Why Bush impeachment doesn't make front page of LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush in the House of Representatives.

Click each image to see full front page:

He provided substantial evidence of criminal activity, evidence that included the president's own public statements that were prima facie confessions of criminal guilt, from admitting he ordered wiretaps and torture, admitting privately to ordering the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, to lying about the threat from Iraq and Iran in spite of overwhelming intelligence to the contrary, lying about available intelligence warning of the 9/11 attacks, to his forcing bureaucrats to lie about the cost of his Medicare drug bill and global warming, to the endemic cronyism from Iraq to Enron to Hurricane Katrina.

This did not merit front page coverage of the nation's top newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times, or Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post had a small blurb on it their Washington news round up.


This all in spite of this being only the third time in American history a president was impeached, and the very first poll on impeaching Bush a few years back showed the same public support for it as there was for impeaching Nixon the day before he resigned and nearly double the peak support for impeaching Bill Clinton.

All of these papers equaly ignored Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

The newspapers do have one good excuse for not covering this: the Democratic leadership in Congress has said impeachment is "off the table," so Kucinich's resolution will likely go nowhere.

But that in itself is worthy of story. Nine years ago, we impeached a president for lying in a sexual harassment civil suit deposition. That could have prevented the plaintiff from getting a fair trial though the point is moot given that the judge threw out the case and Clinton had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts at the time Paula Jones claimed the incident occurred.

By contrast, Bush's lies, imcompetence and corruption has cost the lives of thousands of our troops in an unnecessary war in Iraq, arguably thousands in a preventable terrorist attack, the lives of a million Iraqis and loss of much of the thin goodwill we enjoyed in the Middle East. It has also cost us our reputation as a model of respecting human rights and international law. And of course it has and will cost us trillions for his war, most of it going into the pockets of cronies who have a habit of doing poorly or not doing at all the no bid contracts we are given.

Apparently, Kucinich doesn't understand the difference between the seriousness of the offenses of Clinton and Bush.

Clinton's real offense was being competent and not completely subservient to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful (though he came close with NAFTA) compared to his Republican predecessor. Bush's offenses were merely against American taxpayers and voters, who matter only to the extent that they need to be snookered into ignoring government of, by, and for the wealthy, and against the powerless people of Iraq, who do not matter at all.

Wear orange until Bush and Cheney are impeached

I went to the fabric store to buy three different kinds of orange fabrics to mess around with. The high school girl who cut it for me ask why so much of the same color and I told her the World Can't Wait has come up with this campaign to show national, public support for impeaching Bush & Cheney. She got excited and said she was going to get all her friends to do it too.

The campaign would like to get critical mass on this by Labor Day, and especially have people wearing orange on ORANGE FRIDAYS.



The choice of colors has a couple of advantages:

• It echoes the orange revolution in the Ukraine, which is a great irony since Bush criticized that government for rigging elections when the exit polls didn't match the vote.
  
  
• Orange is a bright, annoying color, most people don't wear in most situations.
  
  
• Enough construction workers wear orange that it will make it look like even more support the campaign.
  
  
• It is also the color of the jumpsuits of the prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
  
  
• Rush Limbaugh has been selling orange "Club Gitmo" wear for a while, so some dittoheads will unwittingly be participating in the campaign.
  
  

The World Can't Wait has bandanas and tees, but if you can't afford to buy anything from them, you could go to a thrift store and buy a couple of orange tee shirts, or a strip of fabric from a fabric store to make a bandana, scarf, or armband. You can also buy one of those rubber wristbands in orange.





Some variations you can do with this:

• Tie an orange ribbon to the antenna on your car or side mirrors.
  
  
• Send an orange postcard to your senators and reps with just the words IMPEACH NOW on it. (or maybe tell them you'll wear orange until they do their job and impeach, so every time they see the color they'll remember they aren't doing their job).
  
  
• Send that postcard to the White House too. What the hell. You know you're on the list already.
  
  
• Put an orange banner or background on your blog.
  
  
• You might also send a nice orange tie or scarf to your favorite White House press corps reporter and say you would be honored if they wore it at press conferences, especially when they're with Bush himself. (Whether or not you tell the reporter the significance of the color is up to you). Hell, Helen Thomas might wear it even if you tell her what it's for.
  
  
• Even better, when Cheney goes hunting, he will be supporting impeaching himself.
  
  

Will you participate in this campaign?