Impeach, Bush, Cheney...The Cindy Sheehan Page

THE CINDY SHEEHAN PAGE

Cindy Sheehan Opens San Francisco Office

Please Start Here…

http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

Though Cindy has my admiration and support; I have from time to time been critical of Cindy and action her actions.

I will probably continue to do so until I see and am convinced that there is a serious, viable campaign in place in California on her behalf to unseat Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I have held, and still hold to the fact that all 435 members of the House are up for (re)election in 2008, and as such, given the ferment in this nation; they are all vulnerable; they are all available for replacement.

Speaker Pelosi has to be #1 on “The Wanted List “and the mantle to take her out lays firmly, and first, on the shoulders of Cindy Sheehan and her campaign team in California and then on ours to aid her in every way possible.

I fully appreciate the demands placed upon Cindy to appear across the country as the symbol and spokesperson for so many of our issues, but there comes a time when “political theater” must come to an end and the street fighting of a serious campaign must begin.

That time is now, and that campaign must be issues focused and prepared for demeaning negative attacks.

The exposure of every Pelosi excess, error of judgment, every act of collusion with the administration does not matter unless Pelosi is called to answer, called to accountability in the campaign arena...otherwise all we be ignored as simple business-as-usual noise.

The Media will rally to the campaign only when the issues are engaged seriously on the home turf of California and Pelosi has to come out of cover to campaign instead of bunkering down and buying another election without getting touched.

Pelosi should go; she should resign; but she must be engaged in campaign battle if we have any hope of moving Impeachment. California is now a main battle ground!

THE NAVIGATION LINKS:

THE PELOSI PAGE

THE STENY HOYER PAGE

THE JOHN CONYERS PAGE

THE CINDY SHEEHAN PAGE

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/12/09/18465925.php

Virtually ignored by the establishment media, the famous antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan opened her new campaign headquarters yesterday in San Francisco. The date of her headquarters opening coincided with the date John Lennon was assassinated in New York 27 years ago. Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, hoped his passing would be remembered by people everywhere imagining a world of Peace and Love.

San Francisco December 9, 2007

Except for a short factual broadcast by Don Knapp of local television station KPIX Channel 5, Cindy Sheehan's official opening of her new campaign headquarters in San Francisco yesterday was virtually ignored by the establishment media. There was no coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle. If one searches "Cindy Sheehan" from Google's news page and glances over the search offerings, one might even get the impression that Cindy had given up her activism. But it isn't so. Far from it.

Especially since yesterday afternoon-- when many friends and supporters met Cindy and her surviving children (her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq) at 1260 Mission Street in San Francisco. There, Cindy addressed the issues that spurred her to directly challenge California District 8 Congressional incumbent Nancy Pelosi, considered by many as the third most powerful person in America today behind George W. Bush and Richard Cheney.

Pelosi has famously vowed to "keep impeachment off the table," and has disappointed most of her constituents and many people around the nation for not helping bring an end to America's involvement in Iraq. The Washington Post reported yesterday that under Pelosi's "leadership" Democrats will have for the third time since they took control of Congress failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq.

Tomorrow, they plan to give Bush a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war in Iraq without timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces. http://tinyurl.com/2jj7y5

During Cindy Sheehan's Campaign Headquarters Open House, Cindy expressed her contempt for such measures which suggest that the Democrats are colluding with the Bush administration and not presenting a true opposition that reflects the will of the people-- particularly in San Francisco where Cindy is now running as an independent.

She also expressed her desire to implement healthy changes which will begin by bringing American troops home from a war that is universally known today as having been founded on lies.

http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

NIEs: Waste of Time? by Cindy Sheehan

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/nies-waste-of-time-by-cindy-sheehan

BushCo and the Fox “News” generation have a long history of ignoring National Intelligence Estimates (NIE). I would say they ignore the NIEs at their own peril, but BushCo has suffered nothing for its denial of truth and exploitation of fear. As a matter of fact, BushCo’s quest to be the global hegemony has proceeded without any kind of check. Fox “News” seems to be thriving and the leader of that Empire, Rupert Murdoch, is able to usurp more media outlets in his quest for unchallenged propaganda power as the ad hoc Minister of Dis-Information.

