BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:34 AM

"Today, Somalia is the world's greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.

Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.

Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia's best hope for peace collapsed.

"A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions," said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.

"There's a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I've seen over the last 20 years," Professor Menkhaus said. "Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis."

Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.

"The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse," he said. "The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we're in today."

The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America's own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.

The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That's probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers. "...NYT

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 09:15 AM

...It was good news when Mr. Paulson finally agreed to funnel capital into the banking system in return for partial ownership. But last week Joe Nocera of The Times pointed out a key weakness in the U.S. Treasury's bank rescue plan: it contains no safeguards against the possibility that banks will simply sit on the money. "Unlike the British government, which is mandating lending requirements in return for capital injections, our government seems afraid to do anything except plead." And sure enough, the banks seem to be hoarding the cash.

There's also bizarre stuff going on with regard to the mortgage market. I thought that the whole point of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lending agencies, was to remove fears about their solvency and thereby lower mortgage rates. But top officials have made a point of denying that Fannie and Freddie debt is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government — and as a result, markets are still treating the agencies' debt as a risky asset, driving mortgage rates up at a time when they should be going down.

What's happening, I suspect, is that the Bush administration's anti-government ideology still stands in the way of effective action. Events have forced Mr. Paulson into a partial nationalization of the financial system — but he refuses to use the power that comes with ownership.

Whatever the reasons for the continuing weakness of policy, the situation is manifestly not coming under control. Things continue to fall apart.


(NYT Columnist)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM

An interesting comparison between the invasion of Sicily by the Athenians (415 BC) and the invasion of Iraq by the US .

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 01:52 AM

Iraqi forces kill, capture Iranian agents

Iraqi troops continue to encounter Iranian agents in eastern Iraq. One Iranian was killed and another was captured during a clash in Al Kut in Wasit province, an Iraqi Army officer told Voices of Iraq.

"The forces killed and detained the two Iranians during clashes that broke out in Sheikh Saad district in south of Kut," Major Aziz Latief, an officer from the 2nd Quick Reaction Force told the Iraqi newspaper.

The men were armed with four machine guns and hand grenades. The captured Iranian agent admitted "they came from Iran to implement armed operations in Iraq."

Al Kut has been a center of Iranian activity in Iraq's east. The city served as a strategic distribution hub for weapons smuggled into Iraq from across the border in Mehran, Iran. From there, weapons were distributed to tactical locations, where they were employed against Iraqi and Coalition forces as well against Iraqi politicians. The Iraqi Army dislodged the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army from Al Kut during operations during the summer of 2008.

Iraqi forces have captured eight Iranian agents and killed one since Oct. 18. Iraqi police captured three armed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers in Al Kut on Oct. 20. Border guards captured four more in Mandali in Diyala province, which also borders Iran.

All nine Iranians are likely members of Qods Force, the elite special operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Qods Force has established a command to direct operations inside Iraq, and has been working to undermine Iraq's security and political environment.

The recent surge of Iranian operatives killed or captured over the past week indicates Qods Force may be ramping up operations inside Iraq, and that Iraqi intelligence on Iranian activities is improving, a US military officer familiar with Iran's operations in Iraq told The Long War Journal. Qods Force may also be looking to take a more active role in directing operations at the tactical level inside Iraq, the officer said. Prior to this week, only a handful of Iranian operatives, along with a Lebanese Hezbollah leader, have been reported captured inside Iraq.

Iraqi and Coalition forces have maintained the pressure on the Iranian-backed terror groups operating inside Iraq during the month of October. Two Iranian-trained Special Groups fighters have been killed and 76 have been captured during since Oct. 1, according to numbers compiled by The Long War Journal. Fifty-three have been captured since Oct. 13. Fourteen of those captured were members of the Hezbollah Brigades. The Hezbollah Brigades is an Iranian-backed terror group that has been behind multiple roadside bombings and rocket attacks against US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 09:01 AM

Under Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the justice system and the separation of powers have come under relentless attack. Mr. Bush chose to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, the moment in which he looked like the president of a unified nation, to try to place himself above the law.

Mr. Bush has arrogated the power to imprison men without charges and browbeat Congress into granting an unfettered authority to spy on Americans. He has created untold numbers of "black" programs, including secret prisons and outsourced torture. The president has issued hundreds, if not thousands, of secret orders. We fear it will take years of forensic research to discover how many basic rights have been violated.

(NYT, endorsing Barack Obama for PResident)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 10:56 PM

That's good news, Bruce. No preconditions, huh? Hmmmm. :D



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 08:48 PM

Bush intends to establish U.S. diplomatic outpost in Iran
   
By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu Oct 23, 5:21 pm ET

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will announce in mid-November, after the presidential election, that it intends to establish the first U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran since the 1979-81 hostage crisis, according to senior Bush administration officials.

The proposal for an "interests section," which falls short of a full U.S. Embassy , has been conveyed in private diplomatic messages to Tehran , and a search is under way to choose the American diplomat who'd head the post, the officials said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the step hasn't been announced and discussions of it have been limited to a small circle of government officials.

It's not known how Iran has responded. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month that he'd consider the idea, which first surfaced over the summer.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20081023/wl_mcclatchy/3080999;_ylt=As._ghDu3kHKSlAHYiLQ6tZxieAA

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 11:11 AM

The quote from Philip Adams in The Australian, posted by Freda, is pretty eloquent and I agree with most of it.

I do have to take issue with one gratuitous sentence, however:

"Bush's ongoing denial of climate change was capped by Katrina, where Washington's scandalous inaction led to the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans."

The Bush administration's destructon of FEMA, turning it into a patronage mill and burying it under the new Department of Homeland Security, cuased a great deal of death and destruction here in my adopted hometown. And it's true that our population has been "cleansed" of many of the poorest of our poor citizens ~ many of the poor folks who were shipped ut of town after that first hoorendous week after the levee breaks have not been shipped back, and still can't afford to travel on their own dime. And some of the public housing complexes where they lived are being bulldozed and replaced with "mixed-income" developments (which may or may not work out as advertised).

