BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 May 07 - 12:54 PM

"The women of CodePink are calling for "a Mother of a March" today. Their plan is to surround the Congress in the spirit of anti-war activist, Julia Ward Howe, who in the 1870s, exhorted women to "Say firmly: 'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies." Howe was the founder of Mother's Day.

No doubt the CodePinkers will be met, as protestors (especially women protestors) are usually met, with either silence or condescension. Establishmentarians don't like protestors behaving rudely and breaking up the consensus. Hush Hush they say. Don't be uppity.

The consensus the White House is trying to build right now is consensus around silence and waiting. As summer looms, we're entering the hushing season.

The White House's latest line is that only come September, will we know if the President's troop escalation strategy in Iraq is working. The only progress report that counts, they say, is the one that'll come from General David H. Petraeus, the new top commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, who, we're told will testify on Capitol Hill in September.

Well, the women of CodePink (like Howe before them,) aren't about to hush. And that's because the only the only thing that's certain about September is by then more US soldiers and Iraqi civilians will be dead or maimed, and by September the US presidential campaign will be in full swing, giving ample scope for the White House to dismiss critics and Congressional action as partisan stunts, or political theater.

Unlike the president, who I'm sure plans to take a long summer vacation, war and occupation don't take a break. The time to increase the pressure on W and his Congressional collaborators is now, because we're not in the thick of the 2008 campaign season. Now is the calm before 2008's storm. Now is when the Congress - in the first year of a two-year term – can most legitimately be expected to focus on governing rather than on getting themselves re-elected. Now, not September, is the time to draw the line.

Let's remember the un-hushable Howe: "From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says, "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

...From The Nation.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 07 - 03:04 PM

Amos thank you for chronicling our times with the examples of the best journalists of our time.

You rarely offer your fact based opinions but your opponent often offers his opinion based facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 May 07 - 09:35 PM

May 15, 2007 2:00 AM PDT

Gonzales proposes new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement

Posted by Declan McCullagh

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.

"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.

...

The IPPA would, for instance:

* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.")

* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.

* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and it is problematic and controversial.

* Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention regulations. Criminal violations are currently punished by jail times of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million. The IPPA would add forfeiture penalties.

* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Certain copyright crimes currently require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period of at least 10 copies" valued at more than $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution.

* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported. Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder, such as photographers, playwrights or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment.

A representative of the Motion Picture Association of America told us: "We appreciate the department's commitment to intellectual-property protection and look forward to working with both the department and Congress as the process moves ahead."

What's still unclear is the kind of reception this legislation might encounter on Capitol Hill. Gonzales may not be terribly popular, but Democrats do tend to be more closely aligned with Hollywood and the recording industry than is the GOP. (A few years ago, Republicans even savaged fellow conservatives for allying themselves too closely with copyright holders.)

On behalf of Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who heads the House Judiciary subcommittee that focuses on intellectual property, a representative said the congressman is reviewing proposals from the attorney general and others. The aide said the Hollywood politician plans to introduce his own intellectual-property enforcement bill later this year but that his office is not prepared to discuss any details yet.

One key Republican was less guarded. "We are reviewing (the attorney general's) proposal. Any plan to stop IP theft will benefit the economy and the American worker," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary committee. "I applaud the attorney general for recognizing the need to protect intellectual property."

Still, it's too early to tell what might happen. A similar copyright bill that Smith, the RIAA and the Software and Information Industry Association enthusiastically supported last April never went anywhere.

From here.

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The breathtaking stupidity and destructiveness of Bush's Bully Boys gets more wild with every passing month. Making a crime carrying life imprisonment for an attempt at somthing -- even if it were something grossly harmful -- would by itself be a wrenching violation of our traditions. It imposes on jury and judge, by implication, the task of interpreting an individual's state of mind to a degree to which no human can routinely succeed. It violates the much deeper and more important evidentiary principle of demonstrating guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

As such it is, legalistically speaking, cheap trash.

But it makes the Bizheads and the RIAA puppies happy, I guess. Heckuva job, Gonzo!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 17 May 07 - 12:55 AM

:examples of the best journalists of our time"


Posted by: Nellie

Posted by: braultrl

Posted by Declan McCullagh

Declan McCullagh is a photographer who lives and works in San Francisco, California

The Christian Science Monitor reports: Christian Science is a group that does not believe in medical treatment which results in the unnecessary death of children.

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) Offical news paper of Louis Farrakahn's Nation of Islam. Farrakhan's bigoted and anti-Semitic rhetoric has included statements calling whites "blue eyed devils" and Jews "bloodsuckers" that controlled the slave trade

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 May 07 - 10:17 AM

I am delighted to see one of the usual critics of the Bush Administration go to some trouble to point out the positive aspects of George's work:

"As Paul Wolfowitz is to the World Bank, the U.S. is becoming to the world.

We should look at the battle unfolding at the World Bank not as the story of one man falling to earth, but as a moral tale of the risks the U.S. faces unless the Bush administration spends more time rebuilding bridges it has burned all over the world.

Mr. Wolfowitz genuinely aspired to help Africa develop, but he ended up isolated, friendless and vulnerable; receiving no credit for his genuine accomplishments; and unable to make progress on the issues he cares about. And the U.S. is in a similar position today.

The similarity arises in part because although President Bush's best-known role has been as a conservative hawk — and everything he has done in that role has been a disaster — he has also aspired to fight poverty and help Africa. And Mr. Bush has genuinely scored some major accomplishments as a humanitarian.

O.K., pick yourself off the floor: It's true. In the world of foreign aid, Mr. Bush has done better than almost anyone realizes — or gives him credit for. It's his only significant positive legacy, and it consists of four elements.

First and most important, Mr. Bush started Pepfar, his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa — the best single thing he has done in his life. It's a huge increase over earlier programs and will save more than 9 million lives. Granted, it has been too ideological about promoting "abstinence only" programs, but at the grass-roots level it is increasingly pragmatic (don't tell the White House, but the U.S. still gives out far more condoms than any other country).

Second, Mr. Bush started a major new foreign aid program, the millennium challenge account. This involves giving large sums to countries selected for their good governance and from top to bottom reflects smart new approaches to foreign aid.

Third, the Bush administration elevated sex trafficking on the international agenda. Mr. Bush spoke about it to the U.N., and he appointed a first-rate ambassador for the issue, John Miller, who until his resignation late last year hectored and sanctioned foreign countries into curbing this form of modern slavery. (Alas, since Mr. Miller left, the administration's anti-trafficking efforts have faltered.)

Fourth, Mr. Bush has begun to focus attention and funds on malaria, which kills more than 1 million people a year in poor countries and imposes a huge economic burden on Africa in particular.

So why doesn't Mr. Bush get any credit for these achievements? Partly, I think, because he never seems very interested in them himself. And partly because, like Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Bush's approach to governing is to circle the wagons rather than build coalitions; they both antagonize fence-sitters by coming across as unilateralist, sanctimonious, arrogant and incompetent.

In December, the White House held an event to call attention to malaria. But Mr. Bush's staff barred me from attending: They apparently didn't want coverage of malaria if it came from a columnist they didn't like.

I can't recall an administration as suspicious and partisan as this one, one so disinclined to outreach, one that so openly adheres to the ancient Roman maxim of Oderint dum metuant: Let them hate, so long as they fear.