Literally millions of people have suffered horribly for BushCo’s crimes, and that’s just in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here in our own country (Love it or Leave it), bulldozers are demolishing low income housing in the Gulf States that were harmed due to the very callous incompetence of the Federal Government and to for immoral profit privatization of everything, even education.

There has always been a war on poor people in this country, but Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath only highlighted how deeply racist our Nation and its policies really still are.

The Every Child Left Behind Act has been designed to transform our children into a generation of cannon fodder and is just another example of how everything George touches turns to rancid garbage.

Our country hovers near the bottom of the global education barrel and is another example of how we are allowing BushCo to make an international laughingstock out of we here in the U.S.

On August 6, 2001, exactly 36 days before 9-11, George was handed a Presidential Daily Briefing that was actually titled: “Bin Laden determined to strike in the US.” George was on yet another vacation in Crawford at the time and according to Ron Susskind, he told the agent who handed him the briefing “Okay, you covered your ass, now.”

My Space Cindy Sheehan: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=61466647&MyToken=bf34205f-e8eb-48f2-95b3-46feb313d5dd

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/29220

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_7639342?source=most_emailed

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/rl_cindy_sheehan_071209.shtml

Cindy Sheehan In The News (Google Search)

Cindy Sheehan On The Web (Google Search)

Cindy Sheehan (+) Nancy Pelosi (Google Search Web Search)

Cindy Sheehan (+) Nancy Pelosi (Google News Search)

THE QUEEN BEE SYNDROME
Pelosi buys $16K worth of flowers
By Mike Soraghan
December 12, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent $16,000 on flowers since taking office, one reason why she spent 63 percent more in her high-profile inaugural year than her low-key predecessor did last year.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent a little more than $3 million in the first nine months of 2007, records show, compared to the $1.8 million Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) spent during the same period in 2006.

It’s Time To Clean House

12/11/07 --Nancy Pelosi should resign as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Since she won’t, I hope the voters in her liberal California district throw her out next November.

Here are the facts as reported by The Washington Post (facts that Pelosi has not contested). In 2002, Nancy Pelosi was given a briefing that informed her that waterboarding – a form of torture applied, among others, by the Nazis – was being used, or at least about to be used, by the CIA. She raised not a peep.

The Post notes that waterboarding, an interrogation technique that uses simulated drowning, has officially been regarded as torture by the U.S. military since the Spanish-American War. The Post article further notes that while Pelosi “declined to comment directly … a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter …acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.”

That's enough for me. I don’t want to hear the liberal equivocators, the ones saying, well, it was right after 9/11 when Americans were afraid -- the ones trying to draw distinctions between Pelosi’s acquiescence and Dick Cheney’s enthusiasm. When it comes to immoral actions, such distinctions just don’t wash. Those who stand by and acquiesce in the end are nearly as guilty as those who carry out the torture.

MORE...

December 10, 2007

I hereby endorse Cindy Sheehan for Congress
By Thoreau

In light of the article that Jim linked to, in which it turned out that Nancy Pelosi knew about torture and secret prisons in 2002, I am compelled to endorse Cindy Sheehan, who is running against Pelosi in the primary. I am also donating $100 to Cindy Sheehan.

I don’t know what Sheehan’s stances are on issues other than war and terrorism, and I don’t care. All I know is that Sheehan is against the war and the bloated security state, and that is enough when she is running against a Speaker who has violated her every duty under the Constitution.

To Nancy Pelosi: You are a disgrace to America. You may give the good speech and cast the right vote on a measure that is going to go the wrong way no matter how you vote, but you have repeatedly failed to even attempt to use your procedural powers as Speaker to block the travesties being inflicted on this country.

Moreover, you have known about these travesties since their inception, and you never used your position as a ranking member or minority leader to push back. Nor did you perform your duty as a Constitutional officer by working to expose these horrific crimes against America’s laws, values, and institutions. You preferred to look “respectable” by giving the right speech and casting the right symbolic vote without ever actually doing anything.

There is a special place in hell for people like you, the wolves in sheep’s clothing who ensure the continuing weakness of the opposition. You may not sit in Cheney’s office or work on his payroll, but you serve the same agenda as him when you lead the opposition down a path of uselessness.

