Impeachment

Vice President Cheney knowingly and willfully lied and deceived the American public and Congress. Several times, he asserted 1) that Iraq was connected to and aided the terrorists of 9/11, 2) that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of, as well as sought materials for, weapons of mass destruction, and 3) that the threat of a terrorist attack with the use of such weapons was imminent. The intelligence regarding 1) was most definitely fabricated; the intelligence community had no legitimate evidence of any kind. It was quickly discovered after the ill-conceived invasion that Hussein did not, in fact, have stockpiles of WMDs, nor did he seriously seek materials in Niger, which means 2) was a deliberate lie. Of course, lacking WMDs, the claim of 3) is ridiculously false; Iraq was underfunded and ill-equipped to develop, construct, and deploy weapons of mass destruction.

Unfortunately for the American and Iraqi peoples, these outright lies led to both parties suffering needlessly. Every day in Iraq, violence disrupts any attempt to rebuild the country. Every day in Iraq, American soldiers - our sons and daughters - are put in harm's way, returning home sick, injured, or in a coffin - if at all. Every day in Iraq, tax dollars get washed down the drain of no-bid contracts, massive corruption and an almost complete lack of oversight. Every day in America, families wait anxiously to hear from loved ones fighting in a false and ill-defined war. Every day in America, more and more citizens become disenchanted and disenfranchised, pushed to the sidelines, seemingly powerless to set things right. Every day in America, the man most responsible for this mess is allowed to continue making decisions that literally affect millions of people.

Rather than roll over and let him get away with it, Congressional Representative Dennis Kucinich gathered the will of the American people and introduced a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against VP Cheney. This is by no means an act unsupported by popular opinion; 54% of those surveyed favored the start of impeachment, and Cheney's approval rating has been dismally low for several months. The simple reason is Americans do not like being lied to.

No other presidential nominee has paid as much attention to the cry for justice as has Kucinich. No other has appealed to the system of checks and balances, so vital for a functioning democracy, to undo the damage done by this administration. He has taken the direct concern of real, every day Americans and translated it into action. He wants, as do many of us, Vice President Cheney to be held accountable for his lies and misdeeds. (This article only discusses but one facet of Cheney's scheming.)

If no other candidate on the ballot supports the desires of millions of understandably angry Americans, if no other candidate respects this republic enough to preserve it, if no other candidate has taken the initiative to right horrible wrongs, why should we even consider having any one of them as president?

In 2008, Americans deserve a candidate that listens to us, supports us, and responds to us. We the people demand a candidate worthy of our vote. That candidate, based on his bold stance against the deception and manipulations of this administration, is Representative Dennis Kucinich.

Universal Healthcare videos

Here's a couple of videos relating to Kucinich and his support for a universal healthcare plan. The first one I saw first over at Put Peace in the White House and is a spoof involving Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. The second is Kucinich talking about universal healthcare during a CNN debate.

      

      

The Problem

     The purpose of this blog is to help elect a progressive President in the upcoming 2008 election. After 8 years of disastrous Bush reign, you would think this would be easy. Someone proposing universal health care, an immediate end to the Iraq war, free college tuition, instant run-off voting (IRV) electoral reform, support for gay marraige, clean energy alternatives, a repeal of the infamous Patriot Act, and protecting social security would seemingly have a very good chance of winning. All of what I just described is part of Dennis Kucinich's platform and yet, somehow, he is in the single-digits in poll numbers.
     How could this be? Are the other candidates offering the same options but have more likable personalities? I wish. The other candidates, with the exception of Mike Gravel, do not have solutions for these problems that are along the lines of those held by the average American. Almost a year after the Democrats were elected on a mandate to end the Iraq war they've still done absolutely nothing. Wait, no, that's not true, they gave it more funding. The front runner of the Democratic party is Hillary Clinton, a former board member of Wal-Mart, who doesn't support single-payer healthcare (any reference she makes to it refers to a pathetic subsidization plan for low-income Americans, whoop-di-do), describes herself as an "an emphatic, unwavering supporter of Israel's safety and security" showing that she has no grasp on events in the Middle East, has argued that we must keep "all options" on the table against Iran, voted for the Patriot Act, introduced the Flag Protection Act of 2005 which would require a $100,000 fine and a year in jail for the act of burning a U.S. flag, supports the death penalty, supports the Defense of Marriage Act which recogizes that the federal government only considers marriage to be between a man and a woman, and refused to label herself as a "liberal" in the CNN-Youtube debate.
    "THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GETTING AFTER 8 YEARS OF BUSH!?!" you ask. Yes, this is how the game is played. See, it's not Clinton's progressive political positions which have enabled her to grab the limelight for the Democratic nomination, it's her conservative positions. She pleases the big business and other conservative interests and is able to raise much more money. With this money and with support from the mainstream media the idea that she is a Democratic frontrunner is hammered into the public. The public, in turn, begins to believe it, and assumes that the reason she is the frontrunner is because others who have spent more time researching and who had time to watch the debates thought that she did the best and so they, in turn, support her, thereby completing the self-fulfilling prophecy.
     Here, let me show you some graphs. What I've done is take the Democratic presidential hopefuls and made graphs showing the amount of money that they've raised in comparison to their congressional scorecard ratings from various advocacy groups. It should be noted that I only did this for Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Kucinich, and Biden because they are the only people who were in the Senate or the House at the time that the 2006 congressional reports were published. I could have taken data from past congressional scorecards to include the other candidates, but since the issues were different in different years it's misleading to compare them. Anyway, what you will see is that the more progressive a candidate is, the less money they have raised (click on any graph if you'd like to see a larger version).

First, let's look at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ratings¹:

This one is very dramatic.

Now the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) ratings²:



And the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) ratings³:


And finally, Peace Action West (PAW)⁴:

Another dramtic difference.

Now, just for comparison, let's look at what the conservative group American Conservative Union (ACU) said⁵:



     So as you can plainly see, the more conservative a Democratic candidate's views are, the more money they raise and the more they are considered the Democratic frontrunners. Something must be done about this because America and the world cannot stand to have another 4 years of the same old conservative policies, regardless of whether they are carried out by Republicans or Democrats. This blog's purpose is to hope to help in that effort.

† Amount of money currently raised comes from http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/money/dems.raised.html
¹http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?page=voteList
²http://www.hrc.org/Content/NavigationMenu/HRC/Get_Informed/Congress_and_Scorecard/Index.htm
³http://www.lcv.org/scorecard/
⁴http://www.peaceactionwest.org/downloads/PeaceActionScorecardLowRes.pdf
⁵http://www.acuratings.org/