But the ethnic composition of our population is still pretty much the same. We're still mostly black. What so many people cannot seem to understand is that there are plenty of middle-class black people, including thousands of New Orleans homeowners struggling to rebuild their properties and their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 11:03 AM

That's good news, Sawz. Maybe we will be able to get the hell out of Sandtown real soon.

I'd like that.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 10:55 AM

US turns over control of 12th Iraqi province

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER API

BABYLON, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. relinquished control of a southern province that includes Sunni areas once known as the "triangle of death," handing security responsibility to the Iraqi government on Thursday. In the capital, where insurgent attacks continue nearly daily, a car bomber targeted a government minister's convoy, killing at least 13 people.

Babil is the 12th of 18 Iraqi provinces to be placed under Iraqi control and a sign of the improving security. U.S. forces will remain in the area to assist the Iraqis when needed.

At a transfer ceremony held near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said security gains have been remarkable — with the number of attacks falling about 80 percent from an average of 20 per week a year ago.

But he cautioned that "while the enemies of Iraq are down, they are not necessarily defeated."

With Babil's handover to the Iraqi government, the only province left under U.S. control in southern Iraq is Wasit, a rural desert region that borders Iran and has been a conduit for the smuggling of Iranian-backed Shiite militants and weapons into Iraq.

Wasit will be transferred to Iraqi authorities on Oct. 29, said Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, U.S. commander south of Baghdad.

Other provinces that remain to be handed over are north of the capital, where violence has been slower to decline after insurgents fled security crackdowns in Baghdad and surrounding areas.

Salim al-Musilmawi, Babil's provincial governor, credited tribal leaders and Sunnis who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq in a U.S.-funded revolt with the downturn in violence.

"Today's security handover is the fruit of the victory over al-Qaida," he said at the ceremony, which included a brass band, marching army squadrons and a simulated riot response by an armored police unit....

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:56 PM

RADICAL RIGHT -- LIMBAUGH AND GIULIANI INDIRECTLY BLAME 9/11 ON PRESIDENT CLINTON: Discussing Sen. Joe Biden's (D-DE) recent comments that the world will "test the mettle" of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) with an international crisis if he is elected, right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani indirectly blamed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on former President Bill Clinton on Monday. "Every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that's why they tested Bush on 9/11," said Limbaugh. Giuliani agreed. The fact that Giuliani so easily agreed with Limbaugh is surprising, considering that in 2006 he said it was wrong to "cast blame on Clinton"Â쳌 for 9/11. "I don't think he deserves it," said Giuliani. Though Clinton has freely acknowledged that he "failed" to get Osama bin Laden, his administration aggressively pursued terrorism. For instance, a June 1995 Presidential Decision Directive issued by Clinton emphasized concern about terrorism "as a national security issue" for the first time, instead of just a matter of law enforcement. Clinton's directive declared that the United States saw "terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act and will apply all appropriate means to combat it." For the last three years of his presidency, Clinton "raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave." In his book, Against All Enemies, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke -- who served under Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton -- described Clinton doing more right than he did wrong in combating terrorism, such as declaring "a war on terror before the term became fashionable."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 10:22 AM

Maureen Dowd wrote the following paragraph in her column today, which deserves to be memorialized if only for the phrase describing the newly elected Bush:

"Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of foreign policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by pros — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama.

"Experience is helpful," he says, "but it is judgment that matters.""

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 10:06 AM

The Clinton administration sponsored and pushed through Congress the "Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993" which created a new higher tax rate of 36% on incomes in excess of $140,000 for married people ($115,000 for singles) and a top rate of 39.6% for incomes in excess of $250,000 for all.

Prior to 1993, the top tax rate was 31%. The Bush tax cuts back some of the Clinton tax increases.

The Bush tax cuts only reduced the top rate to 35%, still 4% points higher than the top rate of 31% before the Clinton tax increases."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 11:45 AM

1500

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: freda underhill
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 09:06 AM

We've all been burned by the son ..

GEORGE H. W. Bush's presidency began with the fall of the Wall and the collapse of communism. George W. Bush's presidency ends with the fall of Wall Street and the collapse of capitalism.

As George Sr watches the destruction of the political dynasty founded by his father senator Prescott Bush, he must wish that he too was turning in his grave. The family tomb must be looking very attractive.

Polls agree that about 80 per cent of Americans are appalled by his son and you can bet George H.W. heads the list. Pretty early in the Iraq fiasco it was painfully obvious that dad was mortified by his son's strategic idiocies, hence his desperate and unsuccessful deployments of family loyalist James Baker to find a face-saving way out of the mess. But now? Iraq must seem almost the least of the dynasty's disasters. To borrow from one of George H.W.'s quaint sayings, it's now in the deepest of doo-doo.

Within hours of Pearl Harbor George H.W. left college to become the youngest naval pilot in US history. He flew scores of missions and won a heap of medals for quite exceptional courage. And his son? Despite the lowest possible scores in the entrance exams he got to be a pilot and did everything he could to avoid doing his duty or getting in harm's way. Despite all the family's influence, he failed to make the cut at the University of Texas law school. He became an alcoholic and a drunk driver. Whereas dad was a millionaire at 40, the son's career as an oil man was an embarrassment. Until young George was provided with the governorship of Texas, his CV was a disaster.

And dad? House of Reps, ambassador to the UN, chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, boss of the CIA, Reagan's vice-president etc etc. Though devoid of charisma and little better than his son as an orator he became the 41st president. Like father Prescott, his career was devoted to pushing the barrow of the biggest of big businesses. His oil industry connections to the Saudis certainly influenced his decision to cross Saddam Hussein off the list of favoured dictators and launch Desert Storm. But Bush Sr was infinitely more careful in his foreign policy than his son. George H.W.'s reluctance to push on to Baghdad and do some regime changing was clearly a factor in his son's later recklessness. And George H.W. made his disapproval clear through the high-level manoeuverings of such dynastic disciples as Baker. There seems strength in the quasi-Freudian argument that the world fell victim to difficulties in a father-son relationship.