So Mr. Bush, unwilling to concede any error, unwilling to reach out, unwilling to shuffle his cabinet, staggers on. And the U.S. itself has been tainted by the same haughtiness; long after Mr. Wolfowitz has gone, and even after Mr. Bush has gone, the next president will have to detoxify our relations with the rest of the world.

Moreover, even in those areas where Mr. Bush has done well, like foreign aid, our strained relations with the rest of the world have undermined our ability to succeed. Indeed, Bill Clinton (who wasn't nearly as generous with foreign aid as Mr. Bush when he was in the White House) has shown in recent years how much can be accomplished when a leader cooperates with partners on issues like AIDS and development. If Mr. Clinton were pursuing Mr. Bush's development agenda, it would be in a flurry of meetings and visits and multilateralism that would be far more effective in seeing that agenda put in place.

But instead the international stage is riven in ways that mirror the World Bank itself. And it looks as if we're drifting toward the end of a failed presidency of the United States that parallels Mr. Wolfowitz's failed presidency of the World Bank."

---

Sorry about the long quote -- links won't work as it is a subscription piece, by Nicholas Kristov.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 17 May 07 - 10:37 AM

new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement


Gasp, I foresee dozens of screen writers being rounded up and taken to jail for thinking about doing a remake of a past movie or TV series.   The Dukes of Hazzard movie writers should be first to go.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 May 07 - 10:38 AM

"There were many fascinating threads to the testimony on Tuesday by the former deputy attorney general, James Comey, who described the night in March 2004 when two top White House officials tried to pressure an ailing and hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft into endorsing President Bush's illegal wiretapping operation.

But the really big question, an urgent avenue for investigation, is what exactly the National Security Agency was doing before that night, under Mr. Bush's personal orders. Did Mr. Bush start by authorizing the agency to intercept domestic e-mails and telephone calls without first getting a warrant?

Mr. Bush has acknowledged authorizing surveillance without a court order of communications between people abroad and people in the United States. That alone violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Domestic spying without a warrant would be an even more grievous offense.

The question cannot be answered because Mr. Bush is hiding so much about the program. But whatever was going on, it so alarmed Mr. Comey and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller that they sped to the hospital, roused the barely conscious Mr. Ashcroft and got him ready to fend off the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Mr. Bush's counsel, Alberto Gonzales. There are clues in Mr. Comey's testimony and in earlier testimony by Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Ashcroft's successor, that suggest that Mr. Bush initially ordered broader surveillance than he and his aides have acknowledged. ...

Pressed by Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, Mr. Gonzales said Mr. Comey's concerns "dealt with operational capabilities" that were not part of the program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. Mr. Gonzales would not describe those capabilities, of course. Yesterday, Mr. Schumer wrote Mr. Gonzales and asked him to reconcile Mr. Comey's account with his own.

The Republican-controlled Congress did a disservice to the nation by refusing to hold Mr. Bush to account for the illegal wiretapping. The current Congress should resume a vigorous investigation of this egregious abuse of power
..."

---

This points up a clear and compelling basis for impeachment.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 17 May 07 - 10:51 AM

wire tap them all and let fearless leader sort them out.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 May 07 - 09:16 PM

From the well-known Wonkette blog,commenting on current turmoil at the even better known Free Republic (Freep) blog:

Members of Free Republic, the beloved wingnut online forum, have a message today for George W. Bush and his great new immigration plan for The Mexicans. They've got lots of messages, actually.

"We need to have a vote of 'no confidence' on Bush," wrote one commenter. "He just spoke and looked so proud of himself. He couldn't wipe that crappy grin off his face."

After the jump, we'll hear from some of the other hundreds of furious "freepers" who just figured out George W. Bush could give a shit what they think.:

dEPORT tHE pRESIDENT aND cLOSE tHE bORDERS.

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We still have Tancredo, Hunter and Fred Thompson on our side. This bill wont go anywhere when our representatives start receiving our faxes

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The rule of law has just been thrown out the window. I agree that impeachment is in order.
And the SELL OUT of the AMERICAN people begins!

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Bring my Step-Son home from Iraq now El Presedente. You don't deserve his service.

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Bush blasphemy! Shameful leader!

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I'm done with him on this and many other issues. I'll never vote for him again. Illegal invaders are going to kill us all.

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"BUSH SUCKS" And the leftists blogs are now PROUD of this fool! What a dichotomy.

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I just said the same thing to my husband - my nephew has been ordered back for the second time after being home for only 10 months. I want them home now, why fight and die for this country of Mexico.

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I just can't believe I worked so hard to get this man elected not once but twice. NEVER AGAIN - no more money and no more volunteer hours for the grand ole GOP

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His brother Bill was the first black president, now we have the first Hispanic president.

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The conservative movement has now been set adrift….like so much jetsam. Our champion has become our betrayer, IMHO.

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My husband just recently retired and we where planning on going back to Texas but we are now seriously considering Australia. It looks better and better each minute. Our kids want to leave also !!! And you are right, we have been betrayed.

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An thus the united States of America is being sold out by those that claim to love her. May they rot before they die. I see the end of my great nation, the shining star in a morass of mediocre to outright scum countries.

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This is what happens when you kill 40 million unborn US citizens.

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I pray he gets IMPEACHED. This is a dark day in America.

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I have long thought that BJBilly was the worst president in history, now I am not so sure………..At least Clinton stuck to BJs instead of trying to f*ck the entire country, like Jorge.

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Apparently the basis of all this rancour is a recent development in the immigration law dialogue:

"Senate, White House agree on a compromise immigration bill
By Dave Montgomery

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - Ending three months of closed-door deliberations, Senate negotiators unveiled a massive immigration bill Thursday that would enable more than 12 million illegal immigrants to step out from their shadow existence to live and work in the United States legally.

The bipartisan bill, which includes a temporary guest-worker program and an employee verification system that ultimately would affect all employers and U.S. workers, now heads toward an uncertain outcome in the Senate, which is scheduled to begin debate on the measure late Monday afternoon.

"I don't care how you to try to spin it, this is amnesty," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., echoing the central opposition theme that began befalling the bill even before it was officially released."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 May 07 - 09:25 PM

Wolfowitz has been forced out of office at the World Bank. For an interesting summary of the rise and fall of the bright star of Shaha Riza, his long-term POSLQ, see this write-up in Salon. Very interesting stuff.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 17 May 07 - 11:36 PM

Senate passed non-binding resolution calling for Iraq funding
by Brendan McKenna
May 17, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Senate found something its members could agree on Wednesday: U.S. troops need more money to support their efforts in Iraq and they should get it before the end of the month.

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., introduced a non-binding amendment to a water projects bill expressing the "sense of the Senate" that Congress should send President Bush a war spending bill that he can sign into law no later than May 28.

The amendment was passed on a voice vote after an 87 to 9 vote to cut off debate on the matter – far more than the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. The underlying bill, authorizing roughly 600 federal projects, eventually passed 91 to 4.


http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=36581

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 07 - 01:51 AM

"Rose Garden Charade
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Published: May 18, 2007
Confronted with soaring gasoline prices, a Congress growing more restless by the day about oil dependency and a Supreme Court demanding executive action on global warming emissions, President Bush stepped before the cameras in the Rose Garden the other day and said, essentially, nothing.

