thing, and so, it follows, is the war against war. But it is always hopeless and quixotic too... Your life will not be flat and dull even though you know that your war will never be victorious. It is far flatter to fight for something good and ideal and to know all the time that you are bound to attain it. Are ideals attainable? Do we live to abolish death? No--we live to fear it and then again to love it, and just for death's sake it is that our spark of life glows for an hour now and again so brightly."

Unfortunately,... (MORE)

I wish I had time to source this parody fully, but I have a flooded basement to deal with right away, so I am crosslinking it from PrudentBear forum, where the Neocons come under regular intense fire:

http://www.prudentbear.com/...

I don't know if "qqqbear" wrote it originally, but from reading him over several years, it is very possible IMO.  

He posted it in reply to a right-winger's posting of Krauthammer's column of Dec. 23 entitled "Impeachment Nonsense"  Enjoy!

"TERM LIMITS NONSENSE:
By Charles Krauthammer:
March 23, 2008:

The past seven years have already been the age of the demagogue, having been dominated by the endlessly echoed falsehoods that the president has "violated the Constitution." But today brings yet another round of demagoguery. Administration critics, political and media, charge that by running for a third term, the president has so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered.

(parody column continues...)

They should ban "Repeat" buttons on CD players, as well as cheap Montepulciano imports from Italy.

But it's too late now.  I'm locked in alone for the night; my daughter away with friends, and "Blonde on Blonde" on the box.  If you have Bobby, go put him on...

Who is this for?

I picture my sisters in soul, -- sisters, lovers, lovers I never knew, fallen from the same stars, and the sharp look in your eyes telling me all -- passing through this half-decade night, and the lives we expected that never arrived

"And you wouldn't know it would happen like this"

and I feel the crossbody tackle you -- we all -- received along the way, day by week by year.  Until you wake up and see a very different outcome than you thought was coming.

And now, the younger people here -- 40?  -- still expect things to turn out, somehow.  We still have an undelivered gift for them, but I don't know how we'll deliver it.

"My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,.."

The story of 2005 might be summed up as "Bush's Problems with Women."  Call it the "return of the oppressed," maybe, but I just see it as a lot of overdue truth-telling, and facade-crumbling.

Nothing beyond entertaining coincidence intended here, but just how I've seen and enjoyed it since around mid-year.  Others who wish may explore further or write deeper pieces, if this sparks a thought or three...

For those who remember, I have Dion's "Abraham, Martin, and John" warming up on the mental jukebox. (And yes, it always makes me verklempt.)  And no, I won't put the parody lyrics here that I thought of originally, but it was an amusing possibility.

I never thought I would appreciate women in politics as much as I have this year.  Gentlemen, we have been nearly rescued from the Kerry-Rove-Diebold debacle of 2004 by the actions -- and mis-actions -- of a stalwart band of females, some of them without any such redemptive intent.

Bush's bad luck with females may turn into our great fortune.

(just the briefest of outlines follows -- I believe you all know the year's details quite well)

"Nothing became him in his life as the leaving of it."
-- Shakespeare, Macbeth

REstore Sanity In Government Now. RE S.I.G.N.

I'm not going to detail the list of high crimes and misdemeanors -- and utter incompetence -- which merit an impeachment effort in 2007, whether likely to succeed or not.  There are other diaries on the recommended list -- right now -- cataloging these reasons very well.  I hope a multi-pronged effort goes forward to remove these clowns from office before 2009.  (Kinda makes you choke a bit to think "2009" in this context, doesn't it?)

This topic ought to be an obvious point for some original thought to begin.  It is also an expression of my curiosity as to campaigns in the works already.

Let the 2006 campaign include numerous statewide and local initiatives and referenda calling upon Bush and Cheney to RESIGN.

Let city councils, and state legislatures, vote such resolutions.  (Model: Nuclear Freeze Campaign, and Nuclear Free Zones, of the 1980s.)

(more)

OK, these partially-formed thoughts of the day found good reception on the "Sinking Ship" diary, so I will offer them up here to start better tactical wheels than my own turning on the subject:

Democrats are about to get busy shooting themselves in both feet.

The Air America and Ed Schultz talk shows today seem to be mostly emphasizing lecturing the Prez to RAISE TAXES to pay for Katrina recovery.

(My peevish nature reveals itself below...)

"...heckuva job, Brownie."

OK, who's next?

Or better, take this chance to guess the highest-ranking Republican resignation we will enjoy by the end of 2006.  That's 2006 -- a whole year to enjoy the fine sport of political prognostication!

Will it be Rove, or Rummy?

Chertoff?  Or the great prevaricator hisself?

One guess to a customer -- first come, first claim.

(We won't quibble: firings -- oh, we can hope, can't we? -- count equally.)

Rankings of winning selections, where in question, may be determined by order of Presidential succession.  Otherwise, by a capricious spin of the beanie-copter cap...

Have at it!

This one all came to me, fully-formed, in the middle of the night, but I was so enthralled with the glow from the bathroom light beyond, softly and beautifully outlining the  breathing form next to me.  Someone who belongs who a small nation with a very live sense of community.  One that I am considering trying to join.

I've probably largely lost its thread by now, but it started with the silent images -- volume turned off -- from the CNN station.  People on rooftops waving to helicopters that might never come for them.

We are watching the death of a community, of a region.  But it only reminds us --  pushes forward a stark physical image -- of the communities of America that we lost long ago.

in "The Republican Zone" ruled by conservatroids.

Did you catch this hilarious cartoon, based on the Rod Serling-written Twilight Zone episode?

"How long...?" asked Martin Luther King, from the capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.

"I know some of you are asking today, "How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you will reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral
universe is long, but it bends toward justice. "

"Not long..."  We, too, can hope the same.

Carrying over thoughts from reading today's diary on Shrub's Social Security blahvulations...

"Bush States Treasury May Default" at

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/5/203517/4975

sent me looking for this Blast from the Past:

http://watergate.info/impeachment/impeachment-articles.shtml

Articles of Impeachment Adopted by the Committee on the Judiciary
July 27, 1974

RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanours,

Once the privatization threat has been shelved, Social Security's fate will be determined by the OVERALL condition of US Government finances.

And, this in the next TEN years, not thirty.

The answer in a nutshell would be that Social Security's finances are just fine -- on paper -- but the cash flow problems of the US Government will very soon threaten EVERY program and force drastic cuts and a clash of interests among ALL constituencies.

Here is the projection from the GAO, which tells the story of the proverbial train wreck approaching:

GAO's site, with slideshow presentation of further data:

http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/simulations.html

Details below,