BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

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

Wal, Homey, I hope that article is true; although they don't seem real strong on sources.

And they don't say whether they are referring to Al Queda, as seems to be the case, or Al Queda in Iraq.

Do you think it is true?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 07 - 08:18 PM

Mission Accomplished, II
By The Editorial Board
Karen Hughes, a close confidante of President Bush, announced today that she is leaving her job as undersecretary of state, where she was responsible for improving America's reputation and standing overseas.

Ms. Hughes used a variety of techniques, including dispatching the figure skater Michelle Kwan as a good-will ambassador.

According to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, America's popularity in the world has slid during the Bush Administration, especially in the Muslim world. Favorable opinion of the United States in Indonesia fell from 75 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2006, and in Turkey, it fell from 52 percent in 2000 to 12 percent in 2006.

While Ms. Hughes was hardly a success in her job, we think the precipitous drop in America's standing has more to do with President Bush's unnecessary and incompetently managed invasion of Iraq and the way he has mistreated prisoners in American detention camps than Ms. Hughes's lack of good ideas about how to spin that reality.

(NY Times Editorial Board)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 07:09 AM

From the Washington Post:

Committee of One

By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, November 1, 2007; Page A21

A story told in cloakrooms of the House of Representatives shows how ironic life on Capitol Hill can be. Jim McCrery, the low-key, hardworking ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, has spent all year trying to establish good relations with the tax-writing committee's first Democratic chairman in 12 years, Charles Rangel. He succeeded, only to discover that Rangel does not really run Ways and Means. Nancy Pelosi does.

Rangel, a crafty New York politician, so far looks like the weakest Ways and Means chairman during my 50 years in Washington. That's only because Pelosi so far is the most powerful speaker of the House during that same period, a reality obscured by her historic role as the first woman to hold that office. She does not confer with or defer to standing committee chairmen, whose predecessors made previous speakers dance to their tune.

On both sides of the aisle, the 67-year-old grandmother from San Francisco is referred to as the "Committee of One" who rules the House. Many speakers over the years relied on their majority leader, as Republican Dennis Hastert let Tom DeLay handle day-to-day operations. But not Pelosi, who actually opposed Steny Hoyer's election as majority leader.

Ruling absolutely does not mean all Democrats think she rules well. Her misguided effort to pass a resolution condemning the 1915 Armenian genocide constitutes a rare public blunder, but beyond that she has not crafted a coherent Democratic message. This month's Harris Poll puts her nationwide job disapproval ("fair" or "poor") at 57 percent. But she is an icon at the Democratic grass roots, and none of the committee chairmen who have been downgraded by her -- certainly not Rangel -- utters a word of public criticism.

Rangel's massive tax reform proposal, released last week, gets less respect than is normally accorded to a Ways and Means chairman's plan, because Pelosi is not on board. Rangel's desire to compromise with the Bush administration on international trade agreements has been frustrated because the speaker defers to Rangel's trade subcommittee chairman, Sander Levin, who follows organized labor's protectionist line.

Much the same treatment has been experienced by John Dingell, the senior member of Congress, as Energy and Commerce Committee chairman. In bygone days, Dingell deferred to neither Democratic presidents nor speakers. But Pelosi is determined to pass an energy bill this year even though it means crossing Dingell, who as a Detroiter opposes Californian Pelosi on vehicle mileage and emission standards. A sage old professional, Dingell knows there is no political profit in publicly clashing with Madam Speaker.

No committee chairman wants to take the risk of going public against Pelosi, including one who sought her advice -- and, hopefully, support -- on a controversial matter of House business. This anonymous chairman was rebuffed by the speaker, who declined to talk to him, in person or over the telephone.

Being the "Committee of One" does not mean Pelosi is without lieutenants. She is close to two fellow Californians, both fiercely partisan, who head committees: George Miller (Education and Labor) and Henry Waxman (Oversight and Government Reform). Miller is regarded as her consigliere, always at her side. She is also considered close to moderate chairmen Ike Skelton (Armed Services) and John Spratt (Budget), plus liberal chairman Barney Frank (Financial Services).

That does not mean, however, that she always takes their advice. Witness her big blunder as speaker. Skelton, a seasoned student of international relations, told her the Armenian resolution would antagonize Turkey and thus constituted a foreign policy debacle in the making. Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, also opposed it (as he had when serving as President Bill Clinton's political aide). Pelosi insisted until some 45 House Democrats -- including Skelton -- opposed her.

The Armenian episode suggests a Pelosi decision has to approach the brink of disaster before Democrats speak out. Her popularity in the party beyond Capitol Hill is too great. When I asked one esteemed Democratic operative whether Pelosi's authority is without restraint, he called that a sexist question because I never would have asked that about Sam Rayburn or Tip O'Neill. Indeed, I would not have. They were not that powerful.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 09:58 AM

BB:

PErhaps you should start a thread on the topic of popular views of the Democratic Congress.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 10:30 AM

They have had a consistantly lower rating than the Bush Administration, haven't they?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 10:49 AM

I doubt that's possible.

"Consider how President Bush has degraded the office of attorney general.

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His first choice, John Ashcroft, helped railroad undue restrictions of civil liberties through Congress after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Ashcroft apparently had some red lines and later rebuffed the White House when it pushed him to endorse illegal wiretapping. Then came Alberto Gonzales who, while he was White House counsel, helped to redefine torture, repudiate the Geneva Conventions and create illegal detention camps. As attorney general, Mr. Gonzales helped cover up the administration's lawless behavior in anti-terrorist operations, helped revoke fundamental human rights for foreigners and turned the Justice Department into a branch of the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Gonzales resigned after his extraordinary incompetence became too much for even loyal Republicans. Now Mr. Bush wants the Senate to confirm Michael Mukasey, a well-respected trial judge in New York who has stunned us during the confirmation process by saying he believes the president has the power to negate laws and by not committing himself to enforcing Congressional subpoenas. He also has suggested that he will not uphold standards of decency during wartime recognized by the civilized world for generations.

After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Mr. Mukasey refused to detail his views on torture, he submitted written answers to senators' questions that were worse than his testimony. They suggest that he, like Mr. Gonzales, would enable Mr. Bush's lawless behavior and his imperial attitude toward Congress and the courts.

In a letter to the 10 Democrats on the committee, Mr. Mukasey refused to say whether he considered waterboarding (a method of extracting information by making a prisoner believe he is about to be drowned) to be torture. He said he found it "repugnant," but could not say whether it is illegal until he has been briefed on the interrogation programs that Mr. Bush authorized at Central Intelligence Agency prisons.

This is a crass dodge. Waterboarding is torture and was prosecuted as such as far back as 1902 by the United States military when used in a slightly different form on insurgents in the Philippines. It meets the definition of torture that existed in American law and international treaties until Mr. Bush changed those rules. Even the awful laws on the treatment of detainees that were passed in 2006 prohibited the use of waterboarding by the American military.

And yet the nominee for attorney general has no view on whether it would be legal for an employee of the United States government to subject a prisoner to that treatment? The only information Mr. Mukasey can possibly be lacking is whether Mr. Bush broke the law by authorizing the C.I.A. to use waterboarding — a judgment that the White House clearly does not want him to render in public because it could expose a host of officials to criminal accountability...."

NY Times editorial 11-1-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 11:25 AM

Amazing as it may be, according to all the polls I have seen the last year or so, the Democratic Congress has about HALF the approval rating of the Bush Administration.

