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May 1, 2001: Gary Condit meets with Dick Cheney at 12:00 noon. One of Gary Condit's mistresses, Chandra Levy, disappears in the early afternoon hours.
May 3, 2001: Condit, leader of the "Blue Dog" Democrat coalition, votes in favor of Bush/Cheney's first tax cut for the rich, in a highly controversial and close vote, in which only ten Democrats, Condit in the lead, break ranks to vote in favor of this awful measure.
Chandra Levy's disappearance prompted my interest in Condit's politics. He was a California rep. I thought that the "Blue Dogs" had gone the way of Bull Connor and George Wallace--Dixiecrats, bigots, Southern "ol' boys." Condit helped reconstruct this rightwing faction, which has now grown large enough to block all progressive legislation in Congress, and to further the interests of global corporate predators and war profiteers.
There were many irregularities in the investigation of Chandra Levy's disappearance. Among them was the failure of any investigative agency and of the entire corpo-fascist press corps to ask any questions of Cheney or his staff about that May 1 Cheney-Condit meeting--not even to verify that it took place (--it had been listed on Condit's schedule for that day, which Condit had released in June). This failure was reported in Newsweek two months later (late July/Early August), in which Cheney aides are quoted as saying that no one inquired about that meeting. There, in a news magazine, three months after Levy's disappearance, was the first confirmation that the meeting in fact took place. The aides averred that it was a short, routine political meeting (about 20 minutes) with two aides present.
"Blue Dogs," in my view, are the sleazy darlings of the Bushwhacks--the vacuous, amoral errand boys of the "military-industrial complex"--the poofy-haired poodles of the super-rich--the manicured mannequins of the destruction of our democracy, the theft of all our wealth, the lawless murder of a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq, the torture of thousands of prisoners and the ripping up of our Constitution. I therefore find this painting of a "Blue Dog"--innocent in itself, as a work of art, by a Louisiana painter, inadvertent symbol of the original Louisiana "Blue Dog" ol' boys)--offensive as an avatar at DU. The "Blue Dogs" are the enemies of the American people. In my opinion, most, if not all, of the them were (s)elected by Diebold and ES&S--two far rightwing e-voting corporations which now control our election system with 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--to fool the voters into believing that they were voting for change.
Every time I see this avatar, I think: Gary Condit. And I think of the ugly, naked, brutal power of Dick Cheney that reigned in Washington DC in spring 2001, as if a huge, devilish tornado had swooped in--so powerful that no one--not the FBI, not the DC police, not a single reporter of the corpo-fascist 'news' establishment--dared to ask him a single question about that meeting, on the day of Chandra Levy's disappearance, during her very disappearance hours--not even to ask if the meeting took place.
I just wanted you to be aware of this, Freddie Stubbs, that your avatar speaks to me of the most profound corruption that has ever engulfed our nation's capitol, and our nation.
El Salvador, though they just elected their first leftist government since the horrors of the Reagan era in Central America, cannot do otherwise than to bend to the will of John "death squad" Negroponte, Otto Reich, Jim DeMint, John McCain and the other Bushwhack powers who are still calling the shots in Washington DC. That is the tragedy of this news story. Those reigning powers will overthrow El Salvador's democracy, as they just did to Honduras, if Mauricio Funes, El Salvador's new president, does not bend over. He also recently made the decision--at their behest--not to join the ALBA trade group, organized by Venezuela and Cuba, with Nicaragua, Ecuador and other small countries as members, and which has many advantages for small countries, in barter trade and collective economic/political clout. If he does not follow Bushwhack orders, the rightwing death squads will start beheading, shooting and torturing leftists in El Salvador, as they are now doing in Honduras. Thus, these rancid powers are attempting to break the back of the new leftist independence movement in Latin America, starting with the weakest, most vulnerable countries.
To me, it is just more of the same. We vote, and nothing changes.
And those who betrayed us--those who destroyed the party of the "New Deal," the party that won WW II and ended Nazi tyranny, the party of labor rights and civil rights, the party of the progressive tax, the party of hope for the poor, the "Big Tent" party, the party that best represented the interests and views of the American people--have a name, "Blue Dogs."
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