He announced that he had ordered four federal agencies to "work together" to devise regulations reducing greenhouse gases. He also renewed his call for greater investments in alternative fuels. But neither he nor the cadre of designated briefers who followed him provided any detail, so nobody knows whether he will in fact end up asking for more efficient cars or what sort of alternative fuels he has in mind or, more broadly, what sort of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions he hopes to achieve.

What we did learn was that he has chosen to make the process as cumbersome and time-consuming as possible. We also learned that nothing concrete will happen until the regulatory process is completed at the end of 2008 — a mere three weeks before Mr. Bush walks out the White House door. As Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, aptly noted, this "will leave motor vehicle fuel economy stuck in neutral until Bush's successor takes office."

This is, in short, yet another of Mr. Bush's faith-based energy strategies, in which the operative words are "trust me." The White House says that good regulations need time to develop. That is true, but we would be more inclined to cut Mr. Bush some slack if not for the fact that speedier routes are readily available.

For one thing, he could have simplified matters by letting the Environmental Protection Agency run the whole regulatory show, which is what the Supreme Court had in mind. He could also have ordered the E.P.A. to grant California the permission it has been seeking for more than two years to impose its own emissions standards on cars and light trucks, which it can do under the Clean Air Act once it gets a federal waiver. But the automakers desperately do not want California or the 11 other states that plan to imitate California to get that authority, and Mr. Bush is obviously in no hurry to grant it.

What we are seeing is the obligatory response of a president who finds himself boxed into a corner by Congress and the court and forced to appear to be doing something. At bottom, his administration doubts the urgency of the climate change issue and remains deeply averse to mandates and regulatory timetables."


(Times editorial, 5-17-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 07 - 09:48 AM

The Icing Is Iglesias
His firing is reason alone for Congress to impeach Gonzales.
By Frank Bowman
Posted Thursday, May 17, 2007, at 6:18 PM ET


"Congress could and should impeach Alberto Gonzales. One ground for doing so, as I have previously suggested (subscription required), is the attorney general's amnesiac prevarication in his testimony before the Senate and the House. But if Congress wants more, it need look no further than the firing of David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney in New Mexico. The evidence uncovered in Gonzales' Senate and House testimony demonstrates that he fired Iglesias not because of a policy disagreement or a management failure, but because Iglesias would not misuse the power of the Department of Justice in the service of the Republican Party. To fire a U.S. attorney for refusing to abuse his power is the essence of an impeachable offense. (...)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 07 - 10:22 AM

Paul Krugman remearks:

"Mr. Bush got us into the Iraq quagmire by conflating Saddam with Al Qaeda, treating two mutually hostile groups as if they constituted a single enemy. Well, Mr. Romney offers more of that. "There is a global jihadist effort," he warned in the second debate. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda with that intent." Aren't Sunnis and Shiites killing each other, not coming together? Nevermind.

What about the administration's state of denial over Iraq, its unwillingness to face up to reality? None of the leading G.O.P. presidential contenders seem any different — certainly not Mr. McCain, who strolled through a Baghdad marketplace wearing a bulletproof vest, accompanied by more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees while attack helicopters flew overhead, then declared that his experience proved there are parts of Baghdad where you can "walk freely."

Finally, what about the Bush administration's trademark incompetence? In appointing unqualified loyalists to key positions, Mr. Bush was just following the advice of the Heritage Foundation, which urged him back in 2001 to "make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second." And the base doesn't mind: the Bernie Kerik affair — Mr. Giuliani's attempt to get his corrupt, possibly mob-connected business partner appointed to head the department of homeland security — hasn't kept Mr. Giuliani from becoming the apparent front-runner for the Republican nomination.

What we need to realize is that the infamous "Bush bubble," the administration's no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there's a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job — and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 07 - 10:30 AM

A Letter to the Editor of the Times:

"...I, for one, have a great mistrust of the conservative movement, Republican Revolution, or whatever you want to call it. Not because I lean more independent/liberal, but because conservatives have been anything but truthful. President Bush claimed to be a compassionate conservative and a uniter; he turned out to be divisive, incompetent and uncaring.

The far right has promoted an aggressive policy of forcing democracy on other nations and using force instead of diplomacy, much to the detriment of the world. The depth of hypocrisy and corruption in the Republican Party is in stark contrast to the Republican claim of bringing honesty and integrity to government after the Clinton era.

The Republicans have acted exactly the opposite of their claims of honesty and integrity. Time has shown that those claims were just words with no substance. It's going to take more than a policy shift for me to believe that the Republican Party is acting in our country's best interests.
Portland, Ore., May 15, 2007"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 07 - 10:41 AM

The New York Times, in its editorial page, has some pointed remarks about the Bush administration's lust for corporate privelege:

"Appointed Hobblers of Government

Published: May 18, 2007

Across six years, the Bush administration has mocked all standards of conflict of interest by choosing private industry zealots for high regulatory posts — where they worked to roll back hundreds of rules on transportation, workplace and mine safety, the environment and other issues. The latest in this subversive chain must surely take the fox-in-the-henhouse statuette: President Bush has nominated Michael Baroody, lobbyist for the powerful National Association of Manufacturers, to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

If approved by the Senate, Mr. Baroody would be in charge of regulating corporate members of his association that have run up millions of dollars in civil fines for violating the commission's safety rules affecting millions of consumers.

As if the White House's colossal sellout to business power was not evident enough, Mr. Baroody's executive friends at N.A.M. are sending him off with a lucrative forget-me-not — a $150,000 severance payment. Compensation experts find this extraordinary for someone supposedly volunteering for government service in behalf of taxpayers.
..."

Full article here

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 18 May 07 - 11:02 AM

Bush as lord and president is wavering.
Like the disappearing support of Ted Haggert, George will be forgotten by many Chritians who thought they were in holy hands but now walk away mumbling they hate the sin but love the sinner.

Yet I suspect there are plans for an evangelical inquisition to avenge the suffering of George W Bush at the hands of non believers.
People of faith will root out those who tried to destroy George.


Yes an army of God will begin to target individuals with far more firepower than slander.


Sometimes I muse that Islam is undergoing their version of the Catholic Inqusition. It is horrid to remember that the Christian Inquisition lasted about 400 years. It is even more revolting to realize that an Islamic Inquisition now includes nuclear weapons.


I do not intend that the Catholic Inquistiion tortured and killed only Jews. The Inquisition morphed to include the murder of Lutherans and the growing protestants that railed against the Holy Roman Christian Church. The Holy Inquision did their wrok hand in hand with the authoirty of the State. It was a religious state with royal kings and queens who did whatever evil the church decreed but on paper the ruling family was a secular power.

Every religion creates an offshoot with a new twist that grows out of an existing religion. Usually the mother religion is villified by the new offshoot. Today the Protestants are beng absorbed by the evangelicals...just as christians grew out of Judaism.

The media and politicaly driven evangelicals as created by Jerry Falwell, and even earlier Billy Graham, differ with fundamentalists who want to recede from the corrupt media worldliness.