Even before the great fiscal f..k-up George H.W.'s spectacularly stupid son had blown the US budget by turning the Clinton surplus into an apocalyptic deficit. On his watch there was a 70 per cent increase in the national debt. Gross domestic product was almost flat-lining at 2.5 per cent, real median income hadn't budged, the dollar was looking worse than the zloty and only the rich were having fun. And now? Not even the rich are happy. Despite vast amounts of anti-depressant being pumped into the global system, the world teeters on the edge of the biggest depression since the 1930s. The Republicans will not only lose the White House but Congress, the Senate, and gubernatorial and state elections across the nation. Not even the dazzling political talents of Sarah Palin will save them.

Under Bush Jr, the unprecedented levels of sympathy for the US post 9/11 evaporated. Now the international polls can be read as prayers for a Barack Obama victory. Anti-American feelings? In the Western democracies they were largely anti-Bush. The invasion of Iraq with its death and destruction led to Abu Ghraib and torture and civil war. Guantanamo and rendition unleashed worldwide protest and recruited regiments of terrorists. Domestic politics saw dramatic attacks on the US constitution and on civil liberties. Political scandals were two a penny, such as Alberto Gonzales's mid-term sacking of those US attorneys he deemed insufficiently conservative.

Bush's ongoing denial of climate change was capped by Katrina, where Washington's scandalous inaction led to the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans. Was there a single issue where George Jr got anything right? While the sub-prime mortgage crisis was kindled before Bush's election his administration did nothing to head it off. The USSR may be dead and buried but George Jr has presided over the creation of a new socialist state: the USSA.

George Jr leaves Washington DC as the most unpopular president in history. He leaves the US, the Middle East and the world economy in much worse shape than they were eight years ago. And he leaves the Republican Party in ruins; it will take decades to repair. As for the Bush dynasty? The presidential campaign of Jeb Bush isn't attracting a lot of donors..

from The Australian, Phillip Adams | October 21, 2008

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 08:50 AM

The Bush administration is writing one more sad chapter in the long, tortured history of Appalachia's coal-rich hills. Last week, the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining proposed a revision, amounting to a repeal, of one of the last regulatory protections against an environmentally ruinous mining practice called mountaintop removal.

Skip to next paragraph
The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.

Go to The Board » Mountaintop removal is just what the name suggests: enormous machines scrape away mountain ridges to expose the coal seams. The leftover rock and dirt are then dumped into adjacent valleys and streams. The practice has gone on for years. By one estimate, 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried this way and hundreds of square miles of forests damaged.

No recent administration, Democrat or Republican, has made a serious effort to end the dumping, largely in deference to the coal industry and the political influence of Robert Byrd, West Virginia's senior senator. But beginning in the late-1990s, concerned citizens tried to slow things by invoking the so-called stream buffer zone rule, which seeks to protect water quality by prohibiting any mining activity within 100 feet of flowing streams.

With the urging of the coal companies, the Bush administration started looking for creative ways to ensure that this destructive practice could continue. In 2002, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency found itself inconvenienced by a rule explicitly prohibiting the use of mining waste as "fill" in streams and wetlands for development and other purposes. So the administration simply rewrote the regulations.

The nettlesome buffer zone rule still remained in place, so in 2004 the administration began a systematic effort to weaken it as well. That culminated Friday when the Office of Surface Mining sent its proposal for gutting the rule to the E.P.A., whose concurrence is required.

...NYT

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 03:02 PM

Bushies Give COlin Powell The Cold Shoulder After Obama Endorsement

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 09:27 AM

Oct 20, 2008, 00:10

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."-- Plato (427-347 b.c.)

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." --Aesop (620–560 b.c.)

"When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression." --H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist

"We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' Stay the course? . . . I'll give you a sound bite: Throw all the bums out!" --Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler Corporation (book: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?)

Whoever is elected president in the coming November 4 American election will inherit a most miserable situation on nearly all fronts. This is because George W. Bush has been one of the worst presidents the U.S. has ever had, if not the worst. It is widely recognized that he was a below average politician who led his country on the wrong track, both domestically and internationally. Today, only a meager 9 percent of Americans dare to say that their country is moving in the right direction.

As a matter of fact, a very large majority of Americans -- both Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and of rural areas, high school graduates and college-educated -- all say that the United States has been headed in the wrong direction under George W. Bush's stewardship. Bush's approval rating reflects the lack of confidence that Americans have in him and his administration. In fact, George W. Bush has recorded the lowest approval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. And, around the world, the United States has never had a leader who commands so little respect and confidence. Most people in the U.S. and abroad will find satisfaction in seeing his term come to an end.

This is a terrible indictment of the Bush administration that has presided over America's destinies for the last eight years. What is more disconcerting, this all came after George W. Bush awarded the presidential election in 2000, with fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Al Gore, on a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court. Therefore, this is an administration that had no widespread democratic mandate to do what it has done. And it has done a lot of things wrong. In fact, many people think this has been a morally bankrupt administration.

International disaster: An illegal and immoral war of aggression

At the center of this fiasco, is the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon cohorts rushed to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to implement a preconceived pro-Israel and pro-oil plan in the Middle East. This led them to adopt a simplistic response to Islamist terrorism, barging into complex Middle East societies on elephant feet. But in the process, they have only succeeded in making matters worse and in encouraging more hatred against the U.S. and more terrorism.

Indeed, George W. Bush will be remembered above all as the man who launched an illegal and immoral war of aggression against another sovereign nation on false pretenses and forged documents, destroying in so doing the entire country of Iraq, and damaging perhaps irreparably the U.S. reputation in the world. As Scott McClellan, Bush's former press secretary (2003-2006), stated, Bush and his advisers in launching the Iraq War "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war."

Bush's deception and lies about Iraq in order to initiate a war of aggression, an aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the U.S., are well documented. Thus, historians will have no difficulty in establishing the fact that the United States, under Bush, acted as a lawless international aggressor. (...)

