George W. Bush Impeachment Poll by MSNBC

Vote and see the results:MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest VideosThat's gotta be worse than any popularity poll ...Not that impeaching Schwubbia would change the behavior of the Botch Administration any. It would probably drive them to be even more secretive and devious.But it would send a message to the world eh? {Replaced "Botch" with "George W. Bush" in the topic title. See message 2 also. - Adminnemooseus}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-26-2005 11:54 AM

From message 50 and back a ways, at the "Ruling: No Separation of Church and State?" topic, the side theme became things impeachment. Perhaps some of the posters there would like to contribute in this topic?Adminnemooseusps: Going to change the "Botch" to "Bush" in the topic title. Believe me, this is NOT because I am a Bush supporter.

I know it's not a scientific poll - no random selection of participants - but 86% of 157,000 people saying "impeach" is still pretty damn impressive. I must be the only one in this county to vote on it so far.

As viewed by myself, and I presume also the bulk of the non neo-cons here, the the GWB administration is deeply flawed from the top to at least a considerable way down. Maybe the way to go would be to remove (via indictment and trial) Karl Rove (the puppet master) and then maybe also remove Dick Cheney. Leave GWB twisting in the wind, without the puppet master's guidance.Flashing back to Nixon. We had Jerry Ford as vice-president then. What if Spiro Agnew had still been v-p?Moose

Agnew would have been worse than Nixon, doing everything he could do to stop the "nattering nabobs of negativism"

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I believe Bush & Co. have indisputably committed impeachable and indictable offenses.But taking either chamber of Congress--especially the Senate--away from the GOP would be more useful and more likely than any WH impeachment/indictment/firing scenarios. There is no comfort anywhere in the succession, and single-party rule would continue.Bush could hardly be impeached without the cooperation of some Republicans, and, were that to occur, the political wounds the GOP has sustained under his leadership would be cauterized, and the political pressure on the GOP Congress eased.IIRC, a number of opinion polls in prior decades suggested that U.S. voters are most comfortable without one party controlling both Congress and the WH, and mid-term elections tend to be setbacks for the WH-holding party. The corrupting effects of unchecked power have certainly become clear, and several unfolding scandals may prompt a 2006 correction.This upcoming election is especially important because the ruling party seeks to alter traditional checks and balances in a permanent way to help create a one-party state; they have already damaged the moral, ethical, and economic health, as well as the international security, of the Republic in that attempt.We need to pry the two-party grip off our throats, but in the meantime I would settle for a Congressional brake on the GOP.

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oh i think we're due for a party split. i'm pretty sure it will happen soon. definitely within my lifetime. i'd be willing to join a fledgling conservative party in order to strengthen sound policy decisions in spite of my devotion to social services.

Personally, I think there are forces at work beyond the two party fraction where the drive for social changes are moving faster than the generations to the point where two or more will co-exist in the future, kind of like two countries operating from the same national grounds but philosophically different.I think we are at the birth of this.Just some thoughts.

POTM nomination coming soon.I think I must fully agree - Skip any and all impeachments. Impeachment could work if you have a badly flawed individual, or perhaps a couple of individuals. But what we need is to impeach the entire Bush administration, and more.Some indictments and trials of some of those below Bush/Cheney, and in the House and Senate would be nice. Put some dents in corrupt organizations. This may include those of the Democratic party.I think that all interested in this topic should also pay attention to the Russ Feingold or The 2008 Presidential Candidate Thread topic. The question that probably better belongs there is, who is a viable Republican candidate in 2008? Can any Republican disassociate himself/herself from the failings of Bush/Cheney et all neo-conservatism? Not that I can see.Moose {Edit - Fix link.}Added by second edit: We need to fix the news/information media also.This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 12-26-2005 08:23 PMThis message has been edited by minnemooseus, 12-26-2005 08:30 PM

Even I might be interested in a conservative party if they actually conserved something.