I am seeing how certain evangelicals are just a cunt hair away from becoming an organized violent army ready to kill for their gospel of hate.
Instead of Jews as their target it will be homosexuals, but when Jews object they too will become evangelical targets. They will not call their acts terrorism a holy war like Muslims use the word jihad, but rather a new rightiously clean term will be invented. Right now they are using "God's Soldiers" for the kids who go to Jesus Camp.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 18 May 07 - 01:53 PM

First of all I do not know what to make of the link below.
IT seems too impossible to be true but as they say truth is stranger than fiction.


This historical research is presented in a rather suspenseful way

however

this is probably the most bizarre explanation of who W's grandfather really was. The claim is that the original family name was Schref.

Since I think mostly in pictures, I see this as a most entertaining spy movie in black and white with excellent science fiction political intrigue.
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 May 07 - 09:40 AM

The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people's homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.

The degree of partisanship in the department is shocking. A study by two professors, Donald Shields of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and John Cragan of Illinois State University, found that the Bush Justice DepartmeThe Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people's homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.

The degree of partisanship in the department is shocking. A study by two professors, Donald Shields of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and John Cragan of Illinois State University, found that the Bush Justice Department has investigated Democratic officeholders and office seekers about four times as often as Republican ones.

It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove. A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states. The main reason for the purge — apart from hobbling a California investigation that has already put one Republican congressman in jail — appears to have been an attempt to tip states like Missouri and Washington to Republican candidates for House, Senate, governor and president.

nt has investigated Democratic officeholders and office seekers about four times as often as Republican ones.

It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove. A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states. The main reason for the purge — apart from hobbling a California investigation that has already put one Republican congressman in jail — appears to have been an attempt to tip states like Missouri and Washington to Republican candidates for House, Senate, governor and president.

From a NY Times editorial

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 May 07 - 10:08 AM

Carter: Bush administration "worst in history"
17:07' 21/05/2007 (GMT+7)

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has lashed out at George W. Bush's presidency, calling his administration "the worst in history" in international relations.


"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," said Carter in an interview with The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette released Saturday.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2002 came down hard on the Iraq war, saying Bush had taken a "radical departure from all previous administration policies."

"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," he said.

Carter criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted" every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents.

The White House declined to comment on Saturday, but on Sunday fired back.

"I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless personal criticism is out there," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters. "I think it's unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments."

Carter has been an outspoken critic of Bush, but the White House has largely refrained from attacking him in return. Sunday's sharp response marks a departure from the deference that sitting presidents traditionally have shown their predecessors.

In a separate BBC interview Saturday, Carter also lashed out at British prime minister Tony Blair.

"Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," Carter said when asked how he would characterize Blair's relationship with Bush.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 21 May 07 - 10:42 AM

The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry

by Steven F. Hayward

America's best ex-president? Only if you're not bothered by the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (which started on his watch), the shamefaced foreign policy of Bill Clinton and John Kerry (ditto), and think that ex-presidents should travel the world coddling dictators and bad-mouthing America à la Jesse Jackson.

Jimmy Carter has been given a free ride from the liberal media, liberal historians, and even the American people, who excuse his political delinquencies and disasters on the grounds that he is a "good" man. But as bank robber

Willie Sutton said of Carter: "I've never seen a bigger confidence man in my life, and I've been around some of the best in the business." It's time to set the record straight. Finally, an honest historian-Steven F. Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan-demolishes the myth of "Saint" Jimmy and exposes how he created today's leftist Democratic party of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Jimmy Carter's laundry list of failures aren't just accidents of history: They're rooted in Carter's deeply flawed character and ideology-a smugly pious arrogance matched with a profound distrust of America. The Real Jimmy Carter reveals:

• Carter as meddling ex-president: Why a Time magazine columnist wrote that some of Carter's "Lone Ranger work has taken him dangerously close to the neighborhood of what we used to call treason"

• How Carter befriended North Korea during the Clinton administration, appeasing the communist regime and giving it cover for its nuclear weapons program

• How Carter made direct contacts with Soviet officials to try to subvert President Reagan's anti-communist policies

• The shocking extent of Carter's clandestine efforts to sabotage the first Gulf War in 1990 and how he used Gulf War II to publicly question the Christian faith of America's commander in chief

• How Carter befriended Yasir Arafat-making himself an enemy of Israel

• Carter as politician: a vicious campaigner-and even race-baiter

• The Carter White House during the disasters of the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua, the energy crisis and stagflation, the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and the invasion of Afghanistan

• How Carter, the failed president, remade himself as Carter the humanitarian and freelance foreign policy critic of America

• How a Nobel official inadvertently revealed that Carter's Nobel Prize was actually meant as a slap at America The Real Jimmy Carter is a shocker, showing why the peanut president should never have left his farm.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 May 07 - 11:28 AM

Jaysus, Dickey, that's pretty mindless blathering, ya know. Its possible you don't notice the difference between the rhetorical invective of Hayward, and the rhetorical invective of Carter. Carter tells what he thinks and why he thinks it; Hayward resorts to innuendo and implication, using highly emotive words like treason and sweeping categorical propositions which are unprovable and histrionic.

If you really intend to lodge a charge of treason against Carter, could you find the moral courage to state your particulars? I would that make you look like an idiot?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 May 07 - 11:44 AM

An interesting segue:

"May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said remarks he made about Republican President George W. Bush's foreign policy were ``careless or misinterpreted.''

Carter, a Georgia Democrat, had previously called Bush's record on international relations ``the worst in history'' in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published May 19.

``My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted, but I wasn't comparing the overall administration and I was certainly not talking personally about any president,'' the 39th president said in an interview on NBC's ``Today Show'' this morning.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said today that Carter's explanation ``highlights the importance of being careful in choosing your words.'' Fratto spoke at a briefing in Crawford, Texas, where Bush stayed through the weekend.

Bush's policies represent an ``overt reversal of America's basic values'' as established by previous administrations, including those of his father, George H.W. Bush, and other Republican presidents, Carter had told the newspaper.

Carter, 82, said today his characterization of Bush's policies came in response to a question about former President Richard Nixon. ``This administration's foreign policy, compared to President Nixon's, was much worse,'' Carter said on NBC. ``I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history but just with President Nixon's.''

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, also said he's ``been very careful, and still am, not to criticize any president personally.'' "

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 22 May 07 - 04:24 AM

Amos:

You got it backward. Hayward was not deemed the worst president and trying to claim someone else is a worse president.
Carter is and he us dumping on GWB.

If you watched the news, Carter was backing off of his criticisim of Bush already.

But then, you would repeat what three year old or Howdy Doody said if it was negative.

Carter backs off criticism of Bush's administration, policy

May 21, 2007

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter said today that his remarks about President George W. Bush's administration being the "worst in history" because of its impact around the world were "careless or misinterpreted."

Speaking on NBC's "Today," Carter appeared to retreat from a statement he made to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that said: "I think, as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." The comment was in a story published Saturday.

Carter said today that when he made the comment, he was responding to a question comparing the Bush administration's foreign policy to that of former President Richard Nixon.

"I think this administration's foreign policy compared to president Nixon's was much worse," Carter said. But he said he did not mean to call it the worst in history.

