Libby Shaw

Meet the GOP/Tea Party Billionaire Puppet Masters

2010-09-02T22:47:00.000-04:00

The Koch brothers. A work in bloated and unbridled greed.

And anarchist wannabees.

I betcha that except for GOP minority leaders and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and FOX Fake News, most members of the Republican tea party wing has no clue that it has major billionaire exploiters, puppeteers and ventriloquists that pull its strings, yank its chains and grows "frogs" called GOP/tea party political candidates. The frogs, according to Koch/BP/FOX/GOP spokesmen are spawned in order to serve and rubber stamp the private agenda of Koch Industries, BP and other corporate power houses.

Many of us have expected as much from the extreme far right given former U.S. House Speaker and lobbyist Dick Armey and his involvement with the rage fests of last summer over health care reform. Richard Scott and his Conservatives for Patients' Rights movement joined forces with Armey, all in a effort to foment fear and uncertainty about health care reform. Fat cats and pimped out shills for the health care industry, Armey and Scott threw the health care needs of the majority of the American people into the pits of denial and poverty.

But Dick Armey and Richard Scott are nano size potato players when compared to the far reaching tentacles of the power, money and influence of the Koch brothers of Koch Industries.

The two libertarians have poured millions of dollars into the tea party movement, along with other right wing extremist groups that have declared war on President Obama and the Democrats agenda.

Of course the billionaires club has an aversion to the Democratic Party (except for blue dogs, perhaps) because Democratic lawmakers are far more likely, for the most part, to stand up to big business and actually represent the interests and needs of their constituents. The GOP, on the other hand, is one big and proud shill for the likes of the Koch brothers. In fact, Republicans are so far removed from every day people that they are not in the least bit embarrassed by their unabashed role as go to pimps and shills for the corporate sector.

The Koch boys, like Armey and Scott, use the tea party people to do their heavy lifting. Of course the tea party folks don't know that the Koch brothers, who until now have managed to hide behind curtains while launching their cowardly stealth attacks, don't give a flip about the teabaggers themselves. The billionaire brothers are only interested in protecting their cash cow that never stops giving. To them.

Fast forward to summer, 2010.

Jane Mayer, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine, recently wrote a detailed expose about the Koch Brothers and their behind the scenes involvement with political action groups.

Billionaires vs. Obama

Meet the Let Them Eat Cake Kochtopus Brothers, the controllers in chief of the GOP/Tea Party.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

In public life the Koch brothers promote themselves as generous philanthropists who donate millions upon millions of dollars to museums, the arts and cancer research centers. I doubt that few of the recipients of the Koch boys generous contributions are aware of their benefactor's stealth attack campaign against democratic principles and a democratic republic called the U.S.A.

With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The pervasive tentacles of Kochtopus run far and deep.

A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Kochtopus messes with Texas. Big time.

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”

At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

Kochtopus training program on how to fool, manipulate and control the GOP/teabagging fringe and grow frog candidates.

Venable honored several Tea Party “citizen leaders” at the summit. The Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its Blogger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West. On June 14th, West, writing on her site, described Obama as the “cokehead in chief.” In an online thread, West speculated that the President was exhibiting symptoms of “demonic possession (aka schizophrenia, etc.).” The summit featured several paid speakers, including Janine Turner, the actress best known for her role on the television series “Northern Exposure.” She declared, “They don’t want our children to know about their rights. They don’t want our children to know about a God!”

During a catered lunch, Venable introduced Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general of Texas, who told the crowd that Obama was “the most radical President ever to occupy the Oval Office,” and had hidden from voters a secret agenda—“the government taking over our economy and our lives.” Countering Obama, Cruz proclaimed, was “the epic fight of our generation!” As the crowd rose to its feet and cheered, he quoted the defiant words of a Texan at the Alamo: “Victory, or death!

If you chose death, nut job, make it your own, thank you.

Koch's front group, Americans for Prosperity is shilling for Koch Industries. It has the money and resources to turn the Koch's private agenda into a mass movement.

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.”

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

I hate to break it to the Republican consultant but his movement's frog candidates are too extreme for the average American voters. The frogs must include Republican candidates such as Sharron Angle (NV), Rand Paul (KY) and Ben Quayle (AZ). Well, it is at least nice to know for certain that the frog candidates are total shills for Koch Industries. Now voters can know that a vote for a teabagger is a vote for the Koch boys.

The Koch boys like to keep their political evil doing underground, but I think they've been duly outed now. Thank you Jane Mayer and thank you Rachel Maddow.

The GOP/teabaggers also should know that the Koch boys own Stalin a debt of gratitude for their great fortune.

Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. Fred Koch was the son of a Dutch printer who settled in Texas and ran a weekly newspaper. Fred attended M.I.T., where he earned a degree in chemical engineering. In 1927, he invented a more efficient process for converting oil into gasoline, but, according to family lore, America’s major oil companies regarded him as a threat and shut him out of the industry. Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union. In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries. Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch’s Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration. He returned to the U.S. In the headquarters of his company, Rock Island Oil & Refining, in Wichita, he kept photographs aimed at proving that some of those Soviet refineries had been destroyed in the Second World War. Gus diZerega, a former friend of Charles Koch, recalled, “As the Soviets became a stronger military power, Fred felt a certain amount of guilt at having helped build them up. I think it bothered him a lot.”

Fred felt so badly about enabling the Soviets that he joined a hate group, the John Birch Society. I guess he had to find someone else to demonize.

In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent. In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties.” He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”

Pathological and dangerous paranoia.

What is it about Republicans that most are paranoid about everything most of the time? It seems that the GOP has a constant and steady need of a stream of targets of blame, witch hunts and crusades.

Perhaps it has occurred to some Republican politicians that they are the evil doers they fear the most.

The George W. Bush era in a nutshell.

Rick Perry Seceded from the People of Texas

2010-08-28T17:01:00.000-04:00

a very long time ago. He and his revolving door of donors and cronies have entrenched themselves comfortably in a tightly controlled gated compound that is filed with lavish opulence fit for kings and queens. There is a swimming pool, cabana, servants, a collection of fine wines and exquisite cuisine. The gates into and out of Perry's community are impenetrable. Not just anyone can live or go near Perry and his cronies. One must first apply for residency. A board comprised of the Governor's appointed community officials decide who deserves to live among their ranks. Usually one is deemed deserving if one donates generously to Perry's political campaign coffers and those who give the Governor advice on potentially profitable real estate.

Those living outside of the compound must support it by providing the Governor with a salary that includes benefits. Outsiders are also expected to cover the costs of the Governor's housing expenses and security detail. In exchange for all of these benefits, the Governor agrees to serve the people as their public servant. A Governor's mission is to serve all of the people in his or her state, not just those that voted for them.

Unfortunately for most Texans Perry may have taken an oath to serve but he has largely ignored his job description. The only ones served in Texas so far are Rick Perry and his cronies.

In the ten years that he has performed as Governor, Rick Perry has made himself a very wealthy man. Meanwhile our K-12 schools rank second to last nationwide and we have the highest number of uninsured residents. In 2002, Rick Perry promised that he would start cracking down on insurance companies but in 8 years, he's done little more than accept $1 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry. Ten of his staff members have made out grandly too as all have earned millions serving as lobbyists for insurance companies.

This past Saturday's edition of the Houston Chronicle discloses the financial histories of both of the gubernatorial candidates, Rick Perry and his Democratic opponent Bill White.

There is no doubt whatsoever that both Bill White and Rick Perry are very wealthy men. According to the report White earned much of his wealth from his former careers as a trial lawyer and company CEO though he did profit from some of his investments while serving as Houston's mayor. White also served in the federal government during the Clinton Administration.

Rick Perry, on the other hand, has accumulated all of his wealth while serving as a public servant. He has been a politician much of his professional life and he has little if any experience in the corporate or private sectors.

There is certainly nothing wrong with one’s luck, good fortune, hard work and talent to make a lot of money. Drive, creativity, innovation, passion, commitment and a willingness to burn the midnight oil 24/7 certainly should have its rewards. At least this is true in the corporate and private sectors. Hard work, a deep commitment to one's line of work with a potential financial reward is, as we know, the pillar of the American dream.

But those who serve in public office as elected officials, whose main purpose is to serve the people, have certain accountability standards to meet. There are and should be legitimate questions asked when any elected official becomes wealthy on the job given the fact that taxpayers pay his/her salary, health care benefits and housing expenses.

Is the public servant serving the people or him/herself?

The Houston Chronicle's article reports on how both men realized their wealth. This diary will focus on Governor Perry. My question is if and how the people of Texas were short changed while the Governor focused on enriching himself. By so doing has Rick Perry failed to serve the needs and the interests of people of Texas?

Demands to come clean

Perry has said he will not debate White until he releases his tax returns for the years he was a deputy U.S. energy secretary.

White said Perry needs to come clean on assets in his blind trust.

"Perry has used his position to secure special deals to become a millionaire while in office," White said. "Whether it is his appointments, or dealings with lobbyists, or his land deals, Perry helps his friends and his friends help Perry, personally and politically."

White said the public knows less about Perry's deals than his own business interests because Perry "hides" his dealings in a blind trust. White said he will not have a blind trust if elected governor.

Perry responded by saying the point of a blind trust is so financial decisions will not affect his policies.

"I have no idea what's in the blind trust, and frankly, I don't want to know," the governor said.

Legally, Perry is not barred from knowing what is in the trust, but officials at the Texas Ethics Commission said since passage of a 2003 law, if a politician with a blind trust knows an asset in the trust, then that asset must be publicly disclosed. Perry set up his trust in 1996.

Before and after the trust was set up, ethical questions on the real estate deals that have made Perry hundreds of thousands of dollars were plentiful.

Perry continues to beat the same dead horse of an excuse for his refusal to debate Bill White. Even if White were to adhere to Perry's request for tax returns from the Clinton era, the Governor would demand yet another document of some sort. Bill White is obviously aware of the Governor's game that is mired in cowardice.

Many of us appreciate the fact that our chicken of a Governor won't debate Mr. White b/c he possesses neither the courage or the integrity. That or Perry's dictatorial arrogance is such that he believes voters are not deserving of a debate between political candidates.

Rick Perry's pay to play politics and cronyism at its finest.

The most recent controversy involved .56 acres at Horseshoe Bay that never was put into the trust. Perry bought the lot in 2001 through childhood friend state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, for $300,000, but the actual seller was San Antonio financier Doug Jaffe. Perry sold the lot in 2007 to one of Jaffe's business associates for $1.15 million.

In between, Perry's office approved a $2.5 million grant to an aircraft company that included Jaffe as a founding investor, but the money never was delivered because the company did not meet job-growth commitments.

The Dallas Morning News hired appraisers who said Perry got the land for $150,000 below market and sold it for $350,000 above the market price for comparable real estate.

Perry's aides have contended the appraisals were unfair. Perry said it was a straight real estate transaction.

"Here's what I think most Texans would say: If you bought a piece of property in central Texas, particularly at Lake LBJ in 2001, and you didn't make money on it six years later, we might not want you to be governor. You'd be a pretty rotten business person," Perry said.

However, Perry's aides could not immediately explain why the governor reported a capital gain of $823,766 in March 2007 from the property's sale on his federal income taxes, but his blind trust grew by only $117,000 between December 2006 and December 2007.

Differences in amounts

Perry's office in the past said the profits from the Horseshoe Bay sale went into the blind trust. But the trust ended 2007 with a value of $742,184, an amount substantially less than his gain on the Horseshoe Bay property. The value at the end of 2006 had been $625,322, according to figures supplied by Perry's campaign.

The Horseshoe Bay transaction was similar to a 1993 real estate deal to which Perry was directed by an old friend named Tim Timmerman, an Austin real estate developer, who, like Perry, is a Texas A&M graduate. Timmerman did not respond to requests for an interview.

Timmerman steered Perry into paying $122,000 for a 9.3 acre plot that became critical to the construction of a 33,000-square-foot home being built by computer millionaire Michael Dell. Perry sold the land to Dell two years later at a profit of $343,000.

Timmerman has given almost $69,000 to Perry's campaign funds this decade and serves on his finance committee.

Rewarding big donors with prestigious and powerful appointments.

In recent years, Timmerman was a focus of a fight in Hutto near Austin, where local residents opposed plans by Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority to build high-voltage electric transmission lines through the city.

The citizens preferred putting the lines along the Texas 130 toll road, but that would have meant the eye-sore lines would have been adjacent to land Timmerman planned to use for swank commercial and multi-family development as part of his Star Ranch community.

In 2008, Perry appointed Timmerman to the LCRA board of directors. The LCRA kept its line route away from Timmerman's property, and Perry's appointees on the Public Utility Commission voted down residents' request to re-route the lines to the highway right of way.

Perry described Timmerman as a friend and said there was nothing improper about the real estate tip or the appointment more than a decade later.

"I trust him and he's honest," Perry said. "What better people would you want to serve on boards and agencies than people you know, that you trust and are honest?"

Of course Rick Perry said there was nothing improper about the land deal or his appointment. Tom Delay said the same thing when he was up to his eyeballs with ethics violations in Washington D.C and here at home. I swear, Texas Republican lawmakers could be caught covered in blood, standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in their hand and all would predictably tell police:

But I did nothing wrong.

I guess Texas Republican lawmakers have one set of rules for themselves and one for everyone else.

Pure Rick Perry politics.

So, former college buddy Timmerman who donated over $69,000 to the Perry campaign, gave Perry an inside tip on some property that would later become highly profitable. Perry made a lot of money from the deal. He later rewarded Timmerman by appointing him to the Board of Directors of the Lower Colorado River Authority. In that capacity Timmerman later used his position to stick the residents of Hutto with unsightly high voltage power lines. Timmerman did not want to disfigure his own nearby pet building project but he had no problem with scarring neighborhoods in Hutto.

How cronies can protect a Governor from a scandal or possible criminal act.

Few of us will forget the execution of a potentially innocent man Cameron Todd Willingham. Scientific experts had discovered that junk science was used as evidence to convict Mr. Willingham of murder. He was sentenced to death. Governor Perry had refused to intervene and Mr. Willingham met his death.

Forty eight hours before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to meet to disclose its findings surrounding the Willingham case, Perry fired its head and replaced two board members. Naturally Perry replaced the head with one of his loyal cronies John Bradley. As we well know by now Bradley uses politically motivated and dictatorial practices to stonewall questions about the Willingham case. A typical Republican Bradley attacks those who dare to question him. He refers to Texans that seek answers as "New York lawyers."

These are a prime example of how unbridled cronyism and pay to play politics is bad for the vast majority of Texans. When a public servant is focused like a laser microscope on enriching himself there is no way he can help himself from throwing the majority of Texans into the ditch. Four more years of Rick Perry politics will fatten the coffers of himself and his crony compound even more. Yet more people will be disenfranchised by deals just like the one in Hutto. And let's not forget about all of the folks who would have been impacted by Perry's land grabbing Trans Texas Corridor deal.

Back to Basics director Clifton Walker said Perry could try to revive portions of the corridor if voters re-elect him.

"Our land, homes and family farms just aren't safe with Rick Perry as governor," Walker said.

With Perry at the helm more fact finding commissions that demand transparency will continue to be shut down by one of the Governor's avid loyalists. The dictatorial Governor and his supporters seem to have little regard, either for the lives of potentially innocent prisoners that have been sentenced to death. Perry's standard operating procedure: Hang 'em first, ask questions later or don't ask questions at all.

Perry's network of crony appointments cover the state like a gargantuan poisonous parasite with its tentacle reaching into every corner.

It is time to starve the blood sucking parasite. Let's begin by firing the host, i.e. an arrogant self serving Governor who has come to believe that he is a king or dictator. Rick Perry has forgotten that he is an elected public servant that serves the people in a state and in a country that is a democratic republic.

The Sterling Accomplishments of the G.W. Bush Administration

2010-08-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

The biggest transfer of wealth in modern U.S. history very likely took place during the Bush Administration, 2000-2008. During these dark and terrible days, the Bush Administration emptied the U.S. Treasury into the pockets of Wall St., big business and 1-2% of the wealthiest Americans. In the process Bush Co. threw the rest of the population to the dogs.

Today in the late summer of 2010, middle and working class Americans can barely hold on. Folks are still out of work. There are hardly enough jobs and people continue to lose their homes. Are the Republicans slapping one another on the back congratulating themselves for successfully accomplishing their mission?

One would think so considering the Party's voting records in the U.S. Congress over the last 18 months. For the Republicans have done nothing but obstruct, stonewall and the filibuster each and every piece of legislation that would throw an economic life line to the American people.

Will the GOP offer any strategies in order to make reparations to the people for its recklessness, criminal incompetence, in some cases and its willful and reprehensible failures during the dark ages of 2000-2008?

There is no strategy for the people. And there never will be.

The GOP will do what it always does when it wants to take back the majority.

Bereft of Solutions and Ideas, The GOP Gins Up Controversy

2010-08-20T22:37:00.000-04:00

The GOP obviously has little of substance to offer to the voters because the Republicans are far more focused on fanning the flames of controversy than they are with crafting solutions to repair our busted economy and create new jobs.

Republican politicians must have absolutely no constructive ideas or rationally based proposals for meeting the challenges of our financial miseries and woes. The sound of silence coming from the GOP campaign in this regard has been deafening for some time.

The Republican Party has refused to participate in crafting constructive legislation on any level, no matter what has been placed on the table.

Health care reform.

Texas Republicans crawled on their knees, groveled and begged BP for forgiveness.
We love you, Big Sugar Daddy.

So, what is a Groveling Minority Party of No Solutions, No Substance, No Ideas to do during an election cycle?

The Party's puppet masters, spin doctors and ventriloquists have crafted a plan and it is so typically Republican that it would be laughable, were it not so very potentially dangerous on both a domestic and foreign policy level.

A plan that only the desperate and self-serving could construct: Unleash McCarthyism at its very worse.

Gin up conflict. Throw barrels of gasoline on a wedge issue that pulls at folk's emotional hot buttons. Distract and terrify the masses with manufactured issues that have little basis in reality. Pit people against one another. Divide and conquer. This is part of the GOP strategy and has been for some time. What else has the GOP to offer voters? Tax cuts for the rich? Endless oil wars with the Middle East? The enabling of Wall St. to behave more as gambling casinos than banks and investment firms? More BP catastrophic oil spills in the Gulf?

Eventually the GOP's ineptitude and hate baiting has got to come back and smack it between the eyes. It has already alienated many African Americans especially during the right wing's ruthless witch hunt after ACORN and later the character assassination of Shirley Sherrod. Now it is on a crusade to demonize Hispanics with the Republican's disgusting rhetoric about repealing the 14th Amendment. And most recently the GOP has just lumped all Muslims into one category, i.e. all are terrorists. Next the GOP will declare another ideological warfare on Asians for God knows why.

The latest ginned up GOP hoopla of distraction is based on the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero, the scene of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The author of the article cited above, Pamela K. Taylor, is co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, former director of the Islamic Writers Alliance and strong supporter of the woman imam movement.

Below is an excerpt from Ms. Taylor's article in the Washington Post.

As for the Christians who have been attacking not only this mosque, but ones planned in Tennessee, California, Wisconsin, and Michigan, or the existing one in Bridgeport, CT which has had to deal with Christian picketers shouting at people as they go in for congregational prayers... it is time for you to learn that Islam is not going away. You will not be successful in converting the entire Muslim world, not to mention the Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Sikh, etc worlds, or even the rest of the Christian world to your theology.

It would be a far better use of your time and energy to learn to respect these other traditions and to work together with us to make the world a better place, rather than picketing and yelling ugly slogans at innocent people. If nothing else, you might do better at converting us if you followed my mom's advice that you attract more bees with honey than vinegar. Telling us that Islam is from the devil, teaches violence, and hates women, dogs, singing, etc, etc, etc is just so blatantly misinformed, hateful and unwelcoming that you aren't likely to attract many people, whether it be Muslims, or folks from other faiths who might be considering embracing Islam.

Similarly blind are the Republicans who have jumped on the Muslims-are-the-seat-of-all-evil bandwagon. It may buy them some votes in the short run, but in the long run bigotry and hatred are not values upon which to build a sound base. McCarthy who once had so much power is now repudiated as a manipulative, fear-mongering, reckless demagogue who should have been shut down much sooner than he was. Republicans who are currently resorting to the same sort of frantic, baseless, mudslinging and demagoguery should look to the past to see where it is going to get them. It would also behoove them to study the history of those whose lives were destroyed by McCarthy -- do you really want to be responsible for destroying the civil and human rights of millions of innocent Muslim American citizens?

Both of these groups are also playing into the hands of Muslim extremists. Even if the mosque/cultural center is eventually built on the site near Ground Zero, irreparable damage has been done. Newspapers all over the Muslim world, and of course the internet, are abuzz with horrific quotes about Islam or Muslims from some of the top leaders in our country, starting with Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. It is almost like their speeches are calculated to start a war between Muslims and the West. When America abandons her traditional values of pluralism and freedom of religion, that is when she cultivates enemies. When she abandons them with such vitriol and hatred as we've seen coming from certain segments of the Republican party and the Christian right, she's going to make a lot of enemies.

Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich should be called out for their reckless and irresponsible rhetoric. Yesterday, Gingrich compared Muslims to Nazis. Seriously. But don't expect Fox "News" and other GOP water carriers in the media to step up to the plate. All have too much to gain by throwing yet more gasoline on the fires of fear. This should be crystal clear given the fact that the parent corporation of Fox "News" recently donated $1 million bucks to Republican gubernatorial candidates. Fox "News" is no longer "news" and never has been. We can now safely call it the official propaganda arm for the Republican Party.

We have already had one clueless and insensitive President in the area of foreign affairs. He appointed neocon hawks as his Vice President and Secretary of Defense. These are the goons that lied us into an unnecessary war with Iraq. We continue to live with the consequences of George W. Bush's appalling and treacherous bullying cowboy "diplomacy." The ginned up war has all but broken our backs, killed and maimed thousands upon thousands and has busted our economy.

This is one typical heckofajob for the GOP. This is what the party does. They hate the government to the point that as soon as Republicans are elected they cut their wrecking crews loose on day 1.

The very last thing this country needs is another re-run of the horror show called the Bush Administration. This is especially true when the leading stars are far right wing extremists Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

The GOP is for nothing that would repair our economy and create jobs. It is against everything that provides a safety net and security for the vast majority of the American people.

The GOP has become the party of no with no ideas, no solutions and one that lacks an ethical backbone. It has become morally bankrupt to the point that it thrives on manufactured fear mongering, race baiting and whose only purpose is to serve themselves and a fraction of the population. In its present form the Republican Party is not fit to govern.

President Obama's Tax Plan Vs. the Republican Plan for the Wealthy

2010-08-16T22:49:00.000-04:00

The contrast between the policies of the Democrats and those of the Republicans could not be more clear.

The Republican Party from the era of President Ronald Reagan through G.W. Bush and its tax policies have broken the backs of the middle and working classes. It has also broken city and state governments.

I guess the Republican Party's crusade against big government is to totally destroy it, all in order to feed the interests of million and billionaires.

TX Governor Rick Perry Stands by BP

2010-08-13T21:43:00.001-04:00

A special note of thanks to Todd Hill and the Burnt Orange Report for providing the powerful and informative video posted below.

TX GOP Louie Gohmert Has Melt Down on CNN

2010-08-13T16:57:00.001-04:00

Anderson Cooper of CNN busted Texas U.S. House House Rep. Louie Gohmert for lying about so-called "terror babies" on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Cooper also accused Gohmert of fomenting fear using false information. Gohmert apparently cannot handle the truth and facts very well.

Gohmert's complete temper tantrum can be viewed here. It certainly is an ugly sight to behold.

From Talking Points Memo:

Oh, wow. Last night, Anderson Cooper hosted none other than Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), the main propagator in Congress of the "terror babies" conspiracy theory -- an alleged diabolical 20- to 30-year plot by terrorists to have babies born in the United States, then taken abroad and trained as terrorists before eventually returning here as U.S. citizens (thanks to birthright citizenship) to commit heinous crimes.

Gohmert previously went to the House floor in June and warned about this evil plan, saying he had heard about it from an unnamed former FBI agent. Then on Wednesday night this week, Cooper hosted an actual former FBI official, who explained that there are no reports of this at all.

Cooper brought Gohmert on last night, and began by asking him whether he had even called the FBI agent. And from there, it turned into a nice one-way shouting match -- that is, Gohmert yelling at Cooper repeatedly. At one point Gohmert did admit that he did not check with the FBI itself: "No, I didn't talk to them, because the point is: when we did the research, we found the hole existed."

The findings of the FBI certainly do not matter to right wing extremists and crazies like Louie Gohmert and other Texas Republican lawmakers. They just like to make any stuff up, no matter how wrong, how untrue or how downright crazy it is, all in an effort to convince themselves of the validity of their conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies.

Chicken Rick Perry Blames his Border Failures on President Obama

2010-08-13T10:58:00.001-04:00

King Rick Perry, a typical coward and Republican leader refuses to take responsibility for his own failings and short comings. The Governor has been in charge for ten long years and his track record reveals that he made few viable overtures in efforts to address the bloated but the conveniently ignored elephant in the room.

For eight of the ten years that Rick Perry has served as the Governor he had open access as well as a friendly relationship with then President G.W. Bush. Did the Governor go out of his way to prevail upon the President to ask Congress to do more to secure the Texas border? Did he push the President to demand comprehensive immigration reform when the Republicans held the majority in the U.S. Congress? Did Governor Perry work with border sheriffs and lawmakers to craft comprehensive and sustainable solutions on a state level?

No, of course he did not. Like most Republicans, Rick Perry loves cheap labor and he willingly turned a blind eye to the border problem.

Worse, Perry willfully diverted tax payer dollars targeted to the border.

Whether it is funding for the border or for schools Rick Perry obviously believes he can do whatever he wants with both federal and state taxpayer money. Apparently the hard work of the legislating process that includes debates, votes in Congress and in the Texas Legislature mean absolutely nothing to King Perry.

Now that it is an election year with the race tightening between the Governor and Bill White, Rick Perry desperately seeks a scapegoat on which to blame his failure to act boldly where border security is concerned. So, what is the Governor's cowardly solution? Play the blame game. Pin his sins of omission on President Obama and the Democrats.

Way to go Rick Perry.

Unlike Rick Perry, Democratic candidate Bill White does have a plan for potentially effective solutions. Though border security is a federal issue, there are steps that border state Governors, Congressmen and law enforcement officials can take on a state level.

"While the federal government has failed in its essential responsibility of securing our borders, Rick Perry has failed too. For ten years, Perry has failed to get the resources we need. For ten years, Perry has failed to be an effective advocate for our state, no matter what party has a majority in Congress, no matter who is President. As governor, I will set politics aside on border issues, and take action. I'll work with everyone from the President and our Texas congressional delegation to border governors and local law enforcement. We will find a solution so that daily, lawful business across the border thrives and communities remain safe," said Bill White.

Perry's record of failure on the border includes his $4 million pet program of border cameras which has yielded only 26 arrests. In April, Perry was slammed by border area congressmen for failing to allocate to the border sufficient federal dollars given to the state. In March, Perry "activated" a secret border plan without consulting local leaders, and elected officials and law enforcement criticized the governor's approach.

Perry consistently uses false border crime statistics despite being called to the carpet for it and has become infamous for his election year posturing. This month, Perry even went as far as falsely claiming that bombs were exploding in El Paso, harming local businesses and security efforts.

When former Houston mayor Bill White says he will set politics aside he means it. His track record as mayor proves this on so many levels from Hurricane management to crime to law enforcement.

In March, Bill White pressed U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano for more resources and airborne surveillance of the Texas border. As governor, Bill White will talk with senior officials in Washington to get things done, as he did throughout his time as Houston's mayor during both the previous and current administrations. "Law enforcement both along the border and in other areas of Texas requires working with sheriffs, police chiefs, state officials and federal agencies. An uncoordinated, secret plan is not an effective plan," White said.

According to the White campaign Governor Perry grossly exaggerated the situation in El Paso during an interview he had with Fox News.

You've got bullets hitting City Hall in El Paso. You've got bombs exploding in El Paso," Rick Perry told Fox News. "Perry later made a similar statement in Laredo, saying a car bomb went off in El Paso, according to Pro8News." "Perry did harm to the name and the goals of El Paso by trying to make a point to the nation that the federal government isn't doing its job of protecting our southern border."

According to folks in El Paso, Perry had confused El Paso with Juarez.

He made the same misstatement during a stop Friday in Laredo, saying a car bomb had exploded in El Paso.

Perry's campaign staff said it was obvious that he meant Juárez, the Mexican city that borders El Paso and that has been plagued by violence.

"He knows that bombs are not going off in El Paso," said Catherine Frazier, a campaign spokeswoman. "He is talking about Juárez -- right across the border."
But El Paso Mayor John Cook and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White say Perry's imprecision adds to misconceptions that make businesses, tourists and military families leery about El Paso.

Crime surveys rate El Paso as the second-safest large city in the country, but city officials say they often have to battle misconceptions that it is crime-ridden.

The Governor is quoted as having said bombs exploded in El Paso. Saying it and then denying you said it does not work in the 24/7 rocket speed electronic world in which we live today. I guess Rick Perry fails to appreciate you tube and the internet.

Rick Perry has also lost significant support from border sheriffs.

After a meeting with border sheriffs in San Antonio today, Val Verde Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez said, "I wasn't too impressed with anything he said there. I don't see any change. We will have to handle our own problems."

Rick Perry's 10 years of failure on border security show a lack of understanding of local needs.

"I don't think [Perry] knows the extent of it...We know what the shortcomings are. There has to be flexibility. We will be accountable for whatever is done, but there has to be flexibility. My needs in Val Verde County might be different from the needs of Maverick County and might be different those in Brewster County."

