BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 07 - 02:04 AM

This thread is scarcely about fear-mongering misinterpretations of NYT policies, Nameless One.

Stick to the topic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Nameless One
Date: 09 Jan 07 - 12:28 PM

So why does this thread contain propaganda from the NYT?

It is said that the NYT publishes the opinions of its "reporters" as if it is the truth. Do opinions take precedence to facts?

As for fear mongering, do you remember all of the articles that they published about how the Bush administration was recklessly ignoring all of the danger signals about WMD's in Iraq?

That was back when Chalabi was telling Congress, not the administration, exactly what they wanted to hear about Iraq in order to get money from congress.

Some people have very conveniently forgotten those facts in favor of popular opinions.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jan 07 - 12:01 AM

The current Post report on the unification of Senators in opposition to the Bush plan for more troops is an interesting study in fracas. It can be found here.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Nameless one
Date: 12 Jan 07 - 10:49 AM

The Source of the Trouble

Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller's series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi—helped the New York Times keep up with the competition and the Bush administration bolster the case for war. How the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong.........

More here

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Nameless One
Date: 12 Jan 07 - 11:07 AM

This is being cut and pasted here because these things disappear often and the link turns worthless.

N.Y. Times Cites Defects in Its Reports on Iraq

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page C01

The New York Times acknowledged today that its coverage of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction "was not as rigorous as it should have been" and that "we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge."

More than a year after Judith Miller and some Times colleagues reported on evidence suggesting that Iraq was hiding such weapons, the paper said in an editors' note: "Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."

One of Miller's prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile whose organization was subsidized by the Pentagon and who "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper," according to an e-mail she sent to a colleague. U.S.-backed forces raided Chalabi's home in Iraq last week amid allegations that members of his Iraqi National Congress may have been providing sensitive information to Iran.

Dan Okrent, the paper's ombudsman, said last night that "I'm looking into the coverage of WMD" and planned to publish his findings Sunday. Executive Editor Bill Keller said last night he was busy on deadline and could not discuss the situation.

The editors' note did say that "we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information."

While many news organizations reported on WMD claims before the war, few did so as aggressively as the Times. The failure to find such weapons has produced growing calls by critics, led by Slate columnist Jack Shafer, for the Times to own up to past errors.

Miller played an unusually active role while embedded last year with an Army unit searching for weapons of mass destruction, at one point writing to object to a commander's order that the unit withdraw from the field and suggesting she would write about it unfavorably in the Times. The pullback order was later rescinded. The unit "is using Chalabi's intell and document network for its own WMD work," Miller wrote her colleague.

Some of the Times's earlier reporting "depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on 'regime change' in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks," the editors said.

Among the problematic stories cited:

� In October and November 2001, front-page pieces cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret camp where terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. "These accounts have never been independently verified."

� In December 2001, Miller cited an Iraqi defector who said he had worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. While weapons might still be found, "in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers."

� A lead article in September 2002, co-authored by Miller, was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." The story "should have been presented more cautiously," and "misgivings" that surfaced days later "appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view."

� In April 2003, Miller reported that an Iraqi scientist who claimed to have worked in the country's weapons program "has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began," and that the team had found "precursors" of banned toxic agents. But "The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims." Miller had said on PBS that the scientist was not just a "smoking gun" but "a silver bullet."

In a New York Review of Books interview, Miller said her note about Chalabi was exaggerated as part of "an angry e-mail exchange" with colleague John Burns.

In a note to Okrent in March, Keller said he "did not see a prima facie case for recanting or repudiating the stories." He called Miller "a smart, well-sourced, industrious and fearless reporter with a keen instinct for news, and an appetite for dauntingly hard subjects."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jan 07 - 02:23 PM

An interesting statistic and call for assistance from Canadians:

As U.S. President Bush announced his plans to send more troops to Iraq bloodshed, a surge in the number of calls from American military during the past week has prompted a Canadian war resistance group to ask for help in housing soldiers leaving the U.S. for Canada, Toronto Star reported.

"We have noticed an uptick since the summer, but this is much more intense," said Lee Zaslofsky, who went AWOL in 1970 and, like many during that time, crossed the border into Canada. He became co-ordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign, a Canada-wide organization that supports U.S. soldiers seeking asylum in Canada because they refuse to fight in the war in Iraq.

According the Air Force Times, the Pentagon has registered approximately 8,000 deserters since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While many of them are living underground in the United States, the War Resisters Support Campaign estimates that there are "as many as 200 or more military personnel in Canada today."

Zaslofsky says the group has received calls from at least 24 concerned U.S. soldiers after U.S. President George W. Bush's call for more troops in Iraq.

The soldiers, he says, include both reserves and those returning from past deployment.

"If you have room where you can house a resister for a few days, a few weeks or longer, please get in touch with us," the group said. The campaign has been running since 2004 and is based in cities across Canada.