"No, that's not what I wanted to say. I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history, but just with President Nixon."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 07 - 10:25 AM

"The administration's pursuit of unilateralism abroad, Mr. Gore says, has isolated the United States in an ever more dangerous world, even as its efforts to expand executive power at home and "relegate the Congress and the courts to the sidelines" have undermined the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The former vice president contends that the fiasco in Iraq stems from President Bush's use of "a counterfeit combination of misdirected vengeance and misguided dogma to dominate the national discussion, bypass reason, silence dissent and intimidate those who questioned his logic both inside and outside the administration."

He argues that the gruesome acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq "were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity — encouraged, authorized and instituted" by President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. And he writes that the violations of civil liberties committed by the Bush-Cheney administration — including its secret authorization of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail messages between the United States and other countries, and its suspension of the rights of due process for "enemy combatants" — demonstrate "a disrespect for America's Constitution that has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of democracy."

Similar charges have been made by a growing number of historians, political analysts and even former administration insiders, and President Bush's plummeting approval ratings have further emboldened his critics. But Mr. Gore writes not just as a former vice president and the man who won the popular vote in the 2000 election, but also as a possible future candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 race for the White House, and the vehemence of his language and his arguments make statements about the Bush administration by already announced candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton seem polite and mild-mannered in contrast.

And yet for all its sharply voiced opinions, "The Assault on Reason" turns out to be less a partisan, election-cycle harangue than a fiercely argued brief about the current Bush White House that is grounded in copiously footnoted citations from newspaper articles, Congressional testimony and commission reports — a brief that is as powerful in making its points about the implications of this administration's policies as the author's 2006 book, "An Inconvenient Truth," was in making its points about the fallout of global warming."

(Book Review from the NY Times, excerpted)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 07 - 10:55 AM

Dicky:

If you were not blinded by your fixed idea about my negativity you would have noticed that I added Carter's back-step to this thread five hours before youdid.

Sigh.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 07 - 12:35 PM

May 22, 2007 11:51 a.m. EST


Shaveta Bansal - AHN Staff Writer
New York, NY (AHN) - The governors of California and Connecticut on Monday criticized the Bush administration for blocking their way to impose mandatory tailpipe emissions standards in their respective states and 10 other states that are poised to follow the league. The outrage comes a week after President Bush issued an executive order giving the federal agencies until 2008 to draft rules to cut fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The states have long demanded the federal government to give them permission to enact their own air pollution standards, but despite a Supreme Court ruling in April that considered carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants, President Bush sought some more time last week to deal with the demands from the states.

"Even after the Supreme Court ruled in our favor last month, the federal government continues to stand in our way," Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post on Monday.

"To us, that again sounds like more of the same inaction and denial, and it is unconscionable," they wrote.

Under the Clean Air Act, the states can enact their own air pollution standards, but for that they need to be exempted from federal laws by Environment Protection Agency.

Now California is seeking a waiver to curb emission from vehicles and EPA was scheduled to hold the first of two hearings on the waiver request on Tuesday, but in the Washington Post article, the governors expressed their fears that the agency may delay an action.

"If it fails to do so, we have an obligation to take legal action and settle this issue once and for all," they wrote....

From here.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:38 AM

May 24, 2007, 6:22 pm
Repairing the Damage Done
By Jules Witcover
WASHINGTON — More than three decades ago, Nixon White House Counsel John Dean called the Watergate cover-up "a cancer on the presidency." Another one exists today, posing a challenge for the next president to restore the office as a credible voice in foreign policy.

President Bush's detour in Iraq off the multilateral track adhered to throughout the Cold War years has caused a deep drop in American prestige abroad, requiring extensive repair by his successor regardless of which party wins in 2008.

While Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the immediate trigger for the decline of American influence, just as significant was his original failure to capitalize on the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to mobilize a truly collective global response.

The outpouring of empathy for the United States in the wake of those events was quickly short-circuited by the invasion. In diverting the American military from its legitimate focus against the real perpetrators of the attacks, Bush left the primary job undone in Afghanistan, in order to chase a more ambitious dream of superpower dominance.

A decade earlier, neoconservative theorists in the Republican Party saw in the collapse of the Soviet Union an invitation for America to assume a vastly more assertive, unilateral role in imposing its power and political ideology elsewhere.

Among these theorists at the Pentagon was Paul Wolfowitz, deputy undersecretary to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, who worried that with the demise of Soviet communism the strongest rationale for a muscular national defense was gone. Yet serious threats remained, from nuclear ambitions in North Korea and the determination in Iran and Iraq to assure control of their vast oil resources essential to American power. ..

---

The balance of this well-written essay can be found here.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:49 AM

George W. Bush to Replace Will Shortz as NYT Crossword Puzzle Editor

Posted by admin on 2007/5/16 12:16:20 (2126 reads)
By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor
New York and Washington, D.C., January 3, 2009
from Avant News

In a development that has surprised political pundits and puzzle enthusiasts alike, The New York Times announced today that President George W. Bush will be replacing retiring puzzle-master Will Shortz as the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times.

Will Shortz, who has edited the famous New York Times crossword puzzle page since 1993, announced several months ago that he is "bored unto death with squares and letters. Across, down, X, Y, Z… who the hell cares?"

Upon his retirement, Mr. Shortz said he plans to fulfil a lifelong ambition to pursue a second career in marine biology with a special focus on the elusive Bent-billed sea snail.

"I've always been fascinated by the species, but never had the time to properly explore it," Mr. Shortz said. "Now's my chance to actually 'take the plunge', if you will."

President Bush, unbeknownst to most beltway observers, has long been an avid crossword puzzle enthusiast. A White House aide who asked not to be identified said Mr. Bush "never takes a powder-room break without his copy of the Dell E-Z Puzzles for Juniors book, which he's been working through for the past eight years, and a number two pencil with a big, fat eraser on the tip."

Milt Rafferty, associate arts and entertainment editor for The New York Times, said the news organization had begun considering an attempt to enlist Mr. Bush's services following the enormously popular public reaction to an earlier crossword puzzle edited by fellow enthusiast President Bill Clinton. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:56 AM

Accepting Bush as a monumental failure
May 23, 2007 - 7:23am.
Bush Leagues

Conservative Republicans finally realize they've been had

By MARTIN SCHRAM (Capitol Hill Blue)

Today we are news-trackers, hot on the trail of tomorrow's Page One, prime-time news.

And it appears that tomorrow's news may be a glimmer of good news at last for conservative Republicans who have been bitterly disappointed with what they concede, mostly in private, but occasionally in public, is the overwhelming failure of the Bush presidency: The misconduct of the Iraq war, a series of political and intelligence leadership blunders that has trapped America's brave, volunteer military in a combat mission that is not yet lost, but may never be won.

Evidence has surfaced, not on Page One or in prime time, but on page A15, the op-ed page of the May 22 edition of The Washington Post, that President Bush is reportedly working, belatedly but finally, to come up with a post-surge strategy, the so-called Plan B the administration hadn't gotten around to devising.

Post columnist David Ignatius, who is of the school that prefers hard reporting to soft punditry, wrote of this new development after talking with senior administration officials who now clearly want to get out the word that they have begun discussing what to do after the so-called surge of more than 20,000 combat troops. Soon the news will make its way to the 24/7 cable news. The surge was supposed to last just a few months, to see if it was possible to secure, at least, Baghdad.

