Cheney: "So?" Perino: "You have input every four years."

Well, what can one say about these recent bits of revelatory banter by Darth Cheney and Cheney/Bush Administration spokes-folk like Dana Perino?

They blast me out of the water. 

As others have said, Cheney's argument that he should not be "blown off course" by  the "fluctuations" in the public opinion polls is pure barnyard animal product — ahh, those flighty, fickle citizens who think their government is their government, that it is working on their behalf, that it is sworn to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution! 

The direction of public opinion on the matter of Iraq has been fairly consistent all along — downhill.

And perhaps nowhere more downhill than among our troops in Iraq, our returning troops who require massive and long-term support, and their families, who have been supported (NOT!!) by the Cheney/Bush Administration: 

• By failing to provide sufficient soldiers to blow up or guard all of Saddam's dispersed ammo dumps so they couldn't be looted of the small-arms cartridges, machine gun ammo belts, machine guns (in US terminology, SAWs or Squad Automatic Weapons), mortars (tube, baseplate, propellant, detonators & shells), machine guns, sniper rifles, artillery shells and fuses, explosives and other materiel with which to build the roadside bombs — probably more than a 20-year supply — that have accounted for more than half of our combat deaths;
  
• By blocking public and press access to Dover AFB, so Americans can't see the coffins of our war dead coming home (we get more pictures in the MSM of Iraqi coffins than we get of American war dead); blocking public and press access to Andrews AFB, so Americans can't see the maimed and wounded American troops returning "from theater;" not junking ALL humvees — death-traps all, up-armored or not (they were never designed to be armored personnel carriers, capable of traversing minefields and gauntlets of IEDs and shape-charges — they're just jeeps, built with canvas doors and plastic side windows — and replacing them with mine-, shape-charge- and IED-deflecting APCs now called "MRAP"s [mine-deflecting, ambush-protected vehicles, originally deemed too expensive to build, given that Rummy, Cheney, Wolfowitz et al. were trying to run their invasion and occupation of Iraq on the cheap — "Nothing's too good for our troops! [Unless it costs money that can't be laundered through Halliburton, cuz they don't make mine-deflecting vehicles]");
• By failing to provide adequate body armor, when the rules of engagement require soldiers to fire only when fired upon;
• By never attending a soldier's funeral if you're the President, Vice President or top military brass (Hey, speaking of top brass, did you know that, while non-coms (the "grunts," "boots," or "legs") take an oath to support and defend the Constitution AND their ossifers and El Presidente, the commissioned officers swear only to support and defend the Constitution, NOT their superior officers, NOT THE PRESIDENT, even. So when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines and other top brass say they're duty-bound to do as the "Unitary Liar-in-Chief" orders, these military men are lying. They answer to higher forefathers — a few pieces of parchment our forefathers, the Framers, wrote on called the Constitution of the United States of America. They are, in fact, NOT sworn to obey the President. They are ALSO bound, by the Nuremberg Conventions, to disobey illegal orders (the fact that they were forced or coerced into following an illegal order — like, they were faced with immediate battlefield execution or court martial — does not excuse them of the crime, but the fact of the coercion may be used as an argument in mitigation of their sentence, when convicted). 

Most of our television, radio, cable and print organizations, unfathomably, still don't seem to get the proposition that you don't listen to what they say, you watch what they do. All governments lie to the people they are supposed to serve. And particularly the Cheney/Bush Administration, who have ginned up a "Global" and "Perpetual" war to excuse all manner of attacks on our Constitution, both in secret and in public, because we are "at war."