Go look at the NYTimes, and see what it says...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush
From: Barry Finn
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 11:33 AM

My ake is that she's not putting up with those that want to compromise their duties when faced with a fight. She's made some blunders but her move on the Armenian issue was not one of them, it's not her fault that more of the Dems in Congress aren't willing to fight by her side instead of just caving in when the going gets tough. If she were to go along with the present Administration she would be doing a disservice to the people of this nation & to her post. The disgrace falls on those that continue to allow Bush & Co. to get their way, they've already driven US over the cliff do we need to let them drown US too? The recent Health Bill for children veto is just one more example of how little this Administration cares for it's people. They've no idea of what is best for this nation & they're so out of touch with the life of their everyday citizen that dying on their doorstep would only mean one more giant step to work their way over US!

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 01:37 PM

Well, I dunno. There was no question about whether or not they got voted in, despite all the dirty tricks Gonzalez, Bush and Rove could field.

But I haven't seen any recent polls, and I am disappointed in them myself.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 01:55 PM

I see no reason to be happy with either George Bush OR the Democratic Congress, BB, so what is your point? To be opposed to George Bush's administration hardly indicates unquestioning support of the Democrats...at least not in my mind, anyway. I regard them both as serving the same essential backing interests...mind you, not in exactly the same out front manner. They have to maintain the appearance of being different in order to preserve the illusion that the 2-party system in the USA provides its voters with a genuine choice that can lead to significant change.

There are some specific indiduals among the Democrats, such as Mr Kucinich, for example, who are offering a genuinely new choice that could lead to significant change...but they are not the people who are going to be chosen to lead the Democratic Party into the next election.

The $ySStem will make quite sure of that.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 07 - 09:32 PM

Poll: Vermont Wants Bush, Cheney Impeached
Nearly Two-Thirds Of State's Likely Voters Want President, VP Removed Before Term Ends

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 1, 2007

President Bush and Vice President Cheney still have almost 15 months left in their term, but that's too long for some: A poll of likely voters in Vermont shows almost two-thirds want impeachment proceedings initiated to remove them from office now.

(CBS) Earlier this year, town meetings across Vermont asked citizens if impeachment proceedings should be initiated against the president and vice president. Thirty-seven towns voted yes, and the Senate approved a resolution calling for impeachment.

Now a statewide poll conducted by CBS affiliate WCAX in Burlington, Vt. posed the question to 400 likely voters. Sixty-one percent said they would be in favor of Congress beginning impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Thirty-three percent opposed it, and 6% were not sure.

The numbers for Vice President Cheney differed only slightly: Sixty-four percent favored impeachment, while 31% opposed it.

Seventy-five percent of respondents said they categorized the president's performance as "fair" or "poor."

"I'm really overjoyed by this," said Jimmy Leas, a South Burlington lawyer who has been a vocal advocate of impeachment. He told WCAX correspondent Kate Duffy that the poll shows "here in Vermont, nearly two-thirds of the public understand we have a serious problem, and the way to address this is to remove the officials who are usurping power."

"The impeachment results are somewhat surprising, frankly, to me," Middlebury College professor and columnist Eric Davis said.

He said the numbers are a sign that Vermonters are extremely dissatisfied with the administration.

"Even though their terms are ending in a little bit more than a year, a majority of Vermonters don't want to even see them remaining in office until January 20, 2009."

Vermont's legislature took up the impeachment issue last spring. The Senate passed a resolution calling for the president's impeachment, but a similar effort failed in the House.

Constitutionally, only Congress can impeach an executive, yet it could be spurred to do so by a state legislature, or by the motion of a single representative. According to the Jefferson Manual, if a House member introduces impeachment as a question of privilege, it would supersede all other business before the Congress and must be addressed.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Nov 07 - 08:21 AM

The New Fellow Travelers

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page A19

Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, arrested the provisional government and installed a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Though the Russian Revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by Russians, who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612), I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the anniversary, I reread " Ten Days That Shook the World," the famed account of the revolution by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow traveler. Then I reread last week's press reports of the recent encounter between Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi Campbell, the British supermodel.

Just as I'd remembered, Reed's book superbly transmits the breathless energy of the autumn of 1917 -- "Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses" -- as well as his fascination with, and approval of, the violence he saw around him. After attending a mass funeral, he understood, he writes, why the Russians no longer need religion: "On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die." By contrast, he is abashed when he has to explain that in America, people try to change things by law -- a state of affairs that his new Russian comrades find "incredible."

Fast-forward 90 years, and surprisingly little has changed. True, the Russian Revolution itself is no longer much admired, not even by Reed's heirs on the far left. But the impulse that drew Reed to St. Petersburg remains. The Western weakness for other people's revolutionary violence, the belief in the glamour and benevolence of foreign dictators, and the insistence on seeing both through the prism of Western political debates, are still very much with us.

Exhibit A is Campbell. Though better known for her taste in shoes than for her opinions about Latin American economics, she nevertheless turned up in Caracas last week gushing about the "love and encouragement" Chávez pours into his welfare programs. Wearing what a Venezuelan newspaper called "a revolutionary and exquisite white dress from the prestigious Fendi fashion house," she praised the country for its "big waterfalls." Not surprisingly, Campbell did not mention the anti-Chávez demonstrations held in Caracas the week before her visit; proposed constitutional changes designed to let Chávez remain in power indefinitely; or Chávez's record of harassing opposition leaders and the media.

But then, that wasn't the point of her visit, just as it wasn't the point when actor Sean Penn, a self-conscious "radical" and avowed enemy of the American president, spent a whole day with Chávez. Together, the actor and the president toured the countryside. "I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country," Penn declared. Of course he found a great country! Penn wanted a country where he would win adulation for his views about American politics, and the Venezuelan president happily provided it.


In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia and the catwalks, Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration Reed once felt -- the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law. For all of his brilliance, Reed could not bring socialism to America. For all of his wealth, fame, media access and Hollywood power, Penn cannot oust George W. Bush. But by showing up in the company of Chávez, he can at least get a lot more attention for his opinions.

As for Venezuelan politics, or the Venezuelan people, they don't matter at all. The country is simply playing a role filled in the past by Russia, Cuba and Nicaragua -- a role to which it is, at the moment, uniquely suited. Clearly, Venezuela is easier to idealize than Iran and North Korea, the former's attitude toward women not being conducive to fashion models, the latter being downright hostile toward Hollywood. Venezuela is also warm, relatively close and a country of beautiful waterfalls.

Most important, Venezuela's leader not only dislikes the American president -- after all, many other heads of state do, too -- but refers to him as "the devil," a "dictator," a "madman" and a "killer." Who cares what Chávez actually does when Sean Penn isn't looking? Ninety years after the tragedy of the Russian Revolution, Venezuela has become the "kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer" for a whole new generation of fellow travelers. As long as the oil lasts.

[e-mail]

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

BB:

I think you need a different thread! At least Id on't see why the last post, which I found interesting, was related to views of the Bush Administration. I am glad you posted it, though.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Nov 07 - 10:35 AM

"Most important, Venezuela's leader not only dislikes the American president -- after all, many other heads of state do, too -- but refers to him as "the devil," a "dictator," a "madman" and a "killer." Who cares what Chávez actually does when Sean Penn isn't looking? "


All depends on what public you want the opinion of...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 07 - 12:45 PM

"n the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we've propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We've become inured to democracy-lite. That's why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.

This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf's.

