BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 07 - 10:27 AM

The bridges in YOUR state

http://transportation.house.gov/Media/File/Full%20Committee/Structurally_Deficient_Bridges.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 07 - 10:02 AM

"The administration has refused to say how much warrantless spying it has been doing. Clearly, it is more than Mr. Bush has acknowledged, but Americans need to know exactly how far their liberties have been breached and whether the operation included purely domestic eavesdropping. And why did Mr. Bush feel compelled to construct an outlaw eavesdropping operation — apart, that is, from his broader effort to expand presidential power and evade checks and balances?

It's not that FISA makes it too hard; the court approves virtually every warrant request. It's not an issue of speed. The law allows the government to initiate surveillance and get a warrant later if necessary.

Instead of answering these questions, the administration has done its best to ensure that everyone stays confused. It has refused repeated requests by Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for documents relating to the president's order creating the spying program, and the Justice Department's legal justifications for it.

When this issue resurfaces, Mr. Bush will undoubtedly claim executive privilege, as he has done whenever he has been asked to come clean with Americans about his decision-making. But those documents should be handed over without delay for review by all members of Congress. We also agree with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has petitioned the FISA court, which normally works in secret, to make public its opinion on the scope of the government's wiretapping powers.

If Mr. Bush wants Americans to give him and his successors the power to spy on them at will, Americans should be allowed to know why it's supposedly so necessary and how much their freedoms are being abridged. If Congress once again allows itself to be cowed by Mr. Bush's fear-mongering, it must accept responsibility for undermining the democratic values that separate this nation from the terrorists that Mr. Bush claims to be fighting."...


New York Times,8-11-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 10:18 AM

"...President Bush took a risk when he put someone so focused on politics as blood sport at the center of his White House. Once he did, he had an obligation to ensure that Mr. Rove understood that his job was to promote the interests of the American people — not solely the Republican Party. Instead, Mr. Rove used his position and power to relentlessly pursue his declared goal of a permanent Republican majority.

Mr. Rove appears to have been deeply involved in the decision to fire nine top federal prosecutors, apparently for either bringing cases that hurt Republicans or refusing to bring cases to punish Democrats. There is also mounting evidence that he turned nonpartisan agencies into campaign boosters, quite possibly violating federal law. Earlier this month, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted that Justice Department officials attended political briefings at the White House, some led by Mr. Rove. Officials at the General Services Administration and Peace Corps, and even six American ambassadors, among others, were also given briefings.

Mr. Rove has stonewalled Congress's legitimate efforts to investigate. Some of his key e-mail messages on the United States attorneys matter appear to have mysteriously disappeared, while others are being withheld with baseless claims of executive privilege. As for defying that Senate subpoena, some subjects might have been protected by privilege, but Mr. Rove's refusal to show up at all is outrageous — although totally in keeping with his and his boss's disdain for the separation of powers.

Mr. Rove failed his own party, as well as the American people, when he counseled President Bush to turn every serious policy debate — Social Security, the war in Iraq, even terrorism — into one more political dogfight. Today, despite Mr. Rove's claims of invincibility, both houses of Congress are back in Democratic hands, Mr. Bush's approval ratings are around 30 percent and many Republican presidential candidates are running as fast as they can away from the Bush legacy.

Mr. Rove can now contemplate that legacy from his home in Texas. But he should not get too settled in. Congress needs to use all its power to bring Mr. Rove back to Washington to testify — in public and under oath — about how he used his office to put politics above the interests of the American people."

Times editorial 8-14.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Aug 07 - 10:45 PM

The Nation -- Dennis Kucinich may not be a front runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.


But the congressman from Cleveland has succeeded in distinguishing himself from the other contenders when it comes to speaking those truths that are self-evident.

And in an era of mass delusion and denial on the party of leaders in both major political parties, stating the obvious can be a radical act.

Such is the case with Kucinich's appropriate answer to the latest move by the Bush-Cheney administration to ramp up hostilities with Iran. That move -- the unprecedented attempt to label Iran's 125,000-strong Republican Guard as a "specially designated global terrorist" group -- is, as the congressman says "nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war -- this time with Iran."

No one who has paid even the slightest attention to the Bush-Cheney administration's approach to Middle East affairs can doubt that Kucinich is right. Yet, his is a lonely voice of clarity amid the din of Democratic obfuscation that aids and abets this White House's worst instincts.

"The belligerent Bush Administration is using this pending designation to convince the American public into accepting that a war with Iran is inevitable," argues Kucinich.

"This designation will set the stage for more chaos in the region because it undercuts all of our diplomatic efforts," he adds. explaining that, "This new label provides further evidence for Iran's leaders that there is no point to engage in diplomatic talks with the United States if our actions point directly to regime change."

Delivering the response that should be coming from New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and especially from Delaware Senator Joe Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he isn't campaigning for president, Kucinich argued that, "Our nation is better served by demanding sensible and responsible diplomatic foreign policy initiatives from the Bush Administration."

Kucinich, who has proposed impeaching Vice President Cheney for continually prodding the country toward an unnecessary war with Iran, may not get the political credit he deserves for calling out this administration. But history will recognize him as the man who sounded the al

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 07 - 09:27 AM

"...Those Bush dead-enders are in a serious state of denial. Just how much so could be found in the Journal interview when Mr. Rove extolled his party's health by arguing, without contradiction from Mr. Gigot, that young people are more "pro-life" and "free-market" than their elders. Maybe he was talking about 12-year-olds. Back in the real world of potential voters, the latest New York Times-CBS News poll of Americans aged 17 to 29 found that their views on abortion were almost identical to the rest of the country's. (Only 24 percent want abortion outlawed.)

That poll also found that the percentage of young people who identify as Republicans, whether free-marketers or not, is down to 25, from a high of 37 at the end of the Reagan era. Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, found that self-identified G.O.P. voters are trending older rapidly, with the percentage over age 55 jumping from 28 to 41 percent in a decade.

Every poll and demographic accounting finds the Republican Party on the losing side of history, both politically and culturally. Not even a miraculous armistice in Iraq or vintage Democratic incompetence may be able to ride to the rescue. A survey conducted by The Journal itself (with NBC News) in June reported G.O.P. approval numbers lower than any in that poll's two decades of existence. Such is the political legacy for a party to which Mr. Rove sold Mr. Bush as "a new kind of Republican," an exemplar of "compassionate conservatism" and the avatar of a permanent Republican majority.

That sales pitch, as we long ago learned, was all about packaging, not substance. The hope was that No Child Left Behind and a 2000 G.O.P. convention stacked with break dancers and gospel singers would peel away some independent and black voters from the Democrats. The promise of immigration reform would spread Bush's popularity among Hispanics. Another potential add-on to the Republican base was Muslims, a growing constituency that Mr. Rove's pal Grover Norquist plotted to herd into the coalition.

The rest is history. Any prospect of a rapprochement between the G.O.P. and African-Americans died in the New Orleans Superdome. The tardy, botched immigration initiative unleashed a wave of xenophobia against Hispanics, the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country. The Muslim outreach project disappeared into the memory hole after 9/11...."

Frank Rich, columnist, NY Times

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Aug 07 - 06:36 AM

Washington Post:

Democrats' Purity Primary

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; Page A17

Every campaign has moments when candidates substitute political preening for substance. Such an episode is unfolding now in the Democratic field, and it involves that perennial piñata, the Washington lobbyist.

John Edwards and Barack Obama won't take lobbyist money; Hillary Clinton will. Edwards, angling for attention in the purity primary, has kicked things up a notch. He is calling on all Democrats to reject lobbyist contributions, and calling on Obama to join him in that call.

"Not a dime from a Washington lobbyist," Edwards declared at the Yearly Kos convention. "Their money is no good with us."

Of course, the folks who would be most delighted with this outcome are lobbyists, the target of relentless haranguing for campaign cash. Of course, it's not going to happen: Democrats, back in partial power and desperate to keep it, aren't about to give up a dime from any (legal) source.

And, as you might have guessed from my tone, I don't think it would much matter if Democrats were to live in The World According to Edwards, who has never taken lobbyist money. Nice symbolism, perhaps, but how does it make candidates any purer to disdain checks from lobbyists while avidly vacuuming up contributions from the various industries they represent?

Edwards is no less tainted by the trial-lawyer money he scoops up by the bucketful than he would be by lobbyist contributions. Obama is no more ethical now than when he was an unknown Senate candidate dutifully calling lobbyists and asking for a check, please.

