The GOP base case for Obama's impeachment

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Sep 11, 2010 at 14:00


From digby:

"The Case for Impeachment: Why Barack Hussein Obama Should be Impeached to Save America" by Steven Baldwin covers all of these issues and more in making its arguments....

"This is the beginning of the end for the United States unless the people exercise their precious remaining liberties and stand and demand that their elected representatives impeach this president before further mortal damage is inflicted upon America," the report concludes....

And the report reveals how rapper Jay-Z and Beyonce were photographed sitting around the "Situation Room" - the confidential White House location filled with top secret communications equipment that allows the tracking of terror threats worldwide.

Access to the room normally requires a high security clearance level.

"Many of Obama's actions, if they do not flat-out violate the Constitution, certainly undermine the spirit and intent of the Constitution as envisioned by our Founding Fathers," the report explains.

Why sure, letting Jay-Z and Beyonce into the Situation Room is an impeachable offense, no question about it!

After all, as more than one top Republican explained during the Clinton impeachment, an impeachable offense is anything that a majority of the House says it is.

Some may think I'm being facetious, but I'm not. Conservative ideologues have never believed that liberals have a legitimate right to rule, no matter what the people say.  If people vote for them, then there must be something wrong with the people, and they shouldn't be voting in the first place.  That's why suppressing minority votes comes so easily to them.  It's why you even hear sporadic calls to repeal women's right to vote.  And, of course, it's part of what's behind recent calls to strip birthright citizenship out of the 14th Amendment.

Today, the GOP is deeply in the grip of ideological conservatives, who don't really need any reason to impeach Obama, other than the fact that he's a Democrat.  Jay-Z and Beyonce will do just fine as reasons.  

Paul Rosenberg :: The GOP base case for Obama's impeachment

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The GOP base case for Obama's impeachment | 19 comments
Outrage! (0.00 / 0)
Beyoncee AND Jay-Z?  start the hearings!  This is much more serious than lying the country into a war!
well, you see, Beyonce and Jay-Z are black (0.00 / 0)
so I'm sure that's the problem

meanwhile, I say fuck it, let 'em impeach him

President Biden won't govern any differently and at least he'll say funny things

I wonder if Republicans realize that they don't get a new election, like, the day after the conviction (assuming it would even go that far)

I don't think you are facetious (0.00 / 0)
As I and my ONE other liberal cousin have been saying this for quite some time, maybe even before November 2008, but the crazy stuff just ratched up after 2/20/2009 and it has continued unabated ever since. God only knows how more far right he would be if he lived closer to me in the South and he wasn't married to non-Gopers.  But then, Virginia is pretty conservative.

Now that the polls show the GOP taking a commanding lead and they have a chance to take over the ENTIRE Congress, they are gloating and salivating.  Not a day goes by that even my brother, himself married to a Democratic wife (who's not very liberal, really), and has a very liberal adult daughter, doesn't forward me a link about the economy tanking because of Obama's policies (they have all forgotten that GOPers had any culpability;it's all the fault of Frank, Dodd, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I have the devil of the time combatting their missives and links from the WSJ on economic and health matters.  The latest he sent me was "Karl Rove says the Democrats are FALTERING, or some such.  Haven't responded to that one yet.  It is wearing, all this keyboard fighting that I do.  But, cannot just ignore it.  They have to be told repeatedly that their view isn't the only legitimate one.

that's easy (0.00 / 0)
tell him you don't believe the clowns in the WSJ, they're a subsidiary of the republicants. and the day you believe in karl rove is the day you join the destruction of america.
[ Parent ]
Thanks, do you have any favorite econ sites (0.00 / 0)
for charts and the like?  I am not altogether ignorant of them, as I worked in the financial services industries for almost 30 years, but it is sometimes difficult and timeconsuming to find rebuttal that is not only clear and concise, but easily locatable.  I try to steer clear of obviously pro left sites, because a couple of them still cling to the belief that Snopes, the urban legend site, is a liberal front.  Rachel Maddow had a wonderful chart on last night.  Believe it came from Ezra Klein's WP post/column.  I had planned on sharing that one.
[ Parent ]
Oh sure. Here's a few: (4.00 / 4)
http://www.calculatedriskblog....  (Best charts evah)

http://economistsview.typepad....