Time-out: You are probably thinking that commons sense should have dictated that a Plan B had to be developed months, if not years. ago. You are of course right, but you are of course not president. The fact that Bush never ordered it has infuriated many former generals, conservative think-tank experts and members of Congress who supported Bush in two elections.

"The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available," Ignatius wrote. "The revamped policy, as outlined by senior administration officials, would be premised on the idea that, as the current surge of U.S. troops succeeds in reducing sectarian violence, America's role will be increasingly to help prepare the Iraqi military to take greater responsibility for securing the country."

Time-out Again: You are probably thinking that training Iraqi troops to take over was what we've been told was already America's main effort in Iraq. You are of course right, but by now you know that Page One and prime-time news scoops are not always all that new. Journalists are just pleased to have been leaked upon.

Balance of article here

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 May 07 - 02:27 PM

NEW YORK When asked which Bush-administration official should be sacked next, Doonesbury.com visitors are opting for Karl Rove.

The online poll has drawn more than 3,400 votes so far, with Rove getting 53%, Alberto Gonzales 39%, and Paul Wolfowitz 7%. (The survey began before the news that Wolfowitz would leave the World Bank. After that, few people voted for the ousting of someone who was already leaving his post.)

Voters were given these descriptions with their three choices:

-- Wolfowitz. A blackmailer ("If they f--- with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f--- them too") running the World Bank is a bad idea. As was his earlier contribution to the World -- the rationale for invading Iraq. The hubris train stops here.

-- Gonzales. His uber-loyalty to Dubya clearly outweighs his loyalty to the law, as the sickbed strong-arming of Ashcroft on illegal surveillance only clarifies. Wrong man, wrong job, right time to go.

-- Rove. Name a scandal -- from Plamegate to Attorneygate -- his prints are all over it. Come on Dubya, finish strong: You owe yourself 18 Svengali-free months.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 26 May 07 - 09:21 PM

Hey, let's quit pussy footing around here... It's all FDR's fault... It ain't Carter or Clinton's fault that the current administration is failing miserably... It FDR's... Dig the sumabitch up and drag his dead body thru the streets...

(But, Bobert, what about Taft???)

Well, okay, Taft made Bush attack Iraq!!! Dig him up, too, and drag his dead body thru the streets... No, no... Dig his body up and send it to the World Court...

(What World Court, Bobert??? Without the US signing on it has kinda fallen apart....)

Hmmmmmm???... Okay, here's me last idea... Dig all the sumabitchs up and put 'um on the carnival circuit... They could be propped up on them chairs above the dunking tanks and folks could pay 3 'er 5 bucks for 3 balls to throw at the target and dunk their most hated x-president... Heck, I'd prolly go broke trying to put Lincoln in the tank... But it'd be worth it...

Sho nuff would...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 May 07 - 09:26 AM

Today's New York Times opines:

"The Bush administration's never-ending push to turn federal agencies into favor-filled partisan clubhouses has just been confirmed in red-handed detail at the General Services Administration, the government's main housekeeping agency. Investigators found that Lurita Doan, the Bush appointee running the agency, violated the Hatch Act, which forbids federal workers from politicking on the job.

Last January, Ms. Doan summoned her assistants to a campaign strategy session run by Karl Rove's White House political operation. Tax-paid employees were treated to a PowerPoint briefing and slide show identifying Democrats marked as "2008 House Targets: Top 20." Witnesses recalled Ms. Doan asking the gathering how they could "help our candidates" with G.S.A. favors.

Like so many Bush appointees lately summoned to account by Congress, Ms. Doan repeatedly said she could not recall details of the meeting. In a bit of novelty, she claimed to be engrossed in reading her BlackBerry e-mail messages. Investigators of the United States Office of Special Counsel found no forensic evidence that she was using electronic devices during the meeting. Her other defense — that her accusers were poor-performing malcontents — was also found untrue, with several holding merit citations.

Ms. Doan promises to document errors in the scathing report, which was obtained by The Washington Post. But her credibility now stands as tattered as her memory. Her fate will be in President Bush's hands, who supposedly knows a slam dunk when he sees one. Ms. Doan should be dismissed for violating one of the most hallowed laws of fairness in government service. As for Mr. Rove, who has run this partisan traveling show through other federal agencies, this is only the latest abuse for which he needs to be brought fully and finally to account. "

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 May 07 - 01:12 PM

from the Washington Post:

Bush the Neoliberal

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; Page A13

Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.

You recoil, I know. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents, an advocate of limited government, minimal taxes and, when it comes to the quintessentially liberal concern with civil liberties, the man who gave us the twin black eyes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It's an appalling record.

But consider this: An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government. Nowhere is this truer than in education. For instance, there was a time when no group of Republicans could convene without passing a resolution calling for the abolition of the Education Department and turning the building -- I am extrapolating here -- into a museum of creationism.

Now, though, not only are such calls no longer heard, but Bush has extended the department's reach in a manner that Democrats could not have envisaged. I am referring, of course, to the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind. I will spare you the act's details, but it pretty much tells the states to shape up or face a loss of federal funds. It is precisely the sort of law that conservatives predicted Washington would someday seek -- and it did.

Similarly, let's take a look at the much-mocked notion of diversity. Bill Clinton was widely berated for his effort to have an administration that looked like America -- women, African Americans, Hispanics, you name it. Whether by design or not, Bush has also managed that feat. A female education secretary is one thing, but a national security adviser -- the uber-macho post -- is something else, and that went first to Condi Rice. And over at Justice, Bush chose Alberto Gonzales, the son of Hispanic migrant workers and, incidentally, a lawyer with the singular gift of forgetting meetings he attended. (In private practice, did he forget to bill?)

I am not suggesting that any of these appointees -- including Bush's former White House counsel, Harriet Miers -- are what is pejoratively known as affirmative action hires. I am suggesting, though, that Bush has not only diversified his Cabinet and staff but obviously got enormous satisfaction in doing so. You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment -- or his frequent mention of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a "mushy-headed liberal."

Allow me to make the case that this is also true when it comes to Iraq. I acknowledge that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed. But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire, then one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region. This "liberal" intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush and it showed in his rhetoric and body language. Contrast it to the position of the so-called foreign policy realists, exemplified by the first President Bush and his trusted foreign policy sidekick, Brent Scowcroft.

It was their decision -- cold realism at its best -- to end the Persian Gulf War with Saddam Hussein still in power and not to intervene when Hussein later decimated rebellious Shiites in the south. Realistic? Sure. But also sickening.

Bush's neoliberal instincts have come a cropper across the board. His appointees have too often been incompetent, and his well-intentioned education act is underfunded. But it is with Iraq that real and long-term damage has been done. For years to come, his war will be cited to smother any liberal impulse in American foreign policy -- to further discredit John F. Kennedy's vow to "pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty." We shall revert to this thing called "realism," which is heartless and cynical, no matter what its other virtues. The debacle of Iraq has cost us -- and others -- plenty in lives. But in the end, it will cost us our soul as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 07 - 09:02 PM

Yeah, I read that one, too, bruce...

Interesting concept...

The problem I have with Cohen's proposition isn't as much about the folks that Bush has hired to do jobs that they couldn't perform as much as a couple he appointed who are beginning to reshape America in a not so neoliberal fashion: Alito and Roberts...

