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Specialization is for Insects.
Posted on Aug 30, 2007 - 1:10am by John P. in News, Politics
I wish this article was some sort of political commentary, but unfortunatly I’m just reporting the news, not referring to President Bush as a dictator or anything like that.
In addition to the illegal wiretapping and other abuses of freedom the Bush administration has undertaken, a political watchdog group called the Center for Research on Globalization has pointed out that the White House released a directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive on May 9th, 2007 in which George W. Bush declares that in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergencyâ€,
“The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. “
The language would create a Presidential dictatorship in the case of such an emergency by placing the executive branch in control of the coordination of the legislative and judicial branches – branches which constitutionally are equally empowered to the President.
The directive defines a “Catastrophic Emergency†as the follows:
“Catastrophic Emergency” means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;
The original article I read this at can be found here, although I wouldn’t call it a fair and balanced piece.
Still, there is reason to be concerned about this exertion of political power as it would shift the balance away from the original intent of the US Constitution. And it makes me really wonder why we haven’t heard about this from the mainstream media.
Where is CNN when we need them?
You know I tried hard John, but I couldn’t find the link :( Jon Steward had a moment on the Daily Show where he covered this in his usual comedic detail and while we laughed, we also thought how scary it was that the “fake news” was really talking about “real news” in a comedic way.
Closest I could find was this search on youtube for “bush directive”:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bush+directive&search=Search
It really is quite scary, especially with Bush’s previous quote back in 2000:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html
(from that CNN link)
This will be the first year I’ll actually vote, and so far my vote is going towards lesser popular candidates like Ron Paul and/or Gravel. Watching the debates with a skeptic’s eye.. I just don’t see the “leading” candidates offering to do anything different than rubber stamp the current future bills that come their way in the same way Bush has. I may not agree completely with the politics of Ron Paul for example, but his non-conforming attitude of change is most certainly refreshing. The fact that mainstream media seems to be refusing to cover him makes me want to hear his point of view even more.
In sales I was always taught: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
It sure seems we’ve been pretty insane with our choice in candidates these past few years. If Diebold hasn’t been modifying our votes, at least :)
We’ll see how it goes, but this directive has me scared. It’s so easy to see how this could be misused at the last minute before Jan 09 while he’s still in power. We just have to keep our fingers crossed that nothing “catastrophic” hits before then.. I’m too busy to be a conspiracy theorist, but it seems that it’s becoming easier and easier nowadays with the transparency the web offers :o