It is no small wonder that the Sheriffs that protect 98.7% of Texans who live in border counties have now endorsed Bill White for governor.

If we think the exploding bombs that never exploded in El Paso is the top of Perry's over the top rhetoric on border security, we would be wrong. Today over at The Burnt Orange Report Phillip Martin reports that Perry has recently compared the border situation to Nazi Germany.

The governor must be getting mighty desperate to sink to this new low. Perhaps he ought to consider spending less times with the far right loony fringes. These would be the ones that show up at rallies with signs depicting the President of the United States as Hitler. Others refer to the President as "Obama bin lying."

Too much time spent in the very hot Texas sun, especially when surrounded by mostly racist and xenophobic crackpots and kooks can take its toll on one's overall mental stability.

We can only imagine what stunt Rick Perry will come up with next.

I wonder if the Governor has any plans other than the blame game, playing the fear card and fomenting conspiracy theories in efforts to whip his crackpot groupies into a frenzy fraught with fear and hate?

So much for a platform based on viable solutions for border security, creating new jobs in Texas, managing the $18 billion budget shortfall and for strengthening our local economies.

Governor Rick Perry = FAIL.

Palin Pals Around with Secessionists and Religious Fanatics

2008-10-08T22:46:00.001-04:00

John McCain and Sarah Palin can't talk about the economy and so their campaign has descended into one of the lowest rings in hell. Indeed, their campaign has sunk to such a degree that it would be laughable were it not so dangerous and downright un-patriotic.

Sarah Palin, McCain's attack wolf, has been on the campaign stump trying real, real hard to paint Senator Obama as a terrorist by association. Sarah-the-heels-are-on-and-gloves-are-off Palin obviously didn't realize when she arrived in national politics that everything she says will actually be fact checked by the media and others. And because heaven help us Palin is on the ticket for the highest offices in the land, journalists are also doing their own vetting of Sarah Palin, something John McCain obviously did not bother to do.

If Obama is guilty by association b/c he knows someone who participated in domestic terrorism when Obama was eight years old, what does that make Sarah Palin whose husband was,until very recently, a member of the Alaska Independent Party? The extremist Party wants to secede from the U.S. and its leader said he hated America and its flag. Sarah Palin apparently approves his message b/c she addressed the Party's Convention in 2008.

(The video and original diary posted on Daily Kos was created by Jed Report.)

I see Alaska has its own coterie of Rush Limbaugh styled wackos. Check out the AIG's leader.

McCain and Palin are apparently unaware that one of their very own Republican colleagues debunked the Ayers smear on NPR. Or maybe they know and just don't care. McCain and Palin don't seem overly concerned with the truth.

Have a listen here.

Sarah Palin seems to have a knack for inciting lovely potential
lynch mobs at her rallies. This is so gosh darn good for the good ol' U.S. of A.

Palin supporters shouted nasty epithets at reporters and an African American AV technician. - Palin made totally unfounded and inflamatory suggestions that Obama is a terrorist or is at least friendly toward terrorists and that he doesn't see the country the way you and I do (wink wink). - In response to the obove comments, one Palin supporter yelled "Kill him!" - Palin was introduced by a shaved headed sheriff who denounced what might happen on election day if Barack Hussein Obama is elected. - McCain asked rhetorically and impregnated with pejorative meaning "Who is Barack Obama?" One McCain supporter yelled "A terrorist!" - In an interview with Bill Kristol, Palin raises Reverand Wright and Bill Ayers and states that we should be talking about this more. Both old news. Both debunked. - Palin questioned Obama's patriotism. - The McCain campaign announces that they are abandoning discussion of the issues, as the Dow drops 800 points intra-day.

And today there was more of Palin's gracious hate mongering.

There you go again, John and Sarah. There's nothing like bringing out the best of us, doggone it.

Sarah likes to pal around with a pastor who has chased down witches. The man is so worried about witches that he performed a ceremony to protect Sarah from them. She willingly participated. Does this mean Sarah was or is possessed by witches? According to her logic, it would appear to be so.

Much has been written about Palin's strange ties to the witch hunting pastor and Palin's other really weird and rather atypical religious and political connections.

David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, is quoted on the Huffington Post as having said:

Sarah Palin Represents a Fatal Cancer to the Republican Party.

Actually as far as I am concerned Sarah Palin represents a fatal cancer to national, state and local politics as a whole. Extremists like her have no place in any elected office.

Is Sarah Palin George W. Bush in a Dress?

2008-09-15T22:27:00.002-04:00

Cross posted on Daily Kos and Texas Kaos as well as The Burnt Orange Report

As we learn more and more each day about Governor Sarah Palin, more than a few comments have been percolating in the blogosphere about how her style of governing shares much in common with that of George W. Bush. This thought is a darkly disturbing one to those of us who honestly believe W. is quite frankly the worst nightmare to happen to the United States of America and its people in a long time. Certainly, over 70% of Americans believe this to be true.

If Sarah Palin is all that the GOP could come up with as its Vice Presidential candidate one must wonder what these people have in mind for a future United States. Does it intend to completely dismantle civil liberties,constitutional rights and democratic principles altogether? Will it privatize and politicize every governmental agency? Will it sell off our social security funds to Enron Kenny boy types so they can steal and squander it? Will it set up an even more authoritarian kind of presidency in which he or she is accountable to no one?

Will it replace qualified professionals with political cronies and hacks? Will McCain/Palin be another administration of neocon war mongers? Will it bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? Will it attack Russia, as Palin suggested in her interview with Charlie Gibson? How about China, while we’re at it?

The manner in which Sarah Palin responds to questions posed by journalists and the media certainly shows some interesting similarities.

During his interview with Sarah Palin, Gibson had asked her about earmarks, stating that Alaska was one of the largest recipients of such. Palin replied:

We sure are -- and this is what -- you go out and you ask any Alaskan this. This is what I've been telling Alaskans for these years that I've been in office, is no more.

The incoherence of this statement is precisely how W. would have responded. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead and confuse the listener. Palin, like W., is playing straight out of Rove’s Handbook: “How to Get Away with Confusing and Lying to the Media.” Hopefully the media and the press will do a better job at examining Palin than they did W.

So far, and very fortunately it does appear, at least recently, that the MSM is beginning to do its job. (See Georgia10's diary below.)

On Small Town Values.

Also checkout the editorial published in the New York Times: "Gov. Palin’s Worldview"

If (McCain) he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

Since the GOP has issues with truth telling, I sure it is only a question of time before the McCain/Palin campaign comes after the media and press with its meat cleavers and brass knuckles.

The parallels and similarities between Palin and W. on a number of levels are striking and deeply distressing. According to the extensive front page article published: “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes” in the New York Times Sunday edition:

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Palin obviously shares W.’s proclivity for cronyism, too.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Palin, like W. is known to pave the way for her heckofjobs to replace professionals.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Palin and W. both intended to become our nation’s President.

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’

(Would that include poisoning a sitting President, Governor? Just asking.)

Her base is identical to that of W. It is comprised of right wing religious extremists and social conservatives.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

Palin also shares W.’s contempt for the First Amendment.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

I am not in the least bit surprised that the author of the censored book told the The Huffington Post "Sarah Palin is my mortal enemy."

click here for the full story.

"I rather suspected one of my books might be the one she targeted," said Michael Willhoite, author of "Daddy's Roomate" and several other children's books. "I can tell you right now, Ms. Palin is a very good mother and everything. But she is my mortal enemy. She is one of the enemies of the First Amendment and I can hardly [organize] my thoughts here, I am so offended by this."

Palin shows us she has much in common with W.’s appalling lack of principled ethics and integrity. Arrogance and hypocrisy do not seem to be a problem for her either.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

Alas, later:

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

In the case above we saw Palin’s use of Rove’s “attack the messenger” strategy. She verbally assaulted Jenkins immediately, despite the fact that he had not written the article about her.

Worst of all, Palin clearly demonstrates that she supports W.’s authoritarian style of leadership. Oversight, transparency and accountability are their worst nightmares.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

And like W. Palin surrounds herself with a small inner circle of loyalists, friends and cronies. I suspect these folks are as incompetent as W.’s.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Is the case below, Palin is a perfect clone of Karl Rove:

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

On traveling abroad and international exposure.

Before becoming President, W. had never ventured outside of this country. Palin has done so one time and she lied about where she actually went, according to an article in the Washington Post:

Palin Camp Provides Conflicting Accounts on Iraq Trip

Palin had stated previously that she had been to Iraq. But, an inconvenient reporter, Anne E. Kornblut, reported an inconvenient truth about Palin’s venture outside the U.S. Palin’s spokesman had to write a third revision about this issue. Let’s see how long it is before Palin’s spokesperson attack Kornblut for smearing her.

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Osborn, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 207th Infantry of the Alaska National Guard told the Globe she did not venture into Iraq. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said.

Late Saturday, a Palin spokeswoman provided yet a third revision to the story, stating that the Alaska governor briefly traveled a quarter of a mile across the border into Iraqi territory at the crossing point.

What WAS McCain thinking when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate? Is she another demagogue whose sole purpose is to ensure his election?

This should tell us a little bit about John McCain’s appalling and dreadful lack of sound judgment.

If McCain is elected, Palin will become our nation’s President. Mark my words and
check out what the good doctor has to say.

Four more years of George W. Bush?

Adios American democracy as we know it.

That said, the good news is, more than a few women in Alaska have a few things to say about Bush in a dress.

Like so many of us, women in Alaska realize we have choices. Stick to the status quo of bullying and lying leadership. Or move to a new level of politics that inspires hope and change.

Palin Pick: Going to the Mattresses

2008-09-05T21:09:00.003-04:00

Is the shoot out over? Have the assault weapons been locked up? Is it safe to come outside to play?

Wow. After watching Palin’s performance last night in which she went to the mats straightaway without wasting a moment, I have to say she did a damned good job at delivering a speech written by one of Rove’s minions. You go girl. You are tough indeed and you did what you were called to do. With Rove’s guidance, you are now the future of the Republican Party. What a new and bright future lies ahead for your Party.

In the middle of it all, one of my nieces who is visiting us asked “Why is she so mean?” My niece is a typically apolitical but engaged college student. I replied “Because it is all about
her."

Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

And she is trying to change the subject to hide this:

John McCain's presidential campaign is threatening a lawsuit against the National Enquirer over a print edition story the tabloid ran today alleging that Gov. Sarah Palin has had an extramarital affair with her husband's business partner.

The allegation would normally be dismissed by political observers as the random musings of a supermarket tabloid -- indeed, the McCain campaign said as much in its statements on Wednesday -- except that the paper has built up a reservoir of legitimacy following its earlier reporting on the John Edwards affair.

And other troubling stuff..

The founder of the Alaska Independence Party -- a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years -- once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a "damn flag."

The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that's now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

"The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.

"And I won't be buried under their damn flag," Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. "I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."

And apparently there is another bridge to nowhere right in Palin's own backyard.

There are many more charges to which, like it or not, Palin must respond, bur for now enough has been said.

And boy oh boy. Did Rudy work up the tired and weary base or what? All of those mostly old and rich white boys and girls actually danced in the aisles. I thought rich Republicans were far too uptight to dance but alas I was wrong.

They dance when they are happy and they are happy when someone who is not like them is shredded. Rudy told the base what they wanted to hear: McCain/Palin would serve a Bush third term. Don’t worry about that Obama. We’ll take care of him, Rudy smugly snarked. But people like me and you know all about the real Rudy.

Rudy and W. have made quite a living by exploiting the tragedy and horror of 9/11 for their own political purposes. Hey Rudy and W., how does the war in Iraq factor in to your fear mongering about 9/11?

Meanwhile, back in the media boxes, the pundits feasted merrily on the red meat they’ve been lusting for. But they also bristled at the bloody attacks flying from the speech makers who blamed them for everything in the kitchen sink. Everything is the media’s fault! Everything we did over the eight years is made up by the evil doing media!

These Republican boys and girls made Tricky Dick Nixon seem like a nice guy when he tried to eat the media alive. This is so typical and predictable. Lousy, corrupt and incompetent politicians will always try to steer the conversation away from their records of shame by attacking someone or something else.

At home, folks like hubby and me watched the show alternating between feelings of humor, contempt and sheer horror. Admittedly I had to be restrained from smashing the TV screen at times. (Hubby wouldn’t have it b/c he needs the TV for sports.)

At one point hubby said “Rudy would make a good Hitler. He’s good at fomenting fear and hate. And he’s quite in love with himself.”

We anxiously waited to hear how the GOP would address the issues like the economy, the war in Iraq and long term solutions for both the broken economy and foreign policy. I had my laptop primed to take notes.

But obviously the GOP didn’t have it within it to discuss anything of substance. It was merely a carnival of gun slinging and wild, relentless shooting. If the blindly shooting gunslingers thought their little gun fest would drum up some happiness, so far it has done squat

Nor are all working class women impressed by Palin either.

The McCain campaign made it clear, too, that it will use Karl Rove's play book, at least where personal attacks and fear mongering are concerned.

What a sad and pathetic Party of rather mean and nasty clowns.

The GOP has become a party of myths and fairy tales. It is fine to give tax cuts to the fat cats during war time. Deficits don’t matter. There are WMD in Iraq and links to Al-Qaeda there. The oil in Iraq will pay for the war. It is OK that over 4,000 of our military have died for a lie. Deregulation is fine. Let loan sharks prey upon misinformed folks who want to buy a home. If we complain about the poor economy we are told we are making it up. We’re whiners who are living in a mental recession. Abstinence programs solve the teen age pregnancy problem. Our government’s piggy bank can be squeezed by the profiteers within the military/industrial complex. Federal agencies like the Justice Department can stop serving justice and become political arms for the RNC. Agencies like FEMA can be gutted so folks in disasters zones can die. Medicare benefits should be slashed so the sick elderly can die miserable early deaths. Social security should be outsourced so the Kenny boys of the financial world can squander it.

After listening to the two hours of a circus of raw meat rhetoric and personal bashing, my question is:

did anyone at the GOP convention actually realize that they’ve been in charge the last 8 years? Has it occurred to the Party and its faithful that IT created all the horrible stuff it wants to reform?

As Homer would say:

.

After the blood bath called a GOP "Convention" I sure could use a reuptake on the jewel of a concept called hope and its promising alternatives for the American people:

And how about a little uplift and reality check and photo journal about the blessings of community service.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/105623/5197/586/586233

And Barack Obama.

Finally, let's have a little fun with with Jon Stewart who brilliantly outs the hypocrites.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

Meet the Real John McCain

2008-08-22T18:55:00.005-04:00

He is no Maverick.

Let's take a look at his long standing relationships with lobbyists.

McCain has claimed he is a reformer who is committed to diminishing the influence of lobbyists in Washington, and yet 59 lobbyists have or are donating to his campaign. More troubling is the fact that some of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are directly advising or managing his campaign.

Folks may recall that Charlie Black had to resign from his role when the mainstream media disclosed that he was a key player in McCain's campaign. Take a look at a brief overview of Black’s sleazy resume. Black, by the way, did deals with Jack Abramoff when both represented the murderous butcher in Africa known as Jonas Savimbi.

John McCain has chosen super global lobbyist Randy Scheunemann to serve as his campaign’s foreign policy advisor.

Pat Buchanan, of all people, recently wrote a blistering and highly disturbing expose on Randy Scheunemann. In the World Net Daily he wrote:

Who is Randy Scheunemann?

He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.

But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.
He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.

From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 – pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.

What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.

Scheunemann came close to succeeding.

Buchanan concludes:

Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's camp.
The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.

Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?

Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.

Another unsavory neoconservative character and blast from the past, Jack Abramoff’s former side kick, Ralph Reed, is raising money for John McCain’s campaign.

McCain’s ties to lobbyists are disturbingly deep and far reaching.

In an article posted on The Huffington Post on August 13, McCain’s lobbyists raked in $1 Billion for U.S. Clients.

The Huffington Post’s Seth Colter Wall reports that according to a non-partisan group Campaign Money Watch:

"The McCain campaign relies on big money lobbyists, and they'll rely on him," said David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch. "In the 'you-scratch-my-back, I'll-scratch-yours' world of Washington, $931 million gets the special interests the best government money can buy. But just think of the payday these lobbyists might expect in a McCain Administration."

The director of Campaign Money Watch has posted a web site:
McCain’s Lobbyists Website

And yet John McCain pretends that he is a “reformer.”

John McCain the Family Man:

John McCain on the economy:

McCain dodges a question about the economy and talks about Islamic terrorism instead. He also defaults to his experience as a POW.

John McCain the Homeowner:

John McCain: Continuing W.’s legacy: Fewer jobs, lost homes, lost jobs, whining home owners and more wars.

John McCain’s Secretary of Treasury Choice:

John McCain is no Maverick. Pat Buchanan said it all.

Change is possible. Hope is alive.

John McCain Supports a Military Draft

2008-08-21T17:18:00.002-04:00

I guess he has no choice. As with W. McCain has always believed war and force are major and viable options to face down an enemy, any enemy, really, whether real or imagined. Indeed, Pat Buchanan of all people said Dick Cheney seems like Ghandi when compared to where McCain stands on the use of force. This is a rather horrifying notion. Certainly the last thing the United States needs is another war monger President and reckless, perilous and irresponsible cowboy diplomacy.

Check out the chilling clip where Pat Buchanan made his alarming observation.

Endless wars will most certainly require a military draft.

According to a piece in Raw Story.com

An audience member at a McCain town hall meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Wednesday indicted the VA's treatment of veterans and expressed worry that unless the draft was reinstituted, the United States wouldn't have the manpower to "chase bin Laden right to the gates of Hell and push him in."

The woman then went on to describe the deplorable conditions for veterans at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque, a four hour one way drive from Las Cruces. (Remember how Republican lawmakers just love to grandstand about how they support our troops.)

McCain’s response:

"Ma'am," the Senator responded, "let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said. Thank you, and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans."

I wonder what Senator John Cornyn, the Yes Man-in-Chief for Neocon ideologues has to say about a military draft. Let’s hear it from big John.

McCain's Huge Whoppers on Energy

2008-08-19T10:44:00.002-04:00

According to a diary written by blogger Jerome á Paris on Daily Kos
today that includes data provided by the Sierra Club, John McBush has told more than a few tall ones on his voting record on energy bills. In a recent interview Walter Issacson asked John McCain to respond to Thomas Friedman’s charge that the Senator did not support an extension of tax cuts for wind and solar energy companies.

Jerome’s Diary can be found here.

WALTER ISAACSON: [...] Tom Friedman's column mentioned that you haven't been there supporting the tax breaks that need to be extended for wind and solar. Do you support those breaks, and will you keep pushing for--will you push for it at some point?

JOHN MCCAIN: Yes, and I have, and I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. [...] I've always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote. But my citizens in Arizona know that when I'm running for the President of the United States I have to be out campaigning. But I of course I am for renewable energy.

McCain talks a good talk but his talk is trash talking lies.
How McCain voted, or failed to show up.

McCain said he never missed a vote when in fact he missed every one of the votes on the 2007 energy bill. And between 1999 and 2006 he voted eight times against renewable electricity standards and clean energy. Nor has McCain supported tax incentives needed for wind, solar, geothermal, efficient appliances.

And the outcome of McCain’s failure to vote on extending wind and solar energy tax cuts? Hint: 116,000 hard working Americans in these industries will lose their jobs.

The incentives have yet to pass, despite more than a dozen votes in the House and Senate.

Projects are already being canceled as a result of these credits not being extended. An independent study estimates that failing to renew them will cost 116,000 hardoworking Americans in the wind and solar industries alone their jobs and we will forgo at least $19 billion in economic activity.

Full and gory details on McCain's voting (or lack thereof) patterns are found in Jerome a Paris’s diary
right here

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, McBush continues to recite his latest litany of lies.

Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill Texas
Drill drill, drill, drill, drill Louisiana
Drill, drill, drill, drill California
Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill right here under my feet no matter where I am.
Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill b/c there is no environmental destruction.
Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill everywhere b/c it will lower gas prices a few pennies in ten years.
Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill so people believe drilling will save them from the oil devil.

McBush, like his soul mate W., obviously doesn't get the Internets and You Tube. The lies the lying liars tell have a way of leaking out to voters.

Are You Ready for A Bush Third Term?

2008-08-14T16:07:00.005-04:00

No? Well, don't be duped into voting for John McCain because you think he is a "Maverick." He isn't.

Republicans in Congress who voted with W. most of the time are also yearning for a Bush third term. Think about it.

John McCain says Nations don't invade other Nations

2008-08-13T19:35:00.003-04:00

I guess Iraq wasn't a nation.

Military Contractors Charge U.S. Taxpayers $85 Billion

2008-08-13T17:52:00.002-04:00

According to a piece written in The Huffington Post military contractors in Iraq have charged the American taxpayers $85. billion for their services.

It should come as no surprise to any informed person that these outsourced services were not less expensive than if they had been provided by our own military.

Worse, these military contractors are responsible for the accidental deaths and shootings of some of our U.S. military. Are these people typically incompetent Republican heckofajobs and buddies or are they just outright criminals? It is hard to tell the difference between the two under W. rule.

The Congressional Budget Office report comes on the heels of increased scrutiny of contractors in the last year, some of whom have been investigated in connection with shooting deaths of Iraqis and the accidental electrocutions of U.S. troops.

The United States has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war to provide services ranging from food service to guarding diplomats. About 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors, the report said.

According to a separate article in the New York Times written by James Risen:

The Pentagon's reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield.

Fraud, shoddy and unsafe work, overbilling, the killing of American troops. What typical Republican criminal ineptitude.

I understand that some of my tax dollars are needed for our national security. I don’t have a problem with that. But I do have a problem when my tax dollars are paying the military at the same time the contractors are raiding our nation’s piggy bank, in the form of tax cuts and fraudulent overbillings.

According to the Huffington Post piece:

Currently, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries, a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member, the report says.

The study does not include monetary figures for 2008, so the total paid to contractors for work in the Iraq theater since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is probably much higher. If spending for contractors continues at about the same rate, by the end of the year, an estimated $100 billion will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

James Risen of the New York Times article writes:

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards, translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.

…casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view…… How typical.

This is why McCain and the other Republican hawks are threatening the planet with their cowboy diplomacy and bullying force. They can intimidate the planet with endless wars because McCain & Co. as with W. & Co., can hire soldiers at will, thus ensuring their own private army.

What we are witnessing here, folks, is the Republican’s full throated use of the military/industrial machinery at its worse. A perpetual state of war that will guarantee perpetual profits for the corporate fat cats.

Mr. Risen continues:

In addition, the dependence on private companies to support the war effort has led to questions about whether political favoritism has played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar contracts. When the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice president, became the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq. After years of criticism and scrutiny for its role in Iraq, Halliburton sold the unit, which is still the largest defense contractor in the war, and has 40,000 employees in Iraq.

The Huffington Post continues:

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Budget Committee, which requested the CBO review, said the Bush administration's reliance on military contractors has set a dangerous precedent.

The use of contractors "restricts accountability and oversight; opens the door to corruption and abuse; and, in some instances, may significantly increase the cost to American taxpayers," Conrad said in a statement.

The death of a Green Beret from Pittsburgh, Sgt. Ryan Maseth, who was electrocuted in January while showering in Iraq, prompted a House committee oversight hearing last month into whether contractor KBR Inc. has properly handled the electrical work at bases it is tasked with maintaining. The military has also said that five other deaths were due to improperly installed or maintained electrical devices, according to a congressional report.

More on the heckajobs from the Huffington Post:

In a separate matter, a federal grand jury is investigating whether Blackwater Worldwide guards acted illegally when they opened fire in a busy Baghdad intersection last September. Seventeen Iraqis died and the shooting strained US-Iraqi relations.

With no accountability, apparently.

The CBO estimated Tuesday that $6 billion to $10 billion has been spent on security work, and that the prices paid are comparable to a U.S. military unit doing that work. It estimated that about 25,000-30,000 employees of security firms were in Iraq as of early 2008.

The report said the legal status of contractor personnel is uncertain, particularly for those who are armed. It also noted that military commanders have less direct authority over the actions of contractors than they would a subordinate because the contract is managed by a government contracting officer and not a military commander.

That's because that's how the government designed the relationship, said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council, which represents government contractors.

"There is accountability through the contract and to the contracting officer," Chvotkin said.

We know that this “accountability through the contract and to the contracting officer” means no accountability in W. world.

Those of us who earn less than $250K per year have shouldered the biggest tax burden to pay for this Republican fat cat stealing fest while the high rollers at Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater have not only received the lion’s share of W.s tax cuts, but they have reaped obscene profits by overbilling and fleecing our national piggy bank, too.

Back in the 1950’s, following WW2, President Eisenhower warned the American people about the clear and present dangers of a U.S. military/industrial complex. It seems we are living through the nightmare envisioned by President Eisenhower today. The military/industrial complex has obviously come to its full fruition during the W. years. McCain and his Republican hawks and soul mates fully intend to keep the machine humming along. According to Pat Buchanan, of all people, McCain’s goals for global war and U.S. hegemony make Cheney’s look like those of a middle school playground bully. Heaven help us all.

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” (Sir) Peter Ustinov.

Republican Rule

2008-08-11T21:47:00.002-04:00

Suit up dudes and dudettes, because McCain will be looking for you to serve in his wars.

The Animal House in Washington Has Got to Go

2008-07-13T22:15:00.001-04:00

I am sure everyone has heard the economic adviser for Senator John McCain and former Texas U.S. Senator Phil Gramm’s words of wisdom last week. Apparently Mr. Gramm is impatient with the American people and he graciously volunteered to serve as our personal life coach and economic counselor for the day.

It sure is nice when one of our former U.S. Senators decides to descend from the bubbly stratosphere of wealth where 1% of the nation’s people reside. Those of us below should feel blessed when a resident of this realm decides to pay us a social call. And we should feel especially grateful when the bubble dweller decides to give us a little pep talk and reassure us about our financial well-being.

According to former Senator Phil Gramm, the media covers only the negative news about the economy. Gramm insists the economic news is nothing more than fabricated doom and gloom. According to him, the economy is fine, it is humming along splendidly and therefore we should all be very happy. Any pain we think we might experience at the pump or at the checkout lanes of the supermarket does not exist. It is all in our heads. You see we are in the state of a “mental recession” according to the former U.S. Senator. We are becoming a nation of whiners, Gramm admonished.

I suppose that us the unformed serfs, I mean, Americans should be happy to pay over $4.00 a gallon for gas and at least $50.00 more each week for groceries for our families. You see we are not really paying over $4.00 for gas or at least $50. more per week for food. We’re making it up. It’s all in our heads. Stop complaining!

Next time I go to the gas station I will tell the attendant the pump must be broken because it charged me $40.00 instead of $20.00 to fill my tank. And I will tell the cashier at the supermarket that $50.00 of the total due is absolutely impossible. The scanner must be screwed up.

I guess we are supposed to be happy, too, that our jobs could be outsourced to a third world country without a moment’s notice and forty-seven million Americans do not have health care insurance.

We should be happy that we’re hooked on oil and we are going to stay hooked on oil as long as greedy, self-serving oilmen have carte blanche to do whatever, whenever they want at any time. We should also be happy that we suffer the environmental and health related costs of unregulated industry. But, as long as it’s good for bidness, it’s good for us because all of the benefits will trickle on down to us whiners. Be happy folks!

We should be happy that there is very little or absolutely no government oversight or regulation of the banking industry, or any industry for that matter. And it is AOK for lending firms to do sales hit jobs on gullible and uninformed Americans who merely dream to own a home of their own. If a family has to foreclose and move they aren’t really losing their home. They’re just bellyaching about a bunch of silly nothing.

Yes indeed, it sure is comforting when one our former Senators comes on out of his bubble to give us a little old pep talk.

Everyone in Texas knows, of course, that Senator Gramm and his wife Wendy profited enormously from their relationship with and role in Enron. I suppose others at Enron who were not so lucky, especially those whose life’s savings went poof, should be as happy as the Gramms. Don’t whine about lost life’s savings. It didn’t happen.

These Republican politicians who have enjoyed cozy relationships with business and lobbyists have done quite well for themselves over the years. In fact, lawmakers did such a great job in looking out for their own self-interests that all of them forgot about the needs of their constituents, i.e. us the whiners.

Case in point: Our self-appointed personal life coach and financial advisor for the day, Phil Gramm, played no small role in the current sub-prime debacle.

According to a piece in Mother Jones last week:
http://www.motherjones.com/

It was Gramm who used a sly legislative maneuver in late 2000, when he chaired the Senate banking committee, to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act--to which practically no one but financial industry lobbyists were paying attention in Washington. This bill prohibited federal agencies from regulating financial products called swaps, which have been used to back up the mortgaged-based securities that caused the sub prime crisis. Michael Greenberger, who directed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's division of trading and markets in the 1990s, says these unregulated swaps have been at "the heart of the sub prime meltdown." He and others point to Gramm as being chiefly culpable for their deregulation.

Wow. What a track record. Now we learn Gramm, McCain’s economic advisor and former profiteer of a criminally broken Enron, has also played no small role in ushering in the sub-prime fiasco. Like most out of touch politicians Senator John McCain sure lacks sound judgment when choosing competent advisors who are not ethically challenged.

Now that the former Senator has admonished us for whining and suggests we’re all supposed to be as happy as clams all of the time because everything is just peachy, one may wonder why the American people are being encouraged to drink the happiness Kool-Aid.

I think the Era of Happiness, at least for the bubble dwellers, started when former cockroach killer, and hot tub dude Tom Delay became The Hammer in the House. In this role he subjugated, bullied and threatened any colleague who dared to disagree with him. Next he threw open the doors to our Congress and its lawmaking process and swept in the corporate raiders, loan sharks, Wall St.’s high rolling gamblers, fat cats, the oil boys and all of their lobbyists, including Jack Abramoff. Anyone capable making big money at anything was invited to join the party. “Let’s have a party!” declared the former bug killer. “Don’t worry! You won’t have to pick up the tab. The taxpayers will!” All clapped and cheered as the champagne flowed freely.