You are as bad as the thugs in the Executive Branch, and so I am compelled to endorse your opponent in the primary election and donate money to her campaign.

Cindy Sheehan has my full, unequivocal endorsement in her campaign to unseat Nancy Pelosi.

EDIT: Link to campaign site added above and here.

This is Speaker Pelosi, and these are the crimes of which I accuse her: not only has she failed us on FISA, on SCHIP, on impeachment, on oversight, on ethics, but she has failed to see her own shortcomings or acknowledge any fault in her service, and she is full of self-satisfied hubris besides. Behold::

By Dana MilbankWednesday, October 10, 2007; A02

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in a determinedly good mood when she sat down to lunch with reporters yesterday. She entered the room beaming and, over the course of an hour, smiled no fewer than 31 times and got off at least 23 laughs.

But her spirits soured instantly when somebody asked about the anger of the Democratic “base” over her failure to end the war in Iraq.

“Look,” she said, the chicken breast on her plate untouched. “I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from trees, building all kinds of things — Buddhas? I don’t know what they were — couches, sofas, chairs, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk.”

Unsmilingly, she continued: “If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ’Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.”

Note: Poor Nancy. Her chicken breast remains untouched on her plate, at a pricey luncheon, while she mocks the people who the Democratic Party claims it represents:

a. the people who want an end to the war in Iraq before more American GIs are killed, before more Blackwater contractors are trained and empowered and desensitisized, before more blood is spilled for oil and more destruction visited on the Iraqi people remaining alive in that most ill-favored of ancient lands, bereft not merely of the dictator Saddam Hussein — who was a very bad man, but who, it must be remembered, was OUR very bad man during the Reagan years — but of electricity, passable roads, available food, safe streets, open schools, and a lack of constant open warfare between armed bands of religious dissidents;

b. the poor, who have nowhere to sleep or bathe or receive mail, telephone messages, or the credit and background checks necessary in today’s Fortress America in order to get a job of any worth: a job with a future, or benefits, or a salary above and beyond being replaced with “a free meal every shift”;

c. the people who want the wrongdoing of the Bush administration not merely “off the table” but answered with justice.

Though opposed to the war herself, Pelosi has for months been a target of an antiwar movement that believes she hasn’t done enough. Cindy Sheehan has announced a symbolic challenge to Pelosi in California’s 8th Congressional District. And the speaker is seething.

“We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow,” Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor. Though crediting activists for their “passion,” Pelosi called it “a waste of time” for them to target Democrats. “They are advocates,” she said. “We are leaders.”

Ah, the hubris of the comfortable incumbent. Nancy, you are not a “leader.” You are — or should be — a public servant. It is your task to do the will of the electorate whose votes raised you to the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives — the most powerful post in the People’s house, a woman in line for succession to the Presidency.

Seething, indeed? Your anger is as misplaced as your priorities, and it is your indifference to justice that renders your hypocrisy so broadly public a shameful specter, Ms. Speaker. Why are you so proud? What have you achieved, in your first year in power?

It was a rather fierce response to the party’s liberal base, which frightens many a congressional Democrat. But it wasn’t out of character for the new speaker. Pelosi’s fixed and constant smile makes her appear as if she is cutting an ad for a whitening toothpaste. But when you listen to the words that come from her grinning maw, the smile seems more akin to that of a barracuda.

One reporter asked about Democratic lawmakers who proposed a tax increase for the war. “They were not making legislation; they were making a point,” Pelosi judged.

A point you clearly do not support, Madame Speaker. Why is that? What matter to you if the war, which is a lie, must be openly financed by taxes dedicated to it, rather than stealing its funding from the legitimate functions of our constitutional government?

Or are you prepared to throw the Constitution under the bus just like you did Jane Harman? Ms. Pelosi, you do your district and your nation a disservice when you conspire to allow the Executive Branch its unimpeded, warrantless searches?

Ms. Pelosi, what is your motivation when you refuse to stand up against corporate monopolies in media and industry that drive a small, greedy elite to deprive more and more of our citizens and residents of jobs with decent wages, affordable health care, safe neighborhoods, decent housing at reasonable prices, working schools, a sane energy policy, safe food and yes, toys free of lead and other poisons derived from the lawlessness of profiteering?