Clinton botched her initial response on this, telling the Yearly Kos-ers -- they weren't skeptical enough of her already? -- that lobbyists represent "real Americans," too. She refined her argument in time for Sunday's ABC debate, noting "this artificial distinction that people are trying to make: Don't take money from lobbyists, but take money from the people who employ and hire lobbyists and give them their marching orders."

Indeed, who takes money from lobbyists is the wrong question about an essential subject. Instead, voters who care -- and I think voters should care -- ought to ask: What is the candidate's history on campaign finance reform, lobbying and ethics rules, and open government generally? How transparent is the candidate about campaign and personal finances? What steps will he or she take to limit the influence of money during the current campaign?

On these, there are revealing differences among the Democratic front-runners.

Edwards was part of the legislative team working to pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, but lobbying and campaign reform were nowhere near the top of his agenda in the Senate.

During the 2004 campaign, Edwards gave a useful speech outlining his plan to limit lobbyists' influence. But, unlike the other Democratic candidates, he refused requests to reveal the identities of his big fundraisers. This time around, after considerable prodding, Edwards agreed to release the names of fundraisers -- all his fundraisers, with no specifics about how much they had collected. His campaign argues vehemently that it should be praised for this avalanche of information, not faulted. But the candidate knows who has reeled in $1,000 and who raised $100,000. Why shouldn't voters?

Clinton has shown no zeal for or even particular interest in the issue in the Senate; nor did she while in the White House. Indeed, as her handling of the health-care task force and Whitewater documents illustrate, Clinton's instinct is for secrecy, and her default position is to disclose only the minimum legally required. She consented to reveal her major fundraisers only after repeated editorial hammering -- and only after all the other leading Democratic contenders had agreed.

On this issue, Obama leads the pack -- I'd say PAC, but he (and Edwards) don't take their checks, either. He helped pass a far-reaching ethics and campaign finance bill in the Illinois state Senate and made the issue a priority on arriving in Washington. Much to the displeasure of his colleagues, Obama promoted an outside commission to handle Senate ethics complaints. He co-authored the lobbying reform bill awaiting President Bush's signature and pushed -- again to the dismay of some colleagues -- to include a provision requiring lawmakers to report the names of their lobbyist-bundlers.

He has co-sponsored bills to overhaul the presidential public financing system and public financing of Senate campaigns. It's nice to hear Clinton talk about how "we've got to move toward public financing" -- Edwards backs it, too -- but I don't see her name on those measures.

Obama readily agreed to identify his bundlers. Unlike Clinton and Edwards, he has released his income tax returns. Perhaps most important, Obama has pledged to take public financing for the general election if he is the Democratic nominee and his Republican opponent will do the same.

Any Democratic candidate wanting to "get the money out of American politics" (Clinton) or demonstrate that "the Democratic Party is the party of the people" (Edwards) ought to leap at this chance. The candidates' silence on Obama's public financing proposal -- they'll "consider" it -- has been more telling than anything they have actually said.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Aug 07 - 07:42 AM

Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007 6:17 p.m. EDT
Zogby: Bush's Approval Twice Congress

President George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has taken a small dip, dropping to 32% positive, down from 34% who gave him positive job marks in mid-July, a new Reuters/Zogby International telephone poll shows.

The survey also shows that the overall job approval rating for the work of Congress remains far below the President's, as just 15% give the national legislature a collective positive rating, up one point since last month. Changes in both the ratings for the President and Congress are statistically insignificant.

This latest Reuters/Zogby poll included interviews with 1,020 likely voters between August 9-11, 2007. It carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Bush has lingered in the low 30s all year. His most recent high was a 42% positive rating just a week before the 2006 midterm elections, when Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. At that time, the positive approval rating for Congress had languished in the low 20s or high teens, but plummeted in the wake of its handling of controversial issues, including immigration reform and the Iraq war, other Zogby polling showed.

Bush wins a positive job rating from 58% of Republicans, 29% of independents, and 11% of Democrats. Among those with a household member who is now or at one time served in the Armed Forces, 37% give the President positive marks, compared with 26% of those with no household member in the military who give him a positive job rating.

Meanwhile, Congress wins just 18% positive approval from Democrats, while 80% of Dems give them negative marks for their performance so far. Republicans watching the performance of the Democratic-controlled Congress are more harsh—just 12% give it good marks, while 86% said they are doing only a "fair" or "poor" job in Washington.

Political independents appear to agree with Republicans on this count—just 16% give Congress positive marks, while the balance give it a negative rating.

Most are not happy with the overall direction in which the nation is now headed, the poll shows. Just 24% said they think things in the country are going well, while 64% said they think things are off on the wrong track. The main problem is foreign policy, the Reuters/Zogby poll shows. Just 22% approve of foreign affairs as practiced by the Bush administration.

Despite their downcast view of the current political leadership in Washington, an overwhelming percentage said they are proud of their nation – 89% said they are either very or fairly proud of the United States.

Just 35% said they are pleased with current U.S. economic policy, but 60% said their own personal economic situation is good or excellent.
Overall, 65% said they feel secure in their current jobs, and most are optimistic about the long-term future of the nation: 64% said they expect their children to have a better life than them.

More than three-quarters—77%—said they feel America is facing threats from abroad, while 21% said they are not concerned about such things.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 08:15 AM

From the Washington Post:

What September Won't Settle

By George F. Will
Thursday, August 23, 2007; Page A19

Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.

After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power.

The Weimar Republic was fragile; America's domestic tranquility is not. Still, remember the bitterness stirred by the accusatory question "Who lost China?" and corrosive suspicions that the fruits of victory in Europe had been squandered by Americans of bad character or bad motives at Yalta.

So, consider this: When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.

One faction -- essentially, congressional Democrats -- is heavily invested in the belief, fervently held by the party's base of donors and activists, that prolonging U.S. involvement can have no benefit commensurate with the costs. The war, this faction says, is lost because even its repeatedly and radically revised objective -- a stable society under a tolerable regime -- is beyond America's military capacity and nation-building competence, and it is politically impossible given the limits of American patience.

The other faction, equal in anger and certitude, argues, not for the first time (remember the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, Iraqi voters' purple fingers, the Iraqi constitution, the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, the capture of Hussein, the killing of Zarqawi, etc.), that the tide has turned. How febrile is this faction? Recently it became euphoric because of a New York Times column by two Brookings Institution scholars, who reported:

"We are finally getting somewhere" ("at least in military terms"), the troops' "morale is high," "civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began" and there is "the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability."

But the scholars also said:

"The situation in Iraq remains grave," fatalities "remain very high," "the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark," "the Iraqi National Police . . . remain mostly a disaster," "Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position," it is unclear how much longer we can "wear down our forces in this mission" or how much longer Americans should "keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part," and "once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines."

The rapturous reception of that column by one faction was evidence of the one thing both factions share: a powerful will to believe, or disbelieve, as their serenity requires. Consider the following from the war-is-irretrievable faction:

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, House majority whip, recently said that it would be "a real big problem for us" -- Democrats -- if Petraeus reports substantial progress. Rep. Nancy Boyda, a Kansas Democrat, recently found reports of progress unendurable. She left a hearing of the Armed Services Committee because retired Gen. Jack Keane was saying things Boyda thinks might "further divide this country," such as that Iraq's "schools are open. The markets are teeming with people." Boyda explained: "There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while . . . after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to."

In the other faction, there still are those so impervious to experience that they continue to refer to Syria as "lower-hanging fruit." Such metaphors bewitch minds. Low-hanging fruit is plucked, then eaten. What does one nation do when it plucks another? In Iraq, America is in its fifth year of learning the answer.

Petraeus's metrics of success might ignite more arguments than they settle. In America, police drug sweeps often produce metrics of success but dealers soon relocate their operations. If Iraqi security forces have become substantially more competent, some Americans will say U.S. forces can depart; if those security forces have not yet substantially improved, the same people will say U.S. forces must depart. Furthermore, will the security forces' competence ultimately serve the Iraqi state -- or a sect?

Petraeus's report will be received in the context of his minimalist definition of the U.S. mission: "Buying time for Iraqis to reconcile." The reconciling, such as it is, will recommence when Iraq's parliament returns from its month-long vacation, come September.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 01:39 PM

August 23, 2007

WASHINGTON

President Bush attempted Wednesday to drape war policy in Iraq in the lessons of World War II-era Japan and Vietnam as part of a broader argument for continuing the military campaign despite fierce opposition at home and abroad.

