I asked this of your colleague Speaker Pelosi a few weeks ago, Mr. Majority Leader, but the continuing collapse of Democrats in Congress is forcing me to ask it again: which part of "Kiss my ass, I’m the Unitary Executive Commander Guy" haven’t you and Nancy Pelosi figured out yet?

Progressives keep pleading for leadership from you, Harry, but we aren’t getting any. From what I’ve seen, you couldn’t lead a troop of Cub Scouts to a camp fire.  One of them would have to do it, otherwise they’d all be wandering around in the woods with you for three weeks while you regaled them with stories of how you stood up to the Las Vegas Mafia back in 1928 or whenever the fuck it was.  

In other words, Harry, what have you done for us LATELY?  Like here in the 21st Century, for example?  We don’t want to hear any more specious crap from you that Democrats "set the bar too high."  You must have been lying bleary-eyed on the FLOOR of a bar when that mind-numbing excuse popped into your head.

Are you the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States or not?  If you are, then starting acting like it instead of fumbling around like Deputy Barney Fife looking for his bullet.    

I’m told by apparent progressives here that we have to be "realists."  I'm told that Bush and Cheney cannot be Impeached.  I'm told it's not "realistic" to ENFORCE the Constitution.  They don't phrase their objections to Impeachment that way, of course, they prefer to call indulging the tantrums of Bush and that bizarre cult that used to be the Republican Party for 600 more days a "realistic" response to this surreal nightmare we've been in ever since that "realistic" Florida recount was shoved down our throats seven "realistic" years ago.  

I've been troubled by many questions lately, but high on the list is a burning question keeping millions of us awake at night: why can't Democrats explain ANYTHING coherently?  

I don't know why, but I know this much: we've all been suffering the consequences.  

Their inability to effectively communicate their positions on issues is as incomprehensible as the convoluted gibberish they spout in response to Republican slogans like "support the troops."  As we know all too well, this slogan of mass destruction is only the latest SMD to collapse Democrats into fetal positions from sea to shining sea.

Two simple numbers with a slash between them, "9/11", triggered this fetal position epidemic among Democrats back in 2001.  A few Democrats managed to whimper about the Constitution, so "obstructionist" was trotted out by the RNC with predictable results, and then "support the troops" took over, which seems to have finished the job of paralyzing Democrats into abject obedience to a despised lame duck president who is even more incoherent than they are.

A 5th grader with average intelligence could refute any of these slogans without even glancing away from his Play Station game.  Unfortunately, intelligent 5th graders aren't representing us in Congress, Democrats are.

I appreciate Chairman Conyers joining us today, but I don't have much appreciation for his apologetic explanations about why issuing subpeonas is necessary.

I consider these subpoenas to be essential because the evidence our investigation has uncovered points to the pivotal role the White House played in the U.S. Attorney firings.  We have only sought to compel cooperation through subpoenas after more than three months of stonewalling by the White House.

Subpeonas aren't essential, Chairman Conyers, IMPEACHMENT IS.   Subpeonas will either be ignored, or Bush's thugs will just say "I don't recall" a hundred times and then go home and laugh at you.

The White House has FIRED THE CONSTITUTION, Chairman Conyers.

You KNOW they have.

Nancy and Harry's pre-Iraq Moratorium Checklist:

Impeachment off the table?   Check.  Iraq withdrawal off the table?  Check.  Immunity handed out like candy?  Check.  Supporting the troops until they're all dead?  Check. Kissing Joe Lieberman's ass every day of the week and twice on Sunday?  CHECK.

Nancy and Harry's post-Iraq Moratorium Checklist:

Impeachment on every table in Congress?  Check.  Iraq withdrawal in 6 months? Check.  Criminal indictments handed out like candy?  Check.  Actually supporting the troops so they won't be dead?  Check.  KICKING Joe Lieberman's warmongering ass every day of the week and twice on Sundays?  CHECK.

That, my friends, is INCENTIVE . . .    

I was going to wait until Yearly Kos to divulge this, but our very survival as a progressive website is at stake and I cannot wait any longer.  A comprehensive study of our mojo system has provided convincing evidence that Islamofascists and Islamofascist sympathizers have infiltrated Daily Kos.  