And what a party it would be. Our Republican lawmakers and their new soul mates were itching to tear down more walls in their newly anointed Animal House because they wanted to throw bigger and better parties. President Clinton held the party animals off for a spell, but real trouble started for the American people when Clinton left Washington. Once W., the party-boy-extraordinaire, arrived on the scene in D.C. the walls were quickly demolished, one by one. Let the bigger and better parties with more and more invited fat cats begin! The good times are gonna roll!

With W. and Cheney securely installed by the Supreme Court, the Animal House could rock with raucous abandonment 24/7. And it did. The lawmakers and their new friends became drunker and drunker on greed tonics. In fact, they grew so addicted to the greed tonics that they couldn’t get enough of them. Jack Abramoff had to find additional caterers to bring in fresh batches. Wild orgies rocked with tax cuts for the wealthy, tax cuts for big business and the gutting of government regulatory agencies. Other independent agencies within our government, i.e. The Justice Department, joined the party and started drinking the greed tonics too. Law books were taken from the shelves and used to clean up the spilled greed tonics. Oil boy Dick Cheney invited his dearest and closest friends including Kenny Boy Lay to his private office in the Animal House’s Veep Tower to write national energy policy. The boys needed more money for themselves. They just could not get enough of it. Dick and his oil boys have had enough of the tonics, by the way. They prefer the real serious hard stuff. It is called crack crude and once hooked on it, addition can last for generations.

Meanwhile, outside the gates of the Animal House, after picking up a few tossed crumbs of cake, the American people headed off to fight terrorists in Afghanistan after 9/11 and then to Iraq to fight W./Cheney’s oil war. The Iraq war ushered in the beginning of a dream Cheney has had for decades: a fully operational, locked and loaded military/industrial complex. And Hot Damn! Halliburton would get most of the no bid contracts. Cheney and Co. couldn’t stop salivating as they dragged Rummy away from the crack crude table. They were anxious to cook up a really splendid shock and awe event. All that fuel burning, pricy high-tech bombs exploding, cool new killer missiles, faster fighter jets. Oh man. What a Cheney dream come true.

And meanwhile back at corporate headquarters in Houston, the fat cats decided it was OK for our military in Iraq to shower in sewage

While Cheney plotted and schemed to pull off more shock and awe events, and the party continued to rock inside the Animal House, Americans continued to lose jobs. Too many of us have difficulty holding on to our homes. Worse, the sub-prime debacle threw thousands of Americans into foreclosure, destroying their financial security, hopes and dreams. Gas and food prices continue to rise. We have become a debtor nation because The Animal House crew broke the nation’s piggy bank to pay for Iraq. They’ve also bankrupted the economic futures for too many Americans.

Fortunately the 2006 Election wasted some of these party animals. And the electorate is far more informed since it finally dawned on us that we are the ones who are paying the price for six years of the Animal House’s drunken brawls and oil orgies

As with his soul mates inside the Animal House, Senator Gramm has been drinking too many of those greed tonics and ingesting a tad too much of crack crude. Our doctors tell us that moderation is the key to staying healthy, both physically and mentally. But it appears as if our poor Mr. Gramm and most of his colleagues have indulged in excesses of everything.

Obviously he and the GOP are evidently completely unaware of the plight of many if not most of the American people.

Mr. Gramm, with all due disrespect, you are the one who is whining. What is your problem? Haven’t you accumulated enough wealth in your lifetime already? Or do you need more, can’t get it and so it’s our fault? Do you have an addiction problem?

It is you, sir, who should stop the whining Senator. Crawl out of your bubble in Fantasy Land. Feel real pain and suffering. Let your credit card max out while you are buying groceries to feed your family or purchasing gas to get to work. Pack up and move because you cannot afford to keep your home. Borrow money to pay your light bill. Go to the doctor, find out you have a chronic disease that requires medication costing $200.00 per month. And you do not have health care insurance. And this is only the tip of an iceberg of suffering. Come on Phil, come out a do a bit slumming with we the real people.

The stark reality is, Senator, that you and yours need immediate psychiatric intervention for Severe Narcissistic and Delusional Disorder. I hate to be the first in the world outside of your bubble to break it to you, sir, but you and Party members are not kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, barons, baronesses or lord nor ladies. The American people are not your subjects.

We know now that your happiness Kool-Aid is toxic.

There is an election in November at which time the American people will pay your Republican colleagues in office a social call.

Your Animal House is coming down.

Not convinced? Check out a little Animal House event
right here You probably will not see this story covered in the MSM, by the way, so I urge you to click on the link.

Someone Call a Doctor, Please! The GOP Has Gone Wacko

2008-06-30T16:39:00.001-04:00

From an overdose of its very own sleaze.

Republican madness became more severe last week when it came up with its ridculous and desperate narrative to paint Senator Barack Obama as an arrogant clone of George W. Bush. According to Maureen Dowd in her editorial in The New York Times More Phony Myths last week, Karl Rove said:

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

Dowd saw right through Rove:

Actually, that sounds more like W.

Sigmund Freud must be rolling in his grave. The party is outing itself. Freud would call such a wacko statement “projection.” Anyone who studied Psych 101 will remember what projection means. If it has been as long for you as it has been for me since you took the course, below is a quick refresher from Wikipedia.

In psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions to others. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them. The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud, and for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as "Freudian Projection"

Republicans must be suffering from acute, severe and desperate projection b/c they have actually expressed and have done some pretty unacceptable things. And their conscious minds have given free expression to more than a little pathology that may have lurked in their subconscious.

It must really, really tough to be a Republican these days. It is an election year and the party, after 8 years of the worst U.S. Presidential Administration in recent history, is obviously in dire straits. Now that little over 20% of Americans approve of George W. Bush and his Administration, it is no wonder the party has become so desperate and is therefore trying to pin its sins, crimes, corruption and incompetence on Democratic candidates.

The Texas Republican Party is obviously taking its orders from Rove because the state’s party chair recently sent a rather deranged letter to party members. Indeed, the Texas GOP is attempting to protect the W. rubber-stamping, boot licking, do-nothing for Texans Senator John Cornyn by scaring the living daylights out of its membership. The loony letter depicted Rick Noriega as a liberal evil doer who will do everything that is just horrible if he is elected.

Noriega is a liberal’s liberal who believes the federal government knows best, that all decisions should be made from command central in Washington, D.C.

Translation: John Cornyn has been a rubber stamp for George W. Bush for over 7 years and his lack of integrity and courage is one of the reason’s things have gone so horribly wrong for the U.S. and Texas. John Cornyn has supported W. at least 97% of the time. Cornyn, a Vietnam War draft evader, does not have what it takes to stand up to a bullying President who prefers a dictatorship to democracy.

Drunk with power and as arrogant as it can be, the Democrats are convinced that the federal government knows how to spend your money better than you do.

Translation: Senator Cornyn has stood by W. while he has all but bankrupted the U.S. with his and his Party’s horrendous and catastrophic debacle called Iraq. The economy is in sewer and there are 47 uninsured Americans in this country because, thanks to job outsourcing, lost homes and a bad economy, they cannot afford to pay for health care insurance. Senator Cornyn did not lift a finger to ease the burden of his constituents.

It is going to take a rapid response truth team and roving massive Truth Squad to counteract Liberal Democratic Lies with our Conservative Republican Truth.

This is projection gone mad.

It will take a massive media blitz on our part to contradict the ugly lies perpetuated by the shameless, hypocritical and power-crazed Democrats.

Translation: The Conservative Republican Truth Squad is the Lying Squad. Conservative Truth has been Conservative Mendacity. Liberal Democratic lies are Republican lies. The media blitz under way is a Republican one whose sole objective is to scare the living daylights out of the American people. When not fear mongering, the GOP will trot out its character smearing hit men to demonize Democratic candidates.

John Cornyn is a pathetic hypocrite when he says he supports our troops, our children, that he has compassion for elderly and less fortunate residents because he voted against the GI Bill, SCHIP and most recently against Medicare. The Texas Medical Association did not withdraw its endorsement of John Cornyn without good reason.
According to an article in the Houston Chronicle on Saturday:

The Texas Medical Association political committee on Friday withdrew its support for the re-election of Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn because he voted against a bill to stop a planned 10.6 percent cut in doctors' Medicare payments.

Medical association officials said the cut, which is set to take effect July 1, will force them to choose between their finances and their elderly patients.

Cornyn said he voted against the measure because it was a partisan ploy and "election-year grandstanding" by Democrats rather than a real effort to solve the problem.

The physicians group began the day criticizing both Cornyn and senior U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for their votes against the bill on Thursday.

Association President Dr. Josie R. Williams of Paris said they "chose to protect insurance companies profits instead of protecting our patients' health."

By the end of the day, the association's political committee, TEXPAC, had withdrawn its backing of Cornyn, saying its board was "outraged."

I am glad Texas physicians have learned something about John Cornyn that his constituents have known for some time.

A complete break with rationality occurred when the Chair insisted the Democratic candidates will play according to Karl Rove's personal political political play book. This is where the Chair truly outed her own party.

Shadowy 527 groups, sinister PACs and sleazy committees are beginning to hatch dastardly plans. They don’t care what they say, who they ruin or how they win in their quest unchallenged power. Their hateful ads will be so bitter, cynical, desperate and hysterical, they make your skin crawl.

The Texas Republican Party’s Chair letter reminds me of Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth who could not wash the blood from her hands no matter how hard she tried.

The GOP is terrified of its overall record, Cornyn's abysmal voting history and his cozy relationships with corporate interests. It fears Rick Noriega because he is a man of integrity, honesty and substance. Rick Noriega has walked the walk and this scares the Cornyn groupies the most.

As far as creepiness is concerned nothing could make anyone’s skin crawl more than the crimes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Nothing could be more dastardly and hateful than lying to the American people about Iraq. The lie is responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 soldiers, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including children and thousands of maimed soldiers.

Nothing could be more dastardly and hateful than letting hundreds of Hurricane Katrina victims drown.

Nothing could be more hateful and dastardly than attempts to slash or deny benefits of those who are fighting Bush’s wars.

Nothing could be more hysterical than the GOP’s former and ridiculous color coded fear alerts. As far as ruining people, the GOP did just that to an undercover CIA Agent, Valerie Plame because her husband knew Bush was lying about Iraq. In fact nothing could be more hysterical and desperate than the Republicans themselves.

Chris Bowers of Open Left pretty much nailed what the Party has become.

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

The Republican Party has gone over the cliff.

The long and painful tragedy is ending. The curtains are closing. The lights are getting brighter.

You can wake up now if you have been dosing.

We can go home soon and back to the America we once knew.

Hope is in sight but the fight is far from over yet.

Son of Late Religious Right Minister Defends Reverend Wright.

2008-03-20T10:14:00.001-04:00

I read the most extraordinary article yesterday on The Huffington Post written by Frank Schaeffer who is the son of the late Reverend Frances Schaeffer. Essentially Mr. Schaeffer (the son) insists Reverend Wright is being demonized for remarks that are not too unlike those expressed by his father in earlier years. The difference of course is that Reverend Schaeffer’s remarks were considered heroic by the Republican Party of Reagan, Bush I and Ford at the time while today had the same words been spoken by Reverend Wright they would be considered treasonous.

Mr. Schaeffer points to the obvious double-standard for Reverend Wright.

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr..

Mr. Schaeffer goes on to cite incendiary samples of his father's writings on civil disobedience from his book The Christian Manifesto. This book, according to the son is an “American-bashing” book.

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Mr. Schaeffer exposes the anti-American message preached by the Christian Right in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

He then points to the blatant hypocrisy of the Christian Right.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

The entire article can be read below.
”Obama’s Minister Committed ‘Treason’ But When My Father Said the Same Thing He was a Republican Hero

Texas Vietnam War Dodger Cornyn Demands Decorated Veteran Noriega’s Military Records.

2008-02-17T16:32:00.006-05:00

Now why would our distinguished junior Senator from the great state of Texas want to examine the military records of the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Lt. Col. Rick Noriega?

For what purpose?

I think we all can guess at the reason. Let’s put it this way. Cornyn dodged the Vietnam War when he could have served in the military, but he instead actively sought a way out. Lt. Col. Noriega, on the other hand, enlisted in the National Guard in the 1980’s in response to the Iranian hostage crisis. He later served in Afghanistan as a result of 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror.

But this is an election year and it obviously has dawned on Cornyn that he had chosen to shirk his walk while Lt. Col. Noriega has walked his. And so now we have a threatened and scared Republican Senator who will fabricate smear for the sole purpose of saving his own scared and sorry derriere.

I don’t think any of us will ever forget the relentless and unconscionable swift boating of John Kerry in 2004, who unlike Bush, did serve in Vietnam. And Bush supporters smeared Kerry mercilessly for it. Yes, folks, this is the sick, twisted and toxic manner in which Republicans and their supporters thrive. The pathetic cowards will smear and demonize decorated war heroes. GOP smear mongers have no honor. They don’t even know its meaning.

Like W., Texas U.S. Senator Cornyn did not serve in the Vietnam War. Both men were of military age at the time and as we know, both are right wing war hawks today. And yet neither was willing to fight in a war themselves when they had every opportunity to do so. While W. his behind his Daddy’s clout and buddies to dodge Vietnam, Cornyn bailed out by using a loophole in the law.

Clueless about the hard and real consequences of warfare, an inept Mr. Bush distracted us from the real war on terror by fabricating an unnecessary debacle called Iraq. His equally oblivious and war dodging soul mate, Mr. Cornyn has blindly and routinely supported W. in his irresponsible quest that has undermined our military as well as our national security. 70% of Americans believe Iraq is a mistake and not worth the price. So much for putting chicken hawks in high positions of power that involve decision making about warfare, our military or our national security. Not to mention the inconvenient truth about our now busted and seriously overdrawn national piggy bank.

It is apparently so easy for swaggering war dodging chickens to send others off into the killing and maiming fields and squander our national treasure while the chickens roost safely at home completely insulated by bastions of personal financial protection and fortresses of political power.

A couple of months ago progressive bloggers, Vince Leibowitz, Hal Heitman, and I put our keyboards together to do a little research on Cornyn’s military history, or rather, the lack thereof. We knew given Cornyn’s age that it is likely he had to have participated in the mandatory Vietnam War draft lotteries of the 1970’s During the time in which so many men Cornyn’s age were drafted into military service we wanted to know why the Senator was neither drafted nor did he enlist.

Vince had discovered an article written in the San Antonio Express News on October 20, 2002 (Section A, page 12) that revealed Cornyn avoided the Vietnam War draft by obtaining a student deferment in 1970.

In 1970, Cornyn requested and received a student deferment from the draft, which was abolished shortly before he graduated in 1973.

"There was a lot of soul-searching going on and a lot of questions about our nation's role in the world," he said. "Ultimately, I turned out to be pretty much a chip off the old block."

I’d say there was a lot of soul searching all right. Cornyn chose to shirk the walk. Chip off the old block? How so? According to Senator Cornyn’s web site his father is a former B17 pilot in WWII and he served in the Air Force for 31 years.

Actually, the fact that Cornyn received a deferment in 1970 is kind of odd given that student deferments were supposed to have come to a screeching halt in 1970. The entire rationale for the draft lottery was to even the playing field for those being called into service. Prior to the lottery student deferments were possible for those enrolled full-time in four year colleges/universities who maintained average/passing GPAs.

Our interest in this issue peaked when strangely, as Vince had discovered, the statement in the San Antonio Express conflicted with one written in the December 14, 2007 issue of the Texas Observer by Jan Reid. In the article about Mr. Noriega’s military service (“Boots on the Ground”) the author had stated Mr. Cornyn was too young to have served during the Vietnam War.

Too young? Vince, Hal and I knew better. Hal, like Cornyn, was of military age at the time and he had to participate in the Vietnam War draft lottery himself.

I am also a baby boomer whose own brother, born the year before Cornyn and one of my brothers-in-law, born a year after Cornyn, also had to go through the draft lotteries.

So, what is Cornyn’s story?

Hal dug through the Selective Service archives and learned that Cornyn did indeed go through the draft lottery system in 1971 and he drew number 28, which is a very low one. You see, those with numbers 0-95 were to have been called into service.

Why did Cornyn go through the draft lottery in 1971 if he received a supposed deferment in 1970?

The fact of the matter is, back in the Vietnam War days deferments were next to impossible to obtain for the young men who followed their fathers into the trades, or for those who did not have the financial resources at the time to attend school. These are the groups that bore the brunt of the draft and most were shipped to Vietnam immediately after basic training. Far too many returned home in body bags.

Fortunately there are times in America when people cry out for justice and fairness for all. During those turbulent Vietnam War times the public grew outraged because so many of the working class and poor citizens were shipped off to the killing fields while the wealthier young men could escape that fate by enrolling and remaining in a university or college. Many of our lawmakers at the time had served in the military themselves and they understood the public’s rage and frustration. And so after enormous public pressure, the draft lottery evolved in an effort to add a degree of fairness to the draft. Here is a snippet on its mission and how the lottery was supposed to have worked.

To make the lottery as fair as possible, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a unique random calendar and number selection program for Selective Service. Using this random selection method for birthdays, each day of the year is selected by computer in a random manner, and that date is placed in a capsule. The capsules are then loaded in a large drum on a random basis. By the same method, numbers from 1 to 365 (366 for men born in a leap year) are also selected in a random fashion, placed in capsules, and the capsules are placed into a second drum. The process, repeated a second time, results in two sets of drums. Official observers certify that the capsule-filling and drum-loading were conducted according to established procedures. This certification is secured to each drum; they are sealed and placed in secure storage. Should a lottery be conducted, one of the first actions would be an inspection of these stored drums and the selection of a set to be used in the lottery.

So much for the NIST’s mission of fairness where Cornyn is concerned.

Because Mr. Number 28 Cornyn avoided the draft.

Last night while writing this diary, I received an email from Hal. As a result of his persistent research efforts he finally discovered how Senator Cornyn had ducked the draft.

According to Hal:

Even though the lottery was instituted in 1969, and meant to level the playing field and deny young men the opportunity to avoid military service by going to college, people were still allowed to apply for and were granted education deferments, aka 2-S deferments, up until September 1971. These deferments did not vaporize, they were held in force after 1971. This is how Cornyn was able to maintain his student deferment while others in his age group went to Vietnam.

So, a man who cowered behind a 2-S deferment has the arrogance to demand the military records of decorated veteran Rick Noriega?

I am convinced that Vietnam War dodging Senator John Cornyn fully intends to swift boat Lt. Col. Noriega and his service in Afghanistan.

If the junior Senator from the great state of Texas thinks that we Texas Democrats are going to let him, Rove and members of the GOP smear a Texas war veteran and demean his military service, these boys and girls have another thing coming.

Texas Democrats don’t let Texas Republican Chicken Hawks smear Texas war heroes.

Texas Democrats, and any revolted and sickened Republican who may be reading this blog, I urge you to go to Lt. Col. Noriega’s website to sign the petition against Senator Cornyn’s swift boat attacks. Let us put a final end to the Republican hate machine that is fueled by personal smear, sleaze and slime. This machine is hostile to us as a people and only serves to hurt. Hate cannot engender anything good, positive, uplifting or worthwhile.

A special note of thanks to Vince Leibowitz and Hal Heitman who contributed research materials for this diary, and to Randy Erb, for his input and for his service and contributions as a Vietnam War Veteran and former draft counselor. And a big thank you and hugs to my brother and one of my brothers-in-law who went through the draft lotteries as full-time college students in excellent academic standing, with no deferments available to them at the time.

Another person whom I don’t even know also inspired me to write this piece. He or she deserves a rather extraordinary applause for his or her heroism, integrity and bravery. Let all of us in the Democratic Party give our deepest and most heartfelt thanks to real hero who donated a portion of his or her re-enlistment bonus to support Rick Noriega.

From a comment posted by a real American hero Daily Kos on February 15, 2008.

just made it a nice round $28,100.

People who never served don't get to swiftboat my brothers and sisters.

I've got about $500 left from my re-enlistment bonus. I was going to save up to build a new PC, but getting Democratic Veterans into office is more important right now. by soonergrunt on Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 04:58:35 PM PST

There was a time, not so very long ago, when Americans used to be more like “Soonergrunt” and less like Cornyn, Bush, Rove and Co.

Senator Cornyn Stands by His Man on FISA Bill

2008-02-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

G.W. Bush may be at a 34% or lower approval rating and yet our U.S. Senator John Cornyn continues to stand by the loser man time after time. W. has been under a 50% rating now for longer than any U.S. President including Richard Nixon, but oh well, why would clueless Cornyn care? And now our Senator is serving once again as a rubber stamp for W. in supporting the illegal warrantless wiretapping bill.

As is typical with the Republican Party, Cornyn plays the fear card on Islamic terrorists in order to justify his fascistic stand on FISA. You know, Senator, Rudy Boy spent millions of dollars and a boatload of weeks in Florida trying to scare the devil out of retired voters there about Islamic terrorism.

The Senator may be unaware of the fact that Rudy Boy was run out of Florida on a rail with his tail tucked tightly between his legs. Now the cowardly fool is clinging like a leach to McCain’s coattails. I guess he scared himself. No one is buying the fear mongering anymore, dudes. Not even those you think you can scare the most. It would be far more compassionate and productive for you bullies to use your millions to support the healthcare benefits for poor children rather than terrify the elderly and retirees.

Earlier this week,Vince Leibowitz of Capitol Annex
mentioned an article written on Texas Insider in which Senator Cornyn made clear his stand on FISA.

America’s elected leaders have a duty to keep the American people safe. We know that the ability to obtain the right information at the right time is critically important in our struggle against radical Islamic terrorists...."

Yeah right.

With all due respect, Mr. Cornyn, it is also the duty of our elected leaders to serve the people whom they represent and to protect our Constitutional rights. The warrantless wiretapping of American citizens is not only unconstitutional, it is also a mechanism only a police state would use. We elect Presidents in this great nation thank you. We do not install dictators or crown kings.

Mr. Cornyn, as our elected U.S. Senator, is obligated to serve his constituents, not to serve as the rubber stamp for one of the worst Presidents elected in recent history. While 77% of Americans believe that this country is headed in the wrong direction, Mr. Cornyn continues to serve Mr. Bush and his policies. Wake up Texans. Our Senator is not and will not serve us. If re-elected he’ll block all legislation that is not supportive of special interest groups, lobbyists and big oil, insurance and his donors. He does not care about us. He will erect a wall against universal health care just like he voted against the SCHIP program. He will fight increased taxes for the upper 1% with every fiber of his being. Cornyn will do his best to undermine any legislation that attempts to regulate our irresponsible banking and financial institutions. Nor will he lift a finger to put the brakes on the shocking rates of home foreclosures. Cornyn will say global warming does not exist. Worse, we can look forward to wars for the next 100 years merely to keep the Republican’s industrial/military complex humming along.

I've quite frankly had enough with the Republican Party’s war hawk fear spinning 24/7, thank you. Look where these war hawks and their fear spewing machinery got us in Iraq. Talk about one hell of a mess. I won’t even mention our crippling federal deficit. Speaking of which, does China own us yet?

Senator, we are tough and we are brave and we will not be terrified by our leaders who rarely tell us the truth and who obviously refuse to serve us. We are also not as stupid as you would like to believe, Sir. Your party has called those of us who dared to disagree with the President’s hair brained scheme in Iraq traitors. And now, Sir, I am telling you and your Republican Party of Rubber Stamps that you have unconscionably and unforgivably betrayed the American people. It is you who are the Republican Party of Traitors.

Yes, it is a very sad time in America, thanks to the Bush Administration.

But we should not despair despite the likes of our traitors in power.

We do have choices thanks to a process called an election.

This year brings Texans, especially, significant hope and an escape route out of our hole in Republican hell because Democrats have a jewel of a candidate to offer who will represent all of the people of Texas. We should thank our lucky stars that Mr. (and Lt. Col.) Rick Noriega is willing to step up. Let all of us pull together to put an end to the lies, the fear, the smear mongering. Let us unite as ordinary and everyday people to get our state and country back where it should be. Let us also not allow ourselves be manipulated by the GOP vicious attacks and smear campaigns against our candidates. The only way to fight bullies is to beat them back, for bullies are cowards at heart. I don’t know about you, but it sure is easy for me to beat up on traitors and cowards. It can also be a boatload of fun.

Republicans to Pump $250 Million into Smear Assault Machine to Attack Democratic Candidates

2008-01-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

(This is a synthesis of comments I posted previously on the Burnt Orange Report. The piece is also cross posted on Texas Kaos)

We Democrats are going to have to work very hard to win in 2008, despite the promising opinion poll results for our party and the Republican's abysmal record of failure on each and every level the party has touched. Remember how W. has turned to shit everything he touched when he was in the private sector? Well, now W. and his did the same thing to our very way of life.

To briefly summarize, for those who may have forgotten a fact or two about W.'s terrible legacy, let me provide a crash refresher.

Everyone on the planet on knows that W., enabled by rubber stamps such as our Texas Republicans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, managed to get us into the worst foreign policy debacle, (Iraq, of course), in recent history. We recently learned that it is Pakistan, not Iraq or Iran, that is the most dangerous place in the world and yet we remain mired down in a war that didn't have to be fought in the first place.

77% of Americans believe our country is headed in the wrong direction now and 64% of us believe we should not have gone to war with Iraq. W. Is at 34% approval - worse than Tricky Dick Nixon.

The economy is a train wreck lurching at rocket speed into a recession, and, thanks to no grown up supervision on the part of our nation's leaders, the banking industry is crashing. Our able leaders did not take notice until their good buddies in the financial markets started hemorrhaging cash; some of it likely belonging to our leaders. Tragically, Americans continue to lose their homes due to the sub-prime fiasco, another result of the appalling absence of government oversight. W.'s global and national credibility is non-existent and so his "stimulus package" failed to convince investors that it would do the trick. The global stock markets continued is downward dive bomb today. We'll see about the U.S. ones tomorrow morning.

We are losing in Afghanistan, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush White House and more of our nation's jobs have been outsourced than ever before. We have no viable immigration policy, no border or national security, either, for that matter thanks to a do-nothing money grubbing Congress 2000-2006. Our nation's infrastructure is falling apart at the seams. Remember New Orleans? It still looks like a war zone thanks to a Bush Administration that obviously despises poor people.

Because of its abysmal failures, the Republicans do not want to loosen their grip on power. This is due to a number of factors, financial outcomes likely loom large, but I suspect the GOP's worst fear is transparency. You see, when the Democratic Party wins a solid majority, the American people will learn the truth about and the far-reaching consequences of the GOP's dirty, sneaky crimes and lies. I'd venture to guess a large number of upstanding Republicans could end up in federal criminal courts. Some may even be tried for war crimes against humanity. Some may get busted for treason. Yes, indeed, the stakes are really high for the crooks in power.

The stakes are so very high that fear must be driving the Republicans to the brink of collective hysteria if not insanity.

What do Republicans do when they are afraid? We know well what they do. The GOP bullies will launch vicious personal attacks based on lies, smear and fear against all who threaten them, namely Democrats.

And so, true to form, some high rollin' Republicans will pump $250. million into their smear attack machine to take down Democratic candidates in state and local elections.

Here is a snippet about the assault machine's players: (The link to the source is below.)

To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.

You see, the GOP is trying to build a protective wall of gridlock within our federal government. With gridlock, it will be tougher to bust the criminals. It will be a fight to roll back the tax cuts to the richest of the rich; end the fraudulent war in Iraq (Halliburton has too much to lose); and implement national health care for all Americans.

This group of high rolling rich and powerful Republicans make the Swift Boaters look like pre-school boys throwing sand in the schoolyard sandbox.

Folks, if you are not involved with the Democratic Party on any level, now is the time to do something. Not tomorrow, not in an hour. NOW. Our local and state elections are going to be crucial this year.

If we do not stand up and fight the thugs in power with all we have, we will deserve whatever the future brings our way. We may not have millions or even hundreds of dollars to donate like high rolling Republicans do. But we do have principles and core values that are far superior to those of the Party of Lying Crooks. More people identify with our values than Republican ones. We are the party with the big tent that truly embraces diversity and altruism.

Our democratic principles are certainly worth the fight, aren't they?

Please help us extinguish the power of the crooks. Let's toss the lot of them out of our districts, our cities, states and nation's Capitol. They don't like us, they don't represent us and they despise the American way of life as we know it. Roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to win.

GOP to Pump $250. into Assault Machine to Attack Democrats

Why Texans Should Fire U.S. Senator Cornyn

2008-01-01T22:49:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my diaries Texas War Hawk Senator Cornyn a Draft Dodger? and Why Texans Deserve Far Better than John Cornyn, Part I, I asserted that rubber stamp for W. and war hawk Cornyn shirked military service during the Vietnam War when he had every opportunity to serve. While a college student, he had drawn a very low draft lottery number and yet he somehow managed to hide behind a student deferment when such were not supposed to be available at the time. Senator Cornyn likes to talk big and tall about a global war on terror as long as he and his don’t do the fighting.

Part II discloses information on draft dodging Cornyn’s rather interesting rise to political power in Texas. The way I see it, Cornyn’s candidacies were essentially both enabled and purchased by a group of the Texas GOP rich, politically connected and very powerful people.

I am presently reading a book written by Mr. Jack Huberman about the GOP that has reawakened my understanding of Cornyn’s rise to power here. I am glad I discovered this book because I frequently find myself wondering how on earth did we get stuck with such a poor excuse for a U.S. Senator? The guy does not care to represent us nor does he make any attempt to even hide the fact that he is obviously the go-to guy for his corporate buddies, donors and special interest supporters. He talks out of both sides of his mouth on just about every issue ranging from benefits for our military (Cornyn says he supports our military but he votes to slash funding for benefits), to the border wall (no border wall in south Texas, he declared, and yet Cornyn turned around and voted for a border wall). I guess the Senator’s arrogance and contempt for most of his constituents leads him to believe the majority of us are as dumb as doornails that are too powerless and too poor to challenge him.