(From the Toronto Daily News)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jan 07 - 11:58 PM

Published on Monday, May 26, 2003 by the Washington Post
Intra-Times Battle Over Iraqi Weapons
by Howard Kurtz


A dustup between two New York Times reporters over a story on an Iraqi exile leader raises some intriguing questions about the paper's coverage of the search for dangerous weapons thought to be hidden by Saddam Hussein.


Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and Times source. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
An internal e-mail by Judith Miller, the paper's top reporter on bioterrorism, acknowledges that her main source for such articles has been Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial exile leader who is close to top Pentagon officials. Could Chalabi have been using the Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction?

The Chalabi connection surfaced when John Burns, the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning Baghdad bureau chief, scolded Miller over her May 1 story on the Iraqi without clearing it with him.

"I am deeply chagrined at your reporting and filing on Chalabi after I had told you on Monday night that we were planning a major piece on him -- and without so much as telling me what you were doing," Burns wrote that day, according to e-mail correspondence obtained by The Washington Post.

"We have a bureau here; I am in charge of that bureau until I leave; I make assignments after considerable thought and discussion, and it was plain to all of us to whom the Chalabi story belonged. If you do this, what is to stop you doing it on any other story of your choosing? And what of the distress it causes the correspondent who is usurped? It is not professional, and not collegial."

Miller replied to Burns: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper, including the long takeout we recently did on him. He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

She apologized for any confusion, but noted that the Army unit she was traveling with -- Mobile Exploration Team Alpha -- "is using Chalabi's intell and document network for its own WMD work. . . . Since I'm there every day, talking to him. . . . I thought I might have been included on a decision by you" to have another reporter write about Chalabi.

Reached by phone, Miller said: "I'm not about to comment on any intra-Times communications." Andrew Rosenthal, assistant managing editor for foreign news, said it is "a pretty slippery slope" to publish reporters' private e-mail and "reveal whatever confidential sources they may or may not have."

"Of course we talk to Chalabi," he said. "If you were in Iraq and weren't talking to Chalabi, I'd wonder if you were doing your job."

According to the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was a key source of information about weapons for the Pentagon's own intelligence unit -- information sometimes disputed by the CIA. Chalabi may have been feeding the Times, and other news organizations, the same disputed information.

Miller has drawn criticism, particularly from Slate's Jack Shafer, for her reporting on the hunt for Iraqi weapons while she was embedded with the MET Alpha unit.

In an April 21 front-page story, she reported that a leading Iraqi scientist claimed Iraq had destroyed chemical and biological weapons days before the war began, according to the Alpha team. She said the scientist had "pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

Behind that story was an interesting arrangement. Under the terms of her accreditation, Miller wrote, "this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted."

Since then, no evidence has surfaced to support these claims and the Alpha team is preparing to leave Iraq without having found weapons of mass destruction.

Rosenthal says all embedded reporters agreed to the same restrictions. "We didn't feel this amounted to censorship," he said. "We thought the added burden of the rules was justified by the access we got to what would have been secret operations."

While Miller was not allowed to interview the unnamed scientist on her own, Rosenthal said "she never said she never met him." Army officials "made an argument that his life would be in jeopardy" if he were identified.

Whether or not the unit's initial findings pan out, Rosenthal says, he is "extremely comfortable" with Miller's reporting because "all the information was attributed to MET Alpha, not 'senior U.S. officials' or some other vague formulation."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jan 07 - 12:05 AM

Judith Miller argues that if she was duped by her unnamed sources, so was the Bush administration — and she's not apologizing for believing there were WMDs in Iraq until the president does. "I think I was given information by people who believed the information they were giving the president," she told Bergman. "When the president asked, you know, 'What about this WMD case? Are we sure about this?' [then-CIA director] George Tenet said to him, 'Mr. President, this is a slam dunk.' The people I talked to certainly thought that." Other WMD believers, she said, included the entire U.S. intelligence community as well as French, English, and Israeli agencies.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/03/18_miller.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jan 07 - 12:16 AM

Old Guy, stop dragging in old news on tangential topics, wouldja? Jeeze Louise, 2003 fer cry-i.

Wake up and smell the hemlock, Dude!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jan 07 - 12:36 AM

Amos is constantly trying to bury the past.

If history does not mean anything, why are you so anxious for people not to see it?

Wake up an learn from history dude.

Within the press, perhaps the most energetic disseminator of "inactionable intelligence" on Iraq's putative weapons has been the New York Times' Judith Miller. A veteran of the Iraqi WMD beat, Miller has accumulated a bulging clippings file over the years full of splashy, yet often maddeningly unverifiable, exposés alleging various Iraqi arms shenanigans: "Secret Arsenal: The Hunt for Germs of War" (2/26/98); "Defector Describes Iraq's Atom Bomb Push" (8/15/98); "Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites For Chemical and Nuclear Arms" (12/20/01); "Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say" (1/24/03).

