Subterranean Homeland-sick Blues

Johnny's in the basement, mixing up the medicine,
I'm on the pavement thinking 'bout the government...

A check just now on Google News shows that the Downing Street Minutes and Conyer's hearing is currently in the "More Top Stories" category, with over 600 related articles.

The Downing Street affair has amplified the antiwar movements, and even William F. Buckley has chimed in, conceding that if the "if in the year ahead the situation in Iraq continues about as it has done in the past year, we will have suffered more than another 500 soldiers killed. Where there had been skepticism about our venture, there will then be contempt."

Which contempt should come just in time for the 2006 elections, and voters are sure to take it out on those who still have their head in the sand over the failing imperialism in Mesopotamia. Which probably explains also why a few Republicans are now jumping on the resolution for an exit timetable bandwagon.

And the glorious i-word is in the air--a search for "impeach" in Google News just returned more than 600 articles as well (back in November when I was looking at impeachment efforts against Bush, I had to use both "impeach" and "Bush" in the same search string to turn up the much fewer relevant items at that time.)

Meanwhile Bush is calling the Democrats the "party of obstruction," playing up the idea that they have no agenda of their own and have nothing to offer. The media is taking up this talking point, and some are even questioning how Democratic popularity can be on the rise in the polls.

Fred Barnes of CBSNews, for example, writes:

"On Capitol Hill today, Democrats have scarcely disguised their lack of an agenda and unswerving opposition to Bush's. But neither has caused them political pain. The public wants Washington to take up Social Security and make the system solvent. But Democrats haven't suffered for refusing to do either or failing to offer an alternative to Bush's reform plan. Instead, they've gained in polls measuring party preference and gauging whom voters prefer to run Congress. "

This Republican-Big Media talking point misses the mark on two scores. First, the Republicans are in power, and the Democrats--who do, here and there, have serious agenda points--have been shut out of the room. The Republican backroom legislative machine shelves all their bills, cuts their markup amendments behind their backs, and--to use Barnes' phrase--has scarcely disguised their contempt for Democratic ideas, proposals, and persons.

Secondly, Barnes' confusion about the popularity of Democrats even though they are mainly pursuing opposition fails to realize that strong opposition is precisely what a large number of Americans are looking for right now. In an increasingly neofascist social-political environment, the left--and all American champions of liberty--are looking with strong approval for any and all signs of road block against the radical agenda of the Frist-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Halliburton-ExxonMobil coalition. Thus strong opposition and steady or rising popularity are not paradoxical but perfectly understandable correlates.

More power to them! Impeach, Johnny, impeach!

...."Look out kid, they keep it all hid,
better jump down a manhole
light yourself a candle
don't wear sandles
try to forge a scandal..."