So the Democrats have taken both houses of the United States Congress.

Whoop-t-doo.

Yeah, that's right. It's just a slap to George that was overdue, the pendulum swinging the other way, the natural progression. The question now is, what are they going to do with their new power? And let me tell you, this is the key question. If the Democrats fail to meet my expectations, and I'll be keeping a close watch, then in the next election I'll be voting against them. You can count on it.

My expectations, which have evolved during the last few months as I've constructed them in my previous posts, are as follows:

1. The elections of 2000 and 2004 will be fully investigated, including but not limited to: the removal of valid voters from the voting rolls; voter registration fraud in which registration cards for Democrats were destroyed; missing, tampered, or destroyed ballot boxes; and election returns that could not possibly have been generated for the districts in question. I want the fraud exposed, the perpetrators found, and heavy prison sentences handed down. And I want it done in the next two years. Period.

2. The run-up to the Iraq War will be fully investigated, to determine a clear and extremely detailed timeline showing what the Bush cabinet members knew, when they knew it, and how they reacted to the information, with the intent of discovering whether Bush misled Congress, the American people, and the United Nations when he made his case for war.

3. The signing statements in which George Bush indicated he would not enforce the law as set down by Congress will be fully investigated. George essentially put into writing that he intended to break the law. That cannot stand.

4. The exposure of a CIA agent's identity will be reinvestigated. The findings of the current commission will be thrown out, and a new investigation will commence.

5. Impeachment proceedings will commence immediately. There will no longer be any illusion that George Bush's policies were condoned by the people of the United States. He held ultimate power for a season, and that season has passed.

6. All legislation that allowed the President to skirt the Bill of Rights will be rolled back. No domestic spying without a warrant, period. Get rid of the damn "Patriot Act" -- what a bit of marketing that was... Roll back Presidential control of the National Guard to what it was prior to the Bush administration. Remove his modifications of Posse Comitatus. Legislatively revoke laws that violate Habeas Corpus. And let's be clear -- the legislature needs to do this. We cannot trust the current Supreme Court, with so many justices on it appointed by Bush Sr. and Bush Jr., to accurately apply Constitutional tests to the laws the corrupted 109th Congress passed.

7. Our troop levels in Iraq will be highly reduced. Bush's war powers must be revoked, and he must be directed to retrieve the troops, pulling them out of the civil war that's developing. High incentives and pay will be offered to Iraqi army recruits. They will trained in small groups, and the trainers will either be fluent in the Iraqi language or have plenty of translators. The army's orders will be simple: for every Iraqi army soldier created, one of ours goes home. And a quota will be in place such that, regardless of whether their army's growth is keeping pace, every month 10,000 of our soldiers will leave. If they are truly in the middle of a civil war, it won't matter what efforts we put into building their army, and this policy recognizes and embraces that. The slogan has been, "As they stand up, we'll stand down," but nothing effective is being done. It's time that changed.

8. The borders will be closed and a fast-track system for processing immigration requests will be enacted. In an age when I can locate a rare part for my iPaq in China, pay my bills, change my stock portfolio, research esoteric particle physics theory, reconnect with an old high school friend, and practically start World War III on a chat forum, all in about 15 minutes on my computer using the internet, we should be able to use current technology to research and vett people wishing to come into this country quickly and with a fair amount of accuracy. My desire is not to eliminate immigration, it's to eliminate illegal immigration, and only because it prevents effective security measures from being put in place. So long as the borders are so incredibly porous, terrorists only need to be fluent in Spanish to come in from the South. If they get caught, worst case, they'll be deported to Mexico where, like other illegal immigrants coming in from that country, they'll just try again.

