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Joe Nilsson (Olympia, WA)

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Musings of a forty-something Northwesterner

Ten Days Out from the Election - Joe the Activist Doorbells

By Joe Nilsson - Oct 26th, 2008 at 12:26 am EDT

Also listed in: Thurston County for Obama '08

I doorbelled a precinct for a fellow PCO today - she had to fly back East to visit an ailing parent.

Fall in Olympia is beautiful. The leaves are turning and many yards are still filled with blooming flowers. Today was no exception. What a great day to pitch in and help elect Democrats!

I started doorbelling about 1 pm. The morning had started like any other Saturday of late. I fixed coffee for Marrial and I. We watched a bit of CNN. I took Mikey and Molly for a walk in nearby Pioneer Park. We had a bit of breakfast. I puttered a bit. Then I headed off to doorbell.

The neighborhood I was in was pretty typical of Southeast Olympia - a mixture of middle class and upper middle class homes, with a few modest duplexes thrown in for good measure.

Obama signs were plentiful, perhaps twenty-five in the precinct. I think I saw two lonely McCain signs. The support for Barack was impressive, even by Olympia standards. Gregoire signs outnumbered Rossi (the snake) by at least a six to one margin.

The main task in this type of precinct is to make sure Democrats vote. Doorbelling is a good way to remind folks.

Folks were very friendly. Many told me they had already voted for Barack, we're a vote by mail area, or were going to. I only had two folks refuse lit - one sharing he was a Republican. Four or five folks actually thanked me for doorbelling.

I finished in four hours, including a break for a bottle of cold green tea at a nearby store.

Doorbelling is a great way to get a bit of exercise and make a contribution to a campaign. I've been doing it for twenty-five years and have had many wonderful experiences. I recommend it highly.

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Impeachment Hearings: The People Are There But Where is Congress and the Media?

By Joe Nilsson - Aug 19th, 2007 at 4:01 pm EDT

The fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney haven’t been impeached is a testament to Congressional Democrats’ choice of politics over principle and the abject failure of the mainstream media to do its job and provide substantive coverage of the Bush Administration’s shredding of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. In the case of the Democrats, they would rather ride out the end of a lame duck Presidency and score big majorities in November of 2008 than risk generating a sympathetic backlash and alienating independent voters. Big Media, dominated and dumbed down by executives to maximize corporate profits, is loath to chance alienating any portion of its audience, even to defend the Constitution that guarantees their right to function freely. The public, once again, is ahead of the politicians and most of the media establishment. A poll by the American Research Group found that, despite Big Media failing to call Bush and Cheney on their assaults against the Constitution in any meaningful way, 45 percent of Americans favor impeachment hearings for Bush and 54 percent favored impeaching Cheney. Nearly One Million Americans have signed petitions calling for impeachment hearings. Consider the arguments for impeachment as outlined by former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark:“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAPresident George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable. 4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.”Clark’s analysis of the basis for impeachment is broad and deep. Findings of fact for any one of these articles would be more than sufficient for removal of Bush and Cheney from office. Some may argue with some aspects of these points but many of these articles are beyond dispute.Democratic partisans are not the only ones calling for impeachment. Consider the arguments made by a former Reagan Administration official, Bruce Fein. A conservative Constitutional scholar, Fein is the former Assistant Director of the Office of Legal Policy in the Reagan Justice Department and Associate Deputy Attorney General for Ronald Reagan.Fein laid out a persuasive series of charges against Cheney in a recent article in SLATE and on Bill Moyers’ Journal. To summarize, Fein maintains Cheney has: “Engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq.Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone. Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties. Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force. “George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached and removed from office. They have trampled on the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights repeatedly. In doing so, they have violated their Oaths of Office and done great harm to the American people, their rights, and their democracy.The fact that Congressional Democrats lack the intestinal fortitude to take this task on does not change that and neither does the failure of Mainstream Media to do the job of documenting these abuses. Time will tell if the politicians and the press catch up with the people.

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