I suggest Mr. Cornyn may wish to revisit his view of his poor and powerless ‘constituents.”

Yes, folks, Mr. Huberman’s book chapter on John Cornyn is a very interesting one indeed.

(The GOP Haters Handbook: 378 Reasons Never to Vote for the Party of Reagan, Nixon and Bush Again)

Though the title of the book is rather provocative and blatantly forthcoming in its political leaning, the author’s research is solid, certainly as much or more so than a conservative author. I also believe Huberman’s research is more factually revealing than that done by many of our GOP loving and suck up journalists and political writer hacks in Texas.

Huberman’s book chapter on Cornyn reminded me that it was Rove who actually made Cornyn. Rove ran Cornyn’s campaign for Texas Supreme Court in 1996. Later, Rove also convinced Cornyn to run for Texas Attorney General. Cornyn acquiesced and found himself elected, in both cases, thanks to Rove’s campaign tactics and “abilities.” After two successful wins, Rove decided to install Cornyn as the junior Senator from Texas in the U.S. Senate. Cornyn won again. According to Mr. Huberman, Rove did what Rove does to clear the GOP path to run Cornyn for the U.S. Senate. I think we all appreciate what this means in Texas. The Bush family, including George H.W., Barbara, W. and Laura stepped up and raised millions for Cornyn’s campaign for U.S. Senate. So did Karen Hughes, another member of the Texas GOP of rich, powerful and politically joined at the hip with W. folks.

I strongly believe that were it not for the criminal incompetence of the Bush Administration, completely enabled by Alberto Gonzales’ blind support and loyalty to Bush that drove his role as the U.S. Attorney General, and had not Rove purged millions of official emails, the Turd Blossom would most assuredly and deservedly be occupying a cell in a federal prison right now. Under a lawful Administration, Rove would, at the very least, be very tied up in criminal court and not off peddling his book extolling the “virtues” of language distortion and alternative realities in an effort to bamboozle and mislead the American people.

I don’t know about you, folks, but I think we deserve far, far better than a Senator who is the minion and fabrication of a treasonous liar who has demonstrated a ruthless contempt for democratic principles.

Cornyn has a demonstrated problem with democracy, too. This will not surprise anyone who has received one of his insulting and arrogant letters-of-lecture, should a constituent dare to question the Senator about anything. I myself have more than just a few of Cornyn’s dictatorial responses to my questions about issues ranging from the rationale for going to war with Iraq, hideous TORTURE, the Abramoff corruption scandal, the U.S. Attorney firings to the firing of a Texas teacher for merely having sent an email that mentioned evolution. Cornyn’s responses are always the same memorized GOP talking point kool-aid laced poison. I may as well be writing to a pre-programmed robot that essentially spews” I don’t care what you think about anything. You do not matter.”

Who needs this kind of non-existent “representation” in a so called democratic republic?

My suspicions about Cornyn’s thinly veiled fascistic and dictatorial tendencies is confirmed by Huberman who wrote that the junior Senator from Texas, when asked in 2006 about GOP disunity on immigration in the middle of an election year, Cornyn replied

“Well, you know, that’s the problem in America, We are always having elections.” (Page 98 under “Democracy.”)

There you have it, folks, Cornyn stands on record as being as anti-democratic as a politician can get. He doesn’t like elections in a democratic republic. The Texas GOP caging machinery is probably working 24/7 in order to suppress as many legitimate voters as it can in a desperate attempt to cling to power in 2008. The GOP did it in Florida in 2000, which is well known and documented, and it is openly engaged in caging right now in Kansas. The GOP chairman there boasted about the illegal caging of voters in an email that he, uh oh, forgot to purge.

DUH. If the GOP did it in Florida and is openly caging voters in Kansas, it is a no brainer that it is happening in Texas, too.

But this is only part of an overwhelming and predictable pattern of GOP corruption that is fueled by its collective and relentless insatiable will to power, as far as we in Texas are concerned.

Cornyn’s rather unsavory past dealings and cozy relationships with lobbyists, some of whom are now convicted felons, make the Senator appear more like a Mafioso go-to-guy-to-pull-off-a-job than one deserving of a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Huberman’s work reminded me of the time when Cornyn, while serving as the Texas Attorney General, led a successful effort to shut down the Texas Tigua Indian tribe’s casino. Cornyn did this in close cooperation with crooks Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon (scumbag Delay’s former spewer of lies), and another sanctimonious, self-serving GOP hypocrite, Ralph Reed.

After Cornyn shut down the Tigua’s casino efforts, Abramoff and Reed turned around and charged the tribe $4.2 million to lobby lawmakers to reopen their casino.

Cornyn denied any contact with the crooks on the issue, and yet emails from Reed to Abramoff, according to Huberman, indicate Cornyn was not a clueless or innocent bystander when this shenanigan took place.

In an email from Reed to Abramoff (Page 98 “The Abramoff-GOP Corruption Cesspool.”) ‘I’m scheduled to talk to Cornyn today’ “and” ‘I think we should budget for an ataboy for cornyn’.”

True to a right wing conservative’s intrinsic hypocritical nature, our Texas Republican, so-called God fearing and anti-gambling U.S. Senator Cornyn received campaign contributions from the now convicted felon Abramoff and Las Vegas casino interests.

Do I need to provide links to printer friendly barf bags at this point?

Since we are not as dumb and stupid as the Texas GOP would like to think, I personally believe no informed person in Texas is in the least bit surprised by these gentle little reminders of the historical and political facts surrounding the junior Senator’s rise to power in Texas.

Some of you may also recall that our junior Senator, while serving as Attorney General here, acted as a tacit yet complicit supporter of Halliburton’s successful attempts to disenfranchise its employees of their legal rights to due process. Sound painfully familiar? Check out the article written by Stephanie Mencimer for Mother Jones.com entitled ”Cheney Justice?”

Excerpts:

So the commission contacted the sheriff and had him serve Cheney with a subpoena for the documents. Rather than turn over the documents, however, Halliburton shredded them. (Wall eventually deposed the woman who did the shredding,.) In a traditional civil lawsuit, judges have wide latitude to impose sanctions against a defendant for destroying evidence. They can tell a jury to assume that the information was extremely damaging to the defense. They can impose fines. They can find for the plaintiff and toss out the rest of the case to punish the other side, regardless of how strong the case was.

But when Pennington later went before the Halliburton arbitrator, the arbitrator dismissed his case, saying he had failed to produce sufficient evidence to support his claims, which, of course, was difficult to do after Halliburton had shredded part of his personnel file. The arbitrator made no mention of the evidence destruction. Wall protested the evidence destruction to the Texas Attorney General, Republican John Cornyn, who is now a U.S. senator, but Wall says Cornyn's office never investigated and no one was ever held accountable for it.

According to this article, it seems that the legal outcome for the multiple rape victim, Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones, is not a very promising one for this criminally and heinously abused young woman.

The GOP obviously knows no shame. It has no moral compass whatsoever, though most of its members, especially in Texas, will proclaim that they are “Christian” who embrace “Christian” and ‘family” values.

Tell that to the constituents of certain GOP leaders who hang out in men’s public restrooms. These are the goons who demonize gay people while indulging in gay sex themselves, thank you. The pattern of behavior here is very typical and can be applied to just about any political stand upheld by the GOP, like draft dodging hawks will worship hot and bloody wars, as long as they don’t have to fight in them. They embrace torture but would not subject themselves to even a harmless experiment where the teeniest tad of a jolt of anything is employed. No, folks, these people are heartless and yellow livered cowards.

Most GOP members are also blatant and unabashed racists, apparently, as we witnessed during the TV news clips of real time events that occurred during and in the aftermath of Katrina. The GOP was caught with its proverbial pants down here and the American people learned the truth about the party’s love for our poor and disadvantaged.

And the so called law abiding and enforcement loving GOP, including those in Texas who lovingly embrace the ultimate punishment – the death penalty - another form of torture - will be caught with its collective pants down, once again, with its criminal voter caging efforts.

This un-American and morally bankrupted party has visited upon our nation an image and collective psyche that is completely devoid of even an iota of a value or principle remotely envisioned by our forefathers.

The people will speak in 2008.

Note: George B. Chamberlain contributed research materials for this diary.

The Texas Taliban Party, a.k.a. The Texas GOP

2007-12-05T11:19:00.000-05:00

Now that some of the Texas Taliban in DC, specifically Rove and Delay, got their slimy butts kicked out of DC, consequently and most unfortunately for Texans, the GOP Taliban are back at home in Texas to raid our Constitutional rights, freedoms and resources. I am telling you folks, these people are a national disease. They are desperados who realize their national gravy train has gone over the cliff and now they are fleeing back to their nesting place in order to find new venues to satisfy their addiction to money, power and greed. There is never enough money to satisfy these vultures’ lust for cash, power and control.

The American voters got it and tossed the GOP majority out of our Congress in 2006. The corrupted and incompetent GOP have racked up close to a trillion bucks in the unnecessary and immoral human calamity called Iraq. Yesterday we learned that W. and Cheney have been lying about and misleading us on Iran’s nuclear weapon program, knowing all along that Iran scrapped its weapons program years ago. And under the Bush Administration’s brilliant leadership our national debt now grows at $1 million per minute. As Dennis Kucinich has recently observed "We're borrowing money from China to finance the war in Iraq."

So much for W.’s Harvard MBA and Wolfie’s Yale Ph.D. I suppose that the best graduate education money can buy doesn’t make a lick of difference when we have greed mongering ideologues running the country who love to fight wars as long as they don’t have to do the fighting themselves.

Fortunately, the American voters got it and threw the bums out. But there are still far too many left in our Congress, including our own Texas lawmakers who have been sucking up to and enabling the worst President in recent U.S. history who is a pathological liar to boot.

We need to purge the Republican Party of Evil Crooks from our states’ offices in 2008. Of course, this will be a real challenge here b/c our state has been gerrymandered to smithereens and the GOP assumes that it owns Texas and can do whatever/whenever it wants anytime. There is little oversight and few questions are ever publicly posed about accountability. And when they are, the party bosses will bully and squelch all who dare to question anything remotely critical of the ruling party of thugs and thieves.

It is time to stand up to the bullies, folks. We know for certain that most of them are corrupt, inept and they have been lying and misleading us for years.

We deserve far, far better than this.

Our state’s newspapers, in many cases, are tacitly complicit and complacent enablers of the Texas GOP Taliban Party. How many letters will our state’s newspapers’ opinion editors publish that are written by readers who are critical of any GOP in office? I myself have written at least a hundred to my local paper, and only one has been published. But the paragraph critical of her royal majesty Senator Kay Rubber Stamping Bailey Hutchison was NOT included in the letter published, supposedly by me. I therefore don’t even bother to take the time to read the paper any more. Why would I waste my time if the paper is merely serving as a propaganda arm for the Texas GOP Taliban? Nope, I’ve fled to the Internet where one can read news from a vast number of resources and can state one’s opinion freely and openly, like I am doing right now.

It is simply amazing what one can learn on the Internet. And what I read each day just reinforces my suspicion that our local papers and media are joined at the hip with the Texas GOP Taliban Party.

If we do not stand up, folks, we will become another little Mexico or other form of banana republic where the wealth is concentrated among very few while the rest of the population has to scratch and claw to earn a living. Part-time jobs at the local Wal-Mart will become the high end and envied positions du jour if we are not careful.

Will Texans become the next generation of despised illegal migrants who must sneak el norte to Canada or back to the countries from which our ancestors immigrated? We won’t be eligible for jobs in all of the other states except for Mississippi because our schools are ranked 2nd to last in the U.S., thanks to the Texas Taliban who care so deeply about our children’s futures.

Think about it before you let yourselves be duped by anything coming from the mouth of a member of the Texas GOP Taliban.

Here are a couple of small snippets of what the Texas GOP Taliban does here and they get away with it thanks to no oversight whatsoever.

A science teacher was canned by a bushie for even mentioning “evolution.”

Teacher in Texas Canned for Mentioning Evolution

This little tidbit about our Dark Ages practices made it to the editorial section of the New York Times yesterday, too. Texans should be so proud.

The New York Times on Fired Texas Teacher

And uh oh, get ready for some real down and dirty criminal activity because the Texas GOP Taliban are apparently scared to the point of needing freighter sized loads of Depends over the prospect of losing elections, even here in the Banana GOP Republic of Texas.

I learned on the Internet (for such would never get published in Texas) that there is a scheme underway by the Texas GOP Taliban to disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of legitimate voters here. Yep, that’s right, folks. They are going to purge and scrub American citizens who are alive and not DEAD from the rolls and guess who these folks might be?

Texas GOP Will Deny Texans the Right to Vote

Do we need Jimmy Carter and the UN to oversee our elections here?

Enough is enough folks. It is time to take a stand and fight back. I wrote letters of outrage to our elected officials yesterday about both of the issues above. We need to hammer them with inconvenient truths and realities until they 1. Either have to act upon our demands or 2. Resign from office. After all, these elected officials supposedly work for us. Perhaps they need a brutal reminder of this little fact.

Finally, when you go to the voting poll, if your name has not been scrubbed, don’t for crying out loud vote for a Texas Taliban. To do so is voting against your own self-interest and preservation. If your name has been scrubbed, contact Voters Rights advocacy groups immediately. Write to our elected officials in Texas and D.C. and scream bloody murder. Call the media and demand an interview. File a lawsuit against the Texas GOP Taliban Party and sue the crap out of them. They hate parting from their loot more than anything else.

Finally, to reinforce the notion that the bushies have been willfully lying to and misleading us for years, below is Seymour Hersch's revelation on how W. and Cheney have known about the NIE findings on Iran's nuclear weapons program for a very long time.

I would say all rubber stamps for W. and Cheney on Iran, no matter their party affiliation, should be fired in 2008. It’s time for a sweeping and deep removal followed by an army of buckets, mops and vats of bacteria killing detergent to purge all of the filth from the halls of law, justice and honor where legislation should be written and passed for the people by the people.

Hersch Reveals Truth about W. and Cheney on Iran

The GOP Vote For Dictatorship, Against Democracy

2007-10-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

The entire lot of the Republican Party voted for an American styled dictatorship this week, in complete and total lock step, in our very own U.S. House of Representatives. I saw the episode unfold in real time before my very eyes on CSPAN. The voting tallies that appeared on the TV screen informed me of the ideology that relentlessly drives the neo-conservative movement in the U.S. today. Fact of the matter is the neo-conservative and present day Republican belief system has little in common with
the bare bones of democratic principles.

This week, our esteemed Republican lawmakers voted for principles that are typically intrinsic to a fascist styled dictatorship in which accountability and oversight are conveniently non-existent.

Republican lawmakers who view the world through precisely the same lens as W. and Cheney will fight to the death (ours, not theirs, thank you) to keep the American people terrified, uninformed and stupid through under funded schools. The Republicans, who both voted with W. and against SCHIP, and who also failed to join Democrats in overriding W’s unconscionable and contemptuous veto of the SCHIP bill has revealed its party’s true colors.

The GOP has failed to take the necessary steps in demanding accountability from its party’s propped up Iraqi government in which we have invested far, far too much American blood and treasure.

During the House debates on H. Res 734 this week that raised objections to the Administration’s withholding of information on corruption in Iraq, not one Republican voted for five of the bill’s resolutions.

Below are 4 of the 5 resolutions that every single Republican voted against:

Excerpts from H.Res 734 from The Gavel.com (see link below).

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that–
(1) as Congress considers the President’s request for over $150,000,000,000 more for the war in Iraq, it is essential that Congress and the people of the United States know the extent of corruption in the Iraqi government and whether corruption is fueling the insurgency and endangering members of the United States Armed Forces;
(2) it was wrong to retroactively classify portions of the report titled `Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq: U.S. Ministry Capacity Development Efforts Need an Overall Integrated Strategy to Guide Efforts and Manage Risk’, which was released by the Comptroller General of the United States at the hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on October 4, 2007, and other statements that are embarrassing but do not meet the criteria for classification;
(3) it is an abuse of the classification process to withhold from Congress and the people of the United States broad assessments of the extent of corruption in the Iraqi Government; and
(4) the directive that prohibits Federal Government officials from providing Congress and the people of the United States with `broad statements/assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption, including allegations that investigations were thwarted/stifled for political reasons’ should be rescinded.

According to CSPAN the 5th resolution was proposed to shield journalists from prosecution for failing to reveal their sources, except in rare and extreme cases regarding National Security. Every Republican voted against the shield law too.

Every Democrat voted Yes for all of the above with the exception of one Democrat who voted with Republicans on one resolution and two Democrats who voted with Republicans on another.

The appalling fraud in Iraq in terms of the criminal misuse of our hard earned U.S. taxpayer’s (i.e. you and me) dollars matters not one nano bit to the GOP. Tragically for we-the-suckers-who-foot-the-bill for the losing debacle in Iraq, our GOP lawmakers demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, how they are far more concerned about safeguarding the White House’s dictatorial and protective cover-up for Republican enabled corruption in Iraq.

This week I learned, thanks to CSPAN’s airing of our U.S. House of Representatives in action, how the State Department will retroactively classify information revealing the depths of the scandalous dissipation of our U.S. tax dollars and other heinous crimes committed by those whom the W. party of enablers have propped up in Iraq. As soon as our various Congressional Committees ask for pertinent documents relevant to Iraqi corruption issues, the documents are immediately sealed and classified.

What do the White House and the State Department have to hide from us?

Apparently a hell of a lot.

I suppose the real threat that faces the lovers of a Stalinesque style authoritarian rule in the GOP is the chilling realization that the party itself is as compromised, mired in corruption and as deadly incompetent as their criminal counterparts in Iraq. Are our fearless GOP leaders also willing accomplices in the theft of our dollars? Or are they simply clueless morons who have been fooled by power crazed bullies, murderers and thieves who are far more clever and calloused than their enablers in Washington?

Comments from some of our Democratic leaders, including Henry Waxman, on H. Res 734 can be viewed below on The Gavel.com.

The Gavel

Shame, Shame, Shame on America

2007-10-03T23:00:00.000-04:00

Our President has vetoed the SCHIP bill and many GOP lawmakers agree with W.

What a pathetically sad and embarrassing day for all of America. What kind of people have we become?

It is obvious to me that the GOP mantra du jour is "save the fetus, hate the born child" especially the child who is born into an economically disadvantaged or struggling family. Only a bunch of calloused, hypocritical, mean spirited and loathsome lawmakers would have voted against this bill.

Let's not forget whom these cruel monsters are when it is time to go to the voting polls. If they hate poor children, they also hate health care services for impoverished senior citizens, reduced interest college loans for middle and working class families, increased veteran's benefits and any program, for that matter, that would throw a life line to the working poor of this "rich" nation. No, these hypocrites instead support big oil, insurance, pharma and they fully embrace the military/industrial complex, i.e. Halliburton, Black Water, et al.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Shame on them and shame on us if we fail to exercise our right to vote. We must systematically fire the pitiful and spineless enablers of the worst President in U.S. history. These poor excuses for humans, much less lawmakers, do not deserve to represent us.

Anyone with a half brain knows the GOP stole Florida in 2000, thanks to the Supreme Court and its Daddy Bush appointees. Likewise happened once again in Ohio in 2004, compliments of huge contributions from Diebold and other GOP profiteers. Add to the mix Ohio’s Ken Blackwell’s voter suppression schemes, and voila! Rove’s lust for a permanent Republican majority became a reality.

Almost.

We the people showed meager support for the Worst’s alternatives in 2000 and 2004. Had we the voters showed more support for the party of the people, the powerful combination of the high court, big money and corrupted political hacks could have never in a day gotten away with a double coup d’etat.

We the people let it happen.

We “got it” and stepped up in 2006. But that was not near enough to stop the party of the war mongering profiteers who have shown their unveiled contempt for our nation’s under privileged children as well as their unconscionable lack of commitment to our troops who must serve inexcusably long tours of duty.

Are you ready to fight back?

Too busy? Too politically uninvolved? Well maybe you will find a snippet of time when you read the following articles du jour about our current state of political affairs.

W’s TIES TO BLACKWATER

Salon.com Bush and GOP Ties to Black Water

WAR FOREVER: THE GOP’S HEAVY LIFTING FOR THE WAR PROFITEERS

Tom Paine on Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

ON THE MORTGAGE MELTDOWN AND THE GOP’S DOMESTIC PROFITEERS

Paul Krugman of the NYT calls it Enron 2. How typical when there is no government regulation of anything.

Paul Krugman on Enron 2

BLACKWATER INVESTIGATES BLACKWATER AT THE GOP’S REQUEST

Josh Marshall on Parody Surge Hits Military Contractors in Iraq

THE GOP IS CAGING AND PURGING THE VOTER ROLLS IN TEXAS. BUT TEXAS LAWMAKERS WILL VOTE MULTIPLE TIMES

Yep, as we Texans know, hypocrisy is the norm among GOP lawmakers in this great state.

Texas Lawmakers Vote Multiple Times

SPREADING THE LOVE. HALLIBURTON’S INTERESTS IN BURMA

Cheney’s Halliburton in Burma

BUSH WHITE HOUSE SAYS WE DO NOT TORTURE TERRORISTS BUT GUESS WHAT? BUSH LIED AGAIN.

TORTURE IS OK ACCORDING TO THE BUSH GOP

The Accomplishments of President George W. Bush 2000-2007

2007-09-08T20:48:00.000-04:00

I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).

I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat, but I did it!!).

I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

I attacked and took over 2 countries.

I cut health care benefits for war veterans.

After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.

In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.

I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.

I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.

I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did).

I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.

I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.

I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.

I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, had a Chevron oil tanker named after her for a while.)

I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.

I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.

I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.

I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security

I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.

I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.

I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine
(Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.

I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

Source: Provided by Ken Deifik

The Legacy of King George W. Bush

For more on Republican corruption see also link to video HERE

Why I Will Never Vote Republican, Part II

2007-08-30T16:14:00.000-04:00

I had formatting problems posting this piece as one. (Please see Part I.)

Secondly, there is far too much Perv Gate going on within the GOP, especially with the conservative family values and gay bashing wing of the party. I am afraid to turn my TV on because there’s far too much lewd porn on the nightly news. What are our children to think?

Now we the American people know when a conservative politician starts bleating about family values and gay marriage, men and boys should avoid public men’s rooms, especially those in airports and parks. Brothel Madams should put out a boatload of help wanted ads. Pages and interns in DC need to flee home straightaway and mothers of little ones might want to pack a porta potty in the back of their cars.

Republicans excel at hypocrisy, too. Perv Gate is only a small part of their gifts and talents in this realm. Certain Senators in the Great State of Delay Gerrymandered Texas, for example, will bellow No Border Wall Will EVER Be Built in Texas. But then they will high tail it back inside the beltway and vote for a border wall. Senator John Cornyn did exactly this. And while our great Senators will pontificate about our troops and how we must support them, once again, back inside the beltway, they suck up to W. and vote for legislation that does the exact opposite, especially where funding is involved. One would think both Senators really despise our troops. It sure is tough living in a state where both U.S. Senators are derriere kissing rubber stamp sheep for a chicken hawk called W.

The rule of law does not apply to GOP and its buddies, appointees and hacks, either. That said, the rule book will be thrown at a GOP elected official IF one should fail to tell the party one has been very bad and naughty and hanging out in men’s rooms. If the GOP can't manipulate the message and do boatloads of damage control, it knows it is toast.

It is also quite obvious to we the little people that the GOP is above the law. It can do whatever it wants and get away with it. Scooter the Perjurer Libby got a pardon. Gonzo and Rove will too if they are charged with anything. Rove probably won’t be because Rove purged all of the emails and public records including the White House visitor’s log that likely would have incriminated him.

Speaking of Rove and the missing records in the White House visitor’s log, I wonder if male escort and fake reporter Jeff Gannon will follow him back to Texas. Yuck. I shudder at the very thought. We already have too much of a GOP infestation of sleaze down here as it is. DeLay still hangs here and the Texans in D.C. are fleeing back, one by one, though Gonzo might be held up a bit since the Justice Dept. is investigating his testimony to Congress.

Rove is already wreaking havoc on the lives of some Texans by master minding their firing. This is what the bushies do should anyone dare to disagrees with them or expose them for the crooks and liars that they are. As soon as Rove gets back there will no doubt be massive voter caging and purging going on in Texas before 2008, too.

”Attorney Claims Rove Had Role in Her Firing”

Sadly for us, Republicans hate the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution. Fascism is far more appealing to them.

Why? Rove can rig the firing of anyone he doesn't like in government for no legitimate reason. Same holds true for voter rolls across the nation. The Bushies can turn federal agencies into political operational arms of the GOP using all methods at their disposal, whether legal, illegal, or unethical with absolutely no accountability to the people.

Gonzo can call the rules governing the Geneva Convention “quaint,” blow them off and he did just that. In the short period of time Gonzo held office as U.S.A.G. he did all he could to shred the Constitution which lies in tatters. Now we can wiretap our citizens at home, including political foes. We can torture the daylights out of anyone we see fit, including political foes, too, no doubt. The DOJ has been gutted now that there is so much work for it to do.

Want to stay current on wire tapping? Check out the report below. Some have said our methods put Stalin and the former East German commies to shame.

Conservatives ought to just love this news. Enjoy the read. It’ll take your mind off of Perv Gate, at least for awhile.

FBI's Nationwide Eavesdropping Network

Now, one may also wish to follow up and stay current on W.s increased powers for domestic wiretapping.

Bush’s Increased Powers for Domestic Wiretapping

Finally, we are far less safe now than we have ever been in our recent history thanks to a GOP White House, Senate and Congress. The spin machines and propaganda arms for the GOP in the mainstream media will try to tell us otherwise. Only a blithering idiot would believe them.

America since 2001: Fascism at its Finest.

Why I Will Never Vote Republican Part I

2007-08-30T15:51:00.000-04:00

The reasons are numerous but here are just a few. (See Part II above this post.)

Republicans lie.

News about no WMD and no ties to Al-Qaeda in Iraq is old and stale. We had a rubber-stamping do nothing Congress when this grim fact became reality and our elected leaders failed to hold the President and Vice President accountable. And though the majority of Americans now know for certain our great nation was misled into a human calamity and debacle, the Republicans continue to try to put a happy and delusional spin on our “progress” there. They can’t wait to get their hands on General Petraeus’s report and ship it straightaway to the mythmaking and happy talk department for “reinterpretation” and quick delivery to the propaganda arm over at Fox News.

Fortunately there are a few brave souls left in Washington because an anonymous official leaked the GAO draft copy of the Iraq progress report to the Washington Post. The official feared the White House’s report would be too watered down.

Now, I know only a complete moron would believe any report spun out of the White House Department of Dissemble, Language Distortion and Delusion, but sadly there are few morons and/or patho liars around and a majority of them are our elected GOP officials and the party’s propaganda arms in the mainstream media.

To quote my friend Ken Deifik: The nature of 'fair and balanced' news is that when the truth is painful, the republicans just balance it out with lies. "The house is burning down." "Well, but maybe it's not burning down. We'll just have to wait and see."

As the truth becomes merely part of a delusional equation, more loved ones die or are maimed for life, the Quagmire gets worse and worse, costs more and more, is harder and harder to get out of, because even the GOPs that have turned against the war keep hoping that there's a grain or truth in all the bullshit. –Ken Deifik

If you really want to know what is going on in Iraq, check out the “real” report before it gets messed with. Hopefully Cheney hasn’t shipped the anonymous official down to Gitmo for a little ol’ fashioned torture. LS

From The Washington Post, August 30, 2007
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks

” Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq”

Do We Need Jimmy Carter To Ensure Fair Elections in Texas?

2007-08-21T18:16:00.000-04:00

I recently attended a meeting held by some of Harris County’s precinct officials and election judges, most of whom are extremely hard working and deeply committed volunteers. A subset of this group has formed a committee to investigate voter suppression and integrity concerns in Harris County (Houston area). They toil away relentlessly in a tireless attempt to guarantee equal and fair access to the county’s elections in this Tom Delay gerrymandered state. This is no small feat given the GOP is in charge of about everything here. The challenges the volunteers face are significant and difficult. Fortunately for voting Democrats in Harris County, we have such committed and patriotic defenders of both our state and national Constitutional rights. We had better hope and pray they never give up because as it stands now, our democracy here is hanging on by mere shreds.

Our mayor in Houston is supposed to be a Democrat and yet he failed to give this group’s selected committee members the respect, time and appreciation they deserve for their well founded research, data and findings. In fact, he was more deferential to the GOP county clerk’s people present and wasted 30 minutes of the mere 60 minutes allocated by spinning irrelevant yarns about this that and everything except voting issues.

For this appalling reason I decided to write to the mayor today and to also post my letter to him as a diary. I think it is high time for Texas Democrats to take the fight to the people who are running and very likely messing with our election outcomes, as well as those officials who chose to do nothing to stop the contemptible and downright illegal shenanigans.

Should Harris County, the most populated in Texas, flip blue, the Texas GOP will be in a big world of hurt. It is for this reason alone that I believe the GOP will do everything it can get away with to purge/scrub/cancel voter rolls, provide inadequate, pre-rigged, and/or mal-functioning voting machines to mostly minority and poor district, and engage in beyond the pale voter intimidation. Indeed in Harris County, the election folks have come up with a “potential felons” list with names that will likely be scrubbed from the rolls. What in heaven’s name is a “potential felon?” That could be anyone now that our Constitutional rights have been flushed down the toilet by the crooked. lying and incompetent Bush Administration.

It is time to hold the elections’ folks feet to the fire, as well as those of their supervisors, and the Secretary of State.