But his remarks to a VFW convention in Kansas City, Mo., also invited stinging criticism from historians and military analysts who said the analogies evidenced scant understanding of those conflicts' true lessons.

What is more, the speech opened a new vein of attack from Bush's political opponents, including the man he defeated in 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a Vietnam veteran who called the president's words "irresponsible" and "ignorant."

In drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, Bush said, "Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence and if we would just withdraw, the killing would end." But, he added, "The world would learn just how costly those impressions would be."

The president spoke just weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, will present his assessment of the so-called troop surge in Iraq, a report that most believe will be critical in determining the level of political support that the president will be able to sustain for the war.

Several officials, including prominent Democrats such as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have returned recently from Iraq and reported signs of military progress. Those assessments, however, have been leavened by an ever-bleaker view of Iraq's political leadership on the part of those officials as well as Bush, who on Tuesday said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government must "do more" to achieve political stability.
....

(Chicago Tribune, Aug 23 2007)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 10:36 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.

It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.

The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.

The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.

The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Government and industry officials say the rules are needed to clarify existing laws, which have been challenged in court and applied unevenly.

A spokesman for the National Mining Association, Luke Popovich, said that unless mine owners were allowed to dump mine waste in streams and valleys it would be impossible to operate in mountainous regions like West Virginia that hold some of the richest low-sulfur coal seams.

All mining generates huge volumes of waste, known as excess spoil or overburden, and it has to go somewhere. For years, it has been trucked away and dumped in remote hollows of Appalachia.

Environmental activists say the rule change will lead to accelerated pillage of vast tracts and the obliteration of hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.

"This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. "What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal."

Mr. Lovett said his group and allied environmental and community organizations would consider suing to block the new rule.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 06:27 AM

"There will, of course, be the Harry Reids and those on the far left who will deny inconvenient reality. Reid will continue to call the surge a failure, as he has since even before it began. And the left will continue to portray Gen. David Petraeus as an unscrupulous commander quite prepared to send his troops into a hopeless battle in order to advance his political ambitions (although exactly how that works is not clear).

But the serious voices will prevail. When the Democratic presidential front-runner concedes that the surge "is working" (albeit very late) against the insurgency, and when Petraeus himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevitable a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms of the Iraq debate become narrow and the policy question simple: What do we do right now -- continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdrawal?

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.

The problem with this argument is that it confuses long term and short term. In the longer run, there must be a national unity government. But in the shorter term, our assumption that a national unity government is required to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against al-Qaeda and are gradually switching sides in the absence of any oil, federalism or de-Baathification deal coming out of Baghdad.

In the interim, the surge is advancing our two immediate objectives in Iraq: (a) to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent the emergence of an al-Qaeda ministate, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-liberation downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction."

from Washington Post

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 11:32 AM

White House Shell Game

(NEw York Times editorial excerpt)

Published: August 24, 2007

The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy took another absurd turn this week. The administration is claiming that the White House Office of Administration is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, even though there are some compelling reasons to think it is. Like the fact that the office has its own FOIA officer. And it responded to 65 FOIA requests last year. And the White House's own Web site, as of yesterday, insisted the office is covered by FOIA.

The administration's logic-free claim about the Office of Administration follows fast on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney's laughable claim that he was immune to an open-government law because his office supposedly was not an executive agency.

The fight over the Office of Administration's status is part of a larger battle over access to an estimated five million e-mail messages that have mysteriously disappeared from White House computers. The missing messages are important evidence in the scandal over the firing of nine United States attorneys, apparently because they refused to use their positions to help Republicans win elections. The Office of Administration seems to know a lot about when and how those messages disappeared, but it does not want to tell the public.

What exactly does the administration want to hide? It is certainly acting as if the e-mail messages would confirm suspicions that the White House coordinated the prosecutors' firings and that it may have broken laws. It is hard to believe the administration's constant refrain that there is nothing to the prosecutor scandal when it is working so hard to avoid letting the facts about it get out.

The administration's refusal to comply with open-government laws is ultimately more important than any single scandal. The Freedom of Information Act and other right-to-know laws were passed because government transparency is vital to a democracy. The American people cannot monitor their elected officials, and ensure that they act in the public interest, if government is allowed to operate under a veil of secrecy. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 07:08 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency 's domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a "state secret."

Times Topics: Surveillance of Citizens by Government
The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell , the director of national intelligence, gave last week to The El Paso Times in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.

Mr. McConnell made the remarks apparently in an effort to bolster support for the broadened wiretapping authority that Congress approved this month, even as Democrats are threatening to rework the legislation because they say it gives the executive branch too much power. It is vital, he said, for Congress to give retroactive legal immunity to the companies that assisted in the program to help prevent them from facing bankruptcy because of lawsuits over it.

"Under the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us, because if you're going to get access, you've got to have a partner," Mr. McConnell said in the interview, a transcript of which was posted by The El Paso Times on Wednesday.

AT&T and several other major carriers are being sued over their reported role in the program, which permitted eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorism ties. The administration has sought to shut down the lawsuits by invoking the state-secrets privilege, refusing even to confirm whether the companies helped conduct the wiretaps.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is heading up the lawsuit against AT&T, said her group might ask the appeals court to consider Mr. McConnell's comments in deciding whether the state-secrets argument should be thrown out.

"They've really undermined their own case," Ms. Cohn said.

Mr. McConnell said those suits were a driving force in the administration's efforts to include in this month's wiretapping legislation immunity for telecommunications partners. "If you play out the suits at the value they're claimed," he said, "it would bankrupt these companies."

Congress agreed to give immunity to telecommunications partners in the measure , but refused to make it retroactive.

Mr. McConnell, who took over as the country's top intelligence official in February, warned that the public discussion generated by the Congressional debate over the wiretapping bill threatened national security because it would alert terrorists to American surveillance methods.

"Now part of this is a classified world," he said in the interview. "The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die.".

Asked whether he was saying the news media coverage and the public debate in Congress meant that "some Americans are going to die," he replied: "That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public."

Mr. McConnell, though, put new information on the public record in the interview, on Aug. 14 while in Texas for a border conference.

Mr. McConnell said, for instance, that the number of people inside the United States who were wiretapped through court-approved warrants totaled "100 or less" but on the "foreign side, it's in the thousands." The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves national security wiretaps, told Congress it approved 2,181 eavesdropping warrants last year. The court and the administration have not been willing to break out how many Americans were in those orders.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Aug 07 - 11:41 AM

A top-flight Patent Attorney remarks on the impact of Bush's political favors game on the United States Patent field:

"..more troubling in this whole scenario is Mr. Dudas himself. He is a young attorney who is not a patent lawyer. He should never have been nominated by President Bush. Mr. Dudas was, at the time of this nomination (and today), totally unqualified for the position of Director of the USPTO. Nevertheless, the Senate ratified his nomination, apparently preferring to fight other Presidential nominees, such as those nominated to serve as federal judges.

Mr. Dudas has instituted a number of ill-conceived policies at the USPTO, equally destructive in nature, and wholly without proper understanding of how industry functions, patent prosecution works, and the role of patents in fueling R & D and the economy. In short, he has wreaked havoc in the USPTO and has failed at the most fundamental level to manage the USPTO by ensuring that an adequate number of patent examiners are hired, properly trained and properly supervised.

What the public ended up with during Mr. Dudas' term as Director is a largely dysfunctional USPTO, continually made worse by bad policies - many probably illegal - and with a clear failure to understand the consequences of his actions.

Anybody can see that if the new rules survive the present Tafas v. Dudas lawsuit, there will be an explosion of appeals, crippling the USPTO's ability to decide patentability on the merits and delaying the grant of a huge number patents many, many years into the future. The new rules will also result in a drastic reduction in applications, and as a consequence, inevitably result in the need for the USPTO to dramatically raise fees on the remaining patent applications and patents since Congress requires the USPTO to be self-supporting from user fees.

As a political appointee of fairly high rank (Under Secretary of Commerce), it is likely that Mr. Dudas will be gone when a new administration takes over in January, 2009, regardless of whether that administration is Democrat or Republican.

At that time, hopefully the new President will nominate one of literally hundreds of qualified patent attorneys to the post of Director of the USPTO. Almost any in-house patent counsel from a Fortune 500 company is far more qualified than Mr. Dudas, and I cannot imagine any of them doing more harm to the US patent system than Mr. Dudas has caused in a very short number of years."