Excerpted from The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 10:35 AM

Another Invitation to Abuse
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Published: October 18, 2008
We still don't know all of the ways that the Bush administration has violated Americans' civil liberties and undercut the balance of powers in the name of fighting terrorism. Even now, in President Bush's waning months in the White House, that overreach continues.

The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.
Go to The Board »
Related
Times Topics: Terrorism
Times Topics: Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently issued new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use a range of intrusive techniques to gather information on Americans — even when there is no clear basis for suspecting wrongdoing.

Under the new rules, agents may engage in lengthy physical surveillance, covertly infiltrate lawful groups, or conduct pretext interviews in which agents lie about their identities while questioning a subject's neighbors, friends or work colleagues based merely on a generalized "threat." The new rules also allow the bureau to use these techniques on people identified in part by their race or religion and without requiring even minimal evidence of criminal activity.

These changes are a chilling invitation for the government to spy on law-abiding Americans based on their ethnic background or political activity.

Mr. Mukasey has promised that investigations conducted under the new rules will be consistent with the Constitution. Clearly, the Bush administration cannot be trusted to find the right balance between law enforcement and civil liberties. Even before this administration the F.B.I. had its own long history of abusing its powers to spy on civil rights groups and antiwar activists.

Critics also warn that the new rules could impede legitimate law enforcement efforts by alienating communities whose cooperation the F.B.I. needs and by distracting agents from focusing on genuine criminal activity and national security threats.

Mr. Mukasey and Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, refused requests from several senators, including Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, to delay the new rules until Congress and the public could thoroughly review them. Instead they rushed to put the changes in place before President Bush leaves office....(NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 09:49 AM

More law-bending by the Bushit wizards:

WASHINGTON — In a newly disclosed legal memorandum, the Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that hire only staff members who share their faith.

The administration, which has sought to lower barriers between church and state through its religion-based initiative offices, made the claim in a 2007 Justice Department memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel. It was quietly posted on the department's Web site this week.

The statutes for some grant programs do not impose antidiscrimination conditions on their financing, and the administration had previously allowed such programs to give taxpayer money to groups that hire only people of a particular religion.

But the memorandum goes further, drawing a sweeping conclusion that even federal programs subject to antidiscrimination laws can give money to groups that discriminate.

The document signed off on a $1.5 million grant to World Vision, a group that hires only Christians, for salaries of staff members running a program that helps "at-risk youth" avoid gangs. The grant was from a Justice Department program created by a statute that forbids discriminatory hiring for the positions it is financing.

But the memorandum said the government could bypass those provisions because of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It sometimes permits exceptions to a federal law if obeying it would impose a "substantial burden" on people's ability to freely exercise their religion. The opinion concluded that requiring World Vision to hire non-Christians as a condition of the grant would create such a burden.

But several law professors who specialize in religious issues called the argument legally dubious. Ira C. Lupu, a co-director of the Project on Law and Religious Institutions at George Washington University Law School, said the opinion's reasoning was "a very big stretch."

And Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002, said the memorandum's reasoning was incompatible with Supreme Court precedent. He pointed to a 2004 case, in which the court said government scholarships that could not be used to study religion did not substantially burden recipients' right to practice their religion because they could still study theology with their own money.... (NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 09:37 AM

In the end game of the Bush Administration's tenure, serious offenses are planned against the environment and against the code that protects it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 06:28 PM

Two items from Congressman Waxman's Committe on OVersight and Reform:

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
White House Orchestrated Taxpayer-Funded Trips to Help Republican Candidates
A draft Committee report circulated by Chairman Waxman finds that in the months before the 2006 elections, the White House Office of Political Affairs "enlisted agency heads across government in a coordinated effort to elect Republican candidates to Congress," directing them "to make hundreds of trips – most at taxpayer expense – for the purpose of increasing the electability of Republicans."

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Bipartisan Committee Report Criticizes President's Assertion of Executive Privilege
A bipartisan report circulated today by Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Ranking Member Tom Davis finds that President Bush made a "legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege" when he directed Attorney General Mukasey to withhold Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's interview of Vice President Cheney from the Committee. A separate report circulated by Chairman Waxman criticizes the President's assertion of executive privilege in the Committee's investigation into recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions. Both reports will be considered by the full Committee next week.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 01:19 AM

Thanks, Sawz. That is good news, I think....


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 12:14 AM

No. 2 al-Qaeda leader killed in Mosul

BAGHDAD (AP) â€" The No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Moroccan, has been killed in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The death was a major blow to the terror network as American commanders have warned it remains a significant threat despite recent security gains.

U.S. troops, acting on tips, killed Abu Qaswarah, also known as Abu Sara, on Oct. 5 after coming under fire during a raid on a building that served as an al-Qaeda in Iraq "key command and control location" in Mosul, according to a statement.

The insurgent leader became the senior al-Qaeda in Iraq emir of northern Iraq in June 2007 and had "historic ties to AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the military said.

It called him "al-Qaeda in Iraq's second-in-command" as the senior operational leader for the head of the network, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

Abu Qaswarah â€" one of five insurgents killed in the raid â€" has been positively identified, the military said, without elaborating.

It said he had trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and directed the smuggling of foreign terrorists into northern Iraq for suicide bombings and other attacks.

"Abu Qaswarah reportedly killed foreign terrorists who wanted to return to their home countries instead of carrying out attacks against Iraqi citizens," military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll said.

The announcement would indicate that al-Qaeda in Iraq's leadership has maintained a presence in the wartorn country amid recent media reports that many had fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan where fighting has been on the rise.

Abu Qaswarah was described by the military as a "charismatic AQI leader who rallied AQI's northern network in the wake of major setbacks to the terrorist organization across Iraq."

The death of the senior al-Qaeda in Iraq leader will cause a major disruption to the terror network, particularly in northern Iraq, the military said.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 05:39 PM

From WaPo today:

"The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.



The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.