What do they do to ensure fair, honest and transparent elections to all Texans? If they won’t give us a straight answer, or refuse to answer at all, let’s call Mr. Jimmy Carter and the U.N. and let them know that Texas is a third world type banana republic.

The Honorable Bill White

Dear Mayor White,

I had the opportunity to hear you speak just prior to the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina at a Young Democrats meeting at Rice University. Although I am no longer a “young” Democrat I was nonetheless fortunate enough to attend. I was extremely impressed by how you encouraged a group of very gifted students, many of whom will become future leaders in a number of fields, to consider careers in public service. I was also impressed by your highly skillful and deeply compassionate approach in planning for the tens of thousands of Katrina victims who were to come to Houston for refuge. I am, to this day, very proud of our city’s generous and heartfelt support for those who had to flee such deadly and appalling conditions with no help whatsoever from our federal agencies. It did not matter what one’s political party affiliation, religious beliefs or race were at the time. As Houstonians we were stood together as one to help those in dire and hopeless circumstances.

Maybe we can do likewise in achieving an open and honest democratic election process for all eligible Houstonians.

As the national election of 2008 looms near, I hope you summon your outstanding leadership skills and fully engage our party’s democratic principles in making certain that all eligible Houstonians can exercise their constitutional right to vote. I am particularly concerned because, since the national elections of 2000 and 2004, volumes have been written by election experts and non-partisan organizations about numerous voting machine malfunctions and overall irregularities. To cover all of the voting abnormalities would require at the least 100 or so pages and to be as brief as possible, I will mention just a few of the facts. I have provided sources below to support the facts I present.

Professional (with advanced degrees) statisticians, computer scientists and mathematicians have documented data proving that much was amiss in both the 2000 and 2004 in terms of machine reliability, especially in terms of security, exit poll data, pre and post electoral processes. This vast group of professionals is certainly not the “conspiracy theorists” the Republican Party will routinely summon when caught trying to achieve certain outcomes. News reports from various battle ground states, in particular, have documented evidence of voter suppression, intimidation, the willful placement of fewer and/or mal-functioning machines in minority, poor and mostly Democratic precincts and questionable vote counting processes (e.g. Ohio 2004 when the Secretary of State locked down a particular precinct when votes were being tallied due to “homeland security concerns.” Ohio’s Secretary of State, by the way, Ken Blackwell, was also chair of one of Bush’s reelection campaigns in Ohio.)

In Texas where Democrats are supposedly a minority, what safeguards do we have at our disposal to ensure open, fair and transparent elections? What guarantees are in place to convince me as a Houstonian that our elections, controlled by a most unforthcoming and unresponsive GOP County Clerk and Secretary of State, are accurate? These folks also count the votes after all. How do I know provisional and absentee ballots are not being tossed into dumpsters as Black Box Voting.org discovered was the case in certain precincts in Florida in 2000 and in 2004?

Of particular concern are the voter rolls and what is being done to them prior to an election? Are our county officials involved in “caging” whereby specific populations are targeted? Guess who these populations might be? I think you know. Caging consists of sending a targeted group “do not forward” notifications to their homes. The notification is returned to the county clerk’s office if someone has moved including those serving in the military and has been shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan; or if one has had the misfortune to become homeless. The outcome for these people, who should have every right to vote if eligible, and most are, will be one of complete disenfranchisement. Their names will be “cancelled” from the rolls. When they show up to vote, they will be denied the right.

How, when and who decides whose name to cancel from the rolls? Who precisely is sent notifications? What is the process and what laws govern such a practice?

Should you think the concept of “caging” is a figment of my imagination, an investigative reporter, forensic economist and author, Mr. Greg Palast, has discovered such lists from 2004 whose contents have been turned over to Representative John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

Caging by the way is a federal felony. Maybe our election officials could use a gentle reminder of this fact.

What assurances do I have as a voter in Harris County that voter caging is not taking place right here and now, as it did in Florida, New Mexico and Ohio in both 2000 and 2004? Indeed, the White House has turned the present U.S. Justice Department into yet another political arm of the GOP. And the firing of 9 U.S. attorneys for purely partisan reasons is further evidence of the GOP’s long term goal to ensure a permanent Republican majority. What “firewall” is in place to protect our electoral process in Texas from such criminal and un-American acts?

What assurances do I have as a voter that there will be sufficient machines in my precinct that are fully functional and with intact and secured seals? There is no paper trail so how am I to know that my vote isn’t flipped to the wrong candidate? How do I know that it is even counted? What oversight and accountability processes are in place before, during and when the votes are being counted to ensure the integrity of our election and democratic process for all eligible residents in Harris County? This is the 21st century after all. It should not be technologically or practically impossible or even difficult to guarantee completely accurate and transparent election processes.

Given the historical difficulty the Harris County Democratic election judges and precinct officials have had in communicating with the County Clerk’s and Secretary of State’s offices, I can only imagine the worst. It seems that our state’s election officials have forgotten that their job is to serve the voting public and not the sole interests of their party and their party’s financial backers. If these officials insist they do serve ALL Texans why do they fail to return Democrats’ phone calls in a timely fashion, if at all?

Surely we won’t have “homeland security” issues in the 3rd or 5th wards in Houston during the election of 2008? Or will we?

Summoning election lawyers after an election is a waste of time. Transparency, oversight and accountability need to be put into place now.

As a Texas Democrat I and many others like me have had it with elected “Democratic” officials who behave as a Republican would. I trust that you, Sir, do not fall into this category. But I must respectfully caution that many of us may think otherwise if our electoral process here is not placed under much, much tighter scrutiny, public transparency and oversight. Those running our elections and managing the voter rolls must be held accountable. They are required to answer voters’ questions and address our concerns. This is what they get paid to do.

We deeply appreciate anything that you can do to expedite such a process immediately.

Surely we will not be forced to call former President Mr. Jimmy Carter and the U.N. in order to achieve open and fair elections in Texas!

Sources on electronic voting data:

KathyDopp.com
Election Mathematics.org
Election Archive.org
Election Archive UCV Analysis
Freedom-to-tinker.com

Background of voting irregularities and suppression since 2004:

Brad Blog

On voter caging:

Mr. Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse

Background info on Florida 2000 election (Palast and the BBC)

BBC Newsnight

Tell Me Our U.S. Texas Lawmakers Do Not Embrace a W. Monarchy

2007-07-27T16:47:00.000-04:00

What indeed are our elected “representatives” doing about W.’s obvious abuse of power? Earlier this week I faxed off letters to my fearless Republican leaders, Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and U.S. Representative (Houston) John Culberson. I am not holding my breath that my very long letter (that merely scratches the surface of W.’s systematic abuse of power) will end up anywhere except in the official shredders.

Whether it goes to the shredder or not, if our so-called “representatives” don’t get a reality check, i.e. that somewhere in Texas, there are some very outraged voters who demand accountability, good the hell luck next election cycle. Burn babies, burn.

They aren’t going to be able to distract us with “family values” “gay marriage, “abortion,” “terrorists are lurking under every rock,” “a strong economy” when there isn’t one, and other BS this time around.

Nope, especially after Gonzo Gate blew wide open yesterday.

On to my letter of letter of July 23:

I am writing to you about the recent highly disturbing and somewhat appalling behavior on the part of President Bush for what is becoming increasingly clear as his willful and blatant abuse of power. The President has overstepped the bounds of his office and is behaving as if he is above the law, accountable to no one.

I am no lawyer but I do know when something is terribly wrong in our government.

There are a number of recent developments that support my claim of Presidential abuse of power. Within the last two weeks, the President has ordered former members of the White House staff, Ms. Sarah Taylor and Ms. Harriet Miers, to refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although Ms. Taylor presented herself at the hearing and answered very few questions, she did make it quite clear that her loyalty belonged to the President and not to the United States. Such a belief on the part of a staff member is both shocking and frightening. It is unheard of in the history of the United States. Indeed, even President Richard Nixon did not possess the authoritarian arrogance to prevent White House staff from speaking the truth to the Congress (i.e. we the people) during his term as President. And surely no staff member in our nation’s history has ever taken an oath to a person, even a President during wartime! I do not know where Ms. Taylor went to school, but she surely should have known better. If she does not, Ms. Taylor had no business serving in the White House in the first place.

President Bush has very recently pardoned a White House Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, for perjury and the obstruction of justice. Mr. Libby lied under oath and obstructed justice to protect Vice President Cheney in the unconscionable outing of an undercover CIA agent, Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson. Americans can now assume the President is definitely covering up criminal acts that were committed in the White House, likely in his very office and that of the Vice President. President Bush’s pardon of Mr. Libby also tells we the people that there is two sets of rules at play in America: one for the President’s people and one for the rest of Americans.

I also find it shocking and frightening how the Bush Administration has deliberately attempted to politicize federal agencies (The Justice Department, the Interior Department, to name just two) in order to turn them into operational arms for the Republican National Party.

The recent firings of the 8 U.S. attorneys for purely political purposes are further evidence of the Administration’s calculated goal to ensure a permanent Republican majority for decades to come. The political imperatives of rule under this “permanent Republican majority” seems to have little in common with the democratic principles that have guided this great nation for well over 200 years. In fact, one party rule has proven to be detrimental and destructive to the very foundations of a democratic society. And for this very reason, the people spoke in November 2006.

It is crystal clear that the Department of Justice, at the urging of the White House, had every intention to replace all U.S. attorneys who did not aggressively pursue voter fraud cases where only Democrats were concerned.

Apparently the DOJ forgot that it is supposed to serve the people and not a President or an Administration. I find it inexcusable and unpatriotic for people in our government who serve, such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Ms. Sarah Taylor, to demonstrate such distain and contempt for the Constitution, the people, and the democratic principles that are supposed to guide our Republic. It seems that many Bush appointees seem to believe they are working within the framework of a monarchy in which they are servants for a king.

Concerning the firings of the U.S. attorneys, I find it very interesting indeed that Mr. Tim Griffin, who replaced Mr. Bud Cummings in Arkansas, is a former protégé of Karl Rove. Mr. Griffin is known to have produced illegal voter caging lists in Florida during the 2000 election. Evidence of such has been produced by Mr. Greg Palast, an investigative journalist who has obtained Mr. Griffin’s 2000 caging lists. I understand that the caging lists have been turned over to the House Judiciary Committee.

It seems that the same in the Department of Defense and the Pentagon had preceded the politicization of the Justice Department since 2001. It is now common knowledge that the Bush Administration did not tell the American people the truth when making the case to go to war with Iraq. We all know there were never any ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda under Saddam Hussein and neither were there WMD. We also know that many members of Congress who supported President Bush in his trumped up case for war did not even bother to read the NIE Intelligence Report that could have changed a few minds and perhaps a deadly, costly and catastrophic failure may have been avoided.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have routinely used the notion of terrorism and the fear it engenders as an excuse to run roughshod over the laws that bind this nation together as a democratic republic.

Since President Bush’s tenure as President, the heretofore unthinkable has happened, such as warrantless wiretaps and spying on American citizens. President Bush publicly admitted he knew about the domestic spying program. A federal court has ruled that such spying is a felony. And yet the Congress has failed to hold the President accountable for his actions. Is the President above the law? It certainly seems to be the case nowadays.

Our country now embraces torture and has willingly abandoned not only the principles of the Geneva Convention but the very moral and legal underpinnings that have governed our democratic republic and our stature in the world. The Supreme Court has ruled the President and Vice President’s system of detention is unconstitutional. Has the detention system changed yet? Not to my knowledge. Why?

As if the evidence mentioned above on the President’s abuse of power isn’t enough, it is both distressing and tragic to write there is yet more.

President Bush has reversed laws with signing statements. He has deliberately undermined the Congress by making whatever changes he deems fit to laws already passed by the representatives of the people! The President’s statements are posted on the White House website. A recent GAO report found that with 30 percent of Bush's signing statements, in which President Bush announces his right to overrule laws, he has in fact proceeded to overrule those laws.

Yes, it is now obvious. President Bush believes that he is well above the law. Some of our lawmakers in our nation’s Capitol obviously hold the same belief.

What else is a citizen to conclude when the sound of silence coming from our Congress on this issue is simply deafening?

When is enough enough? When are our members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate going to hold this President accountable for his blatant disregard and obvious calloused and cynical contempt for the rule of law that has governed this land for well over 200 years? President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s equal scorn for the people has not been lost on the vast majority of Americans, either.

Should you think that I am some left wing liberal who is exaggerating the President’s evident abuse of power, several former officials who served under President Reagan believe President Bush has assumed powers well beyond the legal jurisdiction of a President. Two of them call for the immediate impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Mr. Ron Paul, A U.S. Texas Representative and candidate for President in 2008, shares similar views with his colleagues in the former Reagan Administration. (Two of the three Republicans have also predicted that war with Iran is imminent and Congress will not be consulted about it.)

In a recent online newspaper (July 19, Raw Story.com) a former appointee of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, commented on the new Executive Order that allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies. According to Mr. Roberts, "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”

He goes on to argue, “When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

The article about Mr. Roberts’s views on President Bush can be found here

Mr. Bruce Fein, who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney under former President Reagan and wrote the first article of impeachment against former President Clinton, also calls for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney.

Mr. Fein recently was featured on the PBS Bill Moyers’ Journal on July 13, 2007. The journal can be viewed: Bill Moyers Journal

Following are excerpts from Mr. Fein’s interview.

Recently, Fein has been in the national spotlight after his editorial in the online newsmagazine SLATE called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, in which he outlines the various cases against the Vice President. Fein also testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2007 about President Bush's use of "signing statement."
According to Fein, Cheney has:
• Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.
• Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone.
• Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.
• Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
• Engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
• Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.
• Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.
• Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. (Read Fein's SLATE article)

End of excerpt.

Representative Ron Paul (Texas) has stated, “All evidence suggests that the NeoCon war on Iran is about to be sprung.”

According to him: “we're sending the oldest aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf to replace a newer one --- making another trumped up 'Gulf of Tonkin incident' less costly. That is, stage an attack on the Nimitz, and say it was caused by Iran. This would happen in August, with congress on break.”

The bare suggestion that we would go to war with a nation without Congressional oversight tells me that we are no longer living in a democracy.

The silence from our Congress tells me that our elected officials embrace the Bush monarchy.

Sincerely yours,

Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force List: The Dudes Who Paid to Play

2007-07-18T17:47:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine from California sent me a link to an article written in today’s Washington Post which reveals at least a partial list of Cheney’s secret and very special invitees to his former energy task force meetings. Of course, as we would have expected, environmental and renewable energy groups were granted token participation. The fix was already in for Cheney’s energy policy and so the environmental folks and Democrats were invited just for the photo ops and news reports.

The Republican will to power and lust for greed dominated the entire process as it always does (remember this happened during the Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff heydays) and so the party’s pay to play decree drove the process. Those in big oil, gas and trade groups that were among the first to participate in Cheney's task force had all been major donors to the Bush/Cheney campaigns.

Gosh, maybe this is why we have so few options available to us in terms of alternative choices for fuel. Are we therefore doomed forever to life long addiction to the pusher men in the Middle East? Does this mean we are damned to life long wars to fight over the pollution producing evil crap that should have been rendered at least partially irrelevant to us at least thirty years ago?

Who are the winners in our national addiction to oil? Guess. It’s a no brainer…..It would be none other than Cheney’s best buds the Saudis, of course, and Dictator Greedy Dick too. The Dictator is obviously addicted to money. For himself. Hmmmm… is this why we attacked Iraq and forgot about Osama boy? Is this why Cheney would stop at nothing to hide his evil little list?

Cheney fought tooth and nail to keep his filthy little list a secret and everyone probably remembers how this issue went to the Supreme Court. Naturally, with a politicized judicial system comprised of embedded party hacks and rubber stamps, Cheney won as he always does. What Cheney wants, Cheney gets. This is why I have nicknamed him Dictator Dick. No one or branch of our government seems able, willing or courageous enough to stop him. When an individual or a federal institution should dare to rear a brave head in protest, Cheney will simply chop it off and replace the head with one of his clones. Hmmm… maybe I should call Cheney Dick the Butcher instead or Dick the Terrible. Or perhaps Dr. Evil Dick, or Dick the Tyrant.

Excerpts from The Washington Post

Papers Detail Industry's Role in Cheney's Energy Report
By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; Page A01

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up "about half the meeting," recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country's biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.

The list of participants' names and when they met with administration officials provides a clearer picture of the task force's priorities and bolsters previous reports that the review leaned heavily on oil and gas companies and on trade groups -- many of them big contributors to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. But while it clears up much of the lingering uncertainty about who was granted access to present energy policy views to Cheney's staff, it does not entirely explain why the Bush administration fought so hard to keep it and other as-yet-unreleased internal memos secret.

If the time has not come to impeach this monster, when will it?

It’s time for the Dick to do some time.

Cheney Shows His Love for America

2007-07-13T01:46:00.000-04:00

While Dictator Dick thumbs his nose at the U.S. Constitution, our individual rights and the basic tenets of Democracy, he is busy at work safeguarding the personal fortunes he has amassed.

Alas, it seems that Dictator Dick has very little faith in the future of the American economy.

According to Mr. Mike Whitney of the Information Clearing House.com. (see link below), Dictator Dick is investing millions in European markets as well as in inflation linked short term municipal bonds, and inflation protected securities funds. As Mr. Whitney suggests, Cheney will watch his fortunes grow in Old Europe while we the suckers – i.e. the average American will have to struggle with increasing energy prices and inflation. Our savings and assets could very well dwindle while those of Dictator Dick grow by leaps and bounds.

Thank God for tax cuts for the mega wealthy. There isn’t even a morsel of cake left for we the little irrelevant people who don’t factor in the Bush/Cheney world, except to fight in and pay taxes for their wars with the rest of the world.

I do not have a background in economics or finance, but I know full well when I smell huge stinking rats gnawing and devouring our political, geo-political and economic well-being. Not to mention our national ethos as a people.

Excerpts:

This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.

Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is “intentionally” skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney’s portfolio?

It doesn’t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn’t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that’s what’ll happen.

The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP.

This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness.

Do the math! They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We’re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and “American Celebrity”.

No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.

End of excerpt.

This chilling piece can be read in its grim entirety here

If this isn’t enough to get the impeachment ball rolling, I do not know what is. It is time to press criminal charges. The short list: the Bush/Cheney Administration has misled this nation into an unnecessary, catastrophic and horrific war. It has seriously compromised both our national security and economic well being. It has flipped the bird at the rule of law, as demonstrated in the Scooter Libby trial and the outing of an undercover CIA agent for political revenge. It has given generous tax cuts to the extraordinarily wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The middle class is clearly dying a slow death with sure-fire membership in the under class club. Our military troops are required to serve 3-4 if not 5 tours of duty in hot combat with little reprieve. When our brave, determined and courageous troops do return home it is a national disgrace that they must face yet more battles to get proper medical attention for posttraumatic stress disorder, catastrophic wounds such as severe brain injuries and the loss of limbs. What about the families of the fallen soldiers who are left to grieve alone, after an American flag is summarily handed to them at their loved one’s funeral? That’s it? A flag in exchange for a life? For?

Please.

How much is too much? What kind of people have we become?

To recap, in case anyone should be asleep and doesn’t get it, the Bush/Cheney Administration has willfully and knowingly used propaganda to sell a war and a political agenda that is downright destructive of our national security, our military, our geo-political standing and our economic underpinnings. Worse, it has turned us into a people that we are not. Our future in a Bush/Cheney Land promises a whole third world of hurt, pain, suffering and death.

For? So Bush, Cheney and their best buds can amass personal fortunes? They have distracted us for far too long with emotional and unproductive issues like gay marriage, abortion and heaven knows what else. They have scared the living crap out of us with terror threats that were non-existent. Their motto: keep the people scared, dumb and angry. And the Bushies did the devil’s work while we allowed ourselves to become dumb, scared and angry.

Stand up for impeachment, folks, or go broke and learn how to cope in third world living. The choices aren’t easy but at least we still have a few choices left to us. LS

The Fox Howls about the Fox in the Henhouse

2007-06-08T17:42:00.000-04:00

I am not writing about Fox Fake News though they deserve to be written about now that Fox has revealed its true racist colors in confusing Congressman Jefferson with Congressman Conyers.

Nope, this is about the party Fox shills and spins for – the GOP - and its systematic and criminal voter disenfranchisement program.

U.S. citizens right here in the U.S. and some of those serving abroad have been denied their inalienable right to vote thanks to the GOP’s purging and scrubbing of voter roles.

The sick and twisted irony of this voter fraud issue is that while the Republicans have been screaming about fake incidences of voter fraud in particular states (as exposed in the U.S. Attorney/Alberto Gonzales scandals) GOP henchmen have been willfully and systematically engaged in real voter fraud for years.

The GOP does this by denying the right to vote to a vast number of minority and poor voters who are more likely to vote for Democrats.

Chapter One in Rove’s How to Rig an Election Book: (Source: Mr. Greg Palast “Armed Madhouse.”)

Rove summoned one of his whores - Interim and Now Resigned from Office and hopefully soon to be charged U.S. Attorney for Arkansas – Griffin - to put in the fix for 2008. Griffin sent out registered letters to homeless people, soldiers who had been shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan and to students who tend to move around a lot. If these people did not respond to the registered note or if the note was returned in the mail, legitimate voters were purged from the voting list, likity split. Yes, they were scrubbed of their democratic right to vote, even those who are fighting to defend us overseas. It is called “voter caging” and it is illegal. Not to mention immoral and unconscionable.

This practice is alive and well in Harris County, Texas (Houston its and outlying areas, including Tom DeLay land) in a less blatantly criminal form. I spoke to a friend of mine who has been an election judge in Houston for 9 years. I asked my friend if officials purged voter roles in Harris County. The answer: a resounding yes.

This is how it works in Harris County.

The purge occurs when the county clerk sends a voter registration card (they do this every 2 years since voter registration card expires at that time).
If the voter registration card is returned as undeliverable (they assume one has moved and are now out of the district which would require one to re-register) and/or a person has not voted in a specified number of elections, supposedly they purge this person automatically. But... wait - interestingly enough, my friend’s husband's aunt (who is Mexican, but whose last name is Asian because she married an Asian), hasn't voted in 25+ years and miraculously was STILL on the roles after all that time and registered to vote.

During the 2006 primary, both my friend and her husband voted in the primary election, making them eligible to attend the Democratic conventions as delegates.
My friend’s surname is Mexican, although she is Caucasian. Interestingly enough, when she and her husband were elected as delegates at their Senate District convention, the next step is for the SD chair to verify that my friends had met the requirements (verify that they voted in the primary election - this is what's known as checking credentials). Their SD chair called to let my friend know that she and her husband did not appear on the list of primary voters. Neither of them. My friend said: “What's THAT all about, I'll never know.’ ‘Who knows if our votes even counted or not? Another well known Democrat had physically witnessed us going to the polls and ‘vouched’ for us. I was SHOCKED and AWED.”

There is no forgiveness or mercy here in this Republican run state. The GOP needs fewer voters to win elections. I mean, what intelligent and informed person would actually vote for a Republican? And the Rovian wing knows that many of us are distracted, overly committed and we tend to ignore snail mail. When we move we are overwhelmed by “stuff” and sometimes forget to give a forwarding address.

And this is how the Party of Corruption achieves victory time and time again. It does not have to be a high tech laptop theft to throw an election.

Another Rove whore, Ken Blackwell of Ohio, denied the right to vote to poor people and minorities by providing fewer voting machines to their precincts. Meanwhile there was an abundance of machines in mostly conservative, white and well-off suburbs. The poor and minorities in Blackwell’s district were required to wait 8-10 hours in freezing rain. Naturally many gave up and left. Blackwell’s dream for Bush 2004 was realized.

The latest attempt by our Republican leadership here in Texas to require proof of citizenship in order to vote would essentially deny the right to a huge group of poor, elderly and minorities. If one thinks that a driver’s license or social security card is proof of U.S. citizenship, one is wrong. U.S. permanent residents and foreign nationals with specific visas who work here legally can have both driver’s licenses and social security cards. They are obviously not eligible to vote.

Proof of U.S. citizenship requires one of three documents: an official birth certificate, a U.S. passport or U.S. Naturalization papers. A passport costs close to $100.00 and takes 6-8 weeks to obtain. Many elderly, who were born at home, may not have “official” birth certificates. Victims of floods or hurricanes may have lost official birth certificates, passports and/or naturalization papers. Homeless people likely don’t roam from shelter to shelter with their birth certificates or passports. Soldiers serving overseas cannot check their mail at home for their voter registration status. The poor are overwhelmed trying to make ends meet to think much about where their official birth certificates might be. To send away for a copy of a birth certificates requires time and some money.

Fortunately, we have more Democrats than the Party of Liars and Cheats in Washington now and so there is a modicum of accountability, at least in our nation’s Capitol.

Representative John Conyers is investigating the Rove/Griffin voter caging shenanigans as I write.

Maybe every Republican election official in Texas will be dragged to court along with Griffin and Rove, as he or she well should.

For more information on voter caging, please see the URL below.

Slate.com: The Raging Caging

For ongoing and daily updates about voter fraud, its key players and GOP evil doing, check out Brad’s Blog on a daily basis.

The Brad Blog

Get involved, my Dem soul mates. Get involved.

I just returned from a vacation in Europe and had time to catch up on reading while traveling on trains, planes and in automobiles. I learned how others in Europe view our foreign policy and stand on Iraq. I won’t go there right now but trust me – its’ really bad. A Frenchman told me Bush had ruined the U.S. for 50 years to come. This made him sad. The French and Americans may have had a roller coaster political relationship over the years, but all of Europe has always looked to America as a beacon of light and ray hope and optimism for the world. The dollar is doing so miserably that Americans are the poor tourists in Europe. Thanks, W.

I finished the book written by Greg Palast “Armed Madhouse” and learned much more than I admittedly want to know about the Republican Party and voter fraud. Like, please make it not be so. Make it go away. But it won’t and we have to deal or we will be sleeping in the nightmare forever.

Finally, every Democrat should be required to read “Armed Madhouse” for the complete and thorough scoop on Republican voter shenanigans. You won’t be able to put it down, but you’ll need to go on high blood pressure and anti-stroke meds while reading.

Deleting Democracy?

2007-04-16T22:05:00.000-04:00

I take no credit for today’s post. My friend Ken in California is responsible for the hard work and extensive research, the outcome of which reveals a history of the Bush Administration’s willful and systematic attempts to undermine the democratic process in this country.

Oh, by the way, down here in Texas our Legislature is hard at work trying to figure out how to suppress the voting rights of the poor, minorities and the elderly. LS

From Ken:

First:

Two University of Minnesota professors have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats

American Progress Action

Second:

Bush's US Attorney Steven Biskupic just got a conviction of a Wisconsin state employee named Georgia Thompson. The same publication as above notes that.

Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle's re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison. The federal judges, acting with "unusual speed," "assailed the government's case" and said that Biskupic's evidence was "beyond thin."

Josh Marshall's video narrative of this nasty tale can be found at:
Talking Points Memo

Finally, Ken also found this extraordinary piece on Salon.com written by Mr. Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Greenwald documents the Bush Administration’s historic trail of losing, destroying and deleting official documents since 2000. LS

Such a sad thing. Every time the GOP and the Bush administration could exonerate themselves from all that criminality we've come to expect from them, the documentation that would prove their innocence --- vanishes like magic!! –K

Source: Salon.com 4/12/07. Mr. Glenn Greenwald “The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents”

Excerpts:

I feel -- in this vaguely intuitive sort of way -- as though there is some kind of a pattern buried within this set of facts, but as much as I search, I just can't quite figure out what it might be:

New York Times.,

Political advisers to President Bush may have improperly used their Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, and some communications that are required to be preserved under federal law may be lost as a result, White House officials said Wednesday. . .
As a result, Mr. Stanzel said, "some official e-mails have potentially been lost." He said Mr. Bush had told the White House counsel's office "to do everything practical to retrieve potentially lost messages."

The Politico, March 24, 2007:

In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings.

Newsweek, February 28, 2007:

A federal judge ruled today that suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is mentally competent. . . . But the ruling by U.S. Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami leaves open what may be more intriguing questions than those surrounding the defendant's mental health: what happened to a crucial video recording of Padilla being interrogated in a U.S. military brig that has mysteriously disappeared?

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. "This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

Alicia Valle, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, said in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK that the missing DVD was "of the last interrogation of Padilla while in military custody." She further added that a lawyer for DIA had advised the court "that an exhaustive search was conducted but the [DVD] could not be located."

NPR, June 24, 2004:

Key documents are missing from the batch of newly declassified documents the White House released this week on its policies on torture and the treatment of prisoners, critics say. Absent are any memos to and from the FBI and CIA and any documents dated after April 2003. No documents address the State Department's concern over the Bush administration's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.

USA Today, May 24, 2004:

The Pentagon sought Sunday to explain why some 2,000 pages were missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. . . . .
[Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita] was responding to a Time magazine report Sunday that about 2,000 of the report's 6,000 pages submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee were missing. The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba consists of a declassified summary and about 6,000 pages of classified annexes, including statements from witnesses, prison guards and military intelligence officials.

Associated Press, September 5, 2004:

Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.

No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.

And that is to say nothing of all of the extraordinary and unprecedented steps taken by the administration to justify the concealment of documents and other information -- efforts which, when successful, have made it unnecessary to claim that the documents were lost. But don't worry; it's all to protect us, all for our own good. There is simply no reason for us to know what our Leaders are doing.

UPDATE: Newsweek, March 1, 2006:

[Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael] Brown's comments about the president surfaced in a transcript of an Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials today after they initially told Congress that no such document existed. . . .