I have in my hand right now a list of 278 Islamofascists currently active here.  Some of these covert Islamofascists are front pagers.  Some of them are on the Recommended Diary list with great frequency.  Some of them get major mojo all over the place for insightful, informative and well-timed comments like: "Great Diary! n/t".

Have you ever wondered why this mojo system was implemented?  What purpose does it serve?   What is this mojo really used for?  Where does it go?  Who is tracking this marathon race for mojo?   Where is the finish line?   Is there a finish line at all, or have we all been lured onto a Mojo Bridge to Nowhere?  

We are progressives.  Unlike politicians, we keep our promises.  On September 21, 2007, we can show the world that Americans across this country are going to stand up to that lying son of a bitch in the White House.  Those babbling doorknob polishers currently inhabiting the House and Senate will not stand up to him.  Bush is a despised lame duck president who destroys everything he touches, but they still won’t stand up to him.

So we’re going to.  But that’s not all we’re going to do.

Congressmen and senators who will not vote to end the Commander Guy's occupation of Iraq are going to have their occupation of Congress ended.  By us. That’s a promise.  It's a promise from us to the soldiers they sent to Iraq four years ago and have been betraying ever since. It’s a promise we will sanctify in the streets of this country on Moratorium Day.  It’s a promise we have the strength, determination and honor to keep, and we are going to keep that promise.  

I've posted regularly on ConyersBlog for more than two years, nearly every day, often several times a day. Consequently, I am very aware of the inspiring leadership Congressman Conyers has demonstrated throughout his long and distinguished years of service in Congress.  I have thanked him many times for it.

I have been much less enthused about the leadership he has demonstrated since becoming Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and I have said so on his blog. Bluntly.  Several times.

Why?

Because speaking truth to power is one of the things he taught me.  Because with every day that passes, it is becoming increasingly clear that Impeachment cannot remain off the table. If they are not removed from office, Bush and Cheney are going to inflict grievous damage on America and the world for 600 more days.

600.

MORE.

DAYS.

Not long after George Walker Bush and his pack of conspiring, neo-conservative, Christianist, carnage-inflicting criminals hijacked our government, one of them anonymously proclaimed:

"We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.  We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

                                                             
Thanks for the homework assignment, Professor PNAC.  We’ve been doing some judicious studying.  Indeed we have.  There's been a whole lot of studying going on. We've studied this rightwing racist rampage of reactionary rutting you call the war on terror, and we've seen more than enough.  There isn't anything left to study.

Head for the door, progressives, classes at Commander Guy University are hereby dismissed.  

In a must read front page post, Meteor Blades warns of the disturbing possibility of "outbreaks of rightwing violence if the Republicans, who have embraced outrageously violent talk in many forums, are booted out of power come November 2008."

Many progressives share the same concerns, but I’m just as concerned about rightwing violence during the 2008 campaign.  No one who was old enough in 1968 to follow politics will ever forget the impact the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had on American politics that tragic year.  Many of us believe that Kennedy would have won the Democratic nomination and would have defeated Richard Nixon in the general election that November.  

But the two most powerful voices for liberalism were silenced, and the consequences are still being experienced.  Fearful and intimidated, the Democratic Party degenerated between 1968 and 2006 into a Republican Lite dog and pony show.  We are beginning to reclaim our Party, but the struggle ahead of us is going to be long and difficult, and may well incite a violent backlash.    

For more than a century, poetic words at the base of the Statue of Liberty have proclaimed: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."  

High above these words, a beacon of hope still shines, despite the gathering darkness that has swept across this troubled land since the inauguration of an insider-trading, election-stealing criminal as the 43rd President of the United States.  

That Lady in New York harbor must be feeling very lonely.  There aren’t very many beacons of hope left in this country, they’ve flickered out one by one, leaving behind nothing but broken promises and dread of what the next 600 days will bring.  But one beacon of hope has been shining brighter with every passing day.  It is being held high by Kos and our frontpagers and diarists and commenters and readers.