More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he's championing democracy even as he strangles it. Mr. Bush repeated the word "freedom" 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a "Celebration of Freedom" concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was an Orwellian exercise in branding, nothing more. The sole point was to give cover to our habitual practice of cozying up to despots (especially those who control the oil spigots) and to our own government's embrace of warrantless wiretapping and torture, among other policies that invert our values.

Even if Mr. Bush had the guts to condemn General Musharraf, there is no longer any moral high ground left for him to stand on. Quite the contrary. Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.

Take the Musharraf assault on human-rights lawyers. Our president would not be so unsubtle as to jail them en masse. But earlier this year a senior Pentagon official, since departed, threatened America's major white-shoe law firms by implying that corporate clients should fire any firm whose partners volunteer to defend detainees in Guantánamo and elsewhere. For its part, Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department did not round up independent-minded United States attorneys and toss them in prison. It merely purged them without cause to serve Karl Rove's political agenda.

Tipping his hat in appreciation of Mr. Bush's example, General Musharraf justified his dismantling of Pakistan's Supreme Court with language mimicking the president's diatribes against activist judges. The Pakistani leader further echoed Mr. Bush by expressing a kinship with Abraham Lincoln, citing Lincoln's Civil War suspension of a prisoner's fundamental legal right to a hearing in court, habeas corpus, as a precedent for his own excesses. (That's like praising F.D.R. for setting up internment camps.) Actually, the Bush administration has outdone both Lincoln and Musharraf on this score: Last January, Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution."

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal...."

New York Times editorial, 11-11-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 07 - 09:27 PM

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

(From Vanity Fair magazine. Link below.)

The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy
of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz,
sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz December 2007

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/bush200712?printable=true¤tPage=all

The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is
invincible. Illustration by Edward Sorel.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush
administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq
war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil
liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-
page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond
the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not
driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven
years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent.
Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a
tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a
national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time
this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage
defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that
are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an
American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—
becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the
United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have
not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the
skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been
investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the
technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the
president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean
ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply
dependent on both.
...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 10:02 PM

The late Norman Mailer had an interesting dialogue with his son, John Buffalo Mailer, in a 2006 interview. An excerpt:

"NM: Come on, man, save time. These administration honchos are very, very intelligent with what they are intelligent at, but they're stupid as sludge when they are stupid. I will say this characterizes almost all political regimes. Take Camelot. As open and bright and quick as the Kennedy administration proved to be, look at how wrong they were on the Bay of Pigs. Why? Because they didn't know a lot about Cuba when they came into office, so they listened to Allen Dulles and the CIA. It was a very painful lesson, but they learned that the CIA wasn't always right.

OK, all I'm getting at is the Bushies in the wake of the 2000 election had a host of problems for which war could be a pro-tem solution. The novelist in me would even warrant that the cynics among the Bush honchos loved the idea of selling America on bringing democracy to Iraq. They may even have known they were not going to succeed on any real level. But they did have great faith in the stupidity of the American people. So, they assumed they could carry it off one way or another. With our mighty military, how could they not find something they could paint as a positive?

JBM: I was twenty-four years old at the time, a writer/actor in LA, and I saw what was going to happen if we invaded. How could they not have seen it? It's hard for me to believe that they didn't know Iraq would turn into a quagmire.

NM: Listen, these are men who have been successful all their lives. They've gone through many crises. Their feeling is, "Yes, there's going to be trouble. A lot of shit will hit the fan, a good deal is probably going to go wrong. But we will handle it." Not Bush, but Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld. Take a guy like Cheney. His whole attitude is: "Can do. Will do." I would say their honcho feeling goes like this: "We'll take the sludge that comes our way, but it will be a lot better than chasing bin Laden all over Afghanistan and Pakistan. That won't do it. The Democrats will be too ready to carp about everything that's going wrong in America. So let's shift the war to Iraq. This country is so patriotic. 9/11 brought us back again to operating speed and now we can coast on that patriotism." You have to understand the depth and breadth of the cynical optimism these guys possess. They are able to live with very bad odors, spiritual stinks most of us can't endure. Their strength is in their ability to avoid bad conscience. Immoral is not even a word to apply to these guys. Amoral is no better. They have a God-given or diabolically driven capacity to live with bad conscience. They really don't give a damn. "Hey," goes their credo, "I'm tough. So I can live with this. Others couldn't, but I can take it. I will endure. And even if it doesn't work, it will work anyway, because we will always be able to find a new slew of spokesmen, even intelligent people, who will claim that democracy is beginning to work in Iraq. All those neocons. They keep saying that the Middle East is ready for democracy. Well, I think they are a bunch of Israel-serving, self-serving sons of bitches myself, but if they are right, then we get the oil, and if they're wrong, we'll yet be able to blame them for the consequences." So, yes, John, to speak for myself again, I take them seriously. As they saw it in 2001, the country was in bad shape and they needed a tool big-time to clear it up, especially when they were bound and determined to send all that tax money upstairs to the rich.

JBM: So, instead, they send the poor to die in Iraq.

NM: Don't you think that is one of the themes of history, which repeats itself over and over?

JBM: My question is, Why is the chain never broken?

NM: The reason may be that there are too many strong and skilled people who spend their lives working to keep the chain intact. They labor at it reverently. So they succeed in keeping the majority stupid, even if in a democracy it's just fifty-two percent of the voting populace. They know so well that stupidity is their greatest asset, their political mojo. They work, systematically, to enhance it. They take pride in generating more and more stupidity even as advertising men take pride in selling a piece of crap. After all, anyone can market a Rolls Royce. But try palming off sleaze on a big scale. Hell, yeah! "Bring 'em on.""

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 10:31 PM

The Los Angeles Times reports on new estimates for the overall cost of Bush's adventures in the Middle East:

"WASHINGTON -- The total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could balloon to $3.5 trillion over the next decade because of such "hidden" costs as oil market disruptions, foregone investments, long-term health care for veterans and interest payments on borrowed war funding, according to a report released by congressional Democrats on Tuesday.

The projection, by the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee, is more than $1 trillion higher than a recent forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which accounted only for direct spending and interest payments and assumed a moderate withdrawal of troops between now and 2017.
...
"The full costs of this war to our economy are manifested in ways that have never been accounted for by this administration: We are funding this war with borrowed money, Americans are paying more at the gas pump, and it will take years for our military to recover from the damage of the president's failed war strategy," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told a news conference Tuesday.

For the Iraq and Afghanistan wars so far, those costs total about $1.6 trillion, the report found -- almost double the direct appropriations of $804 billion in the 2003-2008 fiscal years. Of that, $1.3 trillion, or more than twice the $607 billion appropriated, is for Iraq alone.

The report by the Joint Economic Committee Democrats -- Republicans on the panel did not participate -- comes as the House and the Senate prepare to vote, probably this week, on a $50-billion spending bill for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would provide the funding on the condition that the Bush administration begins immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, with a goal of complete withdrawal by Dec. 15, 2008.

If Bush does not agree to the conditions and vetoes the bill, then he "won't get his $50 billion," Reid said, and the Pentagon would have to use its own budget to cover the costs of the conflicts. President Bush recently signed a $470-billion Defense Department appropriations bill that covers mainly costs unrelated to the wars.

Press Secretary Dana Perino defended the administration's Iraq policies, pointing to reduced violence and improvements in the Iraqi economy. She said the Joint Economic Committee report has "obvious motivations" behind it.

"This committee is known for being partisan and political," Perino said. "They did not consult or cooperate with the Republicans on the committee. And so I think it is an attempt to muddy the waters on what has been some positive developments being reported out of Iraq."