Administration and congressional officials said that the administration provided congressional investigators earlier this year with official transcripts of the daily noon FEMA conference calls conducted before, during and after Katrina. But the administration initially told Congress that the transcript for the Aug. 29 call -- the call congressional investigators were most curious about, given that it occurred as the hurricane was actually battering the Gulf Coastâ€”did not exist, with officials initially telling Capitol Hill that someone at FEMA or Homeland Security forgot to push the button on a tape recorder.
"Everybody has been looking for that transcript," former FEMA chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.

A White House official unexpectedly e-mailed the transcript to NEWSWEEK earlier today Wednesday morning -- initially without explaining that it was the missing transcript. Two officials familiar with congressional investigations said that the document was turned over to Capitol Hill investigators Tuesday night. Administration officials told both Congress and NEWSWEEK that FEMA officials in Atlanta had taped the Aug. 29 conference call by aiming a video camera at a TV screen rather than following the usual recording procedure. The videotape was subsequently discovered and transcribed.

While the newly discovered transcript does provide new evidence of initial presidential engagement in the Katrina crisis and of conflicting information about the state of New Orleans levees on Aug. 29, it also exposes some contradictions in previous administration explanations about the role of the White House and top officials in handling the crisis.

I suppose the defense for Bush followers who want to claim that all of this is completely innocent is "extreme ineptitude."

The entire article can be read on the

Salon.com

The Pimps and Their Whores

2007-04-12T11:06:00.000-04:00

Thoughts on the relationship between corporate America and the U.S. mainstream media.

I began to suspect the media in 2000, after W. was installed as President by a bare majority of the Supreme Court, some of which justices were appointed by Bush the father.

But it was after the fiasco in Ohio’s Presidential election of 2004 that I completely gave up on the mainstream media as a credible source for information. Something terrible had happened in Ohio in November 2004. Like, blatant voter fraud and illegal shenanigans. But the media didn’t get it or it refused to get it.

A group of my friends and acquaintances throughout the U.S. felt as I did and we began to look for alternative sources for news.

We discovered a whole new world of on line information and we would email one another articles or clips from various sources we located here in the U.S. and in the U.K.

It got to the point that we discovered so much information to share that we didn't know how to manage it. A friend suggested I start a blog to create a permanent record and archive.

And so I set up Libby Shaw (after my son told me what a blog is) for the explicit purpose of sharing news that is not normally seen or heard within the U.S. mainstream media.

Almost three years later, and after having worked as a volunteer for a Texas candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006, I now merely glance at the front pages of the New York Times and Houston Chronicle every morning. I subscribe to both but read little of the Chronicle. Why don’t I read the Chronicle? Well, for starters, it most unfortunately endorsed the incumbent Texas candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006, Kay Bailey Hutchison. Hutchison is an exemplary rubber stamp for the worst Presidency in U.S. history.

For me, reading a newspaper that endorsed the nation’s worst of elected officials is pretty much the same as reading tabloids at the check out stands in the grocery story.

I’d cancel the Chronicle entirely were it not for my husband who reads the sports sections.

Regarding TV news, if I hear the slightest echo from the right wing scream machine when listening to CNN or MSNBC news in the morning, I immediately switch to CSPAN's Washington Journal. At least I might learn something from the Washington Journal. As far as I can tell, the corporate media has not corrupted CSPAN as it has the other media stations.

I do really enjoy the nerdy Washington Journal for a number of reasons. The information is solid. Invited guests are credentialed experts in particular areas. Some are elected officials. Normally if a member of one political party is an invited guest, a representative from the other party will follow soon afterwards. Discussions are reasoned and dispassionate. No one screams, there are no loud and vacuous commercial breaks about sexual performance medications, miracle diets, or baby boomer’s dreams. Nor is a guest rudely cut off by an anchor who is fixated like a dog on a bone on a specific message or agenda.

The Washington Journal invites listeners to call in to question the invited guests. There are specific phone lines for Democrats, Independents and Republicans. I especially love to listen to Americans call in from all over the country. It is amazing (but not really) how much anger there is out there. We Americans are far from stupid. We know something is terribly, terribly wrong with the Bush Administration. We are keenly aware that we've been had and the mainstream media and press have all too willingly allowed it to happen. Of course there are a handful of callers with lizard brains, which vent, rant and squawk and will support W. to their graves.

I call this group the unfortunate and misinformed Neanderthal wing of the GOP. Thankfully there are not too many of them.

I think the mainstream media is beginning to understand that it has been caught with its collective pants down since Bush took power. And yet the manner in which the MSM has all too readily jumped on the "let's beat up on Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria" band wagon tells me the MSM has a long way to go before I will consider it remotely fair, balanced and unbiased.

The recent and well deserved toasting and roasting of Imus for his reprehensible remarks about female minorities and women in general may have given the mainstream media the kick in the derriere it has needed for years. And yet, at the same time, it seems both hypocritical and disingenuous for Imus to be singled out when there are so very many other spewers of blatant racism and misogyny who occupy radio and TV's bully pulpits. What about Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Savage and a host of others?

Why Imus?

Well, it seems that major corporations such as Proctor and Gamble, Dietech, and the Ford Motor Company, among others, have pulled the plug on their advertising for the Imus Show.

Such spelled the death knell for Imus for is no longer a cash cow for his corporate owners.

After 30 years of Imus and his routine and thinly veiled racist and misogynist comments, suddenly the corporations “care” about content?

Why now?

If it truly cares about content, when will corporate America pull their advertising from ALL of the shows of the purveyors of racism, sexism, political propaganda, hate and disinformation?

Who is asking what is in it for Rush types and FOX to kiss up to the Bushies?

When will corporate America pretend to care about truth, democracy, and forget about its bottom line for one mere nano second to do what is right and ethical? What are corporate America’s true intentions with regard to the media?

And what about the “fair, balanced and unbiased” mainstream media, owned by none other than huge corporate America?

Where is the media’s fair and unbiased coverage of the blatant corruption and lies engendered by the Bush Administration?

Where was the outrage when it became clear that W. lied us into a war based on fake intelligence? How come the Downing Street Memos on the intelligence on Iraq were summarily shoved through the journalistic buzz saw instead of having been splashed across our nation’s front pages and screamed from every talking head’s mouth on TV?

Where was the outrage when the Bush Administration fired U.S. attorneys for purely partisan reasons?

Where was the outrage when Attorney General Gonzales lied about his knowledge of the firings?

The media and press seems to care not a flip that the Bush Administration had attempted to politicize our judicial system to protect Republicans during future contested close elections.

How come? Where is the wall-to-wall coverage of Bush's lies 24/7 since we went to war with Iraq?

It all comes down to IMUS because some of corporate America pulled its advertising?

If we want to save our fleeting Democracy, we the people need to pull the plug on corporations and the media. Stop buying for awhile. Stop watching the idiot box (as my beloved late father would call the TV) for "news." Cancel newspapers if you can live without sports sections. For our own rational well being, sanity and safety we should read more, both from print and on line sources, rely more on CSPAN and on our own instincts and brain power to determine what is true and what is false.

Moving on to news not covered by the corporate owned right wing mainstream media. LS

A hideous, deplorable, reprehensible and heart breaking story one won’t find anywhere in the U.S. mainstream news on Iraq.

Excerpt:

"Once I was called to an explosion site," Saad, a humanitarian worker, is quoted as saying in the report.

"There I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother's body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened. He had been taken out shopping by his mum."

The report also highlights the following problems:

• Iraq's healthcare facilities face critical shortages of staff and supplies. Many doctors, nurses and patients no longer dare to go to hospitals and clinics because they are targeted or threatened

• much of Iraq's vital water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition

• food shortages have been reported in some areas and malnutrition is said to have increased

From the BBC News.com

Iraqis face 'immense' suffering.

West Point Grades Opt Out of Their Commissions

From Boston.com News via The Randi Rhodes Show:

West Point Grads Opt Out

White House Uses Alternative Email Addresses to Avoid Public Scrutiny and Accountability.

From the Huffington Post

White House Staff Use GOP Political Email Addresses When Conducting U.S. Business

But UH OH! Seems that the White House has "lost" thousands of U.S. government emails sent from RNC computers.

U.S. Government Emails Deleted from RNC Server? Guess. S

Iraq War Spawned New Terror

Found on truthout.org

Iraq War Spawned New Terror

Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

Also from truthout.org

Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

GOP Playbook On Stealing Elections

2007-03-26T15:21:00.000-04:00

Before exposing what I have learned on the GOP’s playbook on rigging elections, I would like to point out a few observations I had when catching a few clips of CSPAN’s broadcast on Friday on the recent House vote on the tortured and endless nightmare in Iraq.

It is well about time that a few souls in Congress discovered they possessed a shred of spine and tad of courage to stand up to Daddy’s Supreme Court appointed and product of rigged elections, the current “President” of the United States. Maybe our installed and fake “President” is really a mere puppet whose puppet masters are none other than the obvious. Like, Cheney the Enabler-in-Chief for corporate interests. Next is Rove as the W-Political-Whore-in-Chief to ensure Bushie types prevail for decades to come. Rove is also Cheney’s bitch in ensuring that the VP’s darkest side becomes organic on all levels. Their ultimate goal is to dismantle our Democracy and deliver it to the Bush/Cheney highest masters, corporate interests.

Bush, Cheney and Rove knew full well that we Americans were asleep at the wheel and they took full advantage of our complacency. After 9/11 the puppet and his puppet masters seized upon a national catastrophe to use it as a political target of opportunity. It subsequently and quite successfully played us all for fools. It also quite successfully wreaked havoc on and destabilized the Middle East.

It is time to wake up America because if we do not, we will be no better off than serfs.

On Friday, in the House, true to its nature, the sorry remnants of the do-nothing and rubber stamping Congress used its usual tedious, tired and defeated bullying tactics when pontificating and grand standing about our troops. These low life bullies and chicken hawks, except for a few who actually did serve (there are a few in the GOP) used the usual empty rhetoric and catch phrases fresh from the party’s talking point propaganda factory. I heard the usual “cowards,” “when did blue become yellow?” “cut ‘n run,” “surrender” and on and on and on and on.

The real cowards are the GOP who sent our troops to battle with fake intelligence and on the cheap. Repeat, the real cowards are the GOP who sent our troops to war based on fabricated intelligence and without sufficient troop numbers, equipment and resources to ensure the success of the mission. Worse, the reprehensible Bush Administration is sending wounded troops back into active duty before they have time to fully recover.

From Salon.com:

“Army Deployed Seriously Wounded Troops”

The Bush enablers are also spineless ninnies because they allowed our “President” to over spend his budget over and over and over again and never thought to ask him to account for a dime of our taxpayers' dollars.

John Murtha made this fact abundantly clear during his interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer:

Murtha’s Interview on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer

What pathetic and inept jokes for representatives. Or maybe our Congress people are as corrupt and cynical as W. and Cheney. Inept or corrupt? Or both? Pick your poison, America, if you want our democracy to keep on dying. If you want it to live and thrive as it should, get rid of the poison.

Speaking of ineptitude and corruption, according to Senator Chuck Hagel yesterday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, we have spent one-half trillion of our tax payer dollars on Iraq, $40. billion in investments and there are billions of untouched dollars sitting in Iraq’s bank account.

Excerpt:

You know, we had the Inspector General testifying, our Inspector General, Mr. Bowen, he was testifying before the Congress this week. I met with him alone for an hour and a half. He reminded all of us that we have now spent almost a half a trillion dollars in Iraq. We have put at least 40 billion in economic development there. Which we don't know what we got out of it. There's still no oil law. Billions of dollars have been ripped off, unaccounted for, and one more point on this -- over $12 billion of Iraqi money still sits in the accounts of the Iraqi government that they haven't spent. So something has to give here, George.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos

Transcripts of with Hagel’s Interview on ABC

Forget about funding for education and universal healthcare for we-the-people-who-do-not-matter here at home. Send our dollars instead to Iraq to be squandered and stolen.

Because these dudes are fixated solely on greed and power and since they are also shamefully incompetent, the only way they can get elected is to steal the elections.

Here is how they do it.

A generous corporate donor's firm happens to manufacture electronic voting machines. Diebold’s CEO, for example, said that he would deliver the election to W. in 2004. In Ohio, he did just that. Corporations tend to adore the GOP because of their distain for big business regulation and oversight. The GOP is also more likely to work for lobbyists and corporate interests than they are for we the little people.

CEO Of Diebold Promises to Deliver 2004 Election to Bush

Next we have low level partisan hacks serving as Secretary of State such as Katharine Harris of Florida (2000) and Ken Blackwell of Ohio (2004). These political sluts excel at voter suppression. They are low level grunts that desperately and despicably hope, that by doing their master’s bidding, they will be rewarded later. But, if a lot of controversy surrounds their deeds on blatant voter suppression, these lap dogs are usually dropped like hot potatoes. Suddenly no one in the RNC knows who they are. Ken who?

Rep. John Conyers Report on What Went Wrong in Ohio

The most blatant, destructive, chilling and insidious methodology in ensuring voter suppression is to install U.S. attorneys who are partisan hacks. These so called “attorneys” are more loyal to their political masters than they are to the law of the land. As in the case of Iraq and how the intelligence was fixed to support Bush’s policy, likewise is happening within our judicial system.

From the McClatchy Paper’s “New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records”

Excerpts:

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud.

New U.S. Attorneys Who Will Support Political Ideology over the Law of the Land

DEMONIZING DEMOCRATS

2007-02-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

The GOP routinely attempts to portray Democrats as fiends and yet the party of the sanctimonious and self-righteous will accept donations from the likes of financiers for Al-Qaeda. This snippet of news won’t likely show up anywhere anytime soon in the Right Wing Scream Machine “media.” There is more on this shocking revelation at the end of this diary.

I have just had it with the GOP’s self-serving, hypocritical and junkyard dog tactics. Today on the Dallas Blog, right wingers are trashing Gore for his electric bill. Last month it was Edward’s because of the size of his home and then Pelosi and the Air Force One non-issue that was spun into a circus by the right wing scream machine.

After listening to this nonsense since November 8, I have discovered how the RWSM works. It and the GOP are obviously one and the same. And therefore the RWSM strives to provide distractions from the misery, failures and havoc the GOP has inflicted upon our once great nation since 2000. When the news on Iraq and other colossal blunders become more devastating for Bush and the GOP, the right wing scream machine kicks into action by picking up on some insignificant minutiae and churning it into a national soap opera.

Now the RWSM is picking on Gore. He won an Academy Award for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” One would think Gore was running for office considering how the RWSM is handling the story.

It is being reported that some so-called non-partisan “think” tank in Tennessee (that obviously had nothing better to do) studied Gore’s electric bill. This “think” tank, which may be posing as a front for a 527, happens to receive tons of donations from big oil. It also cheerleads the war in Iraq and has a problem with global warming. Non-partisan? Sell me some ocean front property in Arizona.

To set the record straight, as far as Gore’s utility bill is concerned, his house has 20 rooms in which there are two home offices and space for Secret Service types. Mr. Gore and his wife opted for a green power provider over one whose energy source spews more carbon dioxide into our already filthy air. The green power provider is apparently more expensive than traditional power providers. The RWSM neglected to provide these inconvenient facts.

The RWSM will spend vast amounts of time railing about Gore, Edwards, Pelosi, and other prominent Democrats while ignoring or give merely token coverage (at 3:00 a.m.) to very serious news. One prime example includes how the Ambassador to Switzerland gave Karl Rove an offer from Iran to negotiate in 2003. Somehow the document never made it to Condi Rice. Apparently Cheney and Bush discussed this offer, but since we were at a time in the era of smirking, cocky swaggering and strutting, instead of dealing with Iran at an opportune time, the Bush Administration scolded the Swiss Ambassador for contacting Rove. Despite the seriousness of this obvious bungle, all I hear is the deafening sound of silence from the right.

Then there is the disgrace of Walter Reed Hospital.

More silence.

And how about the inconvenient truth of Bush/Cheney’s back room shenanigans with Iran – like covert operations with no Congressional oversight? And how about the establishment of a panel in the Pentagon whose sole purpose is to facilitate bombing Iran on 24 hours notice? And what about Bush/Cheney support for Sunnis and by extension Al-Qaeda? The Sunnis are the ones who also happen to be those responsible for killing most of our U.S. soldiers in Iraq and who flew jets into the World Trade Center. (Source: Mr. Seymour Hersh’s forthcoming article in The New Yorker 3/5/07.)

More silence….

The drop dead tidbit du jour (that the RWSM will likely not utter a peep) concerns how a financier for Al-Qaeda donated money to none other than the Grand Old Party. Can you believe it? A supporter of TERRORISTS donated money to the GOP? Could you hear the RWSM had a DEMOCRAT received one cent from this person? Oh imagine the histrionics, hysterics, apoplexy, the shrieking, bellowing, the dramas and trauma that would be spewed 24/7 for months and months and months.

Excerpts from Josh Marshall

When it comes to major funders of the Republican party who are also
(alleged) financiers of al Qaeda, we make a special effort to be thorough.

So remember Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, the guy who got indicted two weeks ago for trying to fund new terrorist training camps in Pakistan (apparently it's a growth industry at the moment). Reports at the time said Alishtari had given just over $15,000 to the Republicans. But Paul Kiel looked a bit closer. And it turns out that the true number was $35,000.

There was an extra $20,000 Alishtari contributed to the National Republican Senatorial Committee on August 9th, 2003. (It went unnoticed because his name was misspelled on the disclosure form.)

Admittedly, it ain't the $152,000 he tried to contribute to al Qaeda. But not chump change either.
-- Josh Marshall

Sources: Josh Marshall Piece Here and TPM Muckraker Here

Again, the deafening sound of silence pervades the airwaves from the right.

Bush’s War in Iraq Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold

2007-02-21T17:35:00.000-05:00

A new report has been recently released by Mother Jones, entitled “Iraq 101: Aftermath, Long Term Thinking” (Part 4) This in-depth, 5-part study was led by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at NYU’s School of Law.

According to the study, Bush has been insisting that fighting terrorists “over there” means we don’t have to fight them “over here.” When Rumsfeld has been asked if the war has created more terrorism, he would routinely reply “No one knows. The world doesn’t know.” The report reveals that until now, no one has ever done a statistical analysis of the effects of the war in Iraq on terrorism.

Bergen and Cruickshank’s report give us a crystal clear view into Bush and his GOP enablers' work in abysmal and profound failure, the deaths of hundreds of thousands, devastating human suffering both at home and in Iraq, a nightmare of regional migration displacement, gross corruption and the squandering and depletion of U.S. treasure. As if this personal, social, military, geopolitical and national calamity isn’t horrible enough, Bush & Co. seriously compromised our security and safety by opening Pandora’s Box of terrorism.

All for a lie.

Below is a summary of some of the facts revealed by the study. A link to the full report can be found on the URL for Mother Jones below.

Excerpts:

We have undertaken such a study, drawing on data in the mipt-rand Terrorism database (terrorismknowledgebase .org), widely considered the best unclassified database on terrorism incidents.

Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups, and the number of people killed in those attacks, increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, the scene of almost half the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks. But even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan—the other current jihadist hot spot—there has been a 35 percent rise in the number of attacks, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities.

Contrary to Bush’s assertion, jihadists have not let the Iraq War distract them from targeting the United States and its allies. The rate of attacks on Western interests and citizens has risen by almost 25 percent, while the yearly fatality rate has increased by 4 percent, a figure that would have been higher had planned attacks, such as the London airline plot, not been prevented.

The globalization of jihad and martyrdom has disquieting implications for American security in the future. Jihadists are already leaving Iraq to operate elsewhere, a “blowback” trend that will greatly increase when the war eventually winds down. Terrorist groups in Iraq, which have learned to raise millions through kidnapping and oil theft, may be in a position to help fund their jihadist brethren elsewhere. Finally, Iraq has increased the popularity of a hardcore takfiri ideology so intolerant that, unlikely as it seems, it makes Osama bin Laden appear relatively moderate.

End of excerpt:

Human Consequences of a Failed War

Migration Disaster for Iraq and the Region:

1.6 million Iraqis have been displaced, 1.8 million have left. Saudi Arabia is building a wall at its 560 mile border to prevent migration from Iraq. 700,000 Iraqis live in Jordon, 60,000 in Sweden, according to the report.

All because of a lie.

Social Upheaval:

In 2006, 30% of Iraqi children attended school. Prior to the war, attendance was 100%.
47% of the children have suffered from a traumatic event.
2,000 doctors have been murdered.
30% more Iraqis are in jail now than before the war.
Iraq has descended into a civil war. More and more civilians are being killed.

All because of a lie.

The Cost to U.S. in Blood

Over 3,100 troops killed.
23,000 soldiers have been wounded
4,600 Iraq vets suffer from severe head or brain injury
1,300 have lost limbs
1 in 5 suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
22 Army soldiers have committed suicide.

All because of a lie.

The Cost to U.S. Treasure:

The report also reveals the extraordinary costs of prosecuting the war which is costing U.S. taxpayers $275 million per day. According to the study: “If the U.S. had not invaded, militarily containing Saddam through 2015 would have cost an estimated $23 million a day.”

Additionally, the estimate cost of the ISG which did not find any WMD in Iraq is a cool $900. Million. The amount Congress has budgeted for a “success commemoration” is $20 million.

All because of a lie.

Oil Production:

Excerpt:

Pipe Dreams: Iraq’s Energy Crunch

In 2003, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said oil exports would rebuild Iraq “relatively soon.” But last year, Iraq missed its export goal by nearly 1/3 and spent only $2 billion on reconstruction, while the U.S. spent $5.4 billion. Baghdad gets an average of 4 hours 30 minutes of electricity a day. Estimated cost of boosting Iraq’s power capacity by 2010: $20 billion. Estimated cost of installing enough solar panels to power every home in Iraq: $6.6 billion.

End of Excerpt.

Iraq: a war waged by a heck-of-a-job Bush, Cheney and the GOP.

The liars lied and others die or suffer.

And Pandora’s Box on terrorism has been thrown wide open.

All for……..? LS

MOTHER JONES PIECE HERE

DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS

2007-02-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

Some folks in the mainstream media call Texas the “reddest state of them all.” Enlightened Texans, including those who represent a cross section of all political groups, from liberal to moderate to conservative, have a different interpretation of Texas politics.

The more informed Texan understands that our state is likely the most politically corrupted one in the nation. This is the literal stomping ground of the Bush family. After all, Texas delivered the likes of W. and Rove to Washington.

50 out 50, Texas likely wins the first place award for fast tracking our state down the one-way path to economic devastation… that of a third world economy in which the hard working middle and working classes are completely disenfranchised.

Texas Republican lawmakers are so completely wedded to big oil and gas; insurance, pharma and special interests that they forgot why we, the people, sent them to Washington.

Recent reports reveal that ExxonMobil, supported by the Republican Party, is paying scientists to dispute the findings of global warming.

Let us eat pollution, attendant cancer and suffer the devastating effects of climate change.

Our state’s Republican leaders tacitly applaud illegal immigration for such keeps wages low and benefits such as healthcare non- existent.

It also explains why the corporate owned Republican Party has done nothing whatsoever to secure our southern border except to talk a lot about “securing our border with Mexico.” Which is all mere trash talk followed by nada, zip action. Talk the talk, but shirk the walk.

Recently, the governor in Texas, The Hair Perry, beholden to Merck, decided to mandate a vaccine down the throats of Texans. The vaccine is likely a good thing, but no one, from far right to far left trusts the Gov. Seems that the Gov pretends to care about “our children” and yet in reality, The Hair really owes a big one to Merck who donated $6K to his re-election campaign.

Besides, if our Gov and his Republican Party really gave a flip about Texas children why are our public schools so abysmally under-funded, low performing and why does Texas have record-breaking high school drop out rates?

Ironically, the Republican politicians, including our Gov, all profess to be God-fearing if not fundamentalist “Christians.” Perhaps they should explain their definition of “Christianity.” After all, Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple.

Our junior Senator, John Cornyn, is yet another example of a so-called compassionate conservative and “Christian” Republican.

Let us examine his reasoning for voting against the recent minimum wage increase. After all, Cornyn voted for a minimum wage increase when it was tied to the estate tax bill in August 2006.

After reading the letter Senator Cornyn wrote to a constituent, also a friend of mine, below, please be sure to check the web site indicating Cornyn’s major contributors.

Dear Mr. X:

Thank you for contacting me about efforts to increase the minimum wage. I appreciate having the benefit of your views on this issue.

As you may know, the Minimum Wage Increase Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-188) established the current minimum wage level of $5.15 per hour. I understand the concerns that many Americans have about the difficulties confronting low-wage workers. While increasing the minimum wage may be well intentioned, I do not believe it will—by itself—aid minimum-wage employees or make the U.S. more competitive in today’s global economy. Such an increase would further the financial burden on small businesses and ultimately translate into higher product prices and layoffs. These consequences would disproportionately hurt low-wage workers.

To improve the well being of American workers, Congress must focus on promoting continued economic growth, reducing the tax burden on small businesses, and increasing production—circumstances that will benefit all Americans. You may be certain that I will keep your comments in mind as I work with my colleagues in the Senate to promote economic growth and secure the financial well being of all Americans.

I appreciate having the opportunity to represent the interests of Texans in the United States Senate. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator

517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2934
Fax: (202) 228-2856
http://www.cornyn.senate.gov

CONTRIBUTIONS TO CORNYN FROM NOT SO SMALL BUSINESSES

CORNYN’S CONTRIBUTORS

WHY W. THINKS WE'RE WINNING IN IRAQ

2007-01-09T17:36:00.000-05:00

When over 60% of Americans know better

Mr. Chris Floyd wrote the stunning article below for the UK Independent. LS

Found via Truthout.org

Excerpts:

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."

Put simply, the Bush Family and their allies and cronies represent the confluence of three long-established power factions in the American elite: oil, arms and investments. These groups equate their own interests, their own wealth and privilege, with the interests of the nation - indeed, the world - as a whole. And they pursue these interests with every weapon at their command, including war, torture, deceit and corruption. Democracy means nothing to them - not even in their own country, as we saw in the 2000 election. Laws are just whips to keep the common herd in line; they don't apply to the elite, as Bush's own lawyers and minions have openly asserted in the memos, signing statements, court cases and presidential decrees asserting the "inherent power" of the "unitary executive" to override any law he pleases.

The Iraq war has been immensely profitable for these Bush-linked power factions (and their tributary industries, such as construction); billions of dollars in public money have already poured into their coffers. Halliburton has been catapulted from the edge of bankruptcy to the heights of no-bid, open-ended, guaranteed profit. The Carlyle Group is gorging on war contracts. Individual Bush family members are making out like bandits from war-related investments, while dozens of Bush minions - like Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Joe Allbaugh - have cashed in their insider chips for blood money.

NEW OIL LAW MEANS VICTORY IN IRAQ FOR BUSH

FORMER REAGAN AIDE COMPARES BUSH TO HITLER

Sounds spot on to me. LS

From Raw Story.com

Excerpts:

"Bush is like Hitler," Paul Craig Roberts writes in a column entitled The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?. "He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy."

"Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion," Roberts continues. "In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin."

FORMER REAGAN AID COMPARES BUSH TO HITLER

TED KENNEDY FIGHTS BUSH'S MURDEROUS SURGE

Senator Kennedy will introduce legislation requiring Congressional approval before troops can be increased. I would think Congressional approval should be mandatory given the fact that over 60% of Americans are against Bush's madness. But Bush obviously does not give a flip about what Americans want. The guy obviously thinks he is either a king or dictator. LS

From CNN.com via The Huffington Post

Excerpt:

Kennedy, a leading opponent of the war and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, said any troop increase would be "an immense new mistake."

Kennedy said he introduced the legislation "to reclaim the rightful role of Congress and the people's right to a full voice in the president's plan to send more troops to Iraq."

He added that the bill says "that no additional troops can be sent and no additional dollars can be spent on such an escalation unless and until Congress approves the

KENNEDY TO INTRODUCE LEGISLATION REQUIRING CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL BEFORE TROOPS CAN BE INCREASED IN IRAQ

USA/GALLUP POLL SHOWS 61% OF AMERICANS ARE AGAINST BUSH'S BLOODY SURGE

POLL SHOWS 61% OPPOSE SURGE

BUSH WILL CUT AND RUN AND THEN BLAME IRAQ

2006-12-13T17:16:00.000-05:00

According to the Financial Times of London, Bush intends to blame Iraq and then turn tail and run like a coward/bully chicken hawk would. Naturally, Bush will not take responsibility for his own morass making and in typical and predictable GOP fashion, he will play the blame game instead. I am all for getting out of Iraq NOW, but please Mr. President, at least have the decency and courage to take responsibility for the human catastrophe, carnage, mayhem and unparalleled debacle that you have visited upon the Middle East and on the U.S.

Who on earth appointed this monster W. to office in 2000 (the Supreme Court, thank you very much) and who rigged the election in Ohio (Blackwell and Diebold’s CEO ) to maintain W. in power in 2004? Surely these folks and all of their offspring, including all Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Rices and every Congress person, including Democrats, who voted to declare war on Iraq, should be forced to serve in Iraq.

Make a sacrifice or two before asking average Jane and Joe America to step up.

No? Well, then, perhaps all of those mentioned above should be charged with... let's see...crimes against humanity... treason...... hmmmmm.... LS

Excerpts:

“You could call it ‘blame and run’, ” said Zbigniew Bzrezinski, a former national security adviser now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It is based on a pervasive illusion that there is such a thing as an Iraqi government. The more we blame it for doing things it cannot do, the more impotent it will become. ‘Blame and run’ is self-fulfilling.”

Strobe Talbott, head of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, agrees. In a speech last week he criticised the view that Baghdad could be pressed to make changes such as disarming the sectarian militias by threatening to withhold military, political or economic aid. The ISG report states that Baghdad must prove that it “deserves” future aid.

“The logic of that pressure tactic — that is, why it should work with the Iraqis — is not clear, since most of them want us out [of Iraq],” said Mr Talbott. “The logic on our own side, however, is very clear indeed: having pre-emptively invaded their country, let’s pre-emptively blame them for the mess we’ve made of it.”