In May, an internal Times email written by Miller found its way to the Washington Post's media columnist (5/26/03). In the message, Miller casually revealed her source for many of these stories: Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile leader (and convicted embezzler) who for over a decade had been lobbying Washington to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years," Miller wrote. "He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper." Chalabi, with his network of defectors and exiles, is known in Washington foreign-policy circles as a primary source for many of the weapons allegations that career CIA analysts greeted with skepticism, but that Pentagon hawks promoted eagerly (UPI, 3/12/03).

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jan 07 - 12:29 PM

I guess if you cannot address the topic you can try to Shanghai it by making it about other things and glutting the thread with that. But it is -- even you will acknowledge -- a destructive impulse.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jan 07 - 12:44 PM

This does have bearing on the popular views of the bus administration but Amos only wants to promote the negative and cover up anything that is contradictory.

This copupled to a past of following the drumbeat of extremist causes indicates an inability to recognize the truth.

The enitre impeach Bush / Bush lied movement is nothing but Ochlocracy.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 07 - 12:35 PM

I dunno what Ochlocracy is.

One colunist from the Times (once an Ochs-led organization, I guess) feels this way:

"The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president's endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush's own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It's another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn't Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon's abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party's right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon's most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he'd been lied to once too often. If John McCain won't play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he's about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 07 - 12:40 PM

Meanwhile, back in Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 — Iraq's Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush's proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.

Iraq's prime minister sent a spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, to address President Bush's latest policy.

The Iraqi leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, failed to appear at a news conference and avoided any public comment. He left the government's response to an official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who gave what amounted to a backhanded approval of the troop increase and emphasized that Iraqis, not Americans, would set the future course in the war.

Mr. Dabbagh said that the government's objective was to secure the eventual withdrawal of American troops, and that for that to be possible there had to be security for Iraqis. "If this can be achieved by increasing either Iraqi or multinational forces," he added, "the government, for sure, will not stand against it."

Mr. Dabbagh suggested that much about the Bush plan depended on how circumstances in Iraq would evolve over the coming months — an echo, in its way, of senior Bush administration officials. They have implied that they might halt the month-by-month inflow of additional troops if they think Mr. Maliki is failing to meet the political and military benchmarks Mr. Bush identified as the Iraqi government's part in making the new war plan work.

"The plan can be developed according to the needs," Mr. Dabbagh said. Then he added tartly, "What is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us."

The spokesman's remarks, and a similarly dyspeptic tone that was adopted by Shiite politicians with close ties to Mr. Maliki, pointed to the double-bind Mr. Bush finds himself in. Faced with low levels of public support for his new military push and a Democratic leadership in Congress that has said it will fight him over it, he also confronts the uncomfortable prospect of foot-dragging in Baghdad over the troop increases and the benchmarks he has set for the Iraqis.

(From the Times)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 07 - 12:49 PM

Peter Baker, Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post
Sunday, January 14, 2007

Printable Version
Email This Article
(01-14) 04:00 PST Washington -- The bipartisan opposition to President Bush's troop-increase plan has proved more intense than his advisers had expected and has left them scrambling to find support, but the White House is banking on the assumption that it can execute its "new way forward" in Iraq before Congress can derail it.

The plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq was virtually guaranteed to provoke a furor in Washington, Bush advisers said, but the storm was exacerbated by the slow, leaky way that the White House reached its decision. Aides now harbor no hope of winning over Democrats. Instead, they aim mainly to keep Republicans from abandoning him further.

Bush invited GOP leaders to Camp David this weekend and will argue his case tonight on CBS' "60 Minutes." Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Stephen Hadley will also hit the airwaves today.

"We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical," Bush said in his radio address Saturday, adding, "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."

Many Democrats, in fact, have proposed alternatives centered around pulling out troops, an idea Bush flatly rejects.

Hopes for a bipartisan consensus after Democrats captured Congress in the November midterm elections have evaporated, and Bush appears more isolated than ever."

(Washington Post/SFO Chronicle)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 07 - 12:56 PM

An interesting analysis of the Bush Admin's too-little-too-late efforts to reverse the fatal bad judgments of Bremer et al., by trying to now hire those who said at the time they were bad ideas, can be found here in the Post.

This is just multiplying one piece of brazen stupidity by another. If Bush and Rumsfeld had put a tenth of the importance on intel and wise application of force that they put on false ideas of loyalty and bizarre visions of the world, they would have been much, much better off. Sadly they were too stupid to know what was important.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 07 - 01:29 PM

The Post also ccomments, inter alia:

"

THE POLITICAL tempest that has greeted President Bush's latest plan for Iraq is largely of the president's making. Mr. Bush could have forged a bipartisan consensus if he had embraced the military strategy laid out by the Iraq Study Group, which was in keeping with proposals by the Iraqi government, U.S. military commanders and leading members of Congress. Instead, he chose to embrace an option -- the dispatch of additional American soldiers to Baghdad and Anbar province -- that has the support of less than 20 percent of Americans and maybe even fewer Iraqis. It's not even clear that the Iraqi government is entirely on board.

