upstaging anti-americans, the last senate, and the truth about the commander in chief...

in case you had any doubt left that the Republican party is desperately trying to upstage all others in a race to the bottom, continually further from the lofty ideals they claim to represent...welcome to the primary debates. unless I missed something along the line...I always thought that, if not in practice, at least in rhetoric America was a nation that did not torture. apparently that hope died with the republic (see below). Republican candidates were asked how they would react to a hypothetical scenario which would make a great movie...but tends not to ever happen in real life. each and every one of them, but for the man who actually had endured torture, was roundly applauded for declaring that any and all means should be used on detainees in that situation. hell, romney - "man of god" - went so far as to say gitmo isn't big enough (nevermind that a recent study showed that less than one in 10 of gitmo detainees are classified as al queda - by government records - and about one in 20 were "picked up on the battlefield") and should be doubled. and apparently some of them had issues with the definition of torture...seeing as how folks like rudy giuliani pushed for water-boarding, but not torture. last time I checked, instilling the fear of imminent death in a person repeatedly clearly satisfies the definition of torture in the US code...but then the Republicans have been ignoring the laws for quite some time. so there you have it...one of the major names on the ballot will get there by upping the ante on torture in an effort to upstage his cohorts. I hear the RNC is going to feature a gladiatorial fight between "a-rabs"...

remember a few months ago when you thought that maybe, just maybe, things might be looking up. the Republicans (an ironic name for a party that will go down as gleefully destroying the republican ideals of the united states in favor of imperial hubris and dictatorship) got a sound ass-whooping and candidates that called a spade a spade, and the war a bunch of bullshit got support. well...jokes on you. the Democrats don't want things to change...they have too much to lose if it does. they have too much invested in the war economy that has been pushing us foward since the Depression, they have too much contribution coming from weapons manufacturers, and they are showing their true stripes now. rather than assert their constitutional authority to decide when a war is happening, they have shrunk from the task that history gave them...they have cowered before a mental midget playing king and refused to used the greatest power the legislature has, the power of the purse, to make sure that its power to declare war has some meaning. now they will talk a big talk...they will tell you they are doing it for the troops...because in a militarized society, all that matters is who can thump their chests the hardest and send the most people to die gloriously in battle. this may have been the last chance...this may be the last senate.

the excuse of the back-the-boy-king-at-all-costs crowd will be that he is commander in chief, and so he gets to make all the decisions about the military and cannot be hampered in that during "war" (conveniently the presidency has started its own wars for decades). but then history was never a good subject for them. see...the truth about the president's role as commander in chief is truly simple...and it is nothing like they would like you to believe. congress has the power to declare war, congress has the power to raise an army and navy, or not. congress has the power to tax and spend, or not. the president has the power to be civilian control over the military...that is it, nothing more. see...the founders were no fools, they were students of history (a shame no leader of ours today is). they were well aware that a military on its own causes big problems, that when there is not civilian control of the military, the rubicon will inevitably be crossed. and so in an effort to prevent this, they plopped a person in charge that was not connected with the military (of course, this was before the militarization of american society and politics). and they did so for one simple reason...to protect the republican government they established from being overrun by militarism. so much for that idea...

again...on behalf of history and the american people...sorry Mr. Franklin...we couldn't keep it. but please know...some of us tried...

we're just a million little gods...causing rain storms, turning every good thing to rust...