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I agree, moose. The Fourth Estate is in a shambles: we can't straighten out the nation without a return to form of an aggressively independent press.On one hand, we have the deliberate seduction of the press in return for access, with critical reporters shunned; on the other, the sealing off of traditional flows of information to the press, with the government classifying documents at nearly ten times the rate of the Clinton (or prior) administrations while bringing the process of declassification of older records nearly to a halt. Governmental agencies and departments have been instructed to aggressively resist FOIA requests that were once routinely granted.The Bush administration has always excelled at denying access to critical reporters, while rewarding supporters with leaks: this coziness helped conduct the Iraqi WMD charade. Concomitantly, media conglomeration has facilitated all the above by bringing the interests of media owners in line with GOP funders--huge corporations that at best prefer to sell entertainment and at worst profit from deliberately slanting or withholding information.We could go on and on about media failures in recent years, but for me it culminated with the NYT admitting it sat on the warrantless eavesdropping story prior to the 2004 election. I cannot stop marvelling at how much has been lost when the supposed "newspaper of record"--and oft-accused liberal bastion--would spike a story of deliberate, unConstitutional malfeasance at the perpetrator's request. We are in deep, deep trouble. This is not a smilie--it's really how I look when I think about it.The GOP Congress' response to leaks about a torture gulag is to investigate the leak: both the gulag and the response falls so short of "We hold these truths to be self evident..." that I sometimes fear the damage is beyond repair.Would Watergate be uncovered today? We had one of the two Watergate luminaries pooh-poohing the seriousness of the Valerie Plame leaks, insisting they couldn't possibly be part of an Administration leak-smear, when he had himself received the same leaked info from Karl Rove. How far that is to fall...Could the Pentagon Papers be published? Or would the source and the publisher merely disappear into the enemy combatant gulag--no warrant, no court appearance, no lawyer, no habeas corpus? Perhaps after Homeland Security Agents stop the presses? None of that sounds far-fetched to me--the Attorney General has explicitly argued that the president has the power to declare any U.S. citizen an enemy combatant without review by the courts. We are terrifyingly close to that abyss; history shows us how quickly the distance from Republic to regime can be traveled.I am anxious to see what happens in the first half of 2006. The WH lost some ground on this front with the Rove leak scandal, the pay-offs to columnists for pro-Administration propaganda, government-supplied video segments being passed off as independent news, etc. Most U.S. voters feel they were misled by the Bush administration on WMDs and the Iraqi invasion.Like the Democrats and the left in general, the media desperately need to regrow a backbone. There are a few encouraging signs, but they remain pitifully few.

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Unfortunately, we need more than a simple change in the media. Think of the long term, we need a media that doesnt give a $#^$@# about public perception. We need a media that has secure enough funding so as not to cater to the public's demand for access in Brad Pitt and Jolie's bedroom. This is not a failing of individuals in the media, it's the failure of a system dependent upon profits.Granted, this is still a step up from the dissimenation of information in the past, but we need to generate lofty goals to design a system around... As it is two few hands cradle the fourth estate, all of which have the same goal.Think about it, if a movie by Michael Moore can hit high attendence in movie theaters, then the media is failing, because there certainly is demand for critical reporting (though arguably inaccurate).But even at that are we assuming that the people will make the right decision if the news is reported a certain way? Is the question itself not based on liberal leanings? I think the real answer won't come from such short sighted debate. We need to define and articulate an argument for an ideal media, similar to what Enlightenment-era thinkers did when looking at the control and connections between religion and government.Till then,
Theus

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We lost Kerry Packer today who ran a media empire(and politicians) with an iron hand. Hopefully, in the fallout, things might loosen up. Our other blight to the world, Rupert Murdoch, is pretty ancient and mightn`t be in control too much longer. But still, if you can hush up a long string of scandals from JFK to Flight 800, maybe your home-grown media moguls will still control the news.

Rather, it s a failure of both. As I noted, media conglomerates, concentrating the media outlets in fewer and fewer hands, have had a pernicious effect; however, the failures of individual journalists to maintain the standards, ethical and otherwise, of their profession in recent years have been spectacular. The print and broadcast media in the U.S. have always been dependent on profits, but they have often risen far above their current performance. Well, I don't have liberal leanings--I'm a flat-out radical socialist, I suppose, as much as anything, leavened with libertarian and anarchist tendencies on specific issues and registered as an independent.Over the years, I have voted for candidates in many different parties. But the only "certain way" I want the news reported is honestly and aggressively. Yes, I am assuming people make better decisions if they have more accurate information; that is not a liberal strain of American thought but a founding principle. A debate about ideals is always welcome, but I don't think we have to redefine the Fourth Estate before we address the most execrable current abuses, beginning with reporters who are "in-bedded" with the current administration and with media conglomerates which could not have been formed in a stricter anti-trust environment: a man with a leaking roof is not short-sighted because he tar-papers over the leaks before rebuilding the entire roof--especially in a hard rain.The Fourth Estate problems are both systemic and individual; in the past, the integrity of individual reporters has been a brake on the ideological and economic corruption of a free press; I think that can be true again, making a dramatic, immediate difference, while we work on longer term reforms.Please continue this off-topic media reform discussion here: Media Reform: Systemic Change & Individual IntegrityThis message has been edited by Omnivorous, 12-27-2005 10:03 AMThis message has been edited by Omnivorous, 12-27-2005 02:49 PM

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yeah really. real conservatives are great.