The breadth of support for such a line is striking. In a leaked memo last week, Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing defence secretary, said the Iraqis needed “to pull their socks up”.

CUT AND RUN THEN BLAME IRAQ

BUSH DOES NOT CARE WHAT 75% OF AMERICANS WANT BUT HE AND CHENEY WILL HEED SAUDI ARABIA'S ADVICE.

I read the chilling piece, posted below, written on the New York Times.com concerning Saudi Arabia and how it will likely support Iraqi Sunnis if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq. This is just lovely. Saudi Arabia will support the Sunnis and Iran will support the Shiites. Iran would love to blow Israel off of the planet. Israel openly admitted it has nuclear weapons. Of course everyone in the world knows this but an open admission of such could mean Israel is locked and loaded. No wonder the ISG committee members are so somber and Bush I is sobbing. What a potentially horrible nightmare is in the making, thanks to W., the neonuts and a clueless U.S. mainstream media. Any Kool-Aid left to transport us to an alternate reality? LS.

Excerpts:

The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who told his staff on Monday that he was resigning his post, recently fired Nawaf Obaid, a consultant who wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post two weeks ago contending that “one of the first consequences” of an American pullout of Iraq would “be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.”

Mr. Obaid also suggested that Saudi Arabia could cut world oil prices in half by raising its production, a move that he said “would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today’s high oil prices.” The Saudi government disavowed Mr. Obaid’s column, and Prince Turki canceled his contract.

But Arab diplomats said Tuesday that Mr. Obaid’s column reflected the view of the Saudi government, which has made clear its opposition to an American pullout from Iraq.

In a speech in Philadelphia last week, Prince Turki reiterated the Saudi position against an American withdrawal from Iraq. “Just picking up and leaving is going to create a huge vacuum,” he told the World Affairs Council. “The U.S. must underline its support for the Maliki government because there is no other game in town.”

Prince Turki said Saudi Arabia did not want Iraq to fracture along ethnic or religious lines. On Monday a group of prominent Saudi clerics called on Sunni Muslims around the world to mobilize against Shiites in Iraq. The statement called the “murder, torture and displacement of Sunnis” an “outrage.”

SAUDIA ARABIA SAYS IT MAY BACK IRAQI SUNNIS IF U.S. WITHDRAWS

BUSH'S DELAY IN CHANGING THE POLICY IN IRAQ UPSETS PRINCIPALED JOURNALISTS.

The article below is a very impressive and sobering editorial written by the New York Times' editors today. LS

Excerpts:

We are more than eager for this White House to finally get something right on Iraq. But we find it chilling to imagine that Mr. Bush and his advisers have only now begun a full policy review, months after Iraq plunged into civil war and years after experts began warning that the administration’s strategy was not working.

We would like to believe that the reason for delay is that some of Mr. Bush’s advisers have come up with a sensible change in course and they are now trying to persuade the president to take it. Or that behind the scenes Mr. Bush is already strong-arming Iraq’s leaders to rein in the sectarian militias and begin long-delayed national reconciliation talks.

We fear that a more likely explanation is that the president’s ever-divided policy advisers are still wrangling over the most basic decisions, while his political handlers are waiting for public enthusiasm for the Baker report to flag before Mr. Bush tries to explain why he won’t follow through on some of the report’s most important and reasonable suggestions — like imposing a timetable on Iraqi leaders to make political compromises or face a withdrawal of American support. Or trying to persuade Iran and Syria to cease their meddling.

"WITHOUT DELIBERATE SPEED"

"WHO CARES WHAT YOU THINK?"

This is a great anthology of articles put together by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post on Bush's delay in changing policy in Iraq LS

"WHO CARES WHAT YOU THINK?"

"THE BUBBLE BOY IN THE OVAL OFFICE"

From the L.A. Times. Yet another sobering and disturbing revelation on the quintessential spoiled brat and narcissistic child who is simultaneously running and ruining our nation. Even Daddy’s best buddies cannot stop him. Where is Mother Bush when we need her the most? In total denial, no doubt.. Let us all eat poisoned cake. LS

"THE BUBBLE BOY IN THE OVAL OFFICE"

IT IS WORSE THAN THE VERY WORST IMAGINABLE

2006-12-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

December 7: The day after the release of the Iraq Study Group Report and nearly 24 hours of wall to wall cable news coverage of its findings.

I started this blog in order to share political ideas and news that one may not normally find in the mainstream media, especially after the media blackout following 9/11. The intention was to share information with a small group of like-minded friends and family. I started the blog after I knew something terrible had happened in Ohio in 2004, which seemed to smack of the same evil doing as that of 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed W. as President in a very close election. Everyone recalls how in 2000, the highest court in this nation shut down a recount in Florida. James Baker played no small role in this outcome.

In 2004 GOP political operatives in Ohio, namely Kenneth Blackwell, infinitely hacker friendly and pliable Diebold voting machines and a CEO who promised to deliver Bush to the White House, did indeed guarantee the worst presidency ever known in American history.

In all fairness, Kerry gave up the fight too soon. Had he prevailed and demanded a recount, perhaps we would not be in the ungodly mess we are today. The Supreme Court would have been reluctant to intervene in two elections in a row. Overly aggressive and self-serving politicians can be very dangerous monsters. So can weak and self-satisfied ones.

Now it seems that the GOP demons that took hold of us in 2000 and 2004 are holding us by our throats and will take us straight to hell if we let them.

Many of us have known from the very beginning that W. would be a disaster. He does not and will never possess the character, the integrity, high principles, the intellect or the diplomatic skills required of the highest office on the planet. W. is at best a partisan operative. There is no substance behind the rhetoric. It’s all showmanship and winning at any cost. That’s it. Nothing else exists inside that suit or behind the seemingly steely but in reality, the soulless eyes.

At best we hoped W. would be a do nothing one term president who would do little damage in four years.

But then 9/11 happened and everything changed. The U.S. took a sharp turn and steered far away from the democratic principles that have guided our nation for over 200 years. We entered a new and heretofore unknown era of darkness. Fear overtook hope and optimism. Sinister secrecy overrides transparency. Deception, mendacity, propaganda and illusion are now the standard operating procedural tools used by the White House. Our constitutional rights are seriously compromised. Domestic wiretapping is now the norm. W. and Co. fabricated a war. The principles underlying the rational for going to war are based on lies. Now the war is an abysmal catastrophe that even Daddy’s best and most qualified friends cannot fix.

I wonder why blasts from the 2000 past like James Baker and Sandra Day O’Connor are key players on the ISG committee? Those who were instrumental in visiting Bush upon us are now trying to find a way out of a Bush imposed morass.

Do Baker and O’Connor feel a prick of conscience? Remorse? Or are they merely trying to protect something, which they hold most dear? Their legacies? I mean, who wants to go down in history as delivering the worst and most catastrophic presidency known to this nation so far?

I think Baker, O’Connor and other Bush enablers are terrified for themselves and for all of us. Former President George H.W. Bush may sadly be on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of W.’s perilous fiasco.

For all of their hard work and the distinguished members’ impressive resumes, the ISG offers no concrete viable solutions. Why? Maybe because all committee members are former politicians or held a political or appointed position in Washington. Most of them likely serve on corporate boards.

According to one of the articles posted below, Bush can cherry pick phrases and sentences much like he did the intelligence on Iraq. He can spin parts of the report to maintain his disastrous and vastly unpopular course. Perhaps this is why the former President Bush publicly broke down. Perhaps he is tormented by despair.

So, what’s the solution, as right wingers will always ask me when I criticize the Bush Administration? How do we get out of this mess? The solution, my dear uninformed fellow citizens is to immediately impeach Bush and Cheney. Charge them with crimes against humanity and high treason. Prosecute both men to the full extent of the law.

Bring in the best international diplomats, distinguished Middle East scholars, those who live in the region, understand the cultures, religions and speak the languages; seasoned U.S., British and French military experts (Britain and France know boatloads about failed occupations), and ask them to come up with a plan. Leave politicians and corporate types out of it. All of them. LS

Ken sent a very frank and sobering piece by Fred Kaplan on Slate Magazine.com on the ISG entitled:

“SO MUCH FOR PLAN B”

Excerpts:

So many careers and reputations have been ravaged by Iraq. Even James Baker, the canniest of operators, has now met his Waterloo.
The report of the Iraq Study Group—which Baker co-chaired with Lee Hamilton, that other Wise Man-wannabe—was doomed to fall short of expectations. But who knew it would amount to such an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.
Its outline of a new "diplomatic offensive" is so disjointed that even a willing president would be left puzzled by what precisely to do, and George W. Bush seems far from willing.
Its scheme for a new military strategy contains so many loopholes that a president could cite its language to justify doing anything (or nothing).

”SO MUCH FOR PLAN B" BY FRED KAPLAN

BAKER CAN GO BACK TO HIS DAY JOB ACCORDING TO BUSH

I found this article on CBS News.com via the Huffington Post.com LS

W. TO JIMMY BOY: GO BACK TO YOUR DAY JOB

THE REAL JIMMY BOY BAKER

A journalist in Austin, Mr. Robert Bryce, reminds us of James Baker's role in the outrageous S&L scandals and corruption in the 1980's. I found this piece on Counter Punch.com via Buzz Flash.com LS

Excerpts:

In my book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate, I wrote about the S&L mess and Baker's role in it. I quoted William Black, an attorney who helped clean up the S&L mess while working for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and later, as the deputy director of the Office of Thrift Supervision. Black told me that the Reaganites were "willing to do the most outrageous, unprincipled and dangerous things to maintain the cover up" of the S&L disaster. And said Black, Baker was one of "the centerpieces of this strategy."

To be fair, Congress shares the blame for the S&L meltdown. Jim Wright, the Democratic Speaker of the House worked hard to prevent federal regulators from cracking down on S&Ls in Texas. On the other side of the Capitol building, the Keating Five, a group of senators which included 2008 presidential hopeful John McCain, ran interference on behalf of disgraced S&L boss Charles Keating, the chairman of California-based Lincoln Savings and Loan.

But none of those men were the secretary of the treasury. None of those men had their signatures on American greenbacks. None of those men had the power to appoint aggressive regulators to delve into the unfolding S&L disaster. Baker did. And yet he did nothing.

JAMES BAKER'S ROLE IN THE S&L SCANDALS AND COVERUP

THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVER

2006-12-06T17:08:00.000-05:00

Now we know beyond a doubt that the war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. I also learned today that the Pentagon has been under reporting the real level of violence in Iraq. Am I surprised? Under this administration? Of course not. It has been absolutely essential to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crazed and fascistic leaning policies for the American people to be as clueless and as uninformed as possible. The trio has been lying to us since January, 2000 when sworn into office.

The ISG Report was released today. Bottom line – Bush’s neonut policy has visited chaos, carnage and mayhem on the region that could spread throughout the Middle East to include Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. No one wonder W.’s poor father was reduced to tormented sobs when speaking to a group the other day. As much as I have
criticized the Bush family, it was painful to see an 82 year old man and former President of the U.S. so broken.

The ISG Report from CNN.com:

FINDINGS OF IRAQ STUDY GROUP

TONY BLAIR AGREES WE ARE NOT WINNING IN IRAQ

Our only ally, really, now admits the obvious. LS

From the BBC News.com

BLAIR AGREES WE ARE LOSING IN IRAQ

ARE WE LOSING AFGHANISTAN TOO?

An editorial writer for the New York Times thinks so. LS

Excerpts:

Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war - and the war America was winning. But because of the Bush administration's inattention and mismanagement, even the good war is going wrong.

The latest grim news is that after years of effort - and more than $1 billion spent - Afghanistan's American-trained police force is unable to perform even routine law enforcement work. According to an article in yesterday's Times, investigators for the Pentagon and the State Department found that the training program's managers did not even know how many police officers were serving, while thousands of trucks and other American-purchased police equipment have simply disappeared.

The failure to provide local security - or even a semblance of impartial justice - helps explain why so many Afghans have lost confidence in the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai, and why a growing number are again turning to the Taliban for protection. The failure to stand up an effective police force also helps explain why opium cultivation rose by nearly 60 percent this year.

"LOSING THE GOOD WAR"

BUSH SAYS HE WILL CONSIDER THE FINDINGS OF THE ISG REPORT but does he mean it, asks Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. Mr. Froomkin observes that as long as Bush stays close to Cheney and Rove, it is unlikely he will change any of his views on Iraq. LS

Excerpts:

We'll know for sure once words turn into action. But in the meantime, it strikes me that as long as Vice President Cheney and political guru Karl Rove remain Bush's closest advisers, then the answer is probably not.

Cheney and his loyalists are largely responsible for the deception, delusion and incompetence that brought us to where we are today in Iraq. Rove intentionally turned the war into the most ferocious and divisive of partisan issues. Neither man has shown any sign of remorse.

DAN FROOMKIN ON ISG AND BUSH

GORE,WHO WAS THE TRUE WINNER IN 2000, SAYS IRAQ IS WORST STRATEGY MISTAKE IN U.S. HISTORY. Think about it. Had the recount in Florida taken place as it should have in a real democracy, Gore would have been rightfully installed as President elect. We would most certainly not be in this horrific mess. I wonder how former Justice O'Connor sleeps at night?

Gore says that Bush should realize the disaster in Iraq isn’t about him. That is a tall order, sir. How else does a blatant narcissist see the world but through himself? From Raw Story.com. LS

Excerpts:

"This is an utter disaster," Gore told Today show host Matt Lauer. "This was the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States. And now we, as a nation, have to find a way, in George Mitchell's words, to manage a disaster."

The former Senator from Tennessee, who lost to President Bush in a close election eventually decided by the Supreme Court, expressed hope that the Commander in Chief will recognize that this "isn't all about him."

GORE SAYS IRAQ IS WORST STRATEGY MISTAKE EVER

BRING US BACK TO BASICS, LIKE HAVING OUR LAWMAKERS WORK FOR THEIR SALARIES

Rep. Hoyer says Congress will return to a 5 day work week, a stunning change from the lazy, do nothing, country club loving Republican 2 day work week. Republicans are naturally screaming and are of course accusing Dems of not caring about family life. My advice to lawmakers who run for office, if you don't want to work like the rest of us do, don't run. Move the family to Washington, Virginia or Maryland. Republican indolent whiners fail to understand it should be considered an honor and privilege to serve our nation. Guess they don't get it. From Raw Story.com. LS

"CULTURE SHOCK IN WASHINGTON: HAVING TO ACTUALLY WORK

Do Nothing Iraq Study Group

2006-11-30T16:58:00.000-05:00

Another blast from the past. Following six years of a do-nothing Congress we will soon learn we also have a do nothing Iraq Study Group.

Many in the know believe the ISG is nothing more than a mere damage control device for the Bush Administration and the Bush family legacy. When one considers that some of the players are retreads from the Iran Contra era, it should give one pause. What are they trying to protect this time? Money of course. And then what?

The Bush’s will go down in history as the despicable and incompetent folks they truly are. Even Jimmy Boy Baker won’t be able to fix this mess for Daddy and Junior, no matter how hard the family consigliore tries, beats, bullies and bribes.

Below are stories one will not likely see in the mainstream media, at least for a week. LS

From Common Dreams.org

ISG: MERE DAMAGE CONTROL?

Excerpts:

The group's composition gives the game away. Chaired by James Baker, the famed political operative and former secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, former congressman and fixture on various blue-ribbon commissions, it contains no one who could be even remotely described as entertaining unorthodox opinions or maverick tendencies.

Instead, it consists of Beltway luminaries such as retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and lobbyist Vernon Jordan. No member is now an elected official. Neither do its ranks include any Iraq war veterans, family members of soldiers killed in Iraq, or anyone identified with the antiwar movement. None possesses specialized knowledge of Islam or the Middle East.

Charging this crowd with assessing the Iraq war is like convening a committee of Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the church's clergy sex-abuse scandal. Even without explicit instructions, the group's members know which questions not to ask and which remedies not to advance. Sadly, the average Catholic's traditional deference to the church hierarchy finds its counterpart in the average American's deference to "experts" when it comes to foreign policy. The ISG exemplifies the result: a befuddled, but essentially passive-electorate looks for guidance to a small group of unelected insiders reflecting a narrow range of views and operating largely behind closed doors.

"Iraq Panel's Real Agenda: Damage Control"

From Newsweek.com

"A BUST IN BAKERSVILLE"

The author, Mr. Michael Hirsh suggests the group's findings are doomed, in part, because W. will ignore any plans that are not in synch with his neocon ideology. For one thing, Bush will refuse to meet with “evil doers” in Iran and Syria. Additionally, Mr. Hirsh writes that the study group will “fudge” on the issue of troop strength and withdrawal, which means many officials in both Iraq and Washington will dismiss the report as soon as it is issued. Senator Biden has already said he will hold hearings on Iraq as soon as the 110th Congress convenes when he takes over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Hirsh says this group is practicing the worst kind of cover-your-backside-politics in Washington. I could not agree more. Plain ol' rotten begets plain ol' rotten. LS

BUSH IN BAKERSVILLE

TIME MAGAZINE: BUSH'S FIVE FATAL MISTAKES

As far as I am concerned, the first fatal mistake was made in 2000 when the Supreme Court visited this monster called W. upon us. LS

BUSH'S FIVE FATAL MISTAKES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

GOOD NEWS FINALLY AFTER SIX YEARS OF GOP CORRUPTION, LYING, RIGGED ELECTIONS, CHEATING, STEALING, INCOMPETENCE AND INEPTITUDE

Ken sent this great article written by Sidney Blumenthal for Salon.com today. Adios Rove. LS

From Ken:

Nothing is certain at this point in terms of where the country goes after 11/7/06, but in this article Sidney Blumenthal looks at the possibilities.

Here's a very gee-whiz fact for you: The Democratic advantage over Republicans in state legislatures went from 15 seats (3,650 versus 3,635) to 662 seats (3,985 versus 3,323), with gains in every region. Who knew? That's a very big deal.

And here's very good news for Progressives. Back in the 60's we were always aware that the Democrats had a deal with the devil, in that the powerful Southern Dems in congress were necessary to keeping the majority, but were completely opposed to the progressive ideals that embodied the Democratic party, such as voting rights and civil rights. In fact, it took a Southern Democrat, LBJ, to force these things through congress, and in doing so he had to admit that the Democrats had lost the South. But now, as Blumenthal points out below, "In January, when the 110th Congress is sworn in, it will be the first Congress since the 83rd Republican Congress (swept into office on Eisenhower's coattails) in which the majority party in both chambers is a minority party in the South. While there will be Southerners in the Democratic Congress, their presence is not that of a unitary bloc threatening progressive legislation." -K

"GENERATION DEM"

ON THE REPUBLI-CAN'TS

2006-11-20T23:21:00.000-05:00

I noticed an interesting new noun and verb combo while viewing CNN last week when Jack Cafferty aired his solicited comments on “The Situation Room” news segment about the dormant Congressional Ethics Committee.
The new word is an interesting one because it is brutally honest, in my humble opinion. It is “republicants”

History and experience have proven the Republi-can’ts do winnable wars, manage natural national disasters, keep their noses out of our bedrooms or health-life decisions about whether one’s loved one should continue to live or not in a vegetative state. Nor can Republi-can’ts work for the people who elected them, especially the middle class They have demonstrated they can work for the extremely wealthy, lobbyists and corporate interests. Worse, recent indictments and trials have given us sneak previews of how the GOP certainly cannot keep its hands out of the cookie jar, either.

The fact that we have a non-functioning and non-engaged Ethics Committee should tell us the obvious. There has been no government oversight whatsoever for years. This is bad news in era pervaded by insidious corruption, glaring ineptitude and one party rule. Will there be a crumb left in the cookie jar? I am beginning to wonder.

W’s. approval rating is at 31% and Cheney says it does not matter that Democrats have taken over the Senate and House. The Bush/Cheney strategy (or lack thereof except for the fact that Iraq is a great money making opportunity for Halliburton) will not change. Such spiteful arrogance and who-gives-a-flip-what-voters-think attitude smells like a dictatorial soup to me. It does not matter what the majority of Americans want. The B and C team are calling the shots.

For six long and very dark years these two goons have been enabled and supported by spineless rubberstamps in both the House and Senate. Fortunately the Democrats are back in town and they will usher in a return to checks, balances and oversight. Our federal government will be returned to its healthy and fully functioning role as intended by our founding fathers.

LET THE HEARINGS BEGIN

“DEMOCRATS PROBE BILLIONS LOST TO BAGHDAD CORRUPTION”

The corruption in Iraq is as rampart and pervasive as it is here at home. Sadly for Jane and Joe America the billions lost is our hard earned tax dollars. Ken sent this disturbing but not surprising piece from the London Sunday Times Online yesterday.

Excerpts:

Stoffel, a former intelligence analyst, had hoped to make a fortune by selling ex-Soviet military parts to refit Saddam Hussein’s abandoned tanks and armoured vehicles for the new Iraqi army. But he was also an idealist who turned whistleblower when he learnt that Iraqis in the defence ministry and arms industry expected huge kickbacks for their help.

In a prophetic e-mail, Stoffel wrote to an American colonel he knew in Iraq: “If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail. There is no oversight of the money and if/when something goes wrong, regardless of how clean our hands are, heads will roll and it will be the heads of those that are reachable, and the people who are supposed to know better (US — citizens, military etc.)”

Three days before his death he met John Shaw, then a senior Pentagon official, whose office was investigating fraud in Iraq. Shaw describes the Stoffel case as “the first public indication of the seriousness and institutional depth of corruption in Iraq”. Shaw is convinced that “in time, we will discover a pervasive pattern of cover-ups along with revelations of corruption”.

DEMOCRATS PROBE BILLIONS LOST TO CORRUPTION IN IRAQ

REPUBLICAN’TS WIN SO THEY MUST STEAL

It comes as no surprise to me that the GOP must steal elections in order to stay in power. This piece on the 2006 stolen landslide can be found on the Election Defense Alliance.org web site.

2006: A STOLEN LANDSLIDE

BUSH INSIDERS AND SUPPORTERS ARE VERY BITTER

Bush’s buddies can’t seem to put enough distance between themselves and W. Too bad, so sad dudes. Reasoned and rational Democrats tried to warn you about the B and C team ideologues. Did you listen? Alas no. You instead savaged and spurned the messengers of truth. The GOP blame game begins in earnest.

Ken sent this piece from The Washington Post.

Excerpts:

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

Adelman, a former Reagan administration official and onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust, is only the latest voice from inside the Bush circle to speak out against the president or his policies. Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress.

”EMBITTERED INSIDERS TURN AGAINST BUSH"

TEXAS REPUBLICANS SEND ANOTHER HAMMER WANNABE TO WASHINGTON BUT THE DOCTOR IS APPARENTLY SO MEAN AND ABUSIVE THAT DELAY'S FORMER STAFF IMMEDIATELY FLED.

This woman is a dermatologist who obviously lacks a proper bedside manner. I wouldn’t want to be down under and asleep while she wielded a scalpel. Don’t’ miss the love fest between her, Bush and the adoring rubberstamp numero uno Senator Hutchison in the Houston Chronicle’s photo.

ANOTHER MEAN AND NASTY TEXAS REPUBLICAN DESCENDS UPON WASHINGTON

WE THREW THE BUMS OUT

2006-11-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

I had to pinch myself all day yesterday to make sure I was not dreaming. We did it, America! We threw the bums out! We took back our House and Senate! After six long years of darkness and despair, we went to the polls and exerted our power to fire corrupted, incompetent, morally reprehensible and lazy lawmakers. No amount of GOP gerrymandering, dirty tricks, rigged machines, voter suppression and intimidation kept us from exercising our constitutional right to be heard. We stood firm for the nation our founding fathers had established. Future generations will thank us for putting the brakes on the Bush Administration. Volumes will most likely be written about this era of darkness. Absolute volumes.

There are so many to thank in helping us achieve this amazing outcome, it not miracle. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Air America Radio for letting the voice of freedom ring loud and clear. This was so crucial during the time when Bush deception and spin could confuse and manipulate even the most sage and reasoned. The press and media naturally get an F, but after it became apparent Iraq is a fiasco and the seemingly endless scandals continued to erupt from the Party of Corruption, journalists had finally begun to smell the stench spewing from the sewer.

Huge kudos to the genius of Howard Dean, Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer whose campaign strategies were obviously a smashing success.

Bold on line news organizations, blogs and bloggers such as The Huffington Post, Raw Story.com, Buzz Flash.com, the Brad Blog, Salon.com, Truthout.org, Firedoglake.com, Daily Kos, Move On.org, to name a few, were and are still are my lifelines for information. Mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post had finally awakened from its post 9/11 slumber and returned to the business of reporting the news, even if the news is critical of the Bush Administration.

Lou Dobbs of CNN bravely and doggedly exposed the GOP’s cynical and inept policies on his show through his “War On The Middle Class” and “Our Broken Borders” series. John King did the same with his expose on “Our Broken Government.”

Keith Olbermann is the first mainstream cable news anchor who possessed the courage to stridently and routinely inform his viewers about Bush’s deplorable tactics and outright lies on a number of levels. Colossal thanks to gifted comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. These comedians ironically behave more as news anchors than some of the “real” and professional news people. Stewart and Colbert make us laugh as we learn how bad things really are in a country driven by Bush radical and neoconservative ideology.

Thanks, too, to those who had served in the Bush Administration, such as Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke for exposing their grim and troubling experiences by writing or having books written (“The Price of Loyalty,” and “Against All Enemies”). These men, both Republicans, got the boot for refusing to put politics ahead of policy.

No amount of spin, lies, distortion, departures from reality, fear, smear, propaganda machines such as Fox News, Rush and the other right wing scream machines, money and power could prevent us from knowing the truth. We threw the bums out while we still had the constitutional right to do so. Cheney’s probable secret dream to wrest our right to vote from us somehow is now toast.

Most of all, mammoth thanks to every campaign volunteer whether one stuffed envelopes, block walked, organized events, donated money, drove folks to the polls, made phone calls, wrote letters to newspaper editors or blogged for a candidate.

It is we the little people who make the seemingly impossible possible. 79 million of us voted on Tuesday. The GOP harassing and deceitful robocalls, intimidation in Virginia and other places, the long lines, the chaos with voting machines in some areas and foul weather in others did not deter us. We did what we knew we had to do.

WE THREW THE BUMS OUT

GOP LOVE FEST WITH MONEY AND FAILURE

2006-11-05T00:31:00.000-05:00

I honestly don’t know why anyone with even a half of a brain would vote for any Republican. They have been in power for 12 years and what do they have to show for it? 9/11 happened under their watch. The party can scream, vent, rant, blame Bill, fabricate, attack, twist and distort reality all they want but bottom line, 9/11 happened on Bush’s and the Republican’s watch.

Next Bush and his spineless rubber stamping Republican Congress invade the wrong country for bogus reasons. We have to stay the course until weeks prior to the election and suddenly there is no course to stay. Clueless and/or lazy Senators, including Hutchison failed to read the intelligence and fixated instead on Saddam the boogie man and make believe WMD.

Meanwhile, back in the mountains, the Taliban are regrouping in the area we should have focused on in the first place – Afghanistan. Osama is freely frolicking in the mountains, most likely between his old digs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Halliburton and KBR are probably the only clowns on the planet who are happy about the war in Iraq. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

This party of pimps led by Tom Delay enabled the likes of Abramoff to corrupt and soil our government. It has allowed a homosexual predator to prey upon young male pages. The party of quintessential hypocrites that preach the virtues of family values and rail against gay marriage now reveal that one of its very own outspoken evangelical religious leaders routinely consorted with a drug using male prostitute.

We have seen how well this party of ineptitude has performed when our nation was hit by Katrina. We got the message: go it alone.

The party of greed mongers is so embedded with corporate interests that it no longer works for we the people.

Texas senior Senator Hutchison is a prime example. As I mentioned in a previous diary, she is the biggest recipient of oil and gas money in Congress. Take a peek at her voting record where oil and gas issues are concerned and learn how it works in the Republican cesspool called Washington.

No on $3.1 billion for emergency oil assistance for hurricane hit areas (10/05).
No on reducing oil usage by 40% by 2025 (6/05)
No on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (3/05)
No on removing consideration of drilling ANWR from budget bill (3/03)
Yes on terminating CAFE standards within 15 months (3/02)
Yes on de-funding renewal and solar energy (6/99)
No on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations (9/05)
No on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore. (3/05)

Now, how does Senator Hutchison vote on issues that directly impact her constituents?

On Jobs:

No on raising the minimum wage to $7.25 rather than $6.25 (3/05)
Yes on killing an increase in the minimum wage (11/99)
Yes on repealing Clinton’s ergonomic rules on repetitive stress (3/01)

On Crime:

No on $1.15 billion per year to continue the COPS program (5/99)
Yes on limiting product liability punitive damage awards (3/96)
Yes on restricting class-action lawsuits (12/95)

On Education:

No on $5B for grants to local educational agencies (10/05)
No on shifting $11B for corporate tax loopholes to education (3/05)
No on spending $448B of tax cut on education and debt reduction
Yes on $75M for abstinence education

On Healthcare:

No on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drugs (3/05)
No on allowing reimportation of Rx drugs from Canada (7/02)
No on allowing patients to sue HMO’s and collect punitive damages (6/01)
No on including prescription drugs under Medicare.
No on increasing tobacco restrictions (6/98)

On Government Reform:

Yes on allowing lobbyist gifts to Congress (3/06)
No on establishing the Senate Office of Public Integrity (3/06)
No on banning soft money contributions and restricting issue ads (2/02)

Military, War and Peace Issues:

No on $47B for military by repealing capital gains tax cut (2/06)
No on redeployment of troops out of Iraq by July 2007 (6/06)
No on investigating award contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan (11/05)

There you have it. It is obvious who Senator Hutchison works for.

