In his great novel of the people, Les Misérables, Victor Hugo wrote of convents:
“Their prosperity and corpulence are the impoverishment of the country.”
And world. Hugo added that the “persistence” of these “institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like…the tenderness of corpses which return to embrace the living.”
He may as well have been speaking of the US Administration and Congress during the invasion and occupation of Iraq:
“To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition…to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present – this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, ‘Look! take this, honest people.’ This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practice it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk, and said, ‘She is white, Bos Cretatus’.” [Chalked white cow.]
In this vein today, we have the US Senate voting on how to treat the US occupation of Iraq, a plan that is at best a Chalked White Cow, but in actuality, much worse. Most hideous. Most lethal. And as much a plan to abolish America and the world, as anything.
In fact the US Senate itself is a chalked white cow: giving equal weight to the votes of a few hundred thousand people in Wyoming as it gives to tens of millions of people in California. Thus, in its very structure, and in many other ways, the US Senate is an anti-democracy institution. While claiming the exact opposite. The US Senate is a club of mainly rich white men who are primarily the hand puppets of wealth, and wealth themselves.
Thus, in the spirit of its very structure, the Senate has devised a simple plan to abolish America:
1st: Lie through gold-plated teeth that US policy in Iraq is derived by the needs of “the troops,” which, if true, means that the Senate has abdicated its power to foot soldiers. Thus the US has technically overthrown itself – an auto coup d’état – totally phony, in fact criminal.
2nd: Abdicate whatever power has not been abdicated to the mythical notion of “the troops” to the new War Czar. He will rule with a Czar-like fist.
3rd: Continue to insulate the American Green Zone, that is the US Senate, et al, from the rest of the country.
4th: Continue to seek cover in platitudes to Patriotism and Religion, Family and Nationalism that have long since become the first and last refuge of the scoundrels.
5th: Just lie. Chalk white that cow – the US Senate.
A Practical Policy 
AbolishTheSenate.Org
Actually, I believe that the bulk of Senators were blind sided because they had the old fashioned concept of trust and they placed their trust collectively in a man not with a vision, but a deadly agenda which gave the executive branch a power it did not deserve and rendered the Senate powerless.
I do believe that when Tom Delay was overthrown, Frist and Cheney teamed up to overthrow the last vestige of Democracy and launched an all out war against the Senate who had finally got a little wisdom under their belt. When Cheney and Frist did this back in 2005, the Senate said, “Hmm. We ought to give them a dose of their own medicine and take back the power the country entrusted to us.” I believe that it was the intention of the Senate to place only Senators at the top of the presidential candidates’ list and the rest is history. One of the senators is our president elect. It was a truly brilliant coup.
Now, if only they can nullify the coup d’etat those in Wall Street have going on. It would seem that the market is saying, “Your policies are weak weapons against our ability to control the world economies.” Seems like our policy makers are once again being challenged to a duel. I wonder who is going to win against this beast of the bottomless pit. How many trillions more shall we feed to this beast before it is either satisfied or dies off from its gluttonous appetite and where will that leave the people in this world? Well, it’s something to think about and if you are so inclined to do so, pray about.