Aside from the obvious costs of direct appropriations and the interest on borrowed funds, the report said the war takes money from such "productive investments" as education, law enforcement and health care.

The report noted that more than 30,000 troops had been wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although it does not specify how many have been significantly disabled, it found that costs related to their inability to return to productive work and to their need for care, thus requiring family members to quit their jobs, could total more than $30 billion.

The price of oil also has been affected by the war, the report said, with the cost of a barrel almost tripling from $37 a barrel the week before the U.S. invasion to more than $98 a barrel last week. Although it is difficult to quantify the size of the war's effect on prices, the report said, it has "been one factor contributing to a generally unsettled state of oil markets over the past several years."

---

The notion that this war has directly driven the rising cost of gas is one which I had not thought of; I have often mentioned the huge hidden costs to the country in human agony of neurosis and psychosis derived directly from mind-wrenching battle in a nebulous cause. I can't think of any more dissonant, mind-breaking position for a young man to be in than to destroy other humans and find his justification wanting.

A
...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 09:21 AM

Washington Post:

An Opening For Mr. Competent

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A19

Karl Rove is the not the genius he used to be. Partially responsible for the mismanagement of two wars, the collapse of American prestige around the world, the failure to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive, the loss of Republican control of Congress, the passage of nothing much in terms of legislation, the almost-certain defeat of a Republican presidential candidate next time out, and the virtual evisceration of the GOP, he is easy to dismiss if only on account of his record. But when he (gleefully) lambastes the Democratic Congress as a failure, he is certainly on to something. This is a man who knows ineptness when he sees it.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Rove enumerated the negatives: "No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform." The noes roll on and on, and aside from a partisan dig here or there, no one can quarrel with this. The Democratic Congress, like the pudding that Churchill rejected, lacks theme. To the left, it is a failure; in the middle, it is immaterial; and to the right, it presents an opportunity for restoration.

The equilibrium of ineptitude -- fools at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue -- is not lost on the American people. They award Congress even lower approval ratings than they do the president, about 20 percent in the case of the Hill, about 30 percent in the case of George W. Bush. What they think of the crop of presidential candidates is not yet clear, but I, for one, pick up the paper in the morning and read that the economy is sinking, that oil could top $100 a barrel and that a pandemic of house foreclosures is sweeping our nation of sweet cul-de-sacs -- and the people who want to be president have precious little to say about any of these issues.

Enter Mike Bloomberg. He is the mayor of New York, endowed with near-universal support in his city and about $13 billion in the bank. Intimations of his presidential ambitions are getting stronger. He cooperated with a Newsweek cover story that, whether he intended it or not, left the clear impression that he can hardly be restrained from running. More to the point, his associates and friends do not, as you might expect, caution me against believing that a presidential run is under consideration. On the contrary, they fairly drool like Pavlov's famous mutts when the words "White House" are mentioned.

How such a feat can be accomplished -- how the electoral college can be won and how an independent can govern with a Congress composed of Democrats and Republicans -- is not the issue for the moment. Instead, what animates and energizes the hope of a Bloomberg candidacy is the utter failure of the current political establishment to deal with, not to mention solve, the immense problems facing us.


Michael Dukakis ran for the presidency partially on a platform of competence. The American people took one look at him in a battle tank and concluded that someone else should be commander in chief. Yet things may be different for a different Mike from, of all places, Massachusetts (Bloomberg grew up in Medford).

A glance at the sky shows more than winter's coming -- maybe a recession, too. All sorts of things are going wrong and some of them, like the crisis on Wall Street, cannot even be gauged. Just who will be stuck owning worthless paper based on worthless mortgages secured by nearly worthless houses is still unknown. Not even the financial institutions -- Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, etc. -- knew what was happening or know, will you believe, what is now happening. Bad times -- probably very bad times -- are coming.

So competence will have a certain charm. (And Bloomberg is not short on actual charm, either.) These circumstances, not to mention an ability -- if not a determination -- to spend maybe $1 billion on a campaign, could radically change American politics. The chances of this happening are not great, I know, but Ross Perot did get 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992 (nary a vote in the electoral college, though) and he was perceived as a bit weird and totally unsuited for the presidency. Bloomberg is a different story altogether.

Will Mayor Mike run? He might. Can he win? I still doubt it. But my doubts are nothing compared with my chagrin when I read an op-ed by Karl Rove with which I keep nodding in agreement. It takes a pretty broken system for Rove to be right. Maybe it will take a Bloomberg billion to fix it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 09:34 AM

Washington Post:

The Can't-Win Democratic Congress

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A19

Democrats in Congress are discovering what it's like to live in the worst of all possible worlds. They are condemned for selling out to President Bush and condemned for failing to make compromises aimed at getting things done.

Democrats complain that this is unfair, and, in some sense, it is. But who said that politics was fair?

Over the short run, Democratic congressional leaders can count on little support from their party's presidential candidates, particularly Barack Obama and John Edwards. Both have decided their best way of going after front-runner Hillary Clinton-- who has been in Washington since her husband's election as president in 1992 -- is to criticize politics as usual.

At this weekend's Democratic fundraising dinner in Des Moines, Obama and Edwards not only attacked Bush fiercely but also issued broadsides against the larger status quo.

When Obama assailed "the same old Washington textbook campaigns" and declared that he was "sick and tired of Democrats thinking that the only way to look tough on national security is by talking and acting and voting like George Bush Republicans," he was aiming at Clinton. But Obama was echoing what many in his party have been saying about their congressional leadership.

And when Edwards said that "Washington is awash with corporate money, with lobbyists who pass it out, with politicians who ask for it," he was criticizing a system in which his own party is implicated.

It makes sense for Democratic presidential candidates to distance themselves from the party's Washington wing. A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the performance of Democratic congressional leaders, an increase in dissatisfaction of 18 points since February. Among Democrats, disapproval of their own leaders rose from 16 percent in February to 35 percent now; in the same period, disapproval among independents rose from 41 percent to 56 percent.


Democrats in Congress say that their achievements of a minimum-wage increase, lobbying reform, improvements in the student loan program and last week's override of Bush's veto of a $23 billion water-projects bill are being overlooked -- and that Bush and his congressional allies have systematically blocked even bipartisan efforts to produce further results.

For example: The increases in financing for the State Children's Health Insurance Program passed after Democrats made a slew of concessions to Republicans to win broad GOP support. But in the House, Democrats were short of the votes needed to override the president's veto, so the proposal languishes.

Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, notes that he has bargained productively with Republicans and that his budget bills have secured dozens of their votes. But the president seems intent on a budget confrontation.

In a letter to Bush on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to underscore the president's role in the stalemate by calling for a "dialogue" to settle budget differences that "have never been so great that we cannot reach agreement on a spending plan that meets the needs of the American people."

They went on: "Key to this dialogue, however, is some willingness on your part to actually find common ground. Thus far, we have seen only a hard line drawn and a demand that we send only legislation that reflects your cuts to critical priorities of the American people."

Pelosi and Reid have a point, and they want Bush to get the blame for a budget impasse. But Bush seems to have decided that if he can't raise his own dismal approval ratings, he will drag the Democrats down with him. So far, that is what's happening.

Yet the budget is just one of the Democrats' problems. Their own partisans are furious that they have not been able to force a change in Bush's Iraq policy. In the Pew survey, 47 percent said the Democrats had not gone "far enough" in challenging Bush on Iraq. Many in the rank and file are also angry that the Democratic-led Senate let through the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general even though he declined to classify waterboarding as a form of torture.

