We progressives have told you so, over and over and over.  Bush and his Bushite Republicans, the "me" party of corporate welfare, the super rich, and profits before people lie, cheat, steal, ignore and defy the Constitution to grab and retain imperial, executive power. 

However, some Democratic representatives and senators on Capitol Hill are either incompetent or actually Bushite Republicans deliberately damaging this country and the American people.  We should not tolerate nor condone that.

The so called senior Democrats just "negotiated" aka caved to the Bushites by passing an economic "stimulus" package that isn't; giving tax breaks to businesses and tax rebates to individuals that won't help this economic disaster caused by Bush and his administration.

Other egregious examples:

From the NYTimes, "Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday he doesn't plan for a special prosecutor to investigate whether the CIA broke the law when it destroyed videotapes of terror interrogations, defying some in Congress who want an independent look at the politically charged case.
And who consented to this almost as terrible as Alberto Gonzalez, protecting Bush trumps the Constitution, Republican lackey, Michael Mukasey? Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein (CA) and Chuck Schumer (NY).

I wrote on 11/06/2007, "Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer along with all the torture loving, the president is above the law Republican Bushite toadies on the Senate Judiciary Committee inflicted "worse than Gonzalez" Michael Mukasey on the American people by endorsing his nomination as attorney general and sending it to the full Senate for likely confirmation."  (To read this and more posts about Mukasey, incompetent Dems, etc., just type "Mukasey" in the search feature of this site.)

House Democratic "leaders" are just as bad.  I wrote this in November: "Over in the House, Democratic majority leaders Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Charles Rangel of New York are pressuring Dems, especially freshmen, to vote for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, an agreement so flawed that it is worse than the current law. Some Democrats are balking at being compelled to vote for this awful bill.  As one Dem representative stated: "It's disappointing that Democratic leaders are not in sync with the American people.

"Some Democrats seem to have been hoodwinked about the agreement because of the House's passage of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill which they think helps workers negatively impacted by unfair US trade agreements.  Jonathan Tasini, a labor expert, calls the TAA, which is basically a retraining program, a hoax.  He believes that Democrats who support the TAA are imposing a brutal economic model that is throwing a few bones to affected workers rather than stopping this terrible economic model that is severely harming workers in the United States and other countries."

"By the way, gullible House Dems: the OMB is now recommending that the president veto the House TAA bill because the Administration opposes expanding the program’s reach."

And the ethanol scam is a doozy.   An article in today's Inter Press Service news again points out some of the disastrous problems of biofuels.  " 'The U.S. has led the fight to stem global hunger, now we are creating hunger,' said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank in Washington.

"The booming U.S. ethanol industry is diverting enormous amounts food into fuel: 81 million tonnes of grain in 2007 and 114 million tonnes this year, equaling 28 percent of the entire U.S. grain harvest, Brown told IPS.

" 'Grain prices are at record or near-record highs and they will go higher," he said. 'We might be the first society in history to use public tax dollars to drive up its own food prices.'

"This lose-lose biofuel strategy doesn't even offer any genuine environmental benefits, he added, since growing corn and making ethanol uses lots of fuel, fertiliser, pesticides and water, and degrades the soil.

"Turning food into biofuel pits the car owners of the world against the two billion poor who struggle to get enough to eat, he said."

I wrote the following in a November posting, "As for ethanol promoters, that's a dirty secret that needs to be exposed.  The ethanol production process emits carcinogenic pollutants and greenhouse gases that contribute to global warning.  It also enriches the coffers of Republican corporate agribusinesses like ADM, ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the "Toxic 100" list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts."

So, what kind of energy bill did the Democratic controlled House leadership negotiate? 

As I explained in another posting, "The hypocritical highlight of this bill is that renewable energy such as wind and solar, will receive nothing.  Congressional aides mention that "perhaps" renewable energy might get some production tax credits in a future tax provision bill.  All the expensive giveaways in this bill go to the auto industry and huge agribusiness companies, the big donors to Democrats and Republicans on the Hill.  This bill is corporate welfare at its finest and screws regular Americans."  (For more, just plug in "ethanol" on the search feature in the right column of this site.)

We need to defeat not just Republicans on Capitol Hill but the above pseudo Democrats and those like them during the next five to ten years.  Encourage them to resign or beat them in primaries by running real Democratic opponents.   It's time to clean house on Capitol Hill, not just in the White House.