9. Human rights will be secured while shoring up the Geneva Convention. Our Bill of Rights pertains strictly to citizens of the United States, and the Geneva Conventions pertain strictly to behaviour during times of war, including the treatment of prisoners of war. We need to clarify the Geneva Conventions where they are vague in such a way that we take a morally higher position than is required by those conventions rather than a morally vacant position. And while I'm not terribly comfortable with giving non-citizens the same rights and protections as citizens of this country, I do feel that we, as the only superpower and de facto leader of the world, must protect the human rights of non-citizens that enter our jurisdictions. I don't understand why the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th amendments (with the exception of bail) can't be applied to non-citizens. These are basic protections that ensure that a human being is not trampled by a government. Even enemy combatants should be handled humanely, regardless of who they represented in battle. And torture must never be allowed. Hold them forever if you have to, but do not sink to the horrible levels to which this administration has driven us. And keep in mind, again, that the GOP supported, sometimes publicly and aggressivly, the use of every type of torture you can imagine, including but not limited to sexual humiliation, genital shock, anal rape with broom handles and chemical lights, and dog bites. Bush is fighting as hard as he can to get permission to treat the current crop of detainees as horribly as he can get away with, and the out-of-control GOP Congress has passed measures to make the torture of prisoners legal after the fact. We should lead the world in treating people better, not set examples of the very treatment we would not tolerate if the captured soldiers were our own.

10. Diplomatic relations and treaties broken by the Bush administration are to be restored with all possible haste. Screw the President. Our Democratic Congressional leaders and Presidential candidates should be using their time laying the ground work for restoring the diplomatic relations that Bush has worked so hard to ruin. Peace is not found in the barrel of a gun, only murder and antipathy. Bush doesn't get that, but he doesn't speak for most Americans anymore.

11. Legislation is to be formulated to limit the powers of the President to those given him specifically by Congress and no more. In other words, make sure that no one like George Bush can ever abuse our nation's power and resources ever again.

12. Signing statements are to be eliminated. George has turned something that seemed good on its face into a complete joke. Just kill it. It's unconstitutional and perverts the intended balance of powers. How so? Because Congress can override a veto with a two-thirds vote, but there is no provision for overriding a signing statement that basically says, "The executive branch will not enforce this law."

13. Use the veto override as often as possible. Once signing statements are illegal, shove George's veto down his throat.

14. Secure electronic voting. Diebold is either corrupt or incompetent from drawing to delivery, and they need to be slapped down for producing a laughably bad voting machine. These guys make ATMs -- they know how to produce a secure machine that creates an auditable paper trail. They only way they could have foisted their crappy voting machine on the American public is if they had a motive to produce an insecure and easily exploitable product. These are the machines that returned negative counts for John Kerry in some districts in Iowa. These are the same units that have been shown, in the HBO special documentary, "Hacking Democracy," to be easily hacked in a way that is not obvious and not auditable. We need to set federal guidelines for how a voting unit should be constructed, distributed, collected, queried, serviced, etc.

15. The federal tax code will immediately be rolled back to what it was on November of 2000. Balanced taxes, everyone paying a fair share.

16. Fund our schools. Once our troops are safely home or put back on the hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, begin redirecting funds back into the education system. Every child got left behind during Bush's war on America.

17. Fund veteran services. Our children weren't the only ones to suffer from huge budget cuts. Bush put our troops on the front line with insufficient preparation, supplies, armor, etc., and now that the injured vets are streaming back, he's cut their services. What kind of weasely crap is that? Give our veterans the respect and support they deserve for putting their entire lives on the line in the service of their country.

18. Eliminate H1B visas for the next year and heavily tax outsourced jobs. Pull high tech back into this country, restore the technology base by making it an attractive career choice again. Bush has pushed to get 1.88 million H1B visas created, when it has been projected that there will only be 1.25 million high tech jobs. So, as a present to his corporate buddies, Bush is creating a glut of foreign workers to drive down the pay scale, nevermind that he's driving up the unemployment numbers.

19. The embargo on stem cell research will be broken. Our scientists need carte blanche to get medical research using embryonic stem cells up to speed and able to catch up to the rest of the world.

20. Environmental protections will be restored and beefed up. Put controls back on corporations for eliminating heavy metals and toxins from the effluents. Put incentives back in place for creating creating environmentally friendly cars. The northern icecap is breaking up. Global warming is an obvious reality. The American people aren't nearly as stupid and Karl Rove thinks. It's time to push for a better world and a cleaner future.