We don't think Mr. Bush went out of his way to pick the battle he now has with the new Democratic-controlled Congress. No doubt he has been convinced that the deployment of more troops is the only way to turn the situation in Iraq around. The White House, however, seems to have undervalued the importance of having broad public support before sending more troops into combat, with the inevitable spike in casualties that will cause. The intense criticism that has come from both houses and both parties in Congress is understandable, and justified."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 09:48 AM

In the New Zealand Scoop, Martin LeFevre explains why the Bush administration is evil.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 11:09 AM

Frank Rich of the NY Times, never a great fan of the Bush Admin, offers a scathing survey of the Resident team's history of PR and gesture, and current bunker mentality, in this piece. This is part of the Times Select subscriber material. aN EXCERPT:

..."The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president's endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush's own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It's another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn't Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon's abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party's right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon's most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he'd been lied to once too often. If John McCain won't play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he's about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him. "

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 08:14 PM

Keith Olberman, never a fan either, offers a scathing counterpoint to Bush's address and surge plan.

A

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

A brilliant insight into the militarization of the Presidency can be found in this article by Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern.

It speaks to a deep and important memory we should all have on tap of what it is ike to live in a "normal" era when the nation is not militarized.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 09:12 PM

The Administration continues to double back on itself like a snake biting its own tongue. In "The Bait-and-Switch White House" the Times shines some light on the endless, shuffle-footed tap dancing mealymouthed Janus-faced snake-bellied double-tonguing hypocrisy that seems to be endemic in the W universe. Well, that may be unfair. Maybe its just Cheney's part. With Rove and Rumsfield gone, there's hardly any other explanation left!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 11:31 AM

From today's Times, on the Bush economic impact:

"n the State of the Union speech, President Bush said that the budget deficit had been cut in half from 2004 to 2006. Not quite. The deficit declined, but not by half, from $412 billion to $248 billion. If you measure it as a percentage of the economy, Mr. Bush was off by an amount equal to about $15 billion.

Then, Mr. Bush greatly compounded his otherwise modest exaggeration by taking credit for the reduction, when the deficit really fell despite his policies, not because of them. The distinction is crucial, to understand both the current mess — in which debt is mounting just as huge obligations are coming due for Medicare and Social Security — and how best to get out of it.

The drop in the deficit over the past few years was due largely to the cyclical recovery from the earlier recession, and to a boost in revenue when temporary business tax cuts expired after 2004.

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, has pursued a single-minded strategy of spending more while slashing taxes. That is the opposite of deficit reduction; it has made the budget hole deeper than it would have been. Still, Mr. Bush wants you to believe that tax cuts caused the economic recovery, and thus the budget improvement. If you follow that logic, the key to continued improvement would be continued tax cuts, and that is just what Mr. Bush called for last week. He conjured a bright future in which the deficit disappears after he leaves office, without anyone ever having to raise taxes.

That was the speech, and then there is reality, which came knocking within days when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its annual 10-year budget outlook. The outlook is for a cumulative deficit of $2.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion — about $300 billion a year — if, as Mr. Bush wishes, the tax cuts are extended beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010 and tax relief continues for Americans wrongly afflicted by the alternative minimum tax. In arriving at its estimate, the budget agency also assumed that costs for the war in Iraq would start going down next year, an assumption that, if proved wrong, would result in even higher deficits." ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 12:38 PM

The Australian "theage.com.au" opines:

"

Bush's popularity hits new low

US President George Bush's popularity fell to a new low following his state of the nation speech this week, Newsweek has reported in its latest poll.

With two years left in the White House, only 30 per cent of the 1003 people polled said they approved of Bush's job performance, down from a high of 83 per cent approval at the beginning of 2002.

The poll was taken after Bush's annual State of the Union address delivered Tuesday, in which he announced a new Iraq strategy and major initiatives to improve health insurance coverage and to reduce US dependence on foreign oil.

A hefty 71 per cent of those surveyed said Bush would not have enough support over the next two years to "make a difference" in carrying out his decisions, compared with just 21 per cent who said he did.

The poll, which came days after several more politicians made moves to join the 2008 presidential race, including Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, also tested registered voters on possible matchups in the November 2008 election. ..."

---

As anyone who has followed my threads on the subject over the last seven years knows, I have resisted this man and his policies from the first, and I am glad to see the majority of American citizens swinging around to my point of view. I don't suppose this will be a permanent condition, but it does relieve some of the insult from 2000 when so many were mass-herded into voting for him on the thrust of sheer panic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 09:06 AM

From today's Op Ed in the NY Times, James Bedford writes:

"LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney's office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.