Yet another aspect of ignorance made official in the interest of a low-0caliber ole boy network.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:36 PM

President Bush Signs Landmark Bill Investing in Science

President Bush has signed into law the America COMPETES Act, the landmark innovation and competitiveness legislation that outlines investing in basic research and promoting math and science programs to keep the U.S. globally competitive.

At a press conference held at the White House on Aug. 9. he praised Congress for working in a bipartisan fashion to get the bill passed and added that the legislation reflected priorities he outlined in his American Competitiveness Initiative.

---

While this is nice news, I cannot but think it is superficial and self-serving on his part, and intellectually hypocritical. Bush has one of the worst records vis-a-vis science of any President the country has had, not to mention other areas on incompetence such as diplomacy, foreign policy, strategy, life-sciences, etc., etc.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:34 AM

On the recent Administration stonewall over children's health care reductions it initiated:

"Acting during a Congressional recess, and making a distinct effort to stay beneath the radar of the news media, the administration enacted insidious new rules that make it much harder for states to bring additional children under the umbrella of the program, known colloquially as CHIP.

The program is popular because it works. It's cost effective and there is wide bipartisan support for its expansion. But President Bush, locked in an ideological straitjacket, is adamant in his opposition.

In addition to the new rules drastically curtailing the ability of governors to expand local coverage by obtaining waivers from the federal government, the president has threatened a veto of Congressional efforts to fund a more robust version of the overall program.

"It's stunning," said New York's Gov. Eliot Spitzer. "He says he's going to veto health care for kids because it's too expensive at the same time that these continuing resolutions for the war, where we don't even know what the cost is, are going through unabated. This is insanity.

"Everybody agrees this is the right thing to do except the Bush administration."

---

From the NY Times, 8-28-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:38 AM

"You underline our government's cult-of-personality solution to every crisis. Those directing our misguided adventure in nation-building in Iraq believed that Ahmad Chalabi, an exiled secular Shiite, would automatically solve all Iraq's sectarian problems. They supported similar solutions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with eroding results.

What is even more unnerving is to see the current Republican presidential candidates presenting themselves in the same bogus heroic guise.

It is hoped that voters will avoid our foreign policy mistakes and this time around will pick a substantive candidate. Our democracy does not need another quasi Napoleon. "

(Emphasis added. From the Letters department, Ibid,.)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 11:00 AM

from the Washington Post:

Congress's Ill-Timed Iran Bills

By Danielle Pletka
Tuesday, August 28, 2007; Page A13

This month, the Bush administration tightened the screws on Iran yet again. Its move to formally designate Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is the latest in a wave of state, federal and international efforts to pressure the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into reconsidering its nuclear weapons program and increasingly aggressive sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East.

Five bills are pending in Congress that would encourage divestment and eliminate loopholes in the Iran Sanctions Act, among other things. At the state level, bills are pending in at least 13 legislatures to compel state pension funds to divest from companies and financial institutions doing business with Iran; in Florida and Louisiana, such measures have become law. More broadly, the U.N. Security Council will consider a third resolution in September responding to Iran's failure to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

There is growing recognition that Iran's nuclear activities must be stopped, and the voluntary divestment movement is gaining ground. Yet this moment of harmonious convergence -- possible only because of the gravity of the threat from Iran -- may come to an abrupt end if Congress has its way.

Most of the bills pending in the House and Senate would, if passed, tighten the provisions of the Iran Sanctions Act (formerly known as the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act) and strip the president of authority to waive U.S. sanctions on a variety of firms, many in Europe. Currently, the act allows the president to waive sanctions on firms that invest more than $20 million in Iran's energy sector or to choose from a menu of sanctions, ranging from a slap on the wrist to major penalties.

Soon after the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act became law in 1996, the Clinton administration made clear to European governments that it had no intention of implementing its provisions. European leaders, uniformly insistent that engagement with Iran was the most effective means of moderating Iranian misbehavior, roundly rejected efforts to punish Tehran's business partners. The Clinton administration, and later the Bush administration, looked away as tens of billions of dollars flowed into Iran's energy sector. European investment in Iran skyrocketed with no pressure from London, Paris or Berlin on nuclear or terrorism issues. And with Iran earning upwards of 85 percent of its foreign currency from the sale of petroleum and related products, it was possible to draw a direct line from that investment to the funds available to the regime for nuclear weapons, missiles and funding for terrorist groups.

Congress acquiesced in this executive disregard for more than a decade. Yet, just as lawmakers have gotten riled about enforcing the law, European nations are beginning to grasp the importance of curtailing their economic ties with Tehran. Since early last year, France, Germany and Britain, among other European Union nations, have cut back export credits -- essentially taxpayer subsidies -- to companies doing business in Iran. Germany's export credit agency, Hermes, has reportedly cut guarantees 30 percent and aims to cut a further 10 percent this year. Deutsche Bank last month announced that it is ceasing to do business with Iran. Two major British banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, have cut back significantly. The French Embassy touts hundreds of millions in French divestment from Iran in recent years.

On principle, many European foreign and finance ministries continue to resent American hectoring on trade with Iran. A senior German Foreign Ministry official recently characterized Treasury Department lobbying against business with Iran as "outrageous." Such protestations notwithstanding, word has quietly spread from Paris, London and Berlin that banks and companies now do business with Iran at their own risk.

Japan, once Iran's top trading partner, has also begun to cool its once warm relations, though not to the same extent as the Europeans. But it is a model when compared with China and Russia, which have raced to do business where the West has pulled back. Indeed, China and Russia have been facilitators not just for Iran's energy sector but also for its missile and nuclear programs.

As Congress watches the international community crawl toward a consensus, slapping down European firms that irresponsibly continue to underwrite Iran's energy sector will be tempting. To be sure, Europe could do much more. But the European Union has come a great distance since the 1990s, and with each month, Europeans are doing more to withdraw support from the Iranian economy.

A more appropriate focus of congressional action would be Russian arms and nuclear sales to Iran and growing Chinese investment in Iran's energy sector. Closing loopholes that permit U.S. firms to do business with Tehran through subsidiaries would also show admirable consistency.

For many years, a key element of Iranian strategy has been to divide Europe from the United States, leaving America with only unilateral options. It would be a cruel irony if, just as European governments finally begin doing the right thing, Congress deepens the Atlantic rift.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 09:48 AM

LEtters on the President's defense of Gonzalez, the Attorney General who acted like a non-attorney and without any air of generalship...

"The shame of the Bush administration is that it allows cronyism and loyalty to trump integrity and competence in many of its appointments in an effort to infest all federal departments with its misguided ideology.

That the president's politics will change over the remaining 18 months of his administration as a result of the resignations of Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is probably too much to hope for.

Congress should not view these resignations as substitutes for accountability and should continue to pursue all legitimate charges. Patricia A. Weller

Westminster, Md., Aug. 28, 2007

•

To the Editor:

President Bush's assertion that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has been treated unfairly is wonderfully ironic. No attorney general has been more unfair to the American people and to the Constitution of this great country.

The only unfairness here is that it is highly unlikely that Mr. Gonzales will be prosecuted for subverting the Constitution and for committing human rights abuses as part of his advocacy of and support for torture at home and abroad.


Watertown, Mass., Aug. 28, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Albert R. Gonzales seemed to be a paradox: an attorney general who emphasized the limitation and restriction rather than the protection of human rights and freedoms.

It is to be hoped that the next attorney general our country has will support people's rights and freedoms rather than deny them.

Isn't that the way America is supposed to be, and what makes it so great?

Huntington Beach, Calif., Aug. 28, 2007

•

To the Editor:

That Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's "good name was dragged through the mud," as President Bush suggests, is more a result of the company he chose to keep than any amorphous political reasons.

Mr. Gonzales simply hung out with the wrong crowd and, influenced by its members, tarnished his own, perhaps once fine, name.

It's too bad our Constitution has been tarnished along with it.


Bloomington, Ind. Aug. 28, 2007"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 01:20 PM

An interesting study on the parallels between Bush's approach to Middle East diplomacy and that of Napoleon Bonaparte in the 18th century, entitled Bush's Napoleonic Folly, is wortth a read, even if only to refresh familiarity with history. The parallels are interesting, as well. And I don't need to mention that the verdict of history on Bonaparte was that he was a dyspeptic psycho.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 12:30 PM

"... When Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Tenet sent forbidding intelligence that accurately predicted the terrorist attacks to come. He apparently didn't worry too much about being seen as an alarmist.

