MICHAELMOORE.COMhttp://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestne...ex.php?id=11312April 17th, 2008 5:35 pm
Congressional candidate asks for papal exorcism of Bush, Cheney By Thadeus Greenson / Times-Standard
MENDOCINO, CA — Just hours after Pope Benedict XVI arrived at the White House on Wednesday, North Coast congressional hopeful Mitch Clogg pleaded for his help.
”Your Holiness,” Clogg wrote on his blog, “please exorcise the president.”
Clogg, who also called for a papal exorcism on Vice President Dick Cheney, is challenging Congressman Mike Thompson for his seat representing the North Coast in the Capitol.
On Wednesday, Clogg elaborated on his papal plea from his Mendocino office, talked about why at 69 he's throwing his cap into the congressional ring and why he feels Thompson is unfit to represent his district.
Identified on the June primary ballot as a public interest journalist, Clogg said he's had too many jobs to name: White collar jobs, blue collar jobs and government jobs, but he's always enjoyed researching and writing. The recent note on his blog, he said, wasn't meant too seriously and was aimed in part to highlight a piece of his district integrally involved in the papal White House visit.
”That was a wise crack, but the fact of the matter is that it is a wine produced in this district that is getting poured in honor of the pope,” Clogg said, adding that the wine is Sonoma's Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery's 2005 Dutton Ranch Chardonnay.
While he labeled the post as a wise crack, Clogg didn't entirely dismiss it.
”These men are evil,” he said of Bush and Cheney. “It's not just a bad president and vice president, we've never had anything like this where the country is being run by a criminal syndicate. It seems like these guys ought to be tarred and feathered, literally, on their way to prison.”
Seeing no help from Congress on the horizon in the form of impeachment, Clogg turned to the pope with his Wednesday blog plea.
”If I believed in the devil, I would believe that Bush and Cheney were inhabited by him,” he said.
Clogg also saved some harsh words for his challenger, saying Thompson is essentially a Republican in Democratic clothing and is too conservative to represent the 1st District.
”As far as I'm concerned, a conservative Democrat is like a black blizzard -- it doesn't happen, it's a contradiction in terms,” Clogg said.
Thompson said while Clogg is calling him too conservative, the Republicans he runs against call him too liberal, which highlights the fact he is the moderate he's always claimed to be.
Thompson, Clogg contends, has enabled the war in Iraq by, after initially voting against it, voting for every emergency appropriations bill that has come before Congress. The North Coast congressman has also overseen the dramatic downturn in local fishing and timber industries, Clogg said. Though Thompson has managed to help bring disaster relief funds to town, Clogg said that is too little too late.
He also said Thompson dropped the ball by not pushing for increased governmental oversight of the industries during his almost 20 years representing the district.
Thompson said it's ridiculous to think he hasn't pressed for governmental oversight of the industries. The congressman said he's worked in the California Legislature to augment the state budget to put more feet on the ground to review timber harvest plans, helped bring a lawsuit against the Bush administration for diverting water from rivers and has helped hold hearings on endangered species and water flows.
”I don't think there's anyone that's held this administration's feet to the fire more,” said Thompson, who also received the Sierra Club's Edgar Wayburn Award in 2007 for helping pass legislation to permanently protect 273,000 acres of wilderness in Northern California.
Perhaps most of all, Clogg took issue with Thompson for not having pushed harder in the House to impeach Bush and Cheney. In previous conversations with the Times-Standard, Thompson has said he hasn't done so because he didn't think the subject would gain much traction with his colleagues.
”The people need to see this, that not only do they have a president that will lie us into an extravagant and devastatingly costly, immoral war, we also have members of Congress that will lie to protect him,” Clogg said.
Clogg contends that the topic of impeachment hasn't gained much traction because nobody's brought it to the House floor, where it would only need a 50-percent-plus-one vote to pass. If it arrived on the floor, Clogg contends, Democrats would be under tremendous pressure from their constituents to vote to impeach.
Wednesday, Thompson stood by his guns on the topic.
”It was a legitimate assessment of the facts,” Thompson said of his previous statements. “I voted to send a bill to the judiciary committee where it could see if there was evidence of impeachable offenses, and I signed the letter to the judiciary asking them to do their work, but the reality of the situation is there are not enough votes to impeach. It would be a complete distraction for the House and the Senate, and grind things to a halt.”