The ruling was the result of a suit, in which I am one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act...."

---

A friend remarked recently that some senior executives get to their high positions by creating a mess so hard to confront that they themselves become indispensable as the only ones who can be stuck in front of it. Even though they created it in the first place.

This rings a faint bell, somehow...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 09:08 AM

A few remarks from Americans on the Vice issue:

"To the Editor:

Regarding Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney said the biggest threat is that Americans may not "have the stomach for the fight." One has to wonder if he feels that the failure in Vietnam was merely a result of the American people's not having "the stomach" for 10 years of combat and 58,000 American dead.

In classic Republicanspeak, Mr. Cheney obfuscates the premise of why we are at war and narrows the argument to a misplaced matter of courage.

The nauseating irony of someone who did not have the "stomach" to go to war himself accusing the rest of the country of the same failing serves to reveal the extent to which this conflict is without true rationale.

Pier Giacalone
Ridgewood, Queens, Jan. 27, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Your editorial asks a good question: "Does the vice president simply feel free to cut the ground out from under Mr. Bush?"

It helps to remember that in 2000, after heading up the search for a running mate, Dick Cheney looked in the mirror and picked himself. Why would a self-selected vice president on a ticket that lost the popular vote defer to the popular will or even the judgment of his president?

Robert Stein
Weston, Conn., Jan. 27, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Vice President Dick Cheney defends a war that he started without Iraqi provocation and that continues without the possibility of American victory not because he is "delusional," as Maureen Dowd says ("Daffy Does Doom," column, Jan. 27), but because the war itself serves his interests and the interests of his constituents.

Dick Cheney has spent his life working for military suppliers, American energy corporations and the Republican Party. The war has earned billions of dollars for his former employer, Halliburton, disrupted the supplies of foreign oil and allowed his party to rise to unprecedented power.

During this time the power of the executive branch of government grew, and Mr. Cheney, at the center, exercised more influence over the nation than any vice president in United States history.

This is not "perversity." It is the work of a mercilessly effective politician.

Gabriel Brownstein
Brooklyn, Jan. 27, 2007

"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 09:27 PM

Four steps towards calming the chaos in Iraq

By Zbigniew Brzezinsky

Published: February 1 2007 21:16 | Last updated: February 1 2007 21:16
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/03dd3a7a-b230-11db-a79f-0000779e2340.html>
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/03dd3a7a-b230-11db-a79f-0000779e2340.html

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central
realities: the war in Iraq is a historic, strategic and moral
calamity; and only a strategy that is historically relevant rather
than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the framework for a
tolerable resolution of both the war and intensifying regional tensions.

If the US stays bogged down in Iraq, the final destination on this
downhill track is likely to be head-on conflict with Iran and with
the broader world of Islam. A plausible scenario for a military
collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet US benchmarks;
followed by US accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure;
then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed
on Iran. This could culminate in "defensive" US military action
against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a deepening quagmire
eventually encompassing Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a
protracted war is already being articulated. Initially justified by
false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war is
now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our
time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that
Nazism was based on the military power of the most industrially
advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilise not
only the resources of the Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal
through its Marxist doctrine. To argue that America is already at war
in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the
epicentre, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is obvious by now that the US national interest calls for a
significant change of direction. There is a consensus in favour of
change: US public opinion now holds that the war was a mistake; that
a regional political process should be explored; and that an Israeli-
Palestinian accommodation is essential to the needed policy
alteration. It is noteworthy that a number of leading Republicans
have voiced profound reservations regarding the administration's
policy. One need only invoke here the expressed views of the late
President Gerald Ford, former secretary of state James Baker, former
national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and several leading
Republican senators: John Warner, Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith among
others.

The quest for a political solution to the growing chaos in Iraq
should involve four steps.

First, the US should reaffirm unambiguously its determination to
leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time. Such a declaration
is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring
American imperial hegemony. That perception should be discredited at
the highest level, perhaps by a joint resolution in the Congress.

Second, the US should announce it is undertaking talks with all Iraqi
leaders – including those who do not reside in the fortress area in
Baghdad known as the "Green Zone" – jointly to set and announce
a deadline for full US military disengagement. In the meantime, the
US should avoid escalation.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,282RA
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 11:50 AM

Bush going to squeeze $70 billion out of Medicare saying entitlement program spending is growing faster then the economy and therefore cannot be sustained. But he can spend $270 billion on this war until late 2008.

Now which spending produces less results, entitlements or the war? Hmmmmm...tough one...let's see...spending money so elderly folks can get the medicines and treatments they need OR pouring more money down the Iraq sieve with absolutely nothing to show for it except massive fraud and corruption, upswings in violence, more dead soldiers, more destroyed equipment, far weaker military, deteriorating security.

