November 15, 2006

A Public Service Announcement

Sunday, 21 Betteroff 2006

This was requested to be redistributed freely, and the Funny Farm Editorial Staff is in unanimous agreement that this space could be utilized for such a purpose, and that this is one of those times.

Now the Hard Part Begins

Dear Tom,

We did it! We won at least 29 House seats and took the majority. We won 6 Senate seats and took back the Senate too, not to mention 28 Governors and several more state houses. We had incredible turnout of Democratic voters across the country. Thanks to you, we had a vigorous election protection program in place to fight those who would restrict our right to vote. We ran a positive campaign on the issues that really matter to American voters.

The past two years we have worked very hard to bring a new majority to Congress and to restore accountability in Washington. We have fought together on issues such as the unanswered irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, the scandal of the Downing Street Minutes, the shame of outing a CIA agent, and much more. Together we proved that a number of dedicated online activists, working in conjunction with a single congressman, could become a force to be reckoned with.

Although we won back control of Congress, none of us should delude ourselves into thinking that running the legislative branch in a nation wracked by years of one party rule will be easy. We need to put aside any thought of anger or payback. Instead we need to focus on identifying and correcting abuses and pass legislation which serves the interests of the American people.

We also need to recapture the White House in 2008 and maintain and expand our majorities in the Congress. In order to achieve these goals we need to be totally united as a Party. It is fine to debate and argue behind closed doors and among ourselves, but at the end of the day, we owe it to the American people to unite and lead.

Thus, in my opinion it serve's no one's interests but the Republicans for anyone, including my friend James Carville, to suggest dumping DNC Chairman Dean less than three days after the most sweeping Democratic Congressional victory in more than thirty years. As many of you also know, I have agreed with Speaker-to-be Pelosi that impeachment is off the table. Instead, we agree that oversight, accountability and checks and balances – which have been sorely lacking for the last six years – must occur. I have nothing but respect for those who might disagree, but that is where I come out.

Having devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to detailing the many abuses of the Bush Administration, I firmly believe that we have brought these matters to the attention of the American people and the mainstream media, and that their verdict was reflected in the elections on November 7. I consider the now famous "basement hearings" and the issuance of my "Constitution in Crisis" Report to be among the watershed achievements of my more than forty years in Congress.

I also remain committed to the seminal issue of election reform. As one who held several hearings in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio debacle and went on to author "What Went Wrong in Ohio", I believe more than ever that we need a paper trail on voting machines. We also need to strengthen our laws to put an end to intimidation schemes, like the stealth robo-calls voters received before the election. I intend to introduce legislation next Congress concerning these matters.

Additionally, none of us should underestimate the continued anger and vitriol of our political opponents, even after the election they are engaged in a permanent campaign to discredit Democrats and thwart our agenda of change. You need to go no further than the November 9 editorial in the supposedly mainstream Investors Business Daily, which smeared not only me but my constituents, writing,

"[Michigan congressman John] Conyers led the defense of Bill Clinton in last decade's impeachment hearings and is clearly out for blood. So are many of the constituents he serves."

Pejorative and prejudiced statements like this should have no place in our political discourse.

I am hopeful that I will be selected as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is one of the most important committees in the House, and has jurisdiction over the Justice Department, the civil rights laws, criminal laws, the civil justice system, the courts, immigration laws, antitrust laws, patent and copyright laws, bankruptcy laws, administrative law, and Constitutional amendments. If I am selected as Chair, I believe it will place us in a position to make real and meaningful changes for the good of the American people.

We remain in this together, and I continue to look forward to receiving your ideas, your support, and your advice in the coming months and years.

Your Friend,

John Conyers, Jr.

Go to the John Conyers Blog and voice your opinion. Please try to be courteous, polite, and positive in your comments to Representative Conyers. Feel free to link to this post and pass the message along as best you can.
Posted by (: Tom :) at November 15, 2006 10:56 PM
Comments

Now that our side has a majority in both houses they should actually USE the subpoena power and launch a REAL independent investigation into 9/11.

One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch, with someone who was there when he was attempting to fly a small airplane saying that Hanjour was so clumsy that he was unsure if he had driven a car before. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports after Mohammed Atta supposedly leaves two rental cars at two impossibly far-removed locations. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name ("Hi mom, this is Mark Bingham"), more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces most no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Further making themselves look guilty, the Bush administration steadfastly refused for over a year to allow a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed, only agreeing to it on the conditions that they get to dictate its scope, meaning it was based on the false pretense of the "official story" being true with no other alternatives allowed to be considered, handpicked all its members making sure the ones picked had vested interests in the truth remaining buried, and with Bush and Cheney only "testifying" together, only for an hour, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with their "testimonies" not being recorded by tape or even written down in notes. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastic far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.

Posted by: Enlightenment at November 20, 2006 07:01 PM

Tom,

Sorry dude, but don't get so used to the big win!

Cuz, the GOP's gonna be back and goin strong sooner than ya think!

The Lord's Will be done in every situation!

Sincerely, and with best regards!

Jeremy

Posted by: Jeremy R. at December 13, 2006 10:05 PM

You're obviously basing your statements, Jeremy, on your superior logic, rational points of debate, and factual information. Oh, wait... you're just spouting your religious insanity based on what the voices in your head tell you.

I'll be sure to give your non-reality-based superstitious fantasies all the respect that they deserve. As I always have.

By the way, weren't you banned? Good thing I'm in a good mood, and your occult nonsense looks ridiculous and is so easy to show as a crock of kimchee.

Posted by: (: Tom :) at December 17, 2006 06:27 PM