Well, we obviously are NOT at war with terrorists. If we were, we certainly let them escape in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld refused to send any soldiers to block Osama's escape into the caves and/or mountains of Tora Bora (sounds like a Japanese island rather than a mountainous region in the Middle East). Most observers say Rumsfeld's reason was that the CIA were running the Afghan operation, high-tech warriors on horseback. Rumsfeld wanted to control everything, from intelligence, warfare and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He told President Cheney and Vice President Bush that he'd take responsibility for the whole shootin' match, but only if he controlled everything. As we saw, he certainly took control — arrogant and ineffectual control, now that we know what he thought he knew but didn't, what he didn't know, and, worst of all, what he didn't know he didn't know (like about the Shia and the Sunni, the skill and inventiveness of the disbanded soldiers-turned-revolutionaries, fighting a guerilla war much like the Viet Cong — didn't Donald the Duck and Dickie the Dunce have some experience with that war way back when? (I'm sorry to sound disrespectful, but who can respect liars whose prevarications have cost the lives of 4,000-plus soldiers, maybe 1,000 more mercenaries and "contract non-nationals," the injury (30,000 or so by trauma; maybe 150,000 or more with PTSD) of thousands more soldiers, the lives of from 90,000 to more than a million Iraqi civilians — plus about 500,000 children under 5 by starvation, malnutrition, dysentery and other diarrheal — all preventible — from about 11 years of blockade (a war crime called "collective punishment"). 

Eight of those 11 years of blockade took place on Hillary, Bill, Madeleine and Janet's watch. Maybe It Takes a Village to raise a child, but only a couple of representatives, one from the UK and one from the US, sitting behind closed doors at the UN, answerable to no one, to kill 500,000 of those children under 5, to collectively punish an entire nation, trying to make its citizens suffer enough that they'd rise up and assassinate or depose Saddam Hussein, our former ally (in the Iran/Iraq war). This was a task that our very own devious CIA failed at a couple of times. (Of course, you have to cut them some slack, because just about no member of the CIA spoke Arabic, which is a definite disadvantage in Arab countries. 

But what did Madeleine (Albright) say about this collective punishment aspect of Bill and Hillary's foreign policy (Hillary has said that she was in on all the decisions, right? Claims that was how the un-elected spousal unit got another eight years of experience, right? Well, was it pillow talk? Did they even sleep in the same bed? Or bedroom?)?

Here's what Madeleine told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes on 5/12/96:

And mind you, the blockade had another seven (7) years to run — until April 9, 2003, when Saddam's statue was pulled down by a military PR crew, apparently. And that was after Shock&Awe II blew up, once again (Shock&Awe I was launched by Poppy Bush in 1992), all of the civilian infrastructure — hospitals, electric plants, water purification plants, sewer processing plants, roads, bridges, the airport, if I recall, schools (not needed because the blockade guys wouldn't allow the import of pads and pencils — they were "dual-purpose," I suppose, because you could write chemical formulae on the pads with the pencils, or diagram nuclear warheads, or lab instructions on the care and feeding of lethal viruses or other microbial agents). With bombing like that, who needs a blockade? And the five years of US  occupation? Hooo boy. At least 2 million Iraqis escaped their country and another 2.5 million got to move out of the cities, so they could starve in the mountains. And don't think they had TB Sans (sanitariums) in the Adirondacks to take the fresh, non-polluted piney air.

Just imagine, if you have or ever have had children under 5, what it would be like to see them slowly die of malnutrition, of dysentery, and you know that if you could get non-polluted water, food and ordinary medicines, your children could be saved. You have to imagine this, because the American press showed us none of the suffering our war crimes caused. At any rate, because of Hillary's complicity in this activity, I'll not vote for her. I think, in fact, that she's probably even more dangerous than John McCain, because she has to prove that she can out-man any example of the male species, and perhaps first and foremost, her own spousal unit, the man who should insist on genuine YKK (Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha) products (now with a factory in Macon, Georgia, saith Google) for his pants.

But it's really silly to waste one's time, breath, typing or outrage, or whatever activity and emotions these kinds of interchanges trigger. As I've said before, and will no doubt say many more times again, these lads and lassies of the Cheney/Bush administration are just "doin' thur thang," come hell or high crimes and misdemeanors.

Congress is pretty much useless.