I give, dammit!! I just can't decide which spending needs to be desperately revamped before disaster occurs. Help me out, folks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070204/pl_nm/bush_budget_dc_7

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Cruiser
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 06:05 PM

The Worst President in History?
One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush

Rolling Stone Article

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 12:42 PM

Co-Dependent Congress Must Wake Up: The President Needs a Straight-Jacket and a Padded Cell
by DAVE LINDORFF

Full article here from the Baltimore Chronicle.

Co-dependency is a condition where people associated with a sick person enable that person to ruin not only their own lives, but the lives of others, because of an inability to confront the sick person. It happens in families, and it is happening today to the American nation.

It's time to simply admit the obvious: The president of the United States is crazy as a loon, and the Congress and the media are functioning as co-dependents as he runs the country off a cliff.
Bush says in his latest press conference that he is "certain" that Iran is providing "technically sophisticated" roadside bomb weapons to Iraqi insurgent forces to help them to kill Americans.

He probably is "certain." But nobody else of consequence in the government is, and the evidence to support his claim is simply not there. Shaped charges are not sophisticated. They can be made in a garage. The technology was invented in 1888 by a Navy engineer. It was widely used in World War I and II, as well as in Vietnam, and was even provided by the British to the IRA in a botched sting operation that led to its being disseminated around the world to every conceivable resistance and terror organization. Instructions on how to make these weapons are available on the web. A high school student could do it in shop if the teacher wasn't looking.

On top of that, the people who are primarily responsible for killing Americans in Iraq are Sunnis, who are certainly not the beneficiaries of Iranian government assistance, since Sunnis are killing Shias, who are the ones that Iran is close to.

None of this matters to Bush.

Why? Because he's crazy. Reality and Bush's psyche are wholly different worlds, people.

When you have a person who's off his nut in a position of authority, whether it is in your house, in your office, driving a car or running your country, you need to do something to prevent them from causing harm. It won't do to say, "It's too much trouble to confront him," or "He'll get angry if I challenge him."

This seems to be the attitude in Congress and the media. The Democrats, who could put the president in a richly deserved straightjacket, are afraid to take that step. The media are afraid the president and his crazy backers would howl if they pointed out how nutty he has become...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 12:48 PM

HE knows perfectly well who he serves. The haves and the have mores.

He is not certifiable. He lives in an age where much of the Constitution has been rendered non binding. He lives in an age where the Congress tries to pass non binding resoutions.

He lives in an age where he calls himself the decider and the voice of the people he calls noise.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 07 - 12:33 AM

David Swanson writes:

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/#48101


That was close. You can see how Young could have made the mistake. Here's what Lincoln actually said:


"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."


Lincoln wrote these words while America was at war with Mexico, under the presidency of James Polk, and while Lincoln was a member of Congress. But Lincoln did more than talk about the fraud that had been used to launch that illegal and imperialistic war. He introduced a resolution demanding that Polk provide proof. Polk claimed to have launched that war only after American blood had been shed on American soil. Lincoln's resolution required Polk to identify the spot where that blood had been shed.


"Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly," Lincoln said of the wartime President. "Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation."


When President Polk did not answer, Lincoln and John Quincy Adams sought a formal investigation of the president's pre-war intelligence claims, and of his use of secret funds to launch his fraudulent and illegal war. Under this pressure, Polk announced that he would not seek reelection. Lincoln, Adams, and their allies in Congress then passed a resolution honoring the service of Major General Zachary Taylor "in a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States."


President Polk's descendant William Polk has, by the way, authored a book with former Senator George McGovern outlining a plan to end the Iraq War. There's improvement of a sort that some prominent families can't compare to! ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:37 AM

Todays Times opines:

..."In another low moment for American justice, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that detainees held at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, do not have the right to be heard in court. The ruling relied on a shameful law that President Bush stampeded through Congress last fall that gives dangerously short shrift to the Constitution.

The right of prisoners to challenge their confinement — habeas corpus — is enshrined in the Constitution and is central to American liberty. Congress and the Supreme Court should act quickly and forcefully to undo the grievous damage that last fall's law — and this week's ruling — have done to this basic freedom.

The Supreme Court ruled last year on the jerry-built system of military tribunals that the Bush Administration established to try the Guantánamo detainees, finding it illegal. Mr. Bush responded by driving through Congress the Military Commissions Act, which presumed to deny the right of habeas corpus to any noncitizen designated as an "enemy combatant." This frightening law raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge their detentions. And it gives the government the power to take away habeas rights from any noncitizen living in the United States who is unfortunate enough to be labeled an enemy combatant.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which rejected the detainees' claims by a vote of 2 to 1, should have permitted the detainees to be heard in court — and it should have ruled that the law is unconstitutional.

As Judge Judith Rogers argued in a strong dissent, the Supreme Court has already rejected the argument that detainees do not have habeas rights because Guantánamo is located outside the United States. Judge Rogers also rightly noted that the Constitution limits the circumstances under which Congress can suspend habeas to "cases of Rebellion or invasion," which is hardly the situation today. Moreover, she said, the act's alternative provisions for review of cases are constitutionally inadequate. The Supreme Court should add this case to its docket right away and reverse it before this term ends.