During the Bush administration, reflecting changed priorities, the terrorism alerts faded into the background. Nor was the terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, any more successful when he tried to get Condoleezza Rice's attention. When he personally briefed George W. Bush before leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton told him that Osama bin Laden was one of the biggest threats facing the country.

Again, no one got Mr. Bush's attention, and the country paid dearly for the bureaucratic confusion and ineptitude at the top.

...Malvern, Pa., Aug. 23, 2007"

Letter to the NY Times.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 10:32 AM

... A new report from Congress's investigative arm provides a powerful fresh dose of nonpartisan realism about Iraq as President Bush tries to spin people into thinking that significant — or at least sufficient — progress is being made. With a crucial debate on Iraq set for next month, the report should be read by members of Congress who may be wavering in the fight with the White House over withdrawing American troops.

The Government Accountability Office, in a draft assessment reported yesterday, determined that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for political and military progress mandated by Congress. Laws on constitutional reform, oil and permitting former Baathists back into the government have not been enacted. Among other failings, there has been unsatisfactory progress toward deploying three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad and reducing the level of sectarian violence.

These conclusions are in line with a recent National Intelligence Estimate that found that violence in Iraq remained high, terrorists could still mount formidable attacks and the country's leaders "remain unable to govern effectively."

Mr. Bush earlier this year ordered a massive buildup of American troops in Iraq in a desperate attempt to salvage his failed strategy and stave off Congressional moves to bring the forces home. Despite the cost of more American lives, he argued that he was buying a period of relative calm for Iraqi politicians to achieve national reconciliation.

The top American officials in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are to present their assessments on how calm things are at eagerly awaited Congressional hearings in mid-September. Their findings, and a White House report due Sept. 15, are seen as a potential trigger for a change in Iraq strategy.

Two things, however, are already clear. Iraq's leaders have neither the intention nor the ability to take advantage of calm, relative or otherwise. And a change in strategy seems the farthest thing from Mr. Bush's mind.

...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 10:59 AM

"THE Sun, a feisty tabloid, once ran a headline asking sarcastically whether the last person to leave Britain would turn out the lights. A similar taunt could be made about the White House. One by one, the president's men are leaving: Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and now Alberto Gonzales, the hapless attorney-general. The Democrats scent more expulsions, more Bushies yearning to spend time with their families. The Republicans talk of witch hunts. The image of George Bush tottering around an empty building—empty, that is, except for mad old Uncle Dick in the cellar—is hard to resist.

Hard to resist, but also sad. This presidency still has nearly 17 more months to run. With Iraq, Iran, a global credit crunch and so much more to deal with, the world needs an engaged White House, not one peopled only by ghosts and newly hired defence lawyers. Both Mr Bush and the ruling Democrats in Congress would be wise to find a way out of this mess.

None of this is to mourn the departure of Mr Gonzales. As with Mr Rumsfeld, the tragedy lay not in his ouster, but in the length of time Mr Bush put up with an incompetent crony. At least the former defence secretary hid his uselessness under an impressive, pugnacious veneer. By contrast, Mr Gonzales was simply not up to the job—something that became depressingly obvious during the recent hearings called to discover whether he had sacked nine federal prosecutors for political reasons. Worse, his main qualification—a friendship with the president that went back to Texas—was an especially unhealthy one for the Justice Department.
..."

The Economist, London

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 06:59 PM

Brent Scowcraft, writing in today's NY Times:

...he United States was not previously a homeland, it was just our land, and that unhappy neologism with its Orwellian echoes, its sense of exclusion rather than inclusion, its faint fatherland-like echoes, seems to capture the closing and the menace and the terror-terror refrain with which we have all learned to live.

That refrain, for Americans, but not only them, has a pursed-lipped face called Bush-Cheney, and the braggadocio-smirk of the bring-it-on duo has come to form yet another shorthand for a certain grimness, one as relentless as the U.S. national debt clock.

For many around the world, sympathy has turned to alienation over six years, and that's something else Americans have had to learn to live with, the feeling that we owe an explanation of the inexplicable, a step-by-step guide of how we got from there to here, an accounting of who we really are and, you know, it's not us doing the fingerprinting and we still like rock 'n' roll.

You can't talk about the Belgian idea, or even the Indian idea, but the American idea is inseparable from this country's global resonance, and it's in the tarnishing of that idea — the partial replacement of a liberating notion by a threatening one — that a sea change has occurred.

As Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush, put it to me: "Historically, the world has always given us the benefit of the doubt because it believed we meant well. It no longer does."

He added: "It is easy to lose trust, but it takes a lot of work to gain it. Can the sense of confidence in us be restored? Sure. But not easily."

The American idea, in other words, is dimmed, but endures. On a clear day and holiday weekend, that now lopsided prow of Manhattan still stirs something noble, a sense of "the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" who stepped ashore and made their can-do American way.

Last year, 702,663 people became citizens; there are 877,039 naturalization cases pending. Countries are still divided into those people want to leave and those people want to get into. That division is also a measure of where oppression reigns and freedom resides.

I gazed past the Statue of Liberty to the tip of Manhattan the other day with my 89-year-old uncle, Bert, who first saw the city in 1947, two years after the end of a war in which, as a young South African officer, he had fought his way with the Allied army up through Italy. The Queen Mary had brought him, six to a cabin, from the English port of Southampton to New York.

"You know, when I got to London from Johannesburg, I thought it was the middle of the world," he said. "But I can't tell you what it felt like to step into the canyons of New York. I had this overwhelming feeling of promise and of being at the center of the New World, the coming world."

It is this sense of promise that the United States must restore to provide the leadership without which the big issues facing the world do not get resolved. Sometimes I imagine that a piece of the terrible white confetti of 9/11 has blown all the way around the globe to arrive, like a message in a bottle, and that I open it and read: "September is not the cruelest month."..."




A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 11:04 AM

One of the key metrics by which George the Fake is judged is his hobby horse war in Iraq.

An interesting cmparison of core metrics of the operation is provided here by the Nww York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/09/03/opinion/20070904_IRAQ_GRAPHIC.html. It accompanies this article on the state of Iraq.

It provides hard numbers (a small subset of the many that coudl be gathered) in support of charges of incompetence, not to mention unnecessary deaths of thousands, as a direct result of the Bush administrations policies.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 11:27 AM

Paul Krugman looks back on the tragic responses to Katrina:


"....Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.

On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama's football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.

But why should we be surprised by any of this? The Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina — the mixture of neglect of those in need, obliviousness to their plight, and self-congratulation in the face of abject failure — has become standard operating procedure. These days, it's Katrina all the time.

Consider the White House reaction to new Census data on income, poverty and health insurance. By any normal standard, this week's report was a devastating indictment of the administration's policies. After all, last year the administration insisted that the economy was booming — and whined that it wasn't getting enough credit. What the data show, however, is that 2006, while a good year for the wealthy, brought only a slight decline in the poverty rate and a modest rise in median income, with most Americans still considerably worse off than they were before President Bush took office.

Most disturbing of all, the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal — "you just go to an emergency room" — but the reality is that if you're uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.

Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was "pleased" with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!

Mr. Bush's only concession that something might be amiss was to say that "challenges remain in reducing the number of uninsured Americans" — a statement reminiscent of Emperor Hirohito's famous admission, in his surrender broadcast, that "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." And Mr. Bush's solution — more tax cuts, of course — has about as much relevance to the real needs of the uninsured as subsidies for luxury condos in Tuscaloosa have to the needs of New Orleans's Ninth Ward.

The question is whether any of this will change when Mr. Bush leaves office.

There's a powerful political faction in this country that's determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle — namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn't even try. "I don't want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system," says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration's practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform — did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? — were the way government always works.

..."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Sep 07 - 12:08 PM

IRAQ -- BUSH KNEW BEFORE INVASION THAT SADDAM HAD NO WMD: Two former CIA officers have confirmed to Salon that President Bush was told in Sept. 2002 that Saddam Hussein did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. According to the officer, CIA director George Tenet provided Bush with top-secret information that "detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissible material, which they didn't, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons." Bush reportedly dismissed the warning immediately. According to one of the officers, "Bush didn't give a f*ck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up." Tenet never brought up the information again; in fact, only a few months later he infamously referred to the case that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction as a "slam dunk." The intelligence about the lack of weapons of mass destruction was never provided to Congress before their vote to authorize military operations in March 2003, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair depended on this faulty information to make his decision to support the Iraq war. "Blair was duped," said one of the CIA officers. "He was shown the altered report." Even though Bush finally publicly admitted in 2004 that "Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," he continued to believe that they were. In his new book on Bush, Robert Draper writes that the President repeated conviction that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction "to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006."