"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 05:37 PM

ADMINISTRATION -- BUSH ISSUES TWO NEW SIGNING STATEMENTS: The New York Times reports today that President Bush issued signing statements on Tuesday asserting "that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control." In the authorization bill, Bush objected to being required to enter "negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there" and a prohibition on the use of U.S. funds "being used 'to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.'" President Bush has challenged over 1,100 sections of laws during his two terms, while "all previous presidents combined challenged about 600 sections of bills." Prominent conservatives, including Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), have repeatedly introduced legislation to ban the use of signing statements. The American Bar Associations calls signing statements "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." A recent House Armed Services Committee report found that Bush's justifications for his signing statements are often "broad and unsubstantiated."

CONGRESS -- BIPARTISAN HOUSE REPORT FINDS BUSH MADE 'INAPPROPRIATE' USE OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee released a bipartisan report finding that President Bush made a "legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege" when the administration withheld Patrick Fitzgerald's interview with Vice President Cheney on the CIA leak scandal. Attorney General Michael Mukasey had previously told the committee "that Bush's refusal to release the Cheney interview was within the president's authority, under executive privilege, to keep his discussions with advisers private." But the report, which was signed by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and ranking Republican Tom Davis (R-VA), argued that "there is no reason to believe that the special counsel's interview with the vice president" relates to "presidential decision-making about foreign policy or national security." White House spokesman Tony Fratto dismissed the report as a "campaign attack." The committee also released a separate report criticizing Bush's assertion of executive privilege regarding his recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions, saying that they were "wrong and an abuse of the privilege."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:22 AM

As if it fucking matters what this or that nutbar out there says

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 07:06 PM

Dear Friend:

In the closing months of this administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that it does not plan to regulate perchlorate, a toxic component of rocket fuel that contaminates sites in at least 35 states, including California.

According to the EPA, perchlorate, a chemical found in rocket fuel, is found in the drinking water supplies of up to 16.6 million Americans. However, other independent researchers have estimated that 20 million or more Americans are exposed to the toxin, which particularly threatens pregnant women, infants and children.

The Bush EPA's failure to set a standard for perchlorate is outrageous, and I will do everything in my power to reverse it.  Perchlorate contamination endangers the health of our families, and to simply allow it to remain in our drinking water is immoral.

As Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I've been working to protect the American people from exposure to perchlorate through legislative means.  I've introduced the Perchlorate Monitoring and Right to Know Act (S.24), requiring that the EPA resume testing of drinking water for perchlorate, and that the results of those tests be disclosed to the public; and the Protecting Pregnant Women and Children from Perchlorate Act (S.150), requiring the EPA to promptly set a standard for perchlorate in drinking water that protects pregnant women and children. Both of these bills were approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in July 2008, but our effort to move the bills on the Senate floor was blocked opponents of the measures.  We will continue our fight to enact these bills.

You can count on me to continue to work to protect the health of all Americans by pushing for the regulation of perchlorate.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:45 PM

..."The economy began going south at Warp 6. People started losing their jobs in an economy that John McCain insists is still fundamentally sound. All those tangled webs of high finance and low morals started unraveling. A few of the biggest gamblers went bust, and Uncle Sam stepped in. A few even bigger institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private corporations with some government backing, had to be taken over by Uncle Sam.

And so it was that panic set in and the economic forecasts began to sound like the weather forecasts for Galveston Island a couple of weeks ago.

Now the same Republicans who sat back cashing campaign checks from Wall Street fat cats for seven plus years and busily deregulated everything in sight, including those who'd watched over everything from baby milk powder to brightly colored lead-painted toys to pet food, want to use our money to rescue the robber barons.

If we don't go along, and pronto, they say, the Second Great Depression is right around the corner, and don't bother blaming them, because they at least tried to save us from themselves.

If you needed any further evidence that there's something rotten at the heart of this deal, just look at the Wall Street lobbyists circling around the rescue bill like so many ravenous wolves.

We the people and our national treasury are going to buy all those bad mortgages out of the portfolios of the guilty and the innocent alike. We're going to have to pay some of them to maintain that property, auction off that property and hold the money earned from the auctions.

The wolves smell blood and they smell money, and we the people are supposed to rescue them and make them whole and forgive them and, oh yes, let them make more money in the process.

If you're ready to buy this deal from a used war salesman like George W. Bush and his cronies on Wall Street, then I have a real deal for you on a bridge to nowhere.

Trust us, they say. In a pig's ass, I say."

Joe Galloway, McClatchey Newspapers

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 09:12 AM

Well, I haven't ignored eight years of history, driving the country into perhaps the worst economic, diplomatic and domestic circumstances it has been in since the second world war.

I haven't ignored the river of distorted or directly false facts coming out of the mouths of your heros in the White House, and their wannabe proxies.

So I think your slur is unfounded, senor.

Yeah I know what you mean about those filthy rich elitists--the ones with multiple houses all over the nation, who marry huge amounts of money instead of working their way up. Your candidate qualifies if anyone does. Maybe you should support someone who worked their way up n brains and effort, like Mr Obama.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:35 AM

Amos, I am deeply sorry that you choose to ignore history. Except when you want to cite history yourself. Then history become essential to discussion. As if any body that does not know that bit of history is ignorant.

Michael Buckley's rant is about McCain instead about Bush but he does have some rather entertaining opinions similaar to yours. You and he would make a lovely couple.

Michael Buckley is an American internet celebrity based in Connecticut who satirizes American celebrity culture on his vlog What the Buck. He has one of YouTube's most subscribed channels with several million viewers each month. In October 2007 Buckley "broke all records" of YouTube ratings when four of his shows ended up on the week's 10 top-rated videos. Buckley has appeared in magazines like The Advocate discussing subjects like homophobia on the internet. On 18 March 2008 Buckley won a 2007 YouTube Awards for best commentary with the video "LonelyGirl15 is Dead!".

Buckley has a husband and lives in Connecticut with their four dogs Ellie, George, Colin and Buddy. To show his fans his "softer side", Buckley has also begun to vlog about their home life.