Congressional Democrats are caught between two contradictory desires. One part of the electorate wants them to be practical dealmakers, another wants them to live up to the standard Obama set in the peroration of his Iowa speech when he praised those who "stood up . . . when it was risky, stood up when it was hard, stood up when it wasn't popular." Is there a handbook somewhere on how to be a courageous dealmaker? Pelosi and Reid would love to read it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 02:09 PM

WIMBERLY, TEXAS -- Los Angeles Times

Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. ... And then there is the added heartbreak -- a word he uses -- of his split with President Bush.

Dowd, 46, is one of the nation's leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush's policies -- policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

He began expressing his disillusionment, tentatively at first, at a UC Berkeley conference in January. Since then, he has grown more forceful.

On the administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks: "I asked, 'Why aren't we doing bonds, war bonds? Why aren't we asking the country to do something instead of just . . . go shopping and get back on airplanes?' "

On the White House stand against same-sex marriage: "Why are we having the federal government get involved? . . . Does a thing limiting someone's rights and aimed at a particular constituency belong in the U.S. Constitution?"

On the war in Iraq: "I guess somebody would make the argument, well, the Iraq war was about defending ourselves. But it seems an awfully huge stretch these days to say that."

With a rueful laugh and, at one point, a catch in his throat, Dowd offered a lengthy account of his break with Bush during hours of conversation at his 18-acre ranch in the green Hill Country outside Austin. He puffed a cigar, and then another, as the fading sun glinted off the Blanco River. A CD player cycled through sacred music and country songs.

Dowd is not the first Bush ally to part with the administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill contributed to a book that likened the president at Cabinet meetings to a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people." John J. Dilulio Jr., who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives, left with a shot at "Mayberry Machiavellis." Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who once led U.S. forces in Iraq, accused the administration of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan.

But Dowd was a part of Bush's political inner circle, enjoying a degree of power and intimacy that made his criticism all the more unexpected -- and hurtful to those still close to the president, many of whom are Dowd's friends.

"I care about him as a human being," said Mark McKinnon, a former Dowd business partner who produced Bush's campaign ads and sometimes bicycles with the president. "The problem was not just what he said, but that he never voiced any of those concerns directly to people he was supposed to be advising."

Dowd responded that he shared his feelings with McKinnon and others close to Bush more than once before going public.

In speaking out, Dowd has not only strained personal relationships but raised larger questions about loyalty in the political realm. Is he obliged to stand by his old boss, whose success made Dowd one of the most sought-after consultants in the campaign business? Or does he owe it to the country to openly dissent, even if he didn't do so from the start?

The answer, for Dowd, is simple, even if his life these days is less so. "When you're a public advocate of something in the high-profile way that I was, and all of a sudden it doesn't turn out the way you thought, the counterweight is not to just sit quietly and let it go," Dowd said. "I had to say something in a high-profile way."

His disenchantment with the president built over several years. Dowd went public at a Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor's race; Dowd was both a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee, where he landed after Bush took office, and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection effort. It was a question about the president that set Dowd off and, looking back, liberated him.

"Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we've ever had?" asked a young man. "I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"

Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of the oldest of his three sons, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq. "Now, am I a person who stays up at night thinking about that? Yeah. . . . Do we have hopes and dreams and disappointments? . . . Yes," Dowd said.

But when things don't turn out as hoped "it does not mean that you somehow have to walk down the street in a hair shirt with a sign that says, 'Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,' " he said. "We move on."

Dowd now sees the confrontation as "a gift [that] gave me the opportunity to start expressing things more and more publicly."

In March, he wrote a piece for Texas Monthly magazine suggesting Bush had undercut his "gut-level bond with the American public." Finally, applying torch to bridge in spectacular fashion, Dowd detailed his break with Bush in a front-page interview in the New York Times. No one in the White House was alerted. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 07:05 AM

From the Washington Post:

The Icebergs Ahead For the Democrats

By David S. Broder
Thursday, November 15, 2007; Page A25

As the Democratic presidential race finally gets down to brass tacks, two issues are becoming paramount. But only one of them is clearly on the table.

That is the issue of illegal immigration. A very smart Democrat, a veteran of the Clinton administration, told me that he expects it to be a key part of any Republican campaign and that he is worried about his party's ability to respond.

I think he has good reason to worry. The failure of the Democratic Congress, like its Republican predecessor, to enact comprehensive immigration reform, including improved border security, has left individual states and local communities to struggle with the problem. Some are showing a high degree of tolerance and flexibility. Others are being more punitive. But all of them are running into controversy.

I noticed a new Siena College Research Institute poll of registered voters in New York. It found heavy opposition to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposal to permit undocumented aliens to obtain driver's licenses; nearly two-thirds opposed the latest version.

Moreover, the issue is part of a weakening of support for Spitzer, who now has an almost 2-to-1 negative job rating and, for the first time, an unfavorable image overall. Asked if they are inclined to support him for reelection in 2010, only 25 percent said yes, while 49 percent said they would prefer an anonymous "someone else." It was just last year that Spitzer was elected in a landslide. Spitzer announced yesterday that he was abandoning the driver's license idea.

That is New York, home state of both Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani. And the driver's license question is the one that tripped up Clinton when she was asked about it at the Philadelphia debate last month and gave answers that were indecisive -- and nearly indecipherable.


The other candidates had more time to compose an answer, so they were spared the embarrassment. It was the pummeling she received from Barack Obama and John Edwards during and after that debate (and from moderator Tim Russert) that brought her husband, former president Bill Clinton, into the campaign, with the charge, as he put it, that "those boys have been getting tough on her lately."

The former president's intervention -- volunteered during a campaign appearance on her behalf in South Carolina -- raised the second, and largely unspoken, issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration: the two-headed campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency.

In his view, which I share, this is a prospect that will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first female president -- or, for that matter, the first black president.

As my friend says, "there is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president."

No precedent exists for such an arrangement, and no ground rules have been -- or probably can be -- written. When Bill Clinton was president, the large policy enterprise that was entrusted to the first lady -- health-care reform -- crashed in ruins.

The causes were complex, and some of the burden falls on other people -- Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the interest groups and, yes, the press. But as one who reported and wrote in great detail and length about that whole enterprise, I can also tell you that the awkwardness of having an unelected but uniquely influential partner of the president in charge affected every step of the process, from the gestation of the plan to its final demise. She was never again asked to take on such a project.

And this was simply the confusion sown by having the first lady in charge. Put the former president into the picture -- however "sanitized" or insulated his role is supposed to be -- and the dimensions of the problem become even larger.

No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependence of their political and personal partnership.

No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.

It is a difficult question for any of the Democratic rivals to raise. But it lingers, even if unasked.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 10:11 AM

An interesting point, BB. ALthough, I grump because it is in no wise related to the thread topic.

I dunno though. I wouldn't mind having Bill Clinton OR ELizabeth Kucinich or Michele Obama coaching from the sidelines. I think any one of them would provide much-needed balance, energy, and a resonant sounding board.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Nov 07 - 12:10 PM

From the UK Independent:

US power company linked to Bush is named in database as a top polluter
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 16 November 2007
An American power company with close financial links to President George Bush has been named as one of the world's top producers of global warming pollution.

The first-ever worldwide database of such pollution also reveals the rapid growth in global-warming emissions by power plants in China, South Africa and India. Power plants already produce 40 per cent of US greenhouse gas and 25 per cent of the world's.