21. Corruption investigations will be accelerated, with the Abramoff investigation leading the way. There must be full accountability for everyone involved in a bribery case. Influence peddling and corruption must be eliminated at every possible turn, and that especially includes Doolittle and Jefferson, the most corrupt Republican and Democrat in Congress today (AFAIK). It's like the world's oldest profession in that you'll never successfully eliminate it, but in this case the entire country is the victim of the crime.

As an American, a patriot, and a voter, I demand that the Democratic Party meet my expectations with diligence and speed. A clear message must be sent that we, the American People, hold treason to be a more egregious crime than marital infidelity. We must make clear that we hold our soldiers lives in higher regard than corporations' abilities to make dollar. We must send a message that we hold our children's futures dear, and that we prize a comfortable retirement surrounded by grandchildren being educated to the best of our abilities in a world of peace, love, unity, and respect. We must send a message that terrorists will not be allowed to permanently change us into rabid reactionaries, that war is our defense, not our business model, and that we do in fact stand for humanitarianism, truth, and justice.

Democratic Party, do not fail.

11/9/2006:   It's over. The election, and hopefully the out of control GOP nightmare, is over. When I left to vote on Tuesday, I sent a friend a quick email saying I was off to save the world, and I meant to do just that with my tiny vote. And my tiny vote was part of exactly that result -- we, the U.S. citizens who had had enough, saved the world.

Now what?

I don't mean that in reference to the political realm, I mean that in reference to my own spare moments. Writing my opinions over the last few months hasn't been terribly time consuming (I type *really* fast), but it's added up, a few minutes here, and few minutes there. I still enjoy expressing myself, but I think I can start broadening the scope of my comments to include more positive topics.

That's not to say that I won't be keeping a watchful eye on my government leaders, regardless of party affiliations, but I'm going to make an effort to take a more positive outlook, comment on things that need to change in other areas of the human diaspora.

Man, it's a beautiful day.

11/9/2006:   Bush urged Congress to "tie up key legislation" today. The most key being, of course, the so-called "terrorist surveillance act." That's that funny little bill that would authorize the administration's warrantless surveillance program, which included wiretapping phone calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists overseas.

In other words, it would retroactively legalize Bush's violation of the Constitution.

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean need to flex their muscles here. They needs to make a firm, but very subtle rumble that anyone allowing this legislation to go through will go on the Democratic Party blacklist. Anyone on the blacklist will be marginalized, cut off, slandered, slapped, wedgied, swirlied, heckled, and generally abused leading up to the next election, and when they are up for reelection, this one vote will be used in every single opposing advertisement to destroy their career. Hey, they're not telling you what to do, they're just explaining what will happen next if you defy the American people.

"Go ahead. Vote your heart. And if you vote wrong, prepare to rejoin the private sector..."

11/9/2006:   In a gesture of goodwill, Bush invited Nanci Pelosi to lunch. My advice to Nancy: bring a taster.

This picture cracked me up. Bush looks like a barfly trying for a pickup, and she looks like she's trying to gently discourage a dog from humping her leg. I just had to spruce it up with the obvious dialogue. Bush is such an idiot, it makes you wonder what how the conversation at lunch went. Here's what I picture:

Bush: "9/11! Iraq! Stay the course!"

Pelosi: "Mr. President, please don't talk with your mouth full."

Bush: "We've got a lot of hard work to do. Hard work! And don't forget, I'm the decider! Say, you're cute. Would you like to be my intern for the day?"

Pelosi: "Mr. President, please don't talk."

Or something like that.

11/9/2006:   Apparently at least one governor heard the last Senate seat going to the Democrats as a starting gun in the race for the 2008 Presidential election. Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa, has filed papers to get an early start, and has a multi-state tour planned in November.

I think old Tom is one of those guys that has his Christmas shopping done by February 1st. What a goofball. Unless he's got the charisma and plank to back it up, he's going to come off as a dipstick. Man, this election season is going to be weird....