Democracy for Vancouver

Forget party politics. Please work on the following:

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President Bush were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being flown into buildings by terrorists.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons in nations where we can expect they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that would, for the first time, limit fundamental rights and liberties for entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous coalburning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres of wild lands.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and inconsistent immigration laws and policies.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Act.

No more killing.

No more pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between Dick Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those who are economically-disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs. No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

Full speech of above is here.

Here is an excerpt from The Progressive:

Even before the votes were cast on Election Day, leading figures in the party urged caution. Nancy Pelosi pledged that if she became Speaker of the House, she would take impeachment off the table. Paul Begala and Rahm Emanuel—the smart money guys, who are always playing the angles—talked about the need to move to the center. Harry Reid, before getting a night’s sleep on November 7, announced, “We must work from the middle.”

Says who?

Did Newt Gingrich work from the middle? No, and he achieved a lot for his party and his ideological agenda.

Cowardly Democrats fear that if they act in what is perceived as a partisan manner, they will lose in 2008. But did Republican partisanship, which reached its nadir with the Clinton impeachment, prevent a Republican from winning the Presidency two years later?

November 7 was the nearest thing to a mandate that the Democrats have had in a long time. Not to act on that mandate—not to investigate Katrina, not to investigate Iraq and Halliburton, not to investigate the Abramoff scandal, not to investigate the illegal NSA spying, not to demand impeachment hearings—would be an abdication of responsibility and a betrayal of their base.

Fundamentally, this is not about inflicting partisan pain. This is about exposing wrongdoing, pursuing corruption, restraining a runaway executive, resetting the balance of power, and restoring democracy.

For six years, Democrats suffered from a severe case of subpoena envy. Now they’ve got the power. Use it.

Full story is here.