But it is the enormous carbon footprint of Southern Company – among the largest financiers of Republican Party politicians – which has raised eyebrows. Southern's employees handed George Bush $217,047 to help him get elected twice, and they and the company have contributed an extraordinary $6.2m to Republican campaigns since 1990 according to the Centre for Responsive Politics.

A single Southern Company plant in Juliette, Georgia already emits more carbon dioxide annually that Brazil's entire power sector. The company is in the top two of America's dirtiest utility polluters and sixth worst in the world.

Apart from vague promises by the Democratic presidential hopefuls, there is no pressure on this or any other power company to clean up their act and cut back on CO2 emissions.

Politicians from both parties fear the influence of Southern, which spends huge sums both on lobbying and on political campaigns and is among the biggest power players in Washington. It has seen off numerous attempts to impose controls on the amounts of pollution it pumps out.

The link between massive cash contributions by America's power companies and political arm-twisting in Washington has rarely been put into such sharp relief. Environmentalists have long suspected that President Bush's dogged refusal to sign up to international agreements to control global warming was linked to campaign contributions.

Yesterday's report has finally identified the impact these power companies are having on global warming. Southern, which earned $14.4bn in revenues in 2006, is using its influence to block the introduction of wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy sources on the grounds that it would eat into its profits. ..."


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Nov 07 - 09:41 AM

Another story from the madness imposed on the nation by merchants of war. This one is a study of a man who carries the horror in his head, and wants his life back. Multiply by hundreds of thousands to get the impression of W's contribution to the American mind.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Homey
Date: 18 Nov 07 - 01:07 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/15/AR2007111502032.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

...Nicolas Sarkozy's trip last week to the United States was marked by a highly successful White House visit and a rousing speech to Congress in which he not only called America "the greatest nation in the world" (how many leaders of any country say that about another?) but also pledged solidarity with the United States on Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation. This just a few months after he sent his foreign minister to Iraq to signal an openness to cooperation and an end to Chirac's reflexive obstructionism.

That's France. In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is long gone, voted out of office and into a cozy retirement as Putin's concubine at Gazprom. His successor is the decidedly pro-American Angela Merkel, who concluded an unusually warm visit with Bush this week.
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All this, beyond the ken of Democrats, is duly noted by new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who in an interview with Sky News on Sunday remarked on "the great change that is taking place," namely "that France and Germany and the European Union are also moving more closely with America." ....

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Nov 07 - 12:50 PM

Politics undercut species act, suits say

In a twist, an Interior Department investigation provides much of the grist for the legal action.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 20, 2007 edition
.

...
Wiped out across most of its range in the American Southwest, the Mexican garter snake was considered a shoo-in for listing under the Endangered Species Act. It got nothing.

Neither did the Mississippi gopher frog. Though listed as endangered in 2001, the now-rare amphibian got not a single acre of habitat set aside on its behalf. The loach minnow, once common in Arizona and New Mexico rivers, saw 143,680 acres of proposed critical habitat chopped by more than half.

In each case, Bush administration political appointees overrode federal scientists' recommendations, with little or no justification, according to six lawsuits filed Thursday by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an endangered species advocacy group.

The Bush administration is no stranger to being sued under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But in a tack that could signal a major new legal challenge, last week's suits mark one of the few times Interior Department officials have been sued not merely for bureaucratic foot-dragging, but because of deliberate political interference with the ESA, observers say.

"This wave of lawsuits is different – and what makes them so different is that the agency itself and its inspector general have provided a lot of compelling evidence of political interference with the proper functioning of the act," says J.B. Ruhl, a law professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee and an expert on the ESA.

A big factor in the CBD's legal fusillade hinges on the April release of a scathing report by the Interior Department's inspector general on the actions of Julie MacDonald, the department's former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks. The report found numerous questionable actions on endangered species and criticized her release of internal documents to outside groups opposed to the ESA.

After Ms. MacDonald resigned in May, agency officials reviewing her work identified at least eight species cases that may have been affected. But the CBD claims documents show a pattern of ESA interference affecting many more cases – and by other officials besides MacDonald.

Though declining to comment on the lawsuits, an Interior Department spokesman says they are part of an ongoing wave of litigation by activists that dates back more than a decade. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Nov 07 - 07:47 PM

What is popular now is manufacturing support for WW 3

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BAR20071122&articleId=7411

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Nov 07 - 07:56 PM

Putin puts Russia on nuclear alert and aligns with China and middle east.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2910112.ece


It looks like they are going to let us have one more Christmas.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Nov 07 - 09:34 AM

Former press secretary accuses Bush, Cheney of deceiving public about CIA leak case




Associated Press - November 20, 2007 5:43 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is accusing President Bush and Vice President Cheney of deceit in the CIA leak case.

In an excerpt from his upcoming book, McClellan describes the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby were not involved in the leak.

He writes, "There was one problem. It was not true." McClellan says he had unknowingly passed along false information. He says 5 of the highest-ranking White House officials were involved, including Rove, Libby, Cheney, Bush and his chief of staff Andrew Card.

...(AP)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Nov 07 - 10:00 AM

...President Bush recently vetoed Congress's main social spending bill, for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. He said it — along with Congress's other planned spending bills — would recklessly overshoot his spending target by a total of $205 billion over five years. By Mr. Bush's own earlier reasoning, that figure is bogus. Adjusted for inflation and population, Congress's proposed increases amount to zero.

Mr. Bush's sudden passion for fiscal discipline is hypocritical in other ways. The bill he vetoed would pay for programs like college financial aid, Head Start, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer research, rural health programs, mine safety and job training. Mr. Bush wanted to cut $7 billion in 2008, while Congress wanted a $5 billion increase. But even as he was vetoing the bill, his aides were proposing to add another $51 billion to the deficit to shield the nation's wealthiest money managers from having to pay their fair share of taxes. The House had passed a bill to raise taxes on hedge fund managers and buyout partners, and to use the revenue to offset tax relief for less affluent taxpayers. The White House rejects the tax increase, but is happy to borrow the $51 billion, thus sparing today's titans from taxes while passing on the cost to future taxpayers.

It is clear that Mr. Bush's threat to veto Congress's proposed spending bills has nothing to do with fiscal discipline. It's all about appealing to his base and distracting attention from his failings, like Iraq. Mr. Bush will no doubt persist in that mode as long as his Republican allies allow him to.

There are signs, however, that Congressional Republicans are becoming uneasy. The House upheld Mr. Bush's veto of the social spending bill, but narrowly. With polls showing Americans increasingly anxious about the economy, ever fewer Republicans can risk linking their fates to Mr. Bush's obstinacy.

...

(NY Times)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Nov 07 - 01:56 PM

RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington , DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
Law Enforcement

I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

College

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS
- I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
- I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
- I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.
- With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
- I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
- I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
- I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
- I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
- I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
- I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
- I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
- I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
- My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.
- My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
- I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
- I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
- I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
- I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.
- I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
- I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
- I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
- I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
- I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
- I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.
- I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
- I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
- I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.
- I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.
- In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
- I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
- I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.
- I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES
-All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
- All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
- All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Nov 07 - 04:19 PM

can anyone here help me pay back about $9 Trillion that I borrowed?
http://stb.msn.com/i/D0/A2D5F7163097D3E91EBCC4879A16D1.gif

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Nov 07 - 02:34 PM

TWO BOOBS FINALLY SEE EYE TO EYE...

"It was, let's face it, inevitable. And so, on Wednesday, at the swearing-in of Attorney General Michael Mukasey at the Justice Department, former attorney general John D. Ashcroft was reunited with "The Spirit of Justice," the 12-foot Art Deco-era sculpture his aides once famously covered with giant blue drapes at a cost of more than $8,000.