Here is a response to Mr. Buckley:

Taxpayer Jim:

You say that 'It should be clear that McCain is another four years of Bush'. But you have provided little evidence that this is true. You also state that 'Capitalism is not about saving floundering businesses'. Would you rather the US sink into a deep depression? Based on your story, I believe you would. I hope I see you in the breadline so you can admit how stupid that statement was. the government isn't merely giving the businesses the money - it's a loan. The government has a long history of loaning money to businesses - the country was built on it. And while you're griping about 'paying for big business', ask yourself where you'd be if it weren't for big business to give you a job. Or are you a deadbeat? Exactly how much in taxes did you pay last year? I paid over $100K in taxes - and Obama admittedly wants to raise my taxes higher. If Obama is elected - the country will slip deeper into a recession, or worse. He has not the experience nor the ethics to run the greatest and most powerful country on earth. McCain does.

And how about you Amos? Do you work for a company? Would you want the Government help keep that company from going out of business or would you rather collect welfare form the government after it goes out of business?

I don't have to worry because I can always get a job flipping burgers and parking luxury cars for the filthy rich elitists who know what is best for the American public.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:18 PM

The Herald News
Posted Oct 10, 2008 @ 05:38 PM
Once again, we find our nation in dire straights at the hands of and due to the Republican administration.

John McCain professed loudly that his campaign should be put on hold due to the financial crisis. A pure political ploy much like that which he accused Barack Obama of a few weeks back. It appears that the McCain campaign is starting to flounder and he is starting to increase the use of dirty politics and lies about his opponent much like Bush did, to not only him during the Republican nomination process eight years ago, but also during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 to Al Gore and John Kerry.
This campaign and upcoming election has been mired in the absolutely irrelevant issue of McCain picking Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, and Sen. Hillary Clinton not winning the nomination and then not being asked to be a running mate.

This election is about so much more than that inconsequential issue. This election is about returning the United States to its people. It is about repairing the damage to our country and those liberties, rights and principals that set us apart from all other countries. It is about the treasonous acts committed by the Bush administration. Those acts include the suspension of Habeas Corpus by dogmatically characterizing enemy soldiers as enemy combatants. It is about the U.S. invading a sovereign country for reasons based on lies by the administration. It is about the resulting loss of more than 4,000 valiant and dedicated soldiers who go where they are told without questioning their orders.

It is about the invasion of privacy by using illegal wire taps and subsequently ignoring the Constitution they swore to uphold. It is about the outing of a covert CIA employee and the termination of federal judges for political reasons, just to name a few.
There are many more immoral and illegal actions committed by this administration that can be noted. All are reasons for impeachment, yet we find our nation struggling with a decision coming this November. We find ourselves actually trying to decide who should lead our country. It should be clear that McCain is another four years of Bush.
He has continually sided with the Bush administration. He has been either in the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate since 1982 and has been part and parcel of the legislations that have allowed big business to live by different rules than the average citizen as well as receive relief in the form of government subsidies and bailouts. Where is ours after all we have been paying for big business? He has sided with the Bush administration on every action that flew in the face of the U.S. Constitution. He has helped this administration commit troops to battle knowingly based on lies and misinformation. Troops should never go to battle unless it is a last resort. I know ... I am a Vietnam combat veteran.

Capitalism is not about saving floundering businesses, yet McCain and the Republicans think so. Liberty, freedom and justice are not about changing the rules as you go to fit your desired outcome. They are precise in their intent, design and permanence.
Being a soldier in this country is not about fighting wars that exist for the sake of big business and imperialism. In this country, being a soldier is a noble profession as witnessed by our previous historically righteous reasons for sending them into combat.
Our country needs to change its direction and regain its principled place in the world's society.

Michael Buckley

(Herald News)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:15 PM

You didn't get it at the time, you haven't gotten it since, and you don't get it now.

It's sad, but your incessant thrumming on the low register of desperate ignorance makes an ugly drone.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:07 PM

The worst President ever...so, now it's a music thread.

Sawzall, I fail to see what you think you are doing posting articles from ten years ago on this thread. It is a sort of mindless, desperate scraping on your part.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:05 PM

In America; Clinton's Own Web

By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 17, 1998

Headlines are calling it the moment of truth. We'll see.

Presidential candidate Bill Clinton went on the ''60 Minutes'' program right after the Super Bowl in late January 1992 to clear up the Gennifer Flowers mess. The idea was to tell the truth, to be straight with the American people, and thus save his damaged candidacy. Here's what happened. With more than 30 million viewers looking on, and with Hillary Clinton at his side, he lied.

It worked. The Flowers story, replete with taped conversations between Ms. Flowers and Mr. Clinton, was so sordid the press was uncomfortable with it and the public soon grew sick of it. When Mr. Clinton came in second in the New Hampshire primary in February, he dubbed himself ''the comeback kid.''

Within weeks of the ''60 Minutes'' appearance, Mr. Clinton was facing new questions about how he had avoided the draft during the war in Vietnam. He didn't want to be seen as a draft dodger. If he won the nomination, he would be facing George Bush, who had a strong record of service in World War II. So, as he so often does, Mr. Clinton gave the truth the slip.

Had he received a draft notice or not? Did he escape simply by virtue of a high number in the draft lottery or had he pulled strings? Was he a committed anti-war activist willing to pay a price for sticking by his principles, or just a coward willing to let others fight and perhaps die in his place?

Who knew? The candidate told so many stories, crafted so many evasive answers, came up with so many lame excuses that he gave everybody a headache. The public got tired of the matter and the story went away.

It took Mr. Clinton years to come up with the classic ''I didn't inhale'' response to questions about marijuana. He danced around that issue like Fred Astaire, saying he hadn't broken this law, or violated that statute. We've gotten used to it. It's as if the idea of a straight answer to a difficult question is completely alien to the man.

Now he is going before a Federal grand jury in an effort to salvage what remains of his Presidency. Just about every question he'll be asked will be tough. The danger is that he has woven so many lies he'll be trapped in his own insidious web.