Congress should not wait for the Supreme Court to act. With the Democrats now in charge, it is in a good position to pass a new law that fixes the dangerous mess it has made. Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, have introduced a bill that would repeal the provision in the Military Commissions Act that purports to obliterate the habeas corpus rights of detainees.

The Bush administration's assault on civil liberties does not end with habeas corpus. Congress should also move quickly to pass another crucial bill, introduced by Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, that, among other steps, would once and for all outlaw the use of evidence obtained through torture.

.."

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

The NY Times wonders why so many stellar US Attorneys are being fired without genuine grounds:


In many Justice Departments, her record would have won her awards, and perhaps a promotion to a top post in Washington. In the Bush Justice Department, it got her fired.


Ms. Lam is one of at least seven United States attorneys fired recently under questionable circumstances. The Justice Department is claiming that Ms. Lam and other well-regarded prosecutors like John McKay of Seattle, David Iglesias of New Mexico, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona — who all received strong job evaluations — performed inadequately.

It is hard to call what's happening anything other than a political purge. And it's another shameful example of how in the Bush administration, everything — from rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged city to allocating homeland security dollars to invading Iraq — is sacrificed to partisan politics and winning elections.

---

THis looks like pure smelly political manuvering.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 12:31 PM

I spoke to a financial expert yesterday who remarked that the DAILY burden of servicing the United States' debt was FIVE BILLION dollars a day; and that this figure was up from two billion/day at the start of the first Bush administration.

That includes no principal reduction, just service on the debt.

That means if we were to get OUT of that debt, we could spend a billion dollars a day on resolving national energy resources, another billion a day on caring for and educating our young, another on supporting healthcare for individuals in need, and still put two billion a day in the bank as savings against future need. Every day.

Wouldn't we like to see the nation out of debt to the world?


We might even become the Land of the Free.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 04:18 PM

John B. Taylor, former Under Secretary of the Treasury, argues that in currency management, at least, the Bush administration did something very right.

He argues the case well. Full article here.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 07 - 10:05 AM

Thanks to Lincoln D. Chafee, the former Republican senator from Rhode Island, for reminding us that fault for the catastrophe in Iraq is shared by a complaisant Senate, which, far from performing its constitutional duty, abdicated that responsibility at one of the most crucial moments in our nation's history.

As the 2008 election approaches, we must also not forget that many of the senators voting in favor of the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq harbored presidential ambitions (John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain) and were plainly influenced by a fear that such ambitions might be thwarted if they voted against the resolution and the war later turned out to be a success.

Now that the war is revealed for the unmitigated disaster that should have been predicted, these same senators perform all manner of linguistic contortions to justify their vote.

Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to those senators who, courageously and eloquently, spoke in opposition to this illegal and immoral war. Conversely, history will not be kind to those 77 senators who voted "yea" that fateful evening.

Joseph J. Saltarelli
New York, March 1, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 07 - 10:17 AM

The Times discusses more old-boy slime from the Bush Attorneys General -- the firing of state US Atty's who don't trumpet at the right spots in the script.


"...United States attorneys, the highest federal prosecutors at the state level, must be insulated from politics. Their decisions about whether to indict can ruin lives, and change the outcome of elections. To ensure their independence, United States attorneys are almost never removed during the term of the president who appointed them.

The Bush administration ignored this tradition, and trampled on prosecutorial independence, by firing eight United States attorneys in rapid succession, including one, Carol Lam of San Diego, who had put a powerful Republican congressman in jail. Mr. Iglesias, who was the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, says two members of Congress called him last October and urged him to pursue corruption charges against a prominent Democrat before the November election. He did not. He was dismissed.

Most of the fired United States attorneys' performance evaluations praise them for the quality of their work, and for following the priorities set in Washington. These do not appear to be the evaluations of people who were fired for poor performance.

A House subcommittee has subpoenaed several of the fired United States attorneys to testify next week. The Senate is doing its own investigation. They should question the fired prosecutors, as well as top members of the Justice Department, to find out how these dismissals came about. They should also investigate Mr. Iglesias's allegations about the two members of Congress, who may have violated Congressional rules, and even criminal law.

Mr. Gonzales should also begin his own inquiry. Mr. Iglesias has raised a serious question about politicization of the Justice Department. That, and not public relations, should be the attorney general's primary concern."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 07 - 11:26 AM

The Times offers a list of things that must be done to repair the chaos if the Bush administration:

"Editorial
The Must-Do List
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Published: March 4, 2007
The Bush administration's assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America's global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we're offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems."..