The statue, also known as "Minnie Lou," was ordered uncovered in 2005 in one of the signal achievements of the Alberto R. Gonzales attorney generalship. The decision was made by Paul Corts, assistant attorney general for administration, who is now president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

Blame, or credit, for the coverup fell to advance aide Lani Miller, who reportedly acted after Ashcroft expressed unhappiness about appearing in news photos with the bare-breasted statue over his head.

Meanwhile, a report by the department's inspector general yesterday listed "Restoring Confidence in the Department of Justice" as the No. 2 priority (after terrorism) in the Top Management and Performance Challenges for 2007.

"An immediate challenge facing Department of Justice leadership is the need to restore confidence in the department," the report said, "both with department employees and with the public. ..."

See picture of Ashcroft and the left other right boob at the Washington Post.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Homey
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 08:50 AM

As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone Shifts
New York Times November 25, 2007

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq:

acknowledging that success,

trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there,

highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

Former Senator John Edwards regularly brings up Iraq, but focuses on his opponents' judgment.

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party's primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party's nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

If security continues to improve, President Bush could become less of a drag on his party, too, and Republicans may have an easier time zeroing in on other issues, such as how the Democrats have proposed raising taxes in difficult economic times.

"The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton's and a proponent of the military buildup. "If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it — how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in."

At the same time, there is no assurance that the ebbing of violence is more than a respite or represents a real trend that could lead to lasting political stability or coax those who have fled the capital to return to their homes. Past military successes have faded with new rounds of car bombings and kidnappings, like the market bombing that killed at least eight on Friday in Baghdad.

Neither Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama nor the other Democratic candidates have backed away from their original opposition to the troop escalation, and they all still favor a quick withdrawal from Iraq. But Mrs. Clinton, for one, has not said how quickly she would remove most combat forces from Iraq or how many she would leave there as president. Former Senator John Edwards, by contrast, has emphasized that he would remove all combat troops from the country, while Mr. Obama favors withdrawal at a rate of one to two brigades a month. Those plans stand in contrast to the latest American strategy of keeping most American combat brigades in Iraq but giving them an expanded role in training and supporting Iraqi forces....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/politics/25dems.html?hp

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 01:23 PM

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE DECREE

We have a new colony/protectorate

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-11.html

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 01:26 PM

NEW ILLEGAL BELIEFS http://www.rense.com/general79/rduh.htm


this is the worst news I have seen this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 02:50 PM

''(a) IN GENERAL.—In carrying out this subtitle,
Secretary shall ensure that the efforts of the Department
prevent ideologically based violence and homegrown
rorism as described in this subtitle do not violate
stitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties
States citizens and lawful permanent residents."

Donuel, I have read this act all the way through. It establishes a commission to study the root causes of radicalism in individuals, which is to produce a report on its findings, and then disband.

While I think it is misguided in many ways, and makes unwarranted assumptions, it does not make acts of speech illegal, as far as I can see, that are legal. It does provide wiggleroom for abuse under the notion that threatening violence is comparable to acts of violence, granted, but it provides no penalties or enforcement actions against them.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Nov 07 - 08:33 PM

The Mistresses of George W. Bush is a stunning pinup calendar of secret relationships maintained by the Resident.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Nov 07 - 11:41 AM

After concluding that a Bush administration appointee "may have improperly influenced" several rulings on whether to protect imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service has revised seven decisions on protecting species across the country.

The policy reversal, sparked by inquiries by the Interior Department's inspector general and by the House Natural Resources Committee, underscores the extent to which the administration is still dealing with the fallout from the tenure of Julie MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks who repeatedly overruled agency scientists' recommendations on endangered-species decisions. MacDonald resigned from the department in May after she was criticized in a report by the inspector general and as she was facing congressional scrutiny.

In a letter dated Nov. 23 to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.), acting Director Kenneth Stansell of the Fish and Wildlife Service said that the agency spent four months reviewing eight Endangered Species Act decisions made under MacDonald and is revising seven of them. Those rulings affected 17 species, including 12 species of Hawaiian picture-wing flies.

In the course of those reviews, for example, Mitch King, then the agency's Region 6 director, said in a June memo to headquarters that while the field and regional office's scientific review concluded there is "substantial" evidence that the white-tailed prairie dog faces a risk of extinction, "the change to 'not substantial' only occurred at Ms. MacDonald's suggestion."

Stansell wrote to Rahall that Fish and Wildlife will launch a one-year investigation into whether to protect the white-tailed prairie dog. Agency officials have also decided not to de-list the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, a threatened mammal that lives in Wyoming and Colorado.

"The Service believes that revising the seven identified decisions is supported by scientific evidence and the proper legal standards," Stansell wrote. "As resources allow, these revisions will be completed as expeditiously as possible."


Rahall, who released the letter yesterday, said in a statement that the agency's move highlights the extent to which political ideology had influenced the administration's approach to protecting plants and animals.

"Julie MacDonald's dubious leadership and waste of taxpayer dollars will now force the agency to divert precious time, attention, and resources to go back and see that the work is done in a reliable and untainted manner," Rahall said. "The agency turned a blind eye to her actions -- the repercussions of which will not only hurt American taxpayers, but could also imperil the future of the very creatures that the endangered species program intends to protect."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Barry Finn
Date: 30 Nov 07 - 04:34 PM

Amos, this is not unusual or new, this is what's been happening in all departments. Look at the Health, Education & Energy Departments for blantant examples. These bastards have been fucking with every facet of our well being. To them we are pawns in their play for power, money & politics. We the people are the next species to expire.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 03:55 PM

Cheney's Doctors Detect Signs of Heart

Sudden Appearance of Major Organ Confounds Experts
((From the Borowitz Report)

In a stunning development that has confounded medical experts around the world, doctors examining Vice President Dick Cheney said today that they have detected signs of a heart.

The vice president was rushed to the hospital over the weekend after complaining of chest pains, but no one in Mr. Cheney's inner circle suspected that a human heart was the cause.

"We had been operating under the assumption that he didn't have one," said chief of staff David Addington, who said that Mr. Cheney also has not had a soul since 1995, when it was purchased by the Halliburton Company.

At George Washington University Hospital, doctors struggled to contain their excitement about what appeared to be the medical anomaly of the century: the sudden appearance of a human heart in a 66-year-old man.

"It is too early to say conclusively," said Dr. Carol Foyler, head of the team of doctors who examined the vice president. "But so far the beating and pumping sounds we are hearing in the vice president's chest cavity are very much consistent with his having a heart." ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 04:10 PM

There aren't any.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 06:08 PM

Dr. Fink suggests that the lack of breast feeding may be the cause.

By the way I have a great photo of Mrs Cheney and Dan Foley

and the video of the singing Republicans doing Elvira including Lott, Foley and Ashcroft.

My most treasured video of all time is of then Vice President GHW Bush kissing Sadddam on both cheeks as part of the vice president's duties to diplomatically celebrate Saddam Hussein's birthday in Baghdad.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Dec 07 - 08:25 AM

Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year's elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.

Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.

"There's a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic," said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. "Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies." ... (NY Times for 12-2-07)

The Federal Register typically grows fat with regulations churned out in the final weeks of any administration. But the push for such rules has become unusually intense because of the possibility that Democrats in 2009 may consolidate control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives for the first time in 14 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Dec 07 - 08:44 AM

"resident Bush's veto of Congress's main social spending bill has Democratic leaders looking for places to make trims to satisfy the president's sudden zeal for fiscal discipline. A small, but sensible, place to begin would be to eliminate the bill's $28 million increase for one of Mr. Bush's signature boondoggles — abstinence-only sex education.

