BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 07:53 PM

Quote for the day :

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day"

Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 11:09 PM

Amos Amos Amos:

Why didn't you name this thread "Popular views of the Amos"?

Old Guy

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 11:19 PM

I don't write these references, is why. I just thought it would be good to have a place where the suppressed and stifled voices of dissidence could be pointed out, because Bushie gets really hard on those who disagree with him. Never before in the history of this nation has any President felt obliged to resort to the use of barriered enclosures called "free speech areas" where dissidents must confine themselves, so the public news casts don't see them. Never before has so much suppression of information been imposed by so few on so many. The Bill of Rights has never been so vigorously constrained and attacked as under the current administration.

Orwell must be spinning in his damned grave.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 11:47 PM

America, A Country on the Brink of Destruction; a summary of the Bush presidency,
by Lonna Gooden VanHorn, can be found on this page.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: dianavan
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 12:00 AM

beardedbruce - I take exception to the remark, "Should we have listened to the French, who were major violators of the UN sanctions with Iraq, or other nations that had a vested interest in seeing harm come to the US/ I do not think so."

What did Canada have to gain?

And why didn't the U.S. let the U.N. inspectors finish their job?

d

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Old Guy
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 12:41 AM

Amos:

The democrats and thier supporters do all the spinning. Orwell is dead.

Who the hell is Lonna Gooden VanHorn? Is she a stiffled dissident?

Are you searching through a dumpster somewhere?


Old Guy

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 12:47 AM

Orwell is dead, but Big Brother lives.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 12:59 AM

dianavan,

I have stated in past threads, which generated no end of ire that I dare have my own opinion, that the inspectors stated that they were not getting the required level of cooperation- for a number of years. IMHO, I feel that Saddam was given more than enough chances to comply, and continued to refuse. In the post 9/11 world , and with the information that was available at the time, to NOT take forceful action would have been to risk millions, or tens of millions of lives.

I still wonder why, in all the demonstrations against the US taking action against Iraq, NOONE ever just asked Saddam to comply. Not a single poster, placard, or sign. AT least, none that I know of, from any reports here or on the TV.

There had been a low level of actual fighting between the US and Iraq ever since 1991- but to most of the world it was business as usual, with numerous attempts to violate sanctions, and help Saddam misuse the Oil for Food money. WHy is it that noone ever asks HOW saddam had even the forces he dis, after the Gulf war and the sanctions? For country that the UN was preventing from rearming, Iraq had a lot of firepower....

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 01:02 AM

The link that Amos gives on 21 October, 9:57, is essential reading, imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Old Guy
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 01:15 AM

Are the enlightened people here keeping abreast of the oil for food corruption investigation?

Old Guy

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Old Guy
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 12:59 AM

this thread is dying Anus I mean Amos.

Old guy

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 01:10 AM

I think I can see why, Old Guy.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 09:10 AM

The LA Times paints an accurate and deadly picture of the Bush Administrations Machiavellian philosophy, "Rovism" yclept. This editorial describes the Administration as "The Sopramos in the White House". Apt.

Click here for article

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 09:21 AM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration has decided that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

According to unnamed administration officials who spoke with the newspaper, the opinion reached in recent months holds that there are exceptions to previous U.S. assertions that the Geneva Conventions apply to all prisoners taken in the Iraq war.

Reuters article

---

How handy for the Bush Administration to have the power to set aside the Geneva Convention at will, re-define human rights in times of war, and claim freedom of speech and freedom of assembly is protected by providing "free speech areas" out back during political events.

These guys really are fascistic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 09:28 AM

The London Financial Times endorses Kerry, stating among other things:

The bursting of the Bush bubble
The US presidential election is the most closely watched since at least
1980. Now as then, the choice is between two candidates with sharply
different governing philosophies and views on the exercise of American
power in the world. The outcome will determine whether the radical,
faith-based politics of President George W. Bush triumphs, or whether
Americans opt for the shift in course represented by Senator John
Kerry.

Mr Bush entered the White House in January 2001, having won a narrow
election victory, courtesy of the US Supreme Court. He pledged to be a
conciliator. He talked about uniting Democrats and Republicans at home.
He promised to pursue a humble foreign policy abroad. His record shows
that he has done neither. He has been a polariser, exploiting the War
on Terror to cow domestic opposition and divide the world into Them and
Us.




http://tinyurl.com/67wod

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 10:25 AM

The Washington Post describes the same ham-handed indifference to the Geneva Convention:

"While blaming the crimes at Abu Ghraib on a small group of low-ranking soldiers, the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA have fought to preserve the exceptional and sometimes secret policies