These guys are going to turn back the clock...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 May 07 - 10:54 AM

May 29, 2007, 6:32 pm (NY Times)
Chain Reactions
By Mark Buchanan

The political party that claimed it would restore "honor and dignity to the White House" has done nothing of the sort. Having on false pretenses led us into the disaster of Iraq, the administration and its supporters are now beginning – cravenly and shamefully – to shift blame onto the Iraqi people. The administration continues to hold hundreds of people without charges in secret prisons around the world, while arguing that torture is O.K. and that President Bush can disregard the laws he doesn't like. I haven't even mentioned illegal spying or efforts to keep scientists quiet if they're saying the wrong thing.

Where's the honor and dignity?

In her testimony last week before a House panel, Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, admitted that she had "crossed the line" in using political considerations to judge potential Justice Department employees. She may well have broken laws that forbid political influence over civil service positions. But "crossing the line" has been business as usual for the past six years. Goodling's behavior follows a pattern established across almost all federal agencies, where the administration has sought loyalty over competence at every turn.

Another word for it, of course, is corruption – and it's natural to wonder how we got so deeply mired in it. If the gathering storm of investigations forces Karl Rove and other White House officials one day to testify under oath, we may have some chance of finding out. And I suspect, if we do, that we'll discover that honor and dignity were sacrificed at the very top. It will be a familiar story – of a few power-hungry and largely amoral political operatives, the real drivers, whose actions encouraged and directed a small army of fairly ordinary people, the Monica Goodlings of this world, many of whom were hardly aware they were doing something wrong.

People who engage in corrupt acts often do not see them as such. This much has emerged from studies of corporate scandals and fraud at places like Enron or WorldCom. ...Whether embezzling money, undermining product safety regulations, or even selling completely fake products, the perpetrators rationalize away their responsibility. They deny that they actually had any choice, saying that "everyone was doing it." Or they deny that anyone really got hurt, so there really was no crime: "They're a big company, they can afford to overpay us."...Then there's the popular appeal to higher authority, a mechanism with special relevance, perhaps, to the loyalty-rewarding Bush administration: "I had to do it out of loyalty to my boss."

...People engaged in corruption, the academic researchers suggest, create a kind of psychological atmosphere in which what they're doing seems normal or even honorable. So if congressional oversight does ultimately expose the machinations behind anything from secret prisons to the United States prosecutor purge, brace yourself for a litany of the usual excuses – "We didn't know it was wrong" and "We were told to do it."

But the psychology of rationalization is only part of the story. The other element in all such cases seems to be a chain-like linking together of individual actions that can undermine social norms with surprising speed – or keep them safe, sometimes if just a single person remains strong....... Tiny differences in the group makeup, the presence or absence or a few people of the right type, might be the difference between a few renegade violators and division-wide corruption.

I can't help thinking of the bizarre attempt by then-White House officials Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, drugged and in the hospital, to sign off on a secret National Security Agency wiretapping program. Ashcroft – who back then I would have thought would rubber-stamp anything Bush wanted – was clearly made of sterner stuff and refused, as did Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey. Again, we won't know how much effect these refusals had – and just how extreme the program was that Bush wanted to authorize – until someone manages to get past White House stonewalling and digs up the real information.

But the fragility of social outcome, its potential sensitivity to the actions of just one person, brings home the profound importance of individual responsibility. Everyone's actions count. The laws and institutional traditions we have were put in place precisely to help us avoid these social meltdowns, and to give people the incentive not to step over the line, especially when lots of others are doing so already. In particular, the laws of the civil service prevent hiring on the basis of political affiliation (at least for many positions), and the routine violation of those laws puts our democracy at risk. Many people went along with it, and so might have many more, had the creeping corruption not been exposed when it was.

Restoring honesty and dignity. One might say of it what Gandhi said when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: "I think it would be a good idea."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 May 07 - 08:35 AM

Short video on the impeachment of Al Gonzalez.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 31 May 07 - 11:58 PM

Japan Welcomes Bush Initiative for Cutting Greenhouse Gases

By Sachiko Sakamaki

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Japan welcomed U.S. President George W. Bush's proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said.

Bush yesterday proposed setting a long-term goal to reduce greenhouse gases, reversing his previous stance opposing setting such targets.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Bush share similar ideas about how to tackle global warming issue, Shiozaki said at a regular press conference in Tokyo.

Global warming will be a major topic at next week's meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Germany. Bush said the talks will establish a new framework for when the Kyoto Protocol on emissions expires in 2012.

Abe on May 24 announced a proposal for the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions in by 2050 as a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aILvxFVfBSZQ&refer=japan

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 03:43 AM

"Following are details of U.S. President George W. Bush's proposal for addressing greenhouse gas emissions, an issue that will confront the leaders of the Group of Eight nations meeting in Germany next week.

* Bush will convene a meeting this fall of around 15 countries that produce the largest amount of greenhouse gases to discuss a long-term goal for curbing emissions.

* The countries would include the G8 major developed economies of the United States, Japan, Germany, Russia, Britain, Italy, Canada and France, as well as fast-growing economies such as China and India. The top emitters are responsible for more than 80 percent of global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

* The meeting would be the first in a series. Other forums would include business leaders from various sectors such as power generation and alternative fuels.

* A long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be set by the end of 2008. Individual countries would also set interim targets to reach that goal.

* The plan proposes cutting tariff barriers to spread environmental technology and promote sustainable forestry and agriculture.

* Bush also called for boosting investment in research and development for energy-efficient technologies."

---

If there' sno more to it than that, we already had all this palaver going on at Kyoto -- this just defers action another round. But it is better than nothing.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 10:03 AM

The NY Times reflects on the robustness of Bush's new-found environmental awareness:

"...Given Mr. Bush's history of denial and obstructionism when it comes to climate change, there are good reasons to be cynical about this sudden enthusiasm, coming as it does on the eve of the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations.

Most of these nations — and in particular the meeting's host, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany — were deeply offended by the administration's rude rejection of Mrs. Merkel's proposal for deep, mandatory cuts in emissions by midcentury. Cuts of up to 80 percent by 2050 have been recommended by many of the world's top scientists as necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Mr. Bush gave no indication that he is any more sympathetic to Mrs. Merkel's ideas than he was a week ago. Indeed, his spokesmen made clear that he remains as hostile as ever to most of the mechanisms associated with the 1997 Kyoto accord, which included a firm if modest cap on emissions. Many European leaders are still bristling over Condoleezza Rice's 2001 declaration that the treaty was "dead on arrival."

As rhetoric, some of what Mr. Bush had to say was different and heartening. He acknowledged the need for real reductions in greenhouse gases, as opposed to his earlier strategy of allowing increases in emissions as long as they did not exceed the rate of economic growth. He said he found the scientific evidence of a link between climate change and human activity to be increasingly persuasive. He agreed that big developing nations like China and India absolutely had to be part of the solution.