JUSTICE -- SEN. WHITEHOUSE SEEKS TO RESTRICT EXCESS WHITE HOUSE INTERFERENCE IN DOJ INVESTIGATIONS: In April, during testimony by outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) revealed that during the Bush administration, the number of White House officials allowed to intervene in pending criminal investigations by the Justice department increased by 10,325 percent, from four to 417. In a subsequent hearing in July, Whitehouse also revealed that Gonzales had given Vice President Cheney's office increased access. Whitehouse is now seeking to limit "the number of people in the White House who can be briefed by Justice on pending criminal matters." His bill, which is co-sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), "states that only certain 'covered officers' in both the Justice Department and White House may discuss ongoing criminal or civil investigations carried out by the Justice Department. The bill also requires the Attorney General and President to notify the Senate and House Judiciary Committees when new covered officers are designated." The Senate Judiciary Committee will discuss the bill in a business meeting today.

IRAQ -- UPSET OVER GAO'S FINDINGS ON IRAQ, CONSERVATIVES ATTACK AGENCY'S QUALIFICATIONS: Now that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported little to no progress in Iraq and the administration may be cooking the books on levels of violence, conservatives are desperately trying to attack the agency's credibility. Yesterday at a House International Relations Committee hearing, ranking member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) complained, "I just feel uncomfortable listening to a report by the Government Accountability Office about a war effort." GAO Comptroller General David Walker explained the work his agency does is based on "looking at hard data, interviewing qualified individuals, and appropriate parties have an opportunity to review and comment on our work," he said. "It's my understanding that Secretary of Defense Gates does not have any military experience either." Ros-Lehtinen has had no problem citing the work of the GAO in a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff or enlisting the GAO's resources to pursue her agenda. Similarly, Brookings Institution analyst Michael O'Hanlon, a staunch war supporter, attacked the GAO's work as "flat-out sloppy." It's only when the right wing doesn't like the agency's conclusions that it finds fault with the work of the office.


(Excerpted from a mailing from the Center for American Progress.)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 09:35 AM

The Bush administration reached a deplorable, preordained verdict yesterday when it denied New York State permission to expand a valuable health insurance program to help cover middle-class children. The administration, which makes no effort to disguise its disdain for government insurance programs, imposed new, excessively stringent requirements last month that not only guaranteed New York's denial but will make it nearly impossible for any state to expand coverage.

The denial shows the White House at its most ideological and intransigent. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of children in New York — and many more nationally — will end up paying the price.

New York wanted to raise its income threshold for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, from the current $51,000 for a family of four to more than $82,000. There is room to debate whether that level — four times the poverty level — is too high, but the administration is not basing its rejection on those grounds. Federal officials say they have no authority to reject a state's plan based on income eligibility alone.

That is apparently why the administration cooked up new requirements that allow it to block middle-class coverage on other grounds. This is a distressing change for a program that had previously given states great leeway to devise coverage to fit their own circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 11:59 AM

From the Washington Post:


The Senate's Ethics Sleight of Hand

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, September 10, 2007; Page A15

The final version of the widely celebrated ethics bill, approved by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate a month ago, finally and quietly made its way last week from Capitol Hill to the White House. It surely will soon be signed into law by President Bush. What only a handful of leaders and insiders realize is that this measure, avowedly dedicated to transparency, actually makes it easier for the Senate to pass pet projects without the public -- or many senators -- being aware of it.

Until now, one or two senators could block provisions not passed by the Senate or House from being inserted, usually at the end of a session, into the final version of a bill. Under the new rule, it will take 40 senators to block any such provisions that are protected by the majority or even the bipartisan leadership. That will make it much easier to enact any number of special-interest measures, the goal of all too many members of Congress.

This momentous change could not have slipped by without bipartisan Senate leadership connivance, but it was unknown to rank-and-file senators -- much less the general public. Deception is the watchword on Capitol Hill. Indeed, outsiders do not realize that the ethics bill was held for a month after final passage before going to the president's desk. It was delayed to prevent Bush from exercising a "pocket veto": not signing the bill during the August recess to eliminate any opportunity for a congressional override.

On Aug. 2, reform Republican Sen. Tom Coburn called the just-passed ethics bill "a landmark betrayal, not a landmark accomplishment. Congress had a historic opportunity to expose secretive pork-barrel spending but instead created new ways to hide that spending." As for the act's highly publicized restrictions on lobbyists, Coburn asserted that "the problem in Washington is not the lobbyists" but "members of Congress." He voted no as the bill passed the Senate, 83 to 14, on Aug. 2 (it had been approved in the House two days earlier, 411 to 8).

Coburn objected to the bill taking new policing of pork-barrel earmarks away from the Senate's nonpartisan parliamentarian and giving it to the majority leader. "That makes the quarterback the referee," he said.

But not even Coburn's detailed analysis of the bill's treatment of earmarks mentioned the audacious change to Senate Rule 28, which covers inclusion in a Senate-House conference report of "extraneous matter" that neither chamber has passed. For years, at the end of a session, party leaders have solicited senators for dozens of pet projects to insert into conference reports. However, it took 67 votes in the 100-member Senate to suspend the rules and enact such provisions. In practice, if a party leader learned of serious opposition by one or two senators in his caucus, he would remove a provision because the dissenters could derail the entire conference report.

But the ethics bill's revision of Rule 28 removes that safeguard. Under the change, any senator could propose that points of order on the conference report be waived for all extraneous provisions, with a mere one-hour debate permitted for the lot of them. That could mean the addition to a bill of 40 or more provisions that never really will be debated. The floodgates will be open.

Multiple earmarks will now be added to conference reports with only 60 votes after just this one hour of debate. As Coburn has complained, the final version of the ethics bill permits the newly required identification of earmarks and posting on the Internet to be waived by the majority or minority leader. The leaders can also waive the new requirement that conference reports be posted on the Internet no less than 48 hours before the Senate vote. So much for transparency.

With recourse to a pocket veto denied him, George W. Bush ought to be in a quandary. Should he consider the option of vetoing the pride and joy of the Democratic Congress and be accused, however unfairly, of pandering to lobbyists? He could at least avoid the signing ceremony for a pork-prone ethics bill and maybe even let it become law without his signature.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 12:20 PM

Heartbroken Bush Runs After Departing Rove's Car -- a touching description of the loss of one's beloved master/father-figure/nanny/brain.

Brings tears to my eyes to read it, honest...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 04:40 PM

Thank God that the Petraeus report has fianlly explained why we need to delay any withdrawl from Iraq for 10 years.


I trust him as much as I trusted Colin Powell.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 05:33 PM

A sense of purpose

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 06:32 PM

Holy Moly, Bill, where'd you find that little gem??!! Just goes to show ya his history of self-serving du-plicity goes back quite a stretch.


It would seem some local commander felt he should be required to declare his intentions, honorable or dishonorable. Unless that is a form they ALL sign, I wonder what prompted such a suspicious management action on the commander's part. :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 10:29 PM

Why, right here, Amos...

(actually, I found it in a roundabout way...*grin*..while doing an image search on "Pumkin head")

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 10:51 PM

And another cute lil piece of paper from his lubricious timeline. The marks in the left hand column are labeled "Not observed". Hard to grade the man when he isn't around to be graded, I suppose.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 02:47 PM

LOL...yep, he was hard to find! I expect the same column would have been checked if they had done a brain scan on him.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 11:23 PM

Dan Rather got fired for pursuing that story with dubious photo records and documents.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Sep 07 - 11:54 PM

Yeah, but the funny things was the documents were all they could complain about. The FACTS that the documents reported were apparently true. So the SwiftBoaters nailed Rather on document provenance.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Sep 07 - 12:10 AM

The ruling class does not even need a plausible excuse to destory a voice of the people or even a voice of reason.

However I am starting to see how their clarion call of (HE/SHE IS DISLOYAL) no longer cuts the mustard.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Sep 07 - 06:49 AM

from the Washington Post:

The Assault on Petraeus

By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A19

There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals, from George McClellan to William Westmoreland. It is a more novel tactic to attack a successful one. Sen. Dick Durbin accuses Gen. David Petraeus of "carefully manipulating the statistics." Sen. Harry Reid contends, "He's made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual." A newspaper ad by MoveOn.org includes the taunt: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" -- perhaps the first time since the third grade that this distinguished commander has been subjected to this level of wit.