The issue at the moment is not about impeachment. The Republicans have neither the clout nor the inclination, based on what is now known, to remove Mr. Clinton from office. Rather than fiddling with the dangerously unpredictable bomb of impeachment, the Trent Lotts, Newt Gingriches and Orrin Hatches of the world would much rather see the President, the hope of so many Democrats, sitting humiliated in the White House through the year 2000.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:03 PM

"And if Rumsfeld had had three brain cells he would have seen right through Saddams desperate ploy."

I suppose that goes for Clinton, the US senate and all of the coalition forces.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:56 PM

"you backed a loser and exercised very poor judgement"

You haven't provided any proof of that except for opinions and bullshit like the US oil supply was cut off.

You backed the loser, Kerry. And don't evoke the crybaby Kerry won refrain. The south did not rise again. And what was that about Summary Judgment again?

I see you are trying to blame Bush for what Reagan did and the great depression. Late breaking news Amos, Reagan is dead and the depression was is over. Remember when the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television? Yeah that was Bush's fault too.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 10:49 AM

Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.

Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It's not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan — the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 — has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

I don't for a moment think that the Democratic Party has been free of egregious problems. But there are two things I find remarkable about the G.O.P., and especially its more conservative wing, which is now about all there is.

The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.

Remember voodoo economics? That was the derisive term George H.W. Bush used for Ronald Reagan's fantasy that he could simultaneously increase defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. After Reagan became president (with Mr. Bush as his vice president) the budget deficit — surprise, surprise — soared.

In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan's own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president's tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.

These were the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives who were behaving so profligately. The budget was balanced and a surplus realized under Bill Clinton, but soon the "fiscal conservatives" were back in the driver's seat. "Deficits don't matter," said Dick Cheney, and the wildest, most reckless of economic rides was on.

Americans, including the Joe Sixpacks, soccer moms and hockey moms, were repeatedly told that the benefits lavished on the highfliers would trickle down to them. Someday.

Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the discoverers of the link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion, Tom DeLay, a Republican who would go on to wield enormous power as majority leader in the House, mocked the award as the "Nobel Appeasement Prize."

Mr. Reagan, the ultimate political hero of so many Republicans, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation ruling, William F. Buckley, the ultimate intellectual hero of so many Republicans, asserted that whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks.

"The White community is so entitled," he wrote, "because, for the time being, it is the advanced race..." He would later repudiate that sentiment, but only after it was clear that his racist view was harmful to himself.

The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future. " (Herbert, NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:46 PM

You are one piece o'work, Sawzall. You would do better to face up to the fact that you backed a loser and exercised very poor judgement, and figure out why.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:02 PM

confuse casualty with killed or enemy with US, and you saz are exposed as a vendor of french fried fraud.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:29 PM

I missed a few of Clinton's peacetime activities:

U.S. drops cluster and 'laser-guided' bombs near Mosul August 19, 1993
U.S. Navy fire missiles on southern Iraq July 29th, 1993
U.S. fighter jet fires missile on southern Iraq June 29, 1993
U.S. fires 23 missiles on Baghdad June 26, 1993
U.S. bombs suspected radar site in northern Iraq April 18, 1993
U.S. fires two missiles on northern Iraq January 22, 1993
U.S. attacks suspected 'missile battery' in northern Iraq January 21, 1993
U.S. fires missile near Mosul and drops cluster bombs elsewhere in Iraq January 19, 1993
U.S. attacks northern Iraq and 75 US, British and French aircraft attack southern Iraq January 18, 1993
U.S. attack northern Iraq and U.S. warship fires 45 missiles on nuclear facility in Baghdad January 17, 1993
U.S. attacks 32 suspected missiles sites in Iraq January 13, 1993
No reported bombings during 1994 and 1995
U.S. fighter jet fires missile at Iraqi radar November 4, 1996
U.S. fighter jet fires missile at Iraqi radar....'oops, by mistake' November 2, 1996
U.S. Navy fires 17 missiles on southern Iraq September 4, 1996
U.S. Navy and B-52s fire 27 missiles on southern Iraq; extend southern 'no-fly-zone' September 3, 1996
U.S militarily helps the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) capture Irbil, August 31, 1996
Turkey approves of continued U.S. bombing in Northern Iraq, commencing Operation Northern Watch 1997
As UN-Iraq deal stalls US bombing: Clinton issues new war threats February 24 1998
Missile attack on Iraq anti-aircraft battery near Basra July 1 1998
Clinton Allegedly Orders Aerial Bombing on Iraq and then Pulls Back November 13, 1998
U.S. Attacks Baghdad for Four Days During Ramadan December 16-19, 1998
U.S. Fires Missiles on Northern Iraq December 28, 1998
U.S. Drop Bombs on Southern Iraq December 30, 1998
U.S. jets flew 34 sorties over Basra, Maisan, Dhi Qar and Najaf February 13 1999
American and British planes flew 42 missions in the South, killing 5 and wounding 22 February 15 1999
Navy fighters fire missiles at a SAM site near the city of an-Najaf Nov 22 1999
U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft attack two Iraqi SAM sites near Al Iskandariyah.Feb. 24 1999
U.S. and British warplanes fire at two air defense sites in Iraq Feb. 10 1999
F-15s and two F-14s fire a total of six missiles at four Iraqi MiG-25s Jan. 5 1999

As of May 22 2000 there had been more than 470 separate incidents of Iraqi SAM and anti-aircraft artillery fire directed against coalition pilots since December 1998. Iraqi aircraft violated the southern no-fly zone more than 150 times during the same period

Coalition aircraft target four Iraqi military sites at Nasiriyah.April 4 2000

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 09:59 PM

You are right Amos.

Here are more accurate numbers:

Number of military deaths during the peaceful Clinton administration:

1993 ......... 1213
1994 ......... 1075
1995 ......... 1040
1996 .......... 974
1997 .......... 817
1998 .......... 827
1999 .......... 796
2000 .......... 758
--------------------------------
Total....... 7500

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 08:56 PM

So where are your figures Einstein?

This is the part I like:

"It would be nice for us veterans of the Clinton Administration if we could simply blame mismanagement by President George W. Bush's economic team for this seemingly sudden turnaround in the economy, which coincided so closely with its taking charge. But … the economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 03:00 PM

COdswallop, Mister Sawz. THose figures are WAY out of line.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:33 PM

Amos: "Bush after all is the one who took prosperity and gave back recession; and who gave us less peace than we had, as well."