The list includes:

Restore Habeas Corpus
Stop Illegal Spying
Ban Torture, Really
Close the C.I.A. Prisons
Account for 'Ghost Prisoners'
Ban Extraordinary Rendition
Tighten the Definition of Combatant
Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively
Ban Tainted Evidence
Ban Secret Evidence
Better Define 'Classified' Evidence
Respect the Right to Counsel

I find it execrable that the reform of our economic whirlwind of addiction to fiat-funding, unstable currency, and insane debt-management policies are not included.

See the full article here. It may be restricted to TimesSelect viewers.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: fumblefingers
Date: 05 Mar 07 - 12:37 AM

I take it that Amos doesn't like George Bush and reads a lot of stuff by other lefties who hate him as well?

Well, I like George Bush. He's a decent man who has been unfairly maligned by the media and the Clintonized Democrat party. I also liked him as Governor of Texas.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 07 - 09:55 AM

< a href=http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists>Paul Krugman discusses the Bush administrations complicity in the abysmal decline of health care for veterans, such as at Walter Reed hospital.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: fumblefingers
Date: 05 Mar 07 - 05:52 PM

Comparative Advantage
How economist Paul Krugman became the most important political columnist in America.

By Nicholas Confessore

Krugman has also discovered that when you're the center of attention and you make a mistake, people notice. The most serious error was in a column written last July about Bush's dealings with the Texas Rangers, of which he became a part-owner in 1989. It's well known that Bush put $606,000 into the syndicate that bought the Rangers in 1989, about 2 percent of the total cost. When the deal was initialized that same year and Bush became the team's general manager, the syndicate awarded their well-connected partner an additional 10 percent stake, gratis. When the team was sold in 1998, Bush earned $14.9 million on his original investment. But Krugman went further, charging that Bush's extra return was "a 12-million dollar gift" to "a sitting governor," when in fact the gift had been awarded years before Bush's election as governor in 1994. Krugman later admitted the error--on his Web site, but not in the Times.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 07 - 06:21 PM

Gee, you're scraping that ole barrel pretty hard. Wish someone would make me a little 10 million dollar prezzie before I got elected Governor.

If some kind Elf could put a /a at the end of the word "discusses" in the previous reference to Krugman's column, I'd be grateful.

Your definition of decency is interesting fumblefingers.

Not a word I would apply to the man, personally.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: fumblefingers
Date: 05 Mar 07 - 11:57 PM

Amos "Not a word I would apply to the man, personally."

In view of your previous 51 entries, I don't expect you would.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Mar 07 - 09:54 AM

"From the perspective of history, when people look back, they will wonder how the country could have gone so wrong in its struggle against an inimical ideology. And they will conclude that the wrong leaders were in power to understand and defeat this ideology; instead, those leaders advanced their own power in the guise of safeguarding the country's security while curtailing citizens' liberties.

At that future time, the people will still be struggling to undo what has been done to those liberties and their reputation.

Your list of what needs to be corrected outlines what they will understand has happened and what they know will be needed to restore their liberties and their reputation. Unfortunately, unlike liberties, reputation, once compromised, is never really restored. "

(correspondent to the NY Times)

Yonkers, March 4, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 02:31 AM

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and a hatred for George W Bush.

What else could one ask for?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 09:57 AM

One could ask, my feather-headed friend, for an honest, forthright President who lived within and under the law, sought prosperity, avoided violence except as a last resort, lead by example rather than by decree, protected and defended the Constitution rather than an elite base, and considered truth to be senior to political slickness. One could ask for a leader who did well in some field of endeavour more elevated that cocktails and backslapping. One could ask for a leader who knew something about the culture in which he lead and knew what its true potential for greatness was, and why. One could ask for a leader who understood the corrosive influence of massive debit-spending on the morale and economy of the nation. One could ask for a man who knew the English language better than the average long-haul trucker. One who knew how to negotiate from strength of wisdom, rather than bullying by force of arms and who used courage instead of beetle-browed obstinacy to accomplish things.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 10:39 AM

"I haven't kept count, but it seems to me that the number of times I've seen President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney give speeches about the Iraq war using smiling soldiers as their backdrops have been, well, countless. You'd think that an administration that has been so quick to exploit soldiers as props — whether it was to declare "Mission Accomplished" on an naval vessel or to silence critics by saying their words might endanger soldiers in battle — would have been equally quick to spare no expense in caring for those injured in the fight. ..."

Thomas Friedman, commenting on the abysmal care of veterans under Bush's war Presidency.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 11:26 AM

So Amos, my idealsitic, bristly friend, who would that president be?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 12:31 PM

We've had a few who came closer than the rest. Despite all the hatred stirred up about him, Clinton seemed to hold to those values, and he was literate, although he played political smokescreens on occasion. I think Ike was a representative despite his soft-spoken undramatic ways. FDR had some of those virtues, as did Washington and Lincoln, despite their shortcomings. Even GHB had many, or at least the ability to camouflage those he lacked. W, in my opinion, does not even do that much, and he is mushy at the very core.

A