Ms. Pelosi, your service in Congress antedates the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, and the subsequent destruction of innumerable homes, farms, businesses, and lives belonging to Americans who lived on the Gulf Coast — yes, the City of New Orleans was a part of this destruction, but was not by any means the whole thereof; how dare you step aside and allow those people to remain scattered to the winds while the oldest of America’s cities decays into detritus?

How dare you refuse to demand withdrawal of the US National Guard and Reserve forces from Iraq while they are so desperately needed in the US, to do the work for which most of them chose to enlist — the work of building and rescuing and reclaiming the neighborhoods that the Guard and Reserve historically have defended in time of natural disaster?

Ms. Pelosi, you took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Is your idea of supporting and defending the Constitution to be an active agent of its destruction?

Another asked about a Republican congressman’s complaints that the word “God” was removed from certificates accompanying congressional flags. “I don’t know what his point is,” Pelosi volleyed.

And what is yours?

Complaints that she didn’t go far enough on climate-change legislation? “We did not say we were going to do any more than we did.”

So of course doing the least possible is your goal?

The Senate’s stalemate on the war? “We in the House will not be confining our legislation initiatives to what is legislatively possible in the Senate.”

What? But, you have said, time and again, that you have not put forward action because you lacked the votes to confirm your proposals!

Pelosi admitted no mistakes and claimed no regrets as she reflected on her first session in the speaker’s chair. “I’m very proud of the work of this Congress,” she declared. Evidently so: She repeated how “proud” she was nine times. Passing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission made her “very proud,” while energy legislation made her “very, very proud,” and new ethics rules made her “especially proud.”

“What do you see as your greatest mistake?” asked one reporter.

Pelosi smiled. “Why don’t you tell me?” she proposed. She smiled again, then laughed. ” ’Cause I think we’re doing just great.” She laughed again.

Even those approval ratings for Congress, in the teens and 20s, didn’t evoke regrets. “I don’t like the numbers for Congress,” she admitted, but “I’m very pleased with the Democratic numbers.” She then took an unusual detour into polling minutiae. “Today the Rasmussen numbers were the third time that we were double-digit ahead in the generic,” she reported, “and the third month in a row we were in the high 40s.”

and so the poll numbers trump environmental catastrophe, and your interpretation of a nation’s disapproval trumps the truth?

Holders of high office typically avoid discussions like that because it makes them look, well, political. But Pelosi did not hesitate to plunge into the political, explaining that “it was so important for us to bring the president’s numbers down two years ago on Social Security” because it discouraged Republican candidates from running for Congress.

Pelosi may have realized that her words sounded too calculating, for at one point she begged the reporters’ indulgence for her to “be allowed a partisan moment.” She smiled at her joke, then chuckled.

If we wanted a comedienne, we’d’ve elected Bea Arthur. Acerb is so much better when it’s actually grounded in a relationship with reality that can be as recognized by the audience as by the jokester.

The ready grin seemed at odds with other body language that suggested Pelosi was not having an enjoyable lunch. She ignored her salad and roll, then waved off the chicken and vegetables and left her dessert untouched. “The tea is fine,” she told the waiter, taking her first sip more than halfway through the lunch.

But the smile had its uses. She smiled warmly while telling a reporter in the room that his story was completely wrong. She laughed heartily when somebody mentioned the awkward interview in which Whoopi Goldberg expressed a lust for Pelosi’s husband. She grinned when mentioning the fight over children’s health care. And she laughed while discussing how she has “striven” to work with Bush on Iraq. “Is that a word? ’Striven’? ” she asked.

It seemed that only the antiwar advocates had the power to wipe the smile off Pelosi’s face. Speaking about ethics legislation, she boasted that “we have drained the swamp” in Congress and pleased government watchdog groups. “At last,” she added, “some advocates from the outside who are satisfied.”

but we’re not, because we can see that you don’t believe in the reforms you champion, and you won’t stand up for the people of your District, let alone the people of the Democratic Party base. It’s too politically inconvenient for you, Ms. Pelosi. Your failure is complete.

AND WE ALL NEED TO HELP CINDY SEAL HER POLITICAL FATE!