Joseph Stiglitz, "The Roaring Nineties," The Atlantic Monthly, 10/02:

Clinton's Chairman Of Council Of Economic Advisors, Joseph Stiglitz, Said Recession Started During Clinton's Tenure. "It would be nice for us veterans of the Clinton Administration if we could simply blame mismanagement by President George W. Bush's economic team for this seemingly sudden turnaround in the economy, which coincided so closely with its taking charge. But … the economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier...
... during the Clinton Administration "the groundwork for some of the problems we are now experiencing was being laid. Accounting standards slipped; deregulation was taken further than it should have been; and corporate greed was pandered to..."

---

Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/02 Sunny Clinton Forecast Leaves Cloud Over Bush:

:...Most startling, the Commerce Department in 2000 showed the economy on an upswing through most of the election year, while in fact it was declining...."

---

Bill Clinton's peace that Bush inherited:

The No-Fly Zone War
The Yugoslav War
Bosnian Civil War
Kosovo War
bin Laden's War
Intervention in Somalia
Intervention in Haiti
Sudan bombing
Afghanistan bombing
Baghdad bombing 1996
Baghdad bombing 1998
Khobar towers attack
Trade Center attack
Kenya embassy attack
Tanzania embassy attack
USS Cole attack

number of military deaths during the Clinton administration:
1992 ......... 1,293
1993 ......... 1,213
1994 ......... 1,075
1995 ......... 2,465
1996 ......... 2,318
1997 .........   817
1998 ......... 2,252
1999 ......... 1,984
--------------------------------
Total...13.417

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:29 PM

And if Rumsfeld had had three brain cells he would have seen right through Saddams desperate ploy.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:06 PM

60 Minutes:

Saddam believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:04 AM

The Legacy

"Among the many dispiriting things to come out of Bob Woodward's quartet of books on George W. Bush is his observation that the president has not changed since he first started talking to Woodward in 2001.

No growth. No evolution. No regrets.

"History," Bush replied, when asked by Woodward how he would be judged over time. "We don't know. We'll all be dead." Broke, as well.

It would have been nice to let Bush's two terms marinate a while before invoking Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan from the cellar of worst presidents. But then — over the last two weeks — he completed the trilogy of national disasters that will be with us for a generation or more.

George Bush entered the White House as a proponent of a more humble foreign policy and a believer that government should get out of the way at home. He leaves as someone with a trillion-dollar war aimed at making people who've hated each other for a thousand years become Rotary Club freedom-lovers, and his own country close to bankruptcy after government did get out of the way.

It's a Mount Rainier of shame and folly. But before going any further, let's allow his supporters to have their say.

"He's going to have an unbelievably great legacy," said Laura Bush in an ABC interview, citing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Fifty million people liberated from very brutal regimes."

Fred Barnes argues that Bush is a visionary on a par with Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Bush is a president who leads," he wrote in a 2006 book. "He controls the national agenda, uses his presidential power to the fullest and then some, prepares far-reaching polices likely to change the way Americans live, reverses other long-standing polices and is the foremost leader in world affairs."

Finally, from Karl Rove, the Architect. Bush will be viewed "as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century," he said.

After wading through books with words like "fiasco," "hubris" and "denial" in the title, historians will go to first-hand sources, the people who worked with Bush daily. There they will find Paul O'Neill, the president's former Treasury secretary. In 2002, he sounded an alarm, saying Bush's rash economic policies could lead to a deficit of $500 billion. This, after Bush had inherited a budget surplus, prompted many to scoff at O'Neill.

He was wrong, but only in one respect – the projected deficit, even without a financial bailout, will almost certainly be higher.

This means a lot, for every bridge not built, every Pell grant not given to a kid who may never go to college without one, every national park road left to crumble, every sick person who cannot afford to see a doctor in a country that wants to be known as the best on earth.

Historians will also go to Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary. Bush may not be a "high functioning moron," as Paul Begala called him recently. He is "plenty smart enough to be president," McClellan wrote this year. But McClellan, in his job as the president's mouthpiece, found him chronically incurious. He also said Bush deliberately misled the country into war, and in that effort, the news media were "complicit enablers."

Historians will recall that in each of the major disasters on Bush's watch, there were ample warnings — from the intelligence briefing that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike a month before the lethal blow, to the projections that Hurricane Katrina could drown a major American city, to the expressed fears that letting Wall Street regulate itself could be catastrophic.

Voluntary regulation. That phrase now joins "heckuva job, Brownie" and "mission accomplished" among those that will always be associated with the Bush presidency.

It's painful now to realize, just as the economy craters and the world looks aghast at the United States, that the other cancer from the Bush presidency – his failure to even start the nation on the road to a new energy economy – gets short-changed during the triage of his final days.

Bush has hinted that his legacy will be about the war. So be it. He never caught bin Laden, the mass murderer who launched the raison d'etre of the Bush presidency.

But he did topple a paper army in Iraq, opening the drainage for our currency, blood and global reputation. It may go down as the longest, even costliest war in our history.

In a survey of scholars done earlier this year, just two of 109 historians said the Bush presidency would be judged a success. A majority said he would be the worst president ever...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 09:58 PM

"after Bush had inherited a budget surplus"

When was that?

Do you have any data to support your actual proven facts?

If you study this chart carefully, you will see that the deficit was shrinking just before Clinton took office. He inherited a shrinking deficit. Just before GWB took office, the surplus was shrinking at a rapid rate. If Gore had been elected the momentum would have been the same and he could not have turned it around. GWB inherited a growing deficit whether you want to admit it or not.

"Joseph Stiglitz,(the most cited economist in the world, as of June 2008) the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton, admits that "the economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier."

By the way Stiglitz coined Moral Hazard which explains a lot about the current financial crisis.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 10:28 AM

A thoughtful dissertation on Palin, Bush and Nixon (NYT).


A