Yet he remains convinced that technology holds most of the answers and that the regulatory restraints that many experts regard as a necessary condition of technological progress are largely unnecessary. He says further that his goal is to produce a common strategy in 18 months. This would coincide, roughly speaking, with his departure from public life, suggesting his real goal is to leave the heavy lifting to his successor. "

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 03:35 PM

Singapore leader urges US to stay the course in Iraq until war is won

AP 2007-06-01

SINGAPORE (AP) - Singapore's prime minister Friday urged the United States not to withdraw from Iraq without a clear victory, saying it would embolden extremists in other places.

http://www.pr-inside.com/singapore-leader-urges-us-to-stay-r141211.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jun 07 - 07:34 AM

For all of Mr. Bush's talk about fiscal prudence, $23 billion is only about 2.5 percent of the discretionary spending proposed by Congress for 2008. When it comes to really big money — for wars and tax cuts — Mr. Bush wants more, not less. He is demanding an additional $40 billion for the Pentagon, bringing the national defense budget to $504 billion — over half of Congress's total discretionary budget.

As for the Bush tax cuts, in 2008 they will put some $100 billion into the pockets of the richest Americans. That giveaway will require the government to borrow to make up for the forgone revenue.

Yet, Mr. Bush calls for no restraint on tax cuts. Just the opposite. His administration's biggest criticism of Congress's budget is that it includes a "pay-go" rule requiring future tax cuts to be paid for, either by pairing them with tax increases or with cuts in entitlement spending.

Unable to brook even the possibility that taxes may someday have to go up, Mr. Bush proposes to offset future new spending on Medicare, Social Security and other big entitlements through cuts in other entitlement programs. That would guarantee deeper cuts than would otherwise be required. The Bush budget strategy boils down to never-ending tax cuts for the rich, big increases for the Pentagon and spending cuts for everything else.

When it's suggested that Mr. Bush's approach is overly harsh, the White House insists that the president has other generous impulses. Last February, they note, he recommended that Congress provide more money in 2008 for such areas as international affairs, veterans' hospital care, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

But that brings us back to his veto threat. If he means what he says, Mr. Bush will veto spending by Congress that fails to achieve $10 billion in net cuts, even if those bills include the new money he asked for. The fact remains that Mr. Bush's misguided war and his misguided tax cuts are what stand in the way of responsible, responsive budgeting.

Times editorial 2 June 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 03:22 AM

"put some $100 billion into the pockets of the richest Americans."

How is this "giveaway" accomplished? Does IRS cut a check and mail it to them?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Ron Davies
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 02:01 PM

Dickey--don't you ever read--or is it against your religion? The article specifies exactly-- Bush's tax cuts, which benefit lopsidedly the richest Americans.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 11:52 AM

Writing in Slate, Anne Applebaum recapitulates how the Bush administration's gaffes and blunders decimated American goodwill in New Europe.

Interesting rear-view mirror.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 04:11 PM

Bush's Fleurs Du Mal

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: May 27, 2007 (New York Times, Excerpt:

For me, the saddest spot in Washington is the inverted V of the black granite Vietnam wall, jutting up with the names of young men dying in a war that their leaders already knew could not be won.

So many died because of ego and deceit -- because L.B.J. and Robert McNamara wanted to save face or because Henry Kissinger wanted to protect Nixon's re-election chances.

Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It knows the surge is not working. Iraq is in a civil war, with a gruesome bonus of terrorists mixed in. April was the worst month this year for the American military, with 104 soldiers killed, and there have been about 90 killed thus far in May. The democracy's not jelling, as Iraqi lawmakers get ready to slouch off for a two-month vacation, leaving our kids to be blown up.

The top-flight counterinsurgency team that President Bush sent in after long years of pretending that we'd ''turned the corner'' doesn't believe there's a military solution. General Petraeus is reduced to writing an open letter to the Iraqi public, pleading with them to reject sectarianism and violence, even as the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr slinks back from four months in Iran, rallying his fans by crying: ''No, no, no to Satan! No, no, no to America! No, no, no to occupation! No, no, no to Israel!''

W. thinks he can save face if he keeps taunting Democrats as the party of surrender -- just as Nixon did -- and dumps the Frankenstate he's created on his successor.

''The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland,'' he told Coast Guard Academy graduates. ''The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don't have to fight them where we live.''

The president said an intelligence report (which turned out to be two years old) showed that Osama had been trying to send Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to attack America. So clearly, Osama is capable of multitasking: Order the killers in Iraq to go after American soldiers there and American civilians here. There AND here. Get it, W.?

The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn't know we're leaving. Osama hasn't been found because he's hiding.

The terrorists moved into George Bush's Iraq, not Saddam Hussein's. W.'s ranting about Al Qaeda there is like planting fleurs du mal and then complaining your garden is toxic. ...

(Original article by subscription).

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jun 07 - 09:56 AM

From an Op Ed column in the Times:
...You may not remember the presidential debate of Oct. 3, 2000, or how it was covered, but you should. It was one of the worst moments in an election marked by news media failure as serious, in its way, as the later failure to question Bush administration claims about Iraq.

Throughout that debate, George W. Bush made blatantly misleading statements, including some outright lies — for example, when he declared of his tax cut that "the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder." That should have told us, right then and there, that he was not a man to be trusted.

But few news reports pointed out the lie. Instead, many news analysts chose to critique the candidates' acting skills. Al Gore was declared the loser because he sighed and rolled his eyes — failing to conceal his justified disgust at Mr. Bush's dishonesty. And that's how Mr. Bush got within chad-and-butterfly range of the presidency.

Now fast forward to last Tuesday. Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam "had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction." He dismissed this as an "unreasonable hypothetical."

Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? When those inspectors failed to find nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush ordered them out so that he could invade. Mr. Romney's remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday's debate. But it wasn't.

There wasn't anything comparable to Mr. Romney's rewritten history in the Democratic debate two days earlier, which was altogether on a higher plane. Still, someone should have called Hillary Clinton on her declaration that on health care, "we're all talking pretty much about the same things." While the other two leading candidates have come out with plans for universal (John Edwards) or near-universal (Barack Obama) health coverage, Mrs. Clinton has so far evaded the issue. But again, this went unmentioned in most reports.

By the way, one reason I want health care specifics from Mrs. Clinton is that she's received large contributions from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Will that deter her from taking those industries on?

Back to the debate coverage: as far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate. And post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what the candidates said, but of how they "came across."

Thus most analysts declared Mrs. Clinton the winner in her debate, because she did the best job of delivering sound bites — including her Bush-talking-point declaration that we're safer now than we were on 9/11, a claim her advisers later tried to explain away as not meaning what it seemed to mean.

Similarly, many analysts gave the G.O.P. debate to Rudy Giuliani not because he made sense — he didn't — but because he sounded tough saying things like, "It's unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror." (Why?)

Look, debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts — not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.

For if there's one thing I hope we've learned from the calamity of the last six and a half years, it's that it matters who becomes president — and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments. Mr. Bush's tax lies, not his surface amiability, were the true guide to how he would govern.

And I don't know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 08 Jun 07 - 10:30 AM

I remember getting a check in the mail from IRS once. Was it a giveaway or a give back?

Seems to me it was an effort to spur the economy that Bill Clinton left in the shithouse.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jun 07 - 12:34 PM

Dickey:

Surprisingly enough the economy was very much not in the shithouse when Big Bill Clinton left office. But your perception may be an attribute of yoru own viewpoint.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Dean
Date: 08 Jun 07 - 01:43 PM

Why are we being asked to give 30 Billion dollars to Africa ?

If they can't get their act together that is the responsibly of their governments.

Ever see the new military hardware the rebels in these countries have ?

Why must we always have lead the way in giving our money away ?