Not only does the senior Senator fail to work for Texans, her voting record tells me she doesn’t like us very much either.

Sources:

Voting Record: KBH VOTING RECORD

Donations: KBH DONORS

Thank goodness we have such an awesome choice this election in Texas. Vote for a cynical do nothing rubber stamp, Bush, and oil loving Senator or vote for a jewel of a candidate who will bring real and desperately needed change to Washington. We need to take our government back from the Republicans who have failed us so miserably over the past twelve years.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky is brilliant. No one owns her. She would actually read the intelligence reports. Imagine that. She would read every piece of legislation, too. As a lawyer, Barbara Ann is used to complex language and its nuances. As a professional mediator, Radnofsky would naturally reach across the aisle and work with her colleagues the way our elected officials are supposed to. It is time to send a woman of substance and quality to Washington to do the work of we the people.

NEWSPAPERS GET IT

2006-10-30T16:13:00.000-05:00

The nation's press is finally awake. Many newspapers, including some in red hot red states endorse Democratic candidates. In Florida, 22 newspapers endorse Katharine Harris's opponent. And, for the first time since Nixon, the New York Times endorses no GOP candidate. LS

THE KANSAS CITY STAR

THE HUFFINGTON POST LIST OF NEWSPAPERS

NELSON RECEIVES ENDORSEMENTS FROM ALL NEWSPAPERS IN FLORIDA

NEW YORK TIMES ENDORSES NO GOP CANDIDATE

THE ENDLESS LIST OF GOP SLEAZE AND SLIME

The RNC accepted a generous donation from one of the nation's largest producers of gay porn.

RNC DONATION FROM PRODUCER OF GAY PORN

OHIO'S BLACKWELL GETS DESPERATE AS HE TRAILS BEHIND OPPONENT
Blackwell panders to the far right by suggesting his opponent is gay.

DESPERADO BLACKWELL WAITING FOR A TRAIN THAT AIN'T COMING

GOP DIRTY TRICKS BACKFIRE

A newspaper in Wisconsin says GOP manipulations may backfire in election.

Excerpts:

By pumping up voter hatred of gay people and blood lust for the death penalty, Republicans hoped to turn out many more voters who are ready to vote against Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle as well.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the polls.

The backlash against the Republicans on those issues seems to be doing much more to organize progressives and reasonable folks in the middle to turn out voters on the other side.

Even more surprising, perhaps, homophobia and hanging 'em high seem to be losing the power to drive right-wing voters to the polls. It's true that most public opinion polls show a slight majority in favor of both restoring the death penalty and in opposition to gay marriage. But the small size of that majority is surprising in itself.

FED UP WITH GOP DIRTY TRICKS

AND THE INEVITABLE GOP INCOMPETENCE.

The GAO Chief warns of impending economic disaster. The outcome in no small part, no doubt, of generous tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and the GOP's penchant for throwing our hard earned tax dollars into the sewer.

Excerpts:

What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.

There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.

Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.

A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.

And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

GAO CHIEF WARNS OF IMPENDING ECONOMIC DISASTER

AND LYING
GOP Candidate for U.S. Senate lied about his stand on stem cell research yesterday on Meet the Press

GOP CANDIDATE LIES ON MEET THE PRESS

AND OF COURSE, IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING, THAT ROVE IS HARD AT WORK. A DESPERATE ROVE IS A SCARY THING. It seems that Rove is spending the taxpayers money to keep his corrupt party in power. This is what happens with one-party rule. No one is around to keep the crooks in check.

ROVE USES TAX PAYER MONEY TO KEEP GOP IN POWER

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A REPUBLICAN

2006-10-15T11:58:00.000-04:00

If one votes Republican it means one believes:

It is OK to talk tough at election time about national security but deliver zip afterwards.

It is OK to lie to the American people all of the time about everything.

GOP HOUSE OF LIES

W. AND WIFE UPSET WITH CARD FOR TELLING WOODWARD THE TRUTH

PATHOLOGICAL LYING COMES BACK TO HAUNT GOP

16% OF AMERICANS BELIEVE BUSH IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT 9/11

THINGS ARE GOING REMARKABLY WELL IN IRAQ ACCORDING TO CHENEY

It is OK to scare the bejesus out of Americans for the sole purpose of getting elected.

BUT WE ARE NOT STUPID. WE KNOW SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG IN WASHINGTON

It is OK to attack and smear an individual relentlessly for purely political gain, even when there isn't a lick of truth to the attack.

GOP ATTACKS ON MESSENGERS OF TRUTH

PROPAGANDA BILL SMEARS PELOSI

It is OK to make false claims about the rationale for declaring war on another nation.

BUSH FLIP FLOPS ON IRAQ

MORE CARNAGE IN IRAQ TODAY, OCT. 16

It is OK to go to war with no real plan in place after a military victory.

MORE REVENGE KILLING IN IRAQ

It is OK to turn our back on the real war on terror and start a war instead in another country with the end result of fomenting more terrorism. Turn on the TV and watch it all in real time.

It is OK to ignore a country that lusts for nuclear weapons. Now N. Korea is a not so small threat to our national security. What to do about it? Blame the shame on a former president.

GOP DROPPED THE BALL WITH N. KOREA

War is good for business, especially Halliburton. Rummy sat on board of directors for a company that won a $200. million contract to sell nuke reactors to N. Korea in 2000. In 2002 Rummy declares N. Korea as part of the axis of evil.

SELLING NUKES TO N. KOREA

It is OK to allow Americans to drown after a catastrophic hurricane, especially if those Americans happen to be minorities.

ON HURRICANE KATRINA

It is OK for elected officials to work for corporate interests, big business and lobbyists, even corrupt ones, instead of their constituents.

NON PROFITS TIED TO ABRAMOFF

ABRAMOFF'S FAR REACHING INFLUENCE IN OUR GOVERNMENT

It is OK for a known perverted teen predator to remain in Congress for purely political reasons. It is OK to split up the perv’s contributions among other GOP lawmakers instead of sending the funds to an appropriate charity.

FOLEY WANTED TO LEAVE CONGRESS BUT ROVE WOULD NOT LET HIM

It is OK to cater to the top wage earners in the U.S. and ignore the majority of them.

TAX CUTS FOR THE NATION'S WEALTHY

It is OK that the number of Americans without health insurance is rising.

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES

It is OK to gut social security and turn it over to a best buddy in the private sector who will do with American’s blood, sweat and tear money what Kenny boy did to that of Enron’s employees and shareholders.

WHY THE GOP WANTED TO GUT SOCIAL SECURITY

It is OK to give huge tax breaks to big oil and insurance companies while tossing a few pennies at average working Americans.

OIL COMPANIES GET BILLIONS IN ROYALTY PLAN

It is OK to increase the minimum wage in this country only if estate taxes are repealed for fewer than 1% of the population.

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE BILL FAILS

It is OK to be gay, as long as one is quiet about it, if gays serve GOP political usefulness.

DICEY PATH FOR GAY GOP LAWMAKERS

It is OK to pander to and trick the Christian right for their political value and then after elected poke fun at them and vote on legislation that hurts their charities.

GOP TRASHING OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

It is OK to put friends in high and sensitive positions in government although the friends have absolutely no qualifications or necessary credentials for these jobs. Remember ol' Brownie boy?

It is OK to vote yes to building a wall along our southern border without caring about the implications for the citizens and their communities in the impacted areas. It is OK to vote to build a wall before having done studies on its feasibility.

WILL A WALL REALLY WORK?

It is OK to ignore science.

IGNORING SCIENCE

It is OK that some, if not many, of our lawmakers are corrupt.

CORRUPT LAWMAKERS

MORE ON CORRUPTION

It is OK to sow the seeds of fascism.

SOWING THE SEEDS OF FASCISM

FOX HIDES UNFAVORABLE POLL RESULTS FOR BUSH AND IRAQ

It is OK to steal elections.

HISTORY OF RECENT STOLEN ELECTIONS

BLACK BOX VOTING.ORG

US COUNTS VOTES.ORG

LOU DOBBS OF CNN ON ELECTRONIC VOTING FRAUD

HOW AND WHY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BECAME SO CORRUPT AND OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICAN VALUES

Connect the dots. Think about the GOP merging of fundamentalist religion, politics and big money. Who are the prime beneficiaries? After watching the videos below, check out the link at the bottom of this blog to President Eisenhower's warnings about a US military/industrial complex. I think you will figure it out. LS

DOCUMENTARIES ON THE RIGHT WING GOP

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S WARNINGS ABOUT A U.S. MILITARY/INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Sources for links: Truthout.org, Raw Story.com, The Huffington Post.com, Buzz Flash.com, Truthdig.com, Crooks and Liars.com, CNN.com, usliberals.com, azstarnet.com, The Brad Blog, Black Box Voting.org, U.S. Counts Votes.org, You Tube, throwaway your V.com.

GOP DESPERADOS TRY TO PIN THEIR MALFEASANCE ON CLINTON

2006-10-11T22:10:00.000-04:00

The PervPublicans know they are in deep trouble, having been busted for lying and their shameful attempts to cover up Page Predator Gate. And so they are therefore in high attack mode, pathetically attempting, in a rather cartoon like fashion, to pin their insidious perv-hood, predisposition for pathological lying, beyond-the-pale-incompetence and corruption on our very own good ol' Billy Boy Clinton.

Me thinks this pitiable and wretched hail mary pass will not work.

Why?

The Grand old Party of Sin is headed straightaway on a one-way path to hellfire and damnation because their “base,” that is, the evangelical Christians that the GOP has exploited for pure political purposes, now knows the stunning and dark truth.

Recent news reports reveal that The Party of Sin has nothing but contempt and disgust for evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Christians, like all of average Jane and Jo America, have been used and abused by the Bush GOP.

Welcome to the planet of hurt, EC’s.

Please do not linger long in the self-pity or outraged mode.

No matter what one’s faith, race or economic circumstance is, all of us (except for perhaps 1%) would be far better served by any party than the GOP.

Write (type, click, dial and enter, etc) any name of your choosing if no candidate on the ballot pleases you. This is America, after all, the land of the free and home of the brave. LS

From Crooks and Liars.com via The Huffington Post.

Excerpt:

According to Kuo, Karl Rove's office referred to evangelical leaders as 'the nuts.'

Kuo says, 'National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy.' "

GOP CONTEMPT FOR THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT THAT PUT THEM IN POWER

A NOW NUKE LOADED AND READY TO UNLOAD NORTH KOREA

Bushies are trying to blame Clinton for their gross neglect and inattention to N. Korea’s lust for nukes.

Written by Mr. William Perry, Secretary of Defense 1994-1997 in the Washington Post.

Excerpts:

President Bush, early in his first term, dubbed North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" and made disparaging remarks about Kim Jong Il. He said he would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapons program, but he set no bounds on North Korean actions.

The most important such limit would have been on reprocessing spent fuel from North Korea's reactor to make plutonium. The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium.

The administration also said early this summer that a North Korean test of long-range missiles was unacceptable. North Korea conducted a multiple-launch test of missiles on July 4. Most recently, the administration said a North Korean test of a nuclear bomb would be unacceptable. A week later North Korea conducted its first test.

It appears that the administration is deeply divided on how to deal with North Korea, with some favoring negotiation and others economic and political pressure to force a regime change. As a result, while the administration was willing to send a representative to the six-party talks organized by the Chinese in 2003, it had no apparent strategy for dealing with North Korea there or for providing leadership to the other parties. In the meantime, it increased economic pressure on Pyongyang. Certainly an argument can be made for such pressure, but it would be naive to think it could succeed without the support of the Chinese and South Korean governments, neither of which backs such action. North Korea, sensing the administration's paralysis, has moved ahead with an aggressive and dangerous nuclear program.

WAPO ON SEARCHING FOR A NORTH KOREA POLICY

PERV FOLEY PAGE SCANDAL IS NO OCTOBER SURPRISE DESPITE THE SCREECHING, RANTING AND RAVINGS FROM RUSH AND HIS "COLLEAGUES" WITH THE RIGHT WING SPIN MACHINES.

What are these dudes shooting into their veins to get by? "Rush" suggests a heroin junkie, doesn't it? I suppose the wing nuts must shoot or take something to be able to tell the tall tales and spin the make believe that they do, day in and day out. LS

From Harper's Magazine "REPUBLICANS WANT TO TURN OVER A NEW PAGE."

Excerpts:

Leading Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets, are charging that the Mark Foley scandal was a plot orchestrated by Democrats to damage the G.O.P.'s electoral prospects this November. According to the Washington Post, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and “agreed when the host said the Foley story was driven by Democrats ‘in some sort of cooperation with some in the media’ to suppress turnout of conservative voters” before the midterm elections.

Conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt has said that Hastert had become the “target right now of the left-wing media machine,” and House Majority Leader John Boehner has charged that the release of the Foley documents so close to the elections “is concerning, at a minimum.” Meanwhile, accounts I've heard about the FBI's initial inquiries suggest the bureau is as interested in uncovering how the story came to public attention as it is in investigating Foley's actions.

The Republican leadership is lying when they claim that Democrats have engineered an “October Surprise”; there was never a plan to undermine the G.O.P. or to destroy Hastert personally, as the speaker has vaingloriously suggested. I know this with absolute certainty because Harper’s was offered the story almost five months ago and decided, after much debate, not to run it here on Washington Babylon.

"REPUBLICANS WANT TO TURN OVER A NEW PAGE BY HARPER'S MAGAZINE HERE

SEEMS THAT RUMMY HAS TWO FACES: THREE YEARS AGO HE SAT ON BOARD THAT SOLD NUCLEAR REACTORS TO N. KOREA.

Fancy that! Remember President Eisenhower's warnings about the industrial/military complex? Well, it seems that both Rummy and Cheney mightily profit from war, as the Bush family has always done. From my friend Ken in Cali. LS

The two faces of Rumsfeld

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea

2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

FROM THE U.K. GUARDIAN: "THE TWO FACES OF RUMSFELD"

FOLEY WANTED TO QUIT BUT ROVE AND WHITE HOUSE WOULD NOT LET HIM

Said his career as a lobbyist would be compromised if Foley quit Congress. The Rove gang forced Foley to serve for another two years to avoid possible Congressional hearings. From The New Republic via The Huffington Post.com LS

Excerpts:

According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by "the White House and Rove gang," who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.

"He said, 'The White House made it very clear I have to run,'" explains Foley's friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would "enhance his success" as a lobbyist. "I said, 'I thought you wanted out of this?' And he said, 'I do, but they're scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'"

The White House declined a request for comment on the matter, but obviously the plan hasn't worked out quite as Rove hoped it would.

FOLEY WANTED OUT BUT ROVE SAID NO

BE A PATRIOT! VOTE! FIRE THE LOT OF THEM ON NOVEMBER 7. VOTE! LS

GOP: GRAND OLD PARTY OF PERVS

2006-10-03T17:42:00.000-04:00

The party of corruption and liars is now also a party that protects sick and twisted pervs. For five years an elected sicko could sexually prey upon children while our renowned conservative Republican lawmakers, especially those from the so-called red states, who will utter "Christ is my savior" on demand, whenever necessary, covered up the evil. Tricky Dick suddenly looks innocent. And what is this nonsense about a Clinton impeachment over an affair? Where is Ken Starr when we need him? Ken, oh Ken, where are you??????

The mainstream media is all over the Foley story so I don't have to go there, thank goodness. I don't have the stomach to post stories about a middle aged perv who preys upon children who are supposedly under his mentorship. Excuse me while I vomit. LS

PERV-PUBLICAN MELTDOWN

Ken sent a boatload of very interesting news today. LS

The last link on this page is to a video from a GOP-centered newscast. (Like we can find one that isn't these days.) Even those talking heads are suddenly very pessimistic about the GOP's chances next month. They make the point that every single GOP Speaker of the House since 1994 has resigned in disgrace. (They try to lump Dem Tom Foley in there, too, but Foley did not resign, he was beaten in his local election.)

mydd.com

Total Republican Collapse Imminent
by Chris Bowers, Mon Oct 02, 2006 at 08:21:50 PM EST

The last ten days have been amazing. Starting with Bill Clinton fighting back against Faux News, we have now seen:

The National Intelligence Estimate declare that the war in Iraq in increasing terrorism worldwide.

NIE Report

Colin Powell says he was fired.
POWELL FIRED

Rice is on the verge of having to resign.

CONDI ON VERGE OF RESIGNING

Bill Frist says that the Taliban should rule Afghanistan

FRIST THINKS TALIBAN SHOULD RULE AFGHANISTAN

The White House met with Jack Abramoff 485 times, and had a huge amount of influence. (New emails revealed this morning show Abramoff talking about the coming Iraq war over a year before the invasion. Not if we invade, but that we will invade. -K)

HUGE ABRAMOFF INFLUENCE

Bob Woodward comes out with a book saying the Bush administration is lying about Iraq.

Droves of Republicans are under investigation for something.

REPUBLICANS UNDER INVESTIGATION

I'm sure that I am forgetting some stuff too. But there is this other thing that is going on:

For five years, most of the Republican leadership covered up for and protected a Republican congressman / sexual predator who was targeting young pages who worked on Capitol Hill. And the establishment media is saying just that.

GOP COVERS UP SEXUAL PREDATOR

GOP BLOCKS INVESTIGATIONS

GOP SAYS PERV INCIDENT UNIMPORTANT

The Republican House Leadership has been figuratively decapitated as a result, and now can't speak effectively on anything. (This may be the most important fact, in that the people whose job it was to retain a GOP congress are suddenly kinda busy and have little credibility. -K)

The Republican response has been to blame the pages, blame each other, block investigations, call the incident unimportant, blatant lying, and show once again just how homophobic and ignorant they really are. Because defenses like that really work.

GOP BLAMES PAGES

GOP BLAME ONE ANOTHER

And they did it all because they were worried it might cost them power.

GOP SAYS ANYTHING GOES TO CLING TO POWER

This meltdown has been breathtaking. Even before it started, Democrats were already on the brink of at least taking control, if not a huge wave election. Now, even taking the Senate seems entirely possible. At this point, who knows how bad things will get for Republicans in elections around the country. There is no way to hold off an onslaught like this when they were already in such a bad position. Even the generally cautious, uber-insider Hotline is now starting to see a wave:

Matt is right that Democrats in Congress once again showed how they are not an effective opposition party because of their weak campaign to stop the torture bill (although I disagree when he says they could have "easily" stopped" the bill with an effective campaign). However, I am starting to seriously think that that bill may be the last time we have to worry about ineffective opposition form Democrats in Congress. In the face of total Republican collapse, a good situation for Democrats is quickly turning into a rout. My only regret is that the election ends in five weeks instead of two weeks, because there may be enough time for Republicans to at least somewhat recover and keep the battle for control close. Right now, at least in the House, I don't think the battle for control is very close. There is just no way they can win in the face of this when they were already losing before it.

Please, someone pinch me to make sure that I am not dreaming. This is a total Republican collapse. The House of Representatives may now be ours to lose, but we need to make sure that we stay on the attack as much as possible, and not slack off for one second. (On the other hand, anything can happen. -K)

HOW FOX FAKE NEWS, I.E. THE PROPAGANDA ARM FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, WOULD HAVE REPORTED PERV GATE HAD THE PERP BEEN A DEMOCRAT LS

Excerpt:

THIS IS A FOX NEWS ALERT! Again, we have a FOX NEWS ALERT! We have just learned that Florida DEMOCRAT, Congressman Limp Wrist, has been forced to resign his House seat, effective immediately. Again, this is BREAKING NEWS, it just happened a little while ago and we're working on getting all the details for you as soon as possible but since it's BREAKING NEWS we have to go with what we know so far. What we know is that, again, BREAKING NEWS HERE, several days ago, as we've been telling you all along, it came to light that DEMOCRAT Wrist has been corresponding via email, in some very suggestive, sexual ways, with a teenage BOY page at the Capitol. Not knowing how to handle the situation, since, after all, Wrist is a POWERFUL, INFLUENTIAL and PROMINENT DEMOCRAT, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and DEMOCRAT Chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, the BOY wrote to another congressman, saying he was totally and completely "freaked out" and that what Wrist wrote made him downright "sick." Poor kid.

Our own Greta Van Sustren is on her way to the Capitol building right now and we hope to have a live feed from her in a few minutes. I'm also hearing in my ear that we are trying to get the BOY in for a live interview in the next few minutes -- again, we're working under BREAKING NEWS conditions here -- and we hope to have that LIVE INTERVIEW regarding this crisis for the House DEMOCRATS - for you in this hour. Stay with us. We'll get back to House DEMOCRAT leader Nancy Pelosi, we'll see what she knows about what appears to be developing into a sex scandal involving a House DEMOCRAT, later.

FOX FAUX NEWS AND PERV GATE

THOSE LYING AND DYING REPUBLICANS

2006-10-02T00:11:00.000-04:00

Ever try to have a rational conversation with a right-winger? Don't waste your time. They are so seeped in party ideology that they can no longer think for themselves. Their brains are programmed by the Rove playbook. The RW doesn't care about our country. It's all about attacking the messenger, winning at any cost, greed, of course and power, naturally. I should know for I live in Texas and I post comments on blogs in our big cities in which folks are supposed to be more informed and educated. Apparently the schools in Texas are far worse than most of us suspected. There are a lot of fools out there who still think Bush is doing right by America. Fools rush in where wise men never go.

Want to take a peek at one of the blogs? CLICK HERE, THEN ON REFRESH LS

Moving along...

WHITE HOUSE LIED ABOUT VISITS FROM ABRAMOFF

Well, it seems that "We didn't know Abramoff" or he visited a "time or two" is yet another mendacious statement. Indeed, official records show Abramoff had access to the White House 485 times. Wonder what the unofficial count is. LS

From Newsweek.com via MSNBC

Ho hum and what else is new excerpt:

The folks around Karl Rove are on the hot seat again. The White House has launched an internal ethics inquiry into one Rove aide in response to new e-mails showing that Rove's office had far more extensive conduct with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff than previously acknowledged. The e-mails, obtained by a House committee, show that Rove's executive assistant, Susan Ralston, may have violated a White House ban on accepting gifts worth more than $20 from lobbyists. At the same time, Ralston—who previously worked for Abramoff—was helping the lobbyist and his associates set up meetings with Rove and providing them with inside info about presidential appointments and White House decision making, including at least one matter relating to a business deal in Iraq for an Abramoff client, the e-mails show. Ralston also discussed future business opportunities with Abramoff, such as her plan to help him capitalize on the "rush to get lucrative government contracts" being awarded by the Department of Homeland Security—another possible breach of ethics rules.

LOBBYISTS AND THE EMAIL TRAIL

STAYING THE COURSE MEANS PROTECTING SPIN AND REPUTATIONS

Great article from Mr. Frank Rich of the New York Times via Truthout.org

Excerpts:

Against this ominous reality, the debate over the N.I.E. is but a sideshow: politics as usual on both sides. The president reluctantly declassified what had already been leaked, somehow hoping he could override the bad headlines with Pavlovian repetition of shopworn slogans. (He said America must "stay on the offense" four times in one speech on Friday alone.) Democrats are huffily demanding that the White House release more than a few scraps of the 30-page-plus N.I.E., a debating point with no payoff. The N.I.E. is already six months out of date, and Americans can guess most of it, classified or not. In this war at this late stage, the devil can be found everywhere, not merely in the details.

The facts of Iraq are not in dispute. But the truth is that facts don't matter anyway to this administration, and that's what makes this whole N.I.E. debate beside the point. From the start, honest information has never figured into the prosecution of this war. The White House doesn't care about intelligence, good or bad, classified or unclassified, because it believes it knows best, regardless of what anyone else has to say. The debate over the latest N.I.E. or any yet to leak will not alter that fundamental and self-destructive operating principle. That's the truly bad news.

This war has now gone on so long that we tend to forget the early history that foretold the present. Yet this is the history we must remember now more than ever, because it keeps repeating itself, with ever more tragic results. In the run-up to the war, it should be recalled, the administration did not even bother to commission an N.I.E., a summary of the latest findings from every American intelligence agency, on Iraq's weapons.

Why not? The answer can be found in what remains the most revealing Iraq war document leaked to date: the Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002, written eight months before the invasion. In that secret report to the Blair government, the head of British intelligence reported on a trip to Washington, where he learned that the Bush administration was fixing the "intelligence and facts" around the predetermined policy of going to war in Iraq. If we were going to fix the intelligence anyway, there was no need for an N.I.E., except as window dressing, since it might expose the thinness of the administration's case.

A prewar N.I.E. was hastily (and sloppily) assembled only because Congress demanded it. By the time it was delivered to the Capitol after much stalling, on Oct. 1, 2002, less than two weeks remained before the House and Senate would vote on the Iraq war resolution. "No more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary," according to an article last spring in Foreign Affairs by Paul Pillar, the C.I.A. senior analyst for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005. In a White House press briefing after the war started, an official said Condi Rice hadn't read it at all, leaving that menial duty to her retinue of "experts."

When one senator who did read the whole N.I.E., the now retired Democrat Bob Graham of Florida, asked that a declassified version be made public so that Americans could reach their own verdicts on the war's viability, he was rebuffed. Instead the administration released a glossy white paper that trumpeted the N.I.E.'s fictions ("All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons") but not its doubts about much-hyped evidence like aluminum tubes and uranium from Africa. The only time the president cared about the N.I.E., a document he never wanted, was when he thought it would be politically useful in fighting growing criticism in 2003 that he had manipulated prewar intelligence. Then he authorized his own cherry-picked leaks, which Scooter Libby fed to Mr. Woodward and Judith Miller of The Times. (Neither wrote about it at the time.)

As the insurgency continued to grow in the fall of 2003, the White House again showed scant interest in reality. The American military's Central Command called for an N.I.E. instead. The existence of this second N.I.E. was only discovered in February of this year by Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers. It found that the growing violence in Iraq was "fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists - and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops." Yet the president ignored that accurate intelligence, refusing to raise troop levels and continuing to argue erroneously that the insurgency was mainly linked to Saddam and Al Qaeda. Three years later, he still makes that case rather than acknowledge that our troops are caught in the cross-fire of a civil war.

WHAT STAYING THE COURSE REALLY MEANS

SEEMS THAT A MEETING BETWEEN RICE AND TENET PRIOR TO 9/11 NEVER TOOK PLACE

Here we go again. More lying. This time Condi is the one who tells tall tales.

From the New York Times.

Excerpt:

The book says that Mr. Tenet hurriedly organized the meeting — calling ahead from his car as it traveled to the White House — because he wanted to “shake Rice” into persuading the president to respond to dire intelligence warnings that summer about a terrorist strike. Mr. Woodward writes that Mr. Tenet left the meeting frustrated because “they were not getting through to Rice.”

The disclosures took members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by surprise last week. Some questioned whether information about the July 10 meeting was intentionally withheld from the panel.

9/11 COMMISSION MEMBERS NOT TOLD OF MEETING BETWEEN RICE AND TENET

FINALLY! A HERO EMERGES IN AMERICA

2006-09-26T15:06:00.001-04:00

After five years of dealing with obvious spin and disinformation from journalists and news anchors who behave more as stenographers for the Bush Administration and spewers of GOP talking points than they do as unbiased professionals, a courageous newsperson finally emerges from the murky sludge. And he comes out swinging at that. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown is drop dead awesome. Interesting that the extreme right wing is sending hate mail, including white powder, to Mr. Olbermann's home. The wingnuts will stop at nothing to cover up its heinous lies and sins against the American people. LS

KEITH OLBERMANN'S SPECIAL COMMENTARY

CONDI LIED ABOUT CLINTON NOT LEAVING BUSH A STRATEGY FOR AL-QAEDA.

What's another lie? The Bush Administration has spewed so many lies from their party's wing of the pathological lying liars that it's hard to keep track. It seems that Richard Clarke wrote a comprehensive report on Al-Qaeda, when serving under Clinton that was passed along to and ignored by the Bush Administration. LS

From Raw Story.com

Excerpts:

Rice made the comments in response to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of calling the former president a liar.

However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The document also explores broader strategic approaches, such as a "need to keep in mind that Pakistan has been most willing to cooperate with us on terrorism when its role is invisible or at least plausibly deniable to the powerful Islamist right wing."

But Clarke also made it clear that the Clinton Administration recognized the problem that Pakistan posed in mounting a more sweeping campaign against bin Laden: "Overt action against bin Laden, who is a hero especially in the Pushtun-ethnic border areas near Afghanistan," Clarke speculated in late 2000, "would be so unpopular as to threaten Musharraf's government." The plan notes that, after the attack on the USS Cole, Pakistan had forbidden the United States from again violating its airspace to attack bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The memo sent by Clarke to Rice, to which the Clinton-era document was attached, also urges action on Pakistan relating to al Qaeda. "First [to be addressed,]" wrote Clarke in a list of pending issues relating to al Qaeda, is "what the administration says to the Taliban and Pakistan about ending al Qida sanctuary in Afghanistan. We are separately proposing early, strong messages on both."

CONDI LIED ABOUT CLINTON'S PLANS FOR AL-QAEDA

MAJORITY OF AMERICANS HOLD BUSH, NOT CLINTON, RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILING TO CAPTURE OSAMA BIN LADEN.

Well duh...of course it is Bush's fault. Only the disillusioned and poisoned kool-aid drinkers would think otherwise. LS

GALLUP POLL SHOWS AMERICANS BELIEVE BUSH RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILING TO CAPTURE BIN LADEN

NATURALLY WE ARE LESS SAFE NOW THAN BEFORE 9/11 THANKS TO BUSH'S HAIRBRAINED AND EVIL WAR IN IRAQ.

The more recent NIE Intelligence Report on Iraq will very conveniently not be available until after the election in November. Shocking? Not really considering we are living in a Bush imposed dictatorship. LS

INTELLIGENCE REVEALS U.S. LESS SAFE BECAUSE OF WAR IN IRAQ