This is a great accumulator. Essays, links to all sorts of stuff, some of it technical. Very thoughtful and pretty moderate.

http://www.angrybearblog.com/

Bruce Webb posts here on Social Security. They have a whole section in the margins to get whole thing. Indispensable stuff. I kid you not.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Yves Smith is mostly into finance, but also discusses a lot of econ. Lots of links to good stuff. Great discussion. Leans slightly progressive, although compared to establishment hacks, they come off as lefties. But that's the problem with "relatively."

http://www.debtdeflation.com/b...

Brilliant Aussie economist who saw the crisis coming years ago and is still brilliant. He's quite famous outside the US. His stuff is too technical for American journos, apparently.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.n...

Another Aussie economist/professor. He's quite prolific, but he writes in plain enough language that most people can handle it. He absolutely destroys neo-liberalism every damn day. He's an educator and writes like one. A good one, I should say. I wish I had an econ prof like this one when I was in college.

http://www.newdeal20.org/

New Deal 2.0. Huge collection of writers. Great stuff all the time. Some deep, some very educational. All insightful.

These are all pretty much daily reads for me. I can't read all of them each day, but I'll scan each one most days.

Hope this helps.

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates

[ Parent ]
Thanks for these (0.00 / 0)
Calculated Risk I discovered back in the fall of 2008 when Wall Street almost imploded. Have bookmarked them all.
Thanks again. This does indeed help.
[ Parent ]
Thanks, actually I have already (0.00 / 0)
given them an "earful" about the bias of the WSJ and how, since their buyout by NewsCorp, their objectivity, if not their credibility, has been sorely compromised.  Your comment about Karl Rove I am definitely borrowing.

[ Parent ]
you're welcome (0.00 / 0)
emocrat deserves most of the credit though

I just came up with a catchy (?) one-liner!

[ Parent ]
On econ issues, I just inundate them with data. (4.00 / 1)
Pick some really good econ stuff, with lots of juicy charts and let them sort through it. If nothing else, some might realize just how ignorant they are. I usually don't  get any argument in response. That works for me, oddly enough!

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates
[ Parent ]
The GOP and Democratic legitimacy (4.00 / 9)
The fact that the GOP doesn't recognize the legitimacy of Democratic governance is, I believe, partly because we don't act like we want to govern.  Obama's "look forward, not back" ignoring GOP malfeasance enabled the GOP.  He should have taken a few egregious cases (torture, insider trading, whatever) featuring career GOP daddies and prosecuted them vigorously, I mean full court press (and in the press as well).  Then maybe the GOP would see him (and us) as legitimate governors.
Community, Authority, and Sacredness as Foundations of Morality (0.00 / 0)
You have probably run into this theory before, but it was new to me when I found it through a link in interview of Brink Lindsey of the CATO Institute about his five most personally influential books. (http://fivebooks.com/interviews/brink-lindsey-on-traditional-and-liberal-conservatism)

It's a paper about traditional morality (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=980844) that I found resonant in a way that other concepts, like authoritarianism, weren't.  I think that's because of my personal experience of family members and what I see as contradictory actions and beliefs.  

For example, my father was a member of our local Sanitary Authority for years, a gracious, tireless volunteer servant and at the same time, his rhetoric, beliefs and voting patterns were anti-government regulation.  (He toes the entire right-wing line - doesn't believe in global warming, thinks Gore lost the popular vote in 2000, thinks the Catholics priest pedophiles were dissed...)

This paper lets me see through my father's eyes what is moral and it has been illuminating.  

