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"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players. They have their exits and their
entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts"

        -- William Shakespeare
            As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
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Indeed, never before have the words of the great Bard rung so true.

All across the United States, the play's the thing wherein the GOP will try to capture the attention of the people, and with it the crown of a new king. Make no mistake about it -- that's what they've effectively turned the Presidency into, and a John McCain presidency will simply continue along the path set by his predecessor.

It's time to royally dethrone them and wrest the future of our nation from their arrogantly clumsy, ham-handed fingers and present the nation with a rare treat -- an actual leader, with intelligence and charisma and stuff.

Eight years of Republican dominance, political gamesmanship and unopposed, entrenched cronyism has created a standing pool of fetid, putrid corruption that permeates the entire infrastructure of our nation. The injection of political spin into the realms of science, law enforcement, legislation, accountability and oversight has reached maximum absorption -- we can't take any more. Things are falling apart; the centre cannot hold, and the very foundations are crumbling.

How many people remember this?

(c) Schoolhouse Rock; unofficial site here.

Head below the fold to see what made me think of it, and why -- and yes, the title is a dead giveaway.

Hat-tip Dupa.

It appears that the natives -- us, the "unwashed masses" yearning to be free, who populate shores both foreign and domestic -- are getting restless in their hunger for justice to prevail:

Citizens’ Arrest of Karl Rove Attempted in Iowa

Student group seeks Rice citizen arrest

It looks like citizens of the world, regardles of whether they live in the US or not, are beginning to clamor for justice and deciding to start the process on their own out of fear and resignation that the legal processes of their home nations will fail to step up to hold these men and women accountable.

Make the flip for a collection of links and videos that explore the emerging facts that the George W. Bush Administration is guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity -- and whether or not they'll ever be tried for their crimes.

Update: I'd almost forgotten to include the recent attempt by George Monbiot to arrest John Bolton, too.

Sometimes, comedy is so biting you can't help but wonder at the circumstances that create such a perfect opportunity to skewer reality.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Hat-tip Red Prince.

No wonder the Bush Administration has worked so hard to distance itself from the Geneva Conventions and Republicans in general appear to loathe the very thought of the United States ever joining the International Criminal Court (ICC):

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The ICC "shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as a head of state... shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility," it says.

        -- Article 27 of the Rome Treaty
          per the AFP website.

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It's pretty much a common consensus world-wide -- and among any reality-based people within the U.S. -- that the United States has committed war crimes in pursuit of the GWoT and particularly in Iraq.

"Says who?"

Several findings definitely lead that way:

Crossposted to ePluribus Media, DailyKos, Docudharma and Below Boston

Maybe I missed something -- that can happen. In real life, things can sometimes occur that are unexpected. But this seems almost surreal:

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Obama website's opposition to successful surge gets deleted

A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days.

The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge.

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Governments in the modern world are far from perfect -- sometimes, they must engage in activities that aren't exactly wholesome. But when these activities are controlled and underscored by justifications that come across as complete hypocrisy juxtaposed against the realities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, things get really messy.

With the recent misadventures of the US in the Middle East, and this recent story by Seymour Hersh (hat-tip FWIW), our nation is now showing itself to be one of the biggest hypocrits on the planet -- all courtesy of the Bush Republicans and their enablers. And, unfortunately, those other members of Congress who have failed to stand against them and decry their actions (and inactions).

Oddly enough, this does seem to be a rather stark departure from the nation born under these sentiments:

We're a nation formed under the concept of preserving rights and liberties, and to this end our founding fathers had defined a system of checks and balances to keep our three primary branches of government in a rough balance. Under the George W. Bush Administration, this system of checks and balances has begun to take on too many qualities of a three-ring circus...like this one, in fact:

Pay particular attention to when the judiciary is introduced, and "wrongs" are balanced against our "rights" -- interesting imagery.
I almost started to wonder and ask when they would send in the clowns, but then I realized I shouldn't bother: they're already here.

Schoolhouse Rock videos as found on YouTube.

Originally posted on the old Scoop site on Tue Mar 13, 2007 at 07:06:45 AM EST. No information within is changed or updated -- there is a section specifically related to the GAO "Report Retort" that rba mentions. I thought it was worth pulling this back up to remind folks of what we were seeing even before the GAO report came out.

1978 -- that was the year that President Jimmy Carter accomplished one of the major achievements of his presidency: the Camp David Accords. Interestingly enough, the final week of the historic talks began on September 11th. The accords brought a degree of peace to the Middle East, unlike the events of that same fateful day twenty-three years later.

1978 also brought about the release of Warren Zevon's album "Excitable Boy," which contained the track "Lawyers, Guns and Money."

Back then, nobody could've anticipated the dark shadows gathering ahead for the nation in the form of an ever-corruptible GOP and a DOJ run amok.  Now, I can almost hear George W. Bush calling out to his father...

Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get me out of this

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My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing...

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What happens when the checks and balances of our government are compromised, and justice is undermined?

What happens when the most criminally corrupt group of criminals rule with nearly complete control of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government for nearly two full Administrations, and the media fails to oppose, to challenge and to expose them?

Criminal malfeasance. Negligence. Dereliction of duty. Failure -- multiple failures: failure to uphold the law, failure to act, failure to uphold the duty and responsibility of office.

Actively undermining the just due process of the law and Constitution. Actively interfering with the proper operation of government.

War crimes.

Eight years of crimes, unaccountable to anyone and protected by the entire Republican party -- and Joe Lieberman.

From the poster Becca in the Delphi Forum Pulling to the Left there's this bit of glum news:

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If you go to the Financial Forecast Center, you'll find the current 6-month T-bill yield from the US Treasury. There are links to other forecasts on the page, so you can see how truly spectacularly (yes, that's sarcasm) this economy is chugging along.

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What does the Financial Forecast Center show? A rather depressing graph:

It's a good thing that the GOP, the Bush Administration and George W. Bush himself are telling us we're not in a recession -- acknowledging it might actually mean they'd have to take some responsibility for doing something about it, instead of leaving it (and the myriad of other disasters they've spawned) for the next Administration to clean up.

No wonder the Republican brand is in trouble -- it's true value is now plainly evident, and it's worth far less than the junk bonds it is printed upon.