Gen. Andrew Jackson probably would have responded to these reflections on his honor with a series of duels. Gen. Petraeus, in the manner of the modern Army, patiently answered with a series of facts and charts showing military progress in Iraq that seemed unimaginable even six months ago.

On Petraeus's brief watch, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered a major setback. It has been cleared out of the main population centers of Anbar province; its cells scattered into the countryside. The resentment of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda's highhanded brutality predated the surge -- but the surge gave those leaders the confidence and ability to oppose al-Qaeda. And this approach is showing promise among other Iraqi tribal groups as well.

In Baghdad, the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy -- a kind of community policing with very serious firepower -- has reduced sectarian murders significantly. Some militia activity has been pushed outside Baghdad or gone underground -- and this is also a victory of sorts, because order in Iraq's capital has great symbolic and practical importance.

But for opponents of the war, such progress is beside the point. Anything less than perfection in reaching a series of benchmarks is evidence of failure and reason for retreat. Former senator John Edwards, bobbing like a cork on every current of the left, calls for "No timeline, no funding. No excuses" -- a sudden cutoff of resources for American combat troops. Other critics recommend that American forces withdraw into a noncombat, supportive role, with a "small footprint," while unprepared Iraqis are pushed into the lead -- exactly the strategy that led to the escalation of violence in 2006.

These are not serious options. But the administration does face a serious question: Even if this military progress continues, how does it lead to the endgame of American withdrawal instead of Iraqi dependence? In spite of recent gains, civilian casualties remain high, sectarian groups are still deeply at odds, and the central government remains corrupt and ineffective.

Administration officials answer that they are seeing a promising, bottom-up change in Iraq -- something organic, not imposed or designed. Instead of national, political agreement, Iraq is experiencing local, tribal reconciliation. Even without a national oil law, oil revenue is being shared. Even in the absence of a de-Baathification law, tens of thousands of former Baathists are getting their pensions. Grass-roots progress, the argument goes, will eventually produce more responsible, pragmatic political leaders -- Sunnis who oppose al-Qaeda and Shiites who fight Iranian influence -- as well as more capable and professional Iraqi military forces. And this would allow America to provide the same level of security with fewer and fewer troops.

Petraeus's recommendation of troop reductions beginning in December, with a return to pre-surge troop levels by summer, is a down payment on this expectation. But future reductions, he made clear, will be based on conditions in Iraq, not timelines. And those conditions are hard to predict.

At least three factors could complicate future withdrawals:

First, as the British leave, Basra and the south could descend into a chaos of battling militias -- threatening Iraqi oil fields and American supply lines. Would U.S. troops be forced to intervene?

Second, Iran may not tamely accept American progress in Iraq. Its government is already involved in the training and arming of proxies in Iraq. How would America need to respond if the Iranians escalate further and provide, for example, surface-to-air missiles to militias?

Third, even if Iranian-backed groups are isolated and undermined, the regular Shiite militias, often infiltrated into the police and Interior Ministry, are still forcing Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. What needs to be done to stop them?

Despite real military progress, the situation in Iraq remains difficult. Gen. Petraeus is a skilled leader, but we do not know if even he can win. We know, however, one thing: If he is slandered, his advice is dismissed and Congress cuts off funding for the troops he commands, defeat in Iraq will be certain.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 09:20 AM

From the Washington Post- Miss this one, Amos?


The Least Bad Plan

President Bush's long-shot strategy for Iraq is less risky than the alternatives.
Friday, September 14, 2007; Page A12


PRESIDENT BUSH'S explanation of his latest plans for Iraq last night was marred by a couple of important omissions. First, the president failed to acknowledge that, according to the standards he himself established in January, the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq has been a failure -- because Iraqi political leaders did not reach the political accords that the sacrifice of American lives was supposed to make possible. Instead he focused on the real but reversible military gains achieved in and around Baghdad and on the unexpected decision of Sunni tribes to take up arms against al-Qaeda, a development facilitated but not caused by the surge.

Mr. Bush also failed to mention one of the principal reasons for the drawdown of troops he announced. The president said that the tactical military successes meant that American forces could be reduced in the coming year to pre-surge levels. What he didn't say is that the Pentagon has no choice other than to carry out the withdrawals, unless Mr. Bush resorts to politically explosive steps such as further extending deployments. Another way of describing Mr. Bush's plan is that it leaves every available Army and Marine unit in place in Iraq for as long as possible. If the war were going worse than it is, the deployment schedule probably couldn't have been much different.

Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker have argued this week that the maximal troop levels are necessary to prevent Iraq from returning to the downward spiral into sectarian war it suffered before the surge. They also have emphasized that political accords will be slower in coming than Washington has expected, if they are achievable at all. Yet Mr. Bush's plan for the coming year is based, once again, on the hope that Iraqis will take steps that will make the added security provided by U.S. troops sustainable -- and prevent a worsening of the situation when American brigades withdraw. Though this hope proved illusory during the past eight months, there will be no change in the U.S. mission.

It's impossible not to be skeptical that the necessary political deals and improvements in Iraqi security forces will take place. Unless there is progress that justifies withdrawals going well beyond those he announced last night, Mr. Bush is unlikely to achieve the agreement in Washington on Iraq he said he now aims for. Still, there are no easy alternatives to the present policy. In the past we have looked favorably on bipartisan proposals that would change the U.S. mission so as to focus on counterterrorism and training of the Iraqi army, while withdrawing most U.S. combat units. Mr. Bush said he would begin a transition to that reduced posture in December. But according to Gen. Petraeus, Mr. Crocker and the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies, if the U.S. counterinsurgency mission were abandoned in the near future, the result would be massive civilian casualties and still-greater turmoil that could spread to neighboring countries.

Mr. Bush's plan offers, at least, the prospect of extending recent gains against al-Qaeda in Iraq, preventing full-scale sectarian war and allowing Iraqis more time to begin moving toward a new political order. For that reason, it is preferable to a more rapid withdrawal. It's not necessary to believe the president's promise that U.S. troops will "return on success" in order to accept the judgment of Mr. Crocker: "Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 09:24 AM

Or this one? (also from the Washington Post)

A 'Realistic Chance' of Success

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 14, 2007; Page A13

As always, the inadvertent slip is the most telling. Discussing the performance of British troops, Gen. David Petraeus told Sen. Joe Biden of the Foreign Relations Committee that he'd be consulting with British colleagues in London on his way back "home." He had meant to say "Iraq," where he is now on his third tour of duty. Is there any other actor in Washington's Iraq war drama -- from Harry Reid to the Joint Chiefs -- who could have made such a substitution? Anyone who not only knows Iraq the way Petraeus does but feels it in all its gravity and complexity?

When asked about Shiite militia domination of southern Iraq, Petraeus patiently went through the four provinces, one by one, displaying a degree of knowledge of the local players, terrain and balance of power that no one in Washington -- and few in Iraq -- could match.

When Biden thought he had a gotcha -- contradictions between Petraeus's report on Iraqi violence and the less favorable one by the Government Accountability Office -- Petraeus calmly pointed out that the GAO had to cut its data-gathering five weeks short to meet reporting requirements to Congress. And since those most recent five weeks had been particularly productive for the coalition, the GAO numbers were not only outdated but misleading.

For all the attempts by Democrats and the antiwar movement to discredit Petraeus, he won the congressional confrontation hands down. He demonstrated enough military progress from his new counterinsurgency strategy to conclude: "I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our objectives in Iraq."

The American people are not antiwar. They are anti-losing. Which means they are also anti-drift. Adrift is where we were during most of 2006 -- the annus horribilis initiated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's bringing down the Golden Mosque in Samarra -- until the new counterinsurgency strategy of 2007 (the "surge") reversed the trajectory of the war.

It was being lost both in Iraq and at home. On the home front, Petraeus deftly deflated the rush to withdrawal that appeared poised to acquire irresistible momentum this summer. First, by demonstrating real and irrefutable territorial gains on the ground. Second, by proposing minor immediate withdrawals to be followed by fully liquidating the "surge" by next summer. Those withdrawals should be enough to hold the wobbly Republican senators. And perhaps even more important, the Pentagon brass.