As are the three remaining presidential candidates, all of whom are sitting senators (if they can take time out of their busy, busy campaign schedules), who could actually push legislation NOW for the plans they propose to initiate "When I am President." Well, hell, they're sitting legislators right now. What's to stop them from pursuing the legislative side of their proposals right here, right now, right there in the Senate, which is supposed to be a legislative body, last time I looked? Are the problems they "promise" to address "if elected" not pressing, right here, right now? Is ANYONE calling them on this? Cannot the members of our 4th Estate more than one idea at a time? Senator today. Candidate tomorrow. Or is it just that our "main stream media" can't manage to assign a reporter to cover the candidates both "on the trail" and "meanwhile, back at the ranch"? Do they split the duties? One reporter for Congress, another for Campaign, and never the twain shall compare notes and make a joint story?

Speaking of "Mainstream," the title of Jim Hightower's new book is Swim against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow.

Back to Dana Perino: Input every four years, indeed. The elections are actually every two years, not four. And the elections are not the only time the citizens get to tell their leaders — at least the ones who actually honor their oaths of office to preserve, protect and defend the US Constitution. Not at all. There's that "petition the government for redress of grievances" thing in the First Amendment — a right and power specifically reserved by the people who set up this whole thing in the first place. Dana Perino is right in saying "that's the way we're set up," but she doesn't know the half of it, like everyone else who doesn't know a damned thing about the Constitution. Impeachment is another of those "That's the way we're set up" thingies.

I remain flummoxed by the fact that "our" members of congress are unable to open and read the Constitution, and make a conceptual link between that "piece of paper" and their oath of office (the "support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and Cheney — oops, I mean domestic"  part).  Which reminds me of the lame joke, "Whadaya get when you cross a Cheney and a male Congressional couch potato? A limp dicktater — afflicted with MCS (Missing Constitution Syndrome), VSA (vertebraic stiffener atrophy), and BALLS (Bravery-loss And Lapse of Leadership Syndrome).

Probably the only corrective is to launch campaigns to replace almost all of the members of Congress — of both "parties," Demican and Republicrat. I'm sure we've all noticed that a Democratic majority in the House:

• gave/is giving everything away to the Cheney/Bush administration,
  
• has done nothing effective to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
  
• has not acted to cure the contempt of congress charges against White House staff or ex-staff (the cure is arrest by the Sergeant-at-Arms and detention (or incarceration, to use the English Language) as " Illegal Enemy Combatants" in the Global War On Terrifying Congress),
  
• has not acted to cure the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by (and boasted about by) the Cheney/Bush administration, including (but not limited to):
  

1. extra-Constitutional veto-by-signing statement (torture, permanent military bases in Iraq, Embassy City in Baghdad),
2. Multiple violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, admitted in public fora,
3. Warrantless searches and seizures in violation of law, contravention of the 4th Amendment,
4. Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus,
5. Obstruction of Justice (failure to comply with Congressional subpoenae duces tecum [production of records under subpoena], likely perjury in the Plame case, lying to a Congressional Commission — the 9/11 Commission; likely cooperation in destruction of evidence in the 9/11 case, cooperation with the military and FAA coverup of the events of 9/11),
6. Fixing the intelligence to support a decision to invade and occupy Iraq (lying about WMDs, including, but not limited to: an Iraq/al Qaeda connection, presence of WMDs, attempted acquisition of uranium ore — yellow cake, purpose/suitability of aluminum tubing for uranium enrichment,  
7. Failure to comply with federal records preservation laws,
8. Failure to comply with laws prohibiting the disclosure of CIA operatives identities, (more to come)

And the leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said early on in her "reign," that "Impeachment is off the table." Meaning that she was refusing to honor her very, very recent oath to support and defend the US Constitution, which provides impeachment as a remedy to a runaway branch of government, whether the Executive Branch or the Judicial Branch. It's kind of like the employee of a window-cleaning company showing up for work and declaring, "I don't do Constitution." Or windows. My guess is, they'd be fired forthwith.

So the only thing left to do

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