Thank you for purchasing our fine product, Harry and Nancy’s 110th Congress.  We are very proud of this new and improved version of Congress, which features impressive non-binding resolutions, inspiring no-confidence votes, immunity offers for serial violators of the Constitution, and a wide selection of Iraq war options ranging from no guidelines, no timelines, and no surrender dates, to no withdrawal, no funding cuts, and no consideration whatsoever of anything remotely resembling not supporting the troops.

The lyrics and music of legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan still speak to us today, despite the passage of more than forty years since the writing and recording of peace movement anthems such as "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall", and the searing apocalyptic anthem "Desolation Row."  

Dylan wrote these songs in his pajamas in someone's basement in Greenwich Village. That didn't matter, what mattered is he proclaimed the truth and is still proclaiming it.  His songs changed the world, and so can our activism IF we quit napalming each other over secondary disagreements and unite, as Cindy Sheehan is imploring us to.

My Social Security number is 000-00-051, so for fellow progressives who are slightly younger than I am, and who may be unfamiliar with "Desolation Row", a 2000 concert version of it can be found here. I'm hoping readers of this diary will listen to the song while reading the lyrics and accessing the hot-linked photos in order to fully experience this multimedia adventure . . . ordeal . . . diary.

When in the Course of Daily Kos it becomes necessary to post another diary, to stagger to my computer through the fog of chronic insomnia, and to assume among the ranks of Kossacks the mutual and equal station to which my addiction to mojo consigns me, respect for the reading skills of 93 percent of my fellow Kossacks requires that I should declare the causes which impel me to clutter up the recent diary list with this thing:

My keyboard and I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Kossacks are created seriously pissed off, that we are endowed by Kos the Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Diaries, thread comments, and the pursuit of Acclaim.

On a dark day guaranteeing much darker days to come, the Senate voted 80 to 14 to keep funding the bloodiest fiasco in American military history. The House didn’t sink quite as low into the slime of capitulation, and only shamed America by a vote of 280-142.  As these votes were cast, 156 members of the United States Congress showed us what moral courage looks like.  Over twice as many, 360 of them, showed us what reeking moral cowardice looks like.  If the stark and bitter truth be told, and it must be told, condemning them as moral cowards is far too lenient.  Complete and utter depravity is what we saw yesterday.        

Four score and seven Friedman Units ago, The Decider blew up his first frog.  Thanks to Big Tony Scalia, he smirked his way into the White House and is blowing up entire countries now.  As we've seen, the empty suits and dresses of the 110th Congress have no problem with that.

But we do. We have a MAJOR problem with that. We have an incumbent-purging, 2008 electoral massacring, banish every war funder into political oblivion problem with that. Does anyone here think it’s time for some sound barrier breaking, White House shaking, Capitol Hill quaking, coast-to-coast America waking, Category FIVE Fucking Anger?

I do.  

Patrick Henry didn't calm down, and I'm not going to either.

There. Is. NOTHING. To. Be. Calm. About.  

Try to focus, Madame Speaker.  Try to focus, Mr. Majority Leader.  I'll walk you slowly through this.  Take notes if you have to.  America does not want another wall like this one.  Do NOT give The Decider more BLOOD MONEY to play with!  We do not want to have to build another Wall and grieve at another Wall just because this unspeakable shithead wants to play Commander Guy until we have no Army left.

We have to end this.  But whenever RePugs accuse our Democratic leadership of not supporting the troops, being partisan, or surrendering to the evildoers, Nancy, Harry, and Steny take turns mumbling something incoherent and then run here.

Which part of, "Kiss my ass, I’m the Unitary Executive Commander Guy" haven’t you and Harry Reid figured out yet?  

How many times are you going to bring a toothpick to a gun fight?  How many times are you going to try to "compromise" with that smirking idiot from Crawford?  How many times are we supposed to endure these humiliating contortions you call "working with the president?"   A blank check for Bush is a blank check for Bush, even if you don’t call it a blank check. He just spit on your latest blank check. Congratulations.      

Madame Speaker, ever since you blurted out, "Impeachment is off the table" on 60 Minutes last fall, you’ve stubbornly stayed the course on no Impeachment.  You said, "it’s a waste of time."  You’ve chosen to "negotiate" with Mr. 28 Percent instead.  If you’re trying to prove you’re as delusional as he is, you’re doing a heckuva job.