The service chiefs no longer fight wars. That's now left to theater commanders such as Petraeus. The chiefs' job is to raise armies -- to recruit, train, equip and manage. Petraeus's job is to use their armies to win wars. The chiefs are quite reasonably concerned about the enormous strain put on their worldwide forces by the tempo of operations in Iraq. Petraeus's withdrawal recommendations have prevented a revolt of the generals.

Petraeus's achievement is no sleight of hand. If he had not produced real, demonstrable progress -- reported by many independent observers, including liberal Democrats, even before he came back home (i.e., the United States) -- his appearance before Congress would have swayed no one.

His testimony, steady and forthright, bought him the time to achieve his "realistic chance" of success. Not the unified, democratic Iraq we had hoped for the day Saddam Hussein's statue came down, but a radically decentralized Iraq with enough regional autonomy and self-sufficiency to produce a tolerable stalemated coexistence between contending forces.

That's for the longer term and still quite problematic. In the shorter term, however, there is a realistic chance of achieving a separate success that, within the context of Iraq, is of a second order but in the global context is of the highest order -- the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Having poisoned one country and been expelled from it (Afghanistan), al-Qaeda seized upon post-Hussein instability to establish itself in the very heart of the Arab Middle East -- Sunni Iraq. Yet now, in front of all the world, Iraq's Sunnis are, to use the biblical phrase, vomiting out al-Qaeda. This is a defeat and humiliation in the extreme -- an Arab Muslim population rejecting al-Qaeda so violently that it allies itself in battle with the infidel, the foreigner, the occupier.

Just carrying this battle to its successful conclusion -- independent of its larger effect of helping stabilize Iraq -- is justification enough for the surge. The turning of Sunni Iraq against al-Qaeda is a signal event in the war on terrorism. Petraeus's plan is to be allowed to see it through.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 10:11 AM

Thanks, Bruce. These sound reasonable, and I had not seen them.

I do feel concerned that this positive news-spin will (a) make people feel unnecessarily optimistic about the state of affairs in the Arab world and (b) that Mister Bush and those like him will have established an imperial precedent of unique magnitude, presenting the notion that a unilateral invasion, costing thousands in deaths and billions in treasure, framed on false rationale and clouded in intentional distortions, can be justified.

Men like Bush, and his key henchmen, energize and disseminate the idea that a good end justifies foul means. He is a paradigmatic example of the idea. And it's a shitty idea.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 10:14 AM

I do feel concerned that the previous negative news-spin will (a) make people feel unnecessarily pessemistic about the state of affairs in the Arab world and (b) that the "anti-war" folks will have established a precedent of unique magnitude, presenting the notion that a NO action, under any circumstances, even a direct threat to this country and its people, can be justified.

Subject: RUMSFELD ON THE MOVE
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 11:22 AM

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39249

He has joined the think tank 'The Hoover Institute' which has an affiliation with Stanford University.

Nixon was right about Don.
In 1971, President Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 12:18 PM

Bruce:

You're mi-mi=mi-mimicking me again, gawdammit. Your proposition is ridiculous on the face of it. Such a notion would have a very hard time getting any traction in this country. The precedent of unilateral initiation of war is a much more dangerous one.

It is possible that you are confusing terror wwith actual threat. They are very different.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Rotkopf
Date: 15 Sep 07 - 09:02 AM

The genius of GWB is that he is able to get his enemies to fight each other.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 07 - 08:55 PM

"Alan Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve chairman for 18 years and was the leading Republican economist for the past three decades, levels unusually harsh criticism at President Bush and the Republican Party in his new book, arguing that Bush abandoned the central conservative principle of fiscal restraint.

While condemning Democrats, too, for rampant federal spending, he offers Bill Clinton an exemption. The former president emerges as the political hero of "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan's 531-page memoir, which is being published Monday.

Greenspan, who had an eight-year alliance with Clinton and Democratic Treasury secretaries in the 1990s, praises Clinton's mind and his tough anti-deficit policies, calling the former president's 1993 economic plan "an act of political courage."

But he expresses deep disappointment with Bush. "My biggest frustration remained the president's unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending," Greenspan writes. "Not exercising the veto power became a hallmark of the Bush presidency. … To my mind, Bush's collaborate-don't-confront approach was a major mistake."

Greenspan accuses the Republicans who presided over the party's majority in the House until last year of being too eager to tolerate excessive federal spending in exchange for political opportunity. The Republicans, he says, deserved to lose control of the Senate and House in last year's elections. "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," Greenspan writes. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither."

He singles out J. Dennis Hastert, the Illinois Republican who was House speaker until January, and Tom DeLay, the Texan who was majority leader until he resigned after being indicted for violating campaign finance laws in his home state.

"House Speaker Hastert and House majority leader Tom DeLay seemed readily inclined to loosen the federal purse strings any time it might help add a few more seats to the Republican majority," he writes.

He adds three pages later: "I don't think the Democrats won. It was the Republicans who lost. The Democrats came to power in the Congress because they were the only party left standing."

Greenspan, 81, indirectly criticizes his friend and colleague from the Ford administration, Vice President Cheney. Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill has quoted Cheney as once saying, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Greenspan says, " 'Deficits don't matter,' to my chagrin became part of the Republicans' rhetoric."

He argues that "deficits must matter" and that uncontrolled government spending and borrowing can produce high inflation "and economic devastation."

When Bush and Cheney won the 2000 election, Greenspan writes, "I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets. … I was soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions."

He says, "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences." The large, anticipated federal budget surpluses that were the basis for Bush's initial $1.35 trillion tax cut "were gone six to nine months after George W. Bush took office." So Bush's goals "were no longer entirely appropriate. He continued to pursue his presidential campaign promises nonetheless."

Greenspan was intensely criticized for endorsing a large tax cut in 2001 in congressional testimony during the first weeks of the Bush administration. He notes that he was recommending any tax cut, even a smaller one proposed by some Democrats. He acknowledges that those who had warned him about the perception he was backing Bush's plan were right. "The tax-cut testimony proved to be politically explosive," he writes.

Yet, he adds: "While politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment. … Yet I'd have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president."

By the end of last year, Greenspan writes with some bitterness, Washington was "harboring a dysfunctional government. … Governance has become dangerously dysfunctional.""

Excerpted from The San Francisco Sentinel.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 07 - 09:12 AM

From today's NY Times:

"ollowing the dastardly attacks of 9/11, it was evident that the nation had to do some careful thinking about the proper balance between national security and civil liberties. Instead of care and balance, sadly, the Bush administration immediately lunged to claim extraordinary, and largely unnecessary, new powers. Aided by a compliant Congress, the administration repeatedly tried to shield the resulting intrusions on people's rights from meaningful scrutiny, even by the courts.

Recently, however, a federal district judge in New York declared unconstitutional one notorious outgrowth of the Bush team's approach: the Federal Bureau of Investigation's overreliance on informal demands for information, called national security letters, to obtain private records from telephone and Internet companies, banks and other businesses without a court warrant.

The decision by Judge Victor Marrero struck down 2006 revisions to the Patriot Act that expanded the bureau's power to use national security letters, and a 1986 law that first authorized such letters. The recent provisions not only compelled companies to turn over customers' records without a warrant, but forbade them to tell anyone what they had done, including the customers involved. The authority of the courts to review challenges to the gag rule was extremely limited.

Judge Marrero took proper umbrage at the attempt to tightly confine the courts' authority and to silence recipients of national security letters without meaningful judicial review. He declared that the measure violated both the First Amendment and the principle of separation of powers. The deference that the law required courts to give to the executive branch, he stated, could amount to "the hijacking of constitutional values."..."


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Sep 07 - 10:25 AM

Hey, as for Patraeous being slandered, yeah, I think MoveOn was over the top...

I also am getting purdy sick and tired of the Swift Boat Liars, with millions and millions of fat cat dollars behind them marchin' into my living room with one wounded vet or vets family telling me that their sacrifices would mean nothing if we don't "win" in Iraq...

This is the same old worn our sup0wer-patriotism crap that was shoved down our throats in Nam while another 26,000 of our troops were killed while the politicans played a hot potato... All Bush is doing is trying to run out the clock herer and pass his mess on...

I used to think that Bush was going to somehow figure out a way to impiose martial law before the '08 election and call off the election so he could hold power but Iraq has made me change my thinkin'... Jan. 20, 2009 can't come soon enough fir either Bush, the American people or the world...

Bobert