Federal government spending on highly restrictive abstinence-only sex education has ballooned under President Bush, while evidence of the program's danger as a public health strategy has continued to mount.

Last April, a Congressionally mandated evaluation found that students who received abstinence instruction in elementary and middle school were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not get such instruction.

States are catching on. Last month, Virginia became the 14th state to reject federal grant money for abstinence-only sex education to pursue the comprehensive approach supported by science and most Americans. That approach encourages abstinence but also arms young people with information about sexually transmitted diseases, contraceptives and pregnancy...."

(From Science, Sex and Savings, a Times editorial.)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 03:52 PM

CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND
The Progress Report
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, and Ali Frick
December 3, 2007

IRAQ
Rove's Revisionist History

A little over a week ago on PBS's The Charlie Rose Show, President Bush's former political adviser Karl Rove attempted to re-write the history of the lead-up to the Iraq war by claiming the Bush administration did not push war in the fall of 2002 for political purposes. It is widely believed that "the vote's timing" was part of an effort to increase pressure on the party's wavering senators to back the president. Yet Rove told Rose, "The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002." "We didn't think it belonged in the confines of the election." Rove's version of events was disputed last Friday by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who told MSNBC, "that's not the way it worked." Direct contradiction by a senior member of the administration, however, did not deter Rove. He reiterated his claim in an interview with the Washington Post, saying that it is "disingenuous" for "Democrats to suggest they didn't want to vote on it before the election." Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also discredited Rove's claims, flatly saying that "it was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress." "Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong," added Fleischer. While multiple people have contradicted Rove in the days since he first made his comments, not a single individual has stepped forward to support his "far-fetched" claims.

THE WHITE HOUSE'S POLITICAL PUSH: Nine months before the war began, Rove and then-White House Political Director Ken Mehlman delivered a power-point presentation to California Republicans "about the outlook for the GOP in House and Senate races in November," in which they counseled that a "focus on war" should be the top priority of the party's electoral strategy. A top White House aide who was involved in pre-war discussions told Newsweek's Michael Isikoff that "the president's advisers wanted to use the upcoming election to pressure skeptical Democrats to back the president -- or face being portrayed as soft on national security." "The election was the anvil and the president was the hammer," the aide told Isikoff. Bush pollster Matthew Dowd told a group of Republicans that "the No.1 driver for our base motivationally is this war." "Weeks before the vote, Republican candidates across the country began running ads attacking their Democratic opponents on issues of war and national security, with some even using imagery of Saddam Hussein. When Bush was asked on Sept. 13, 2002, about Democrats who wanted to delay the vote until after the U.N. Security Council acted, he replied with political pressure. "If I were running for office," said Bush, "I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, 'Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act." In a press conference days later, Bush exclaimed "we've got to move before the elections."

CONGRESS'S HESITATIONS: During a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting, Bush "made it clear" to congressional leaders that "he wanted Congress to vote before it adjourned." Then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), said he tried to put the brakes on Bush's plans, asking "directly" if they "could delay" the vote until after the election" in order to "depoliticize it." Daschle later recounted that Bush just "looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.'" Daschle conceded that he would go along with the President if Bush insisted on a vote before the election, saying on Sept. 10, "I don't think we have much choice but to respect the decision." But Daschle spoke ardently in public on multiple occasions against politicizing the vote. "We've got to be very careful about politicizing a war in Iraq or military efforts," Daschle told reporters. A vote too close to the election "could jeopardize a thoughtful and deliberative debate," he added. Daschle wasn't the only member of Congress speaking out against a rushed vote. "I do not believe the decision should be made in the frenzy of an election year," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). "I know of no information that the threat is so imminent from Iraq" that Congress cannot wait until January to vote on a resolution, said then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

ROVE'S DISINGENUOUS ARGUMENTS: On Fox News Sunday yesterday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) confronted Rove on his revisionist history, challenging him to "retract" his "outrageous comments." But Rove refused while changing his story in the process. On The Charlie Rose Show, Rove had said definitively that "the administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002." But after being confronted about this statement, Rove backtracked, claiming that he was just saying that it's "simply not true" that Bush "was the only person pushing the Congress to vote on the war resolution before the November election." Rove then cherry-picked old Daschle quotes that he claimed supported his point. In particular, Rove pointed to a Sept. 16, 2002 quote from Daschle, in which he said, "I think there will be a vote well before the election, and I think it's important that we work together to achieve it." Rove doesn't mention that at the time Daschle made his comment, he had already tried to stop Bush from pushing for an early vote, but had been rebuffed by the President.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Dec 07 - 10:46 PM

while this post http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20071202&articleId=7525
is guaranteed uncheckable, you know I would vouch for every point made.

The seven things probably need to be expanded to include a few more families.

(in case the link is bad)
It is sort of like the Readers Digest version of "I was an economic hitman"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 07 - 09:42 AM

A Key Moment for Justice
      


Published: December 5, 2007

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that offers a chance to redress an enormous wrong done by President Bush and Congress when they denied justice to a group of prisoners. It is the latest phase of a battle over whether detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to bring a habeas corpus challenge to their confinement. The narrow legal issues have changed since the court considered the question last year, but the principle remains the same: The detainees have a right to have a court determine whether the government has a valid basis for imprisoning them. ...

Habeas corpus is an important bulwark against authoritarianism, so vital that the Constitution expressly protects it. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration has fought to weaken it both for foreigners held by the United States and for American citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 07 - 09:49 AM

The inimitable Maureen Dowd writes:

"...After getting Iraq wrong and Iran wrong in 2005 and almost every other big thing wrong since the nation began spending billions every year on intelligence, the burned spooks may not have wanted to play the patsy again while W., Cheney and the neocons beat the drums for an Iran invasion.

Now the apple-polishing George Tenet is gone. The man who oversaw the new estimate is Tom Fingar, a former State Department intelligence officer who was smart and brave enough to object to the cooked-up intelligence on Iraqi W.M.D.

"The way they used to do business was to write estimates in a way that couched things so they said, 'We may not always be right, but we're never wrong,' " said Tim Weiner, the reporter for The Times who wrote the award-winning history of the C.I.A., "Legacy of Ashes." "This is a slam-dunk reversal, admitting error. Now, when they play poker, they show their hands to each other, so they don't get another curveball."

The president, who has shut out reality for seven years, justified continuing in his world of ideological illusion by saying that he would not be "blinded" to the realities of the world. You can't get more Orwellian than that.

"And so," W. concluded triumphantly, and nonsensically, "kind of Psychology 101 ain't working."

W. loves to act as though psychology is voodoo even though his whole misbegotten foreign policy has been conducted from his gut, by checking the body language of his inner circle and looking into the hearts and souls of dictatorial leaders.

If I were looking at the latest fiasco from a Psych 101 point of view, I'd say it was another daddy issue for W.

Poppy Bush, who was once C.I.A. director, loved the agency and liked to sign notes: "Head Spook." The C.I.A. headquarters bear his name.

W., by contrast, has voiced contempt for the intelligence community. In 2004, he dismissed a pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate that didn't match his sunny vision of the Iraq occupation, saying that the analysts were "just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."

When W.'s history is written, he will be seen as the rebellious teenager crashing the family station wagon into his father's three most cherished spots — diplomacy, intelligence and the Gulf. ..."

A