Isn't "The Situation" Room in that house on the Jersey Shore? (0.00 / 0)

No, it's Wolf Blitzer's joint! (0.00 / 0)


"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates
[ Parent ]
They Hated Clinton Too (4.00 / 1)
As you said, the right doesn't view Democrats as legitimate authorities.  

They despised Clinton with the same blind, visceral fury as they do Obama and Clinton was a white guy from the south.    

What if they gave an impeachment... (0.00 / 0)
What if they gave an impeachment and nobody came?  First, I suspect the anticipated blizzard of Republican subpoenas will be handled the same way the Bush Administration handled Harry Waxman's subpoenas:  straight into the trash can.  Same with demands that various Obama Administration members testify under oath:  they just don't show up.  Now the Republicans have no documents and no testimony to work with.

But that won't stop Newt wannabees!  So they pass an impeachment bill, send it to the Senate, and Obama does... nothing.  No response.  No appearances by lawyers or any members of the Administration.  Just stony silence.  Then the Repubs take a vote, the results are 52-48 (at most; maybe more like 30-70), and... Nothing.  Just nothing.  Plenty of screaming on the Limbaugh and Beck shows, but nothing else.  

That's my prediction for the impeachment scenario.

sPh

What jimintampa said /nt (0.00 / 0)

Nixon again (4.00 / 2)
Ever since Nixon cried foul in 1960, Republicans have felt Democrats in particular and voting in general were illegitimate.  Ever since Watergate, Republicans have been eager to pile up Democratic scalps and Democrats have laid off Republican Presidents.  Reagan, in particular, got a free ride on Iran Contra and the September surprise because Democrats were scared of impeaching every President even if they deserved it.  

Now the jerk is a deity while great Presidents are pushed aside.  Greatest ever?  Greatest ever impeachment or hearing opportunity missed.  I hate Reagan far, far more now than when he was in office and I was no fan back then.  He forever understated unemployment (and screwed up comparison) fatally screwing up policy/  This economy is a heck of a lot worse than portrayed and the Fed should and was legally ovligated to push full employment.  That is on the bloody hands of that old liar Reagan. Grr.

Of course, Nixon paid for recounts in many states and they only proved he was wrong until Nixon pulled the plug in a fake "statesmanlike" pose.

We need to changed the absolute dominance of Iowa in Democratic Presidential politics or we will be stuck with more bipartisan bs.  Iowa needs to, at the least, be paired with New Hampshire.  Funny thing.  Iowa nominates the Democrats and stuffs bipartisanship down our throats.  NH nominates Republicans and stuffs tax cuts down our throat.  The only Presidents "elected" by Iowa: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  They did gift us with Carter in 1980. Mondale in 1984, Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.

As long as Obama is in the White House we will be stuck with Iowa and caucuses.  Never been to a caucus in my life or cast a meaningful vote for the Democratic nominee.  Maybe I never will.

We should have been partisan and clear from the start.  Republicans will give us the blame anyway.  Didn't those Blue Dogs learn anything from Gingrich and Bush?  As for Obama, he's beyond "hope."  Just a conservadem with a tan as far as I'm concerned.

Er...source, anyone? Breitbart moonlighting? (0.00 / 0)
It's an email.

From whom, who knows? It's not on the record, at least, so far as I understand.

Conservative ideologues have never believed that liberals have a legitimate right to rule, no matter what the people say.

That's the great thing about righty propaganda: it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not! (Obviously, the wised up element pick and choose.)

If all he's got to go on is what we currently know is out there (ie, nothing), I'm pretty sure Boehner will think he has better uses for a GOP majority in the 112th (assuming there is one).

But left field suggestions of impeachment goose the more immoderate righty elements and agitate a tranche of lefties. Plus getting the idea in the ether, if only for it to be immediately squished (for the moment).

A very small but interesting element of the multilevel right propaganda effort.

The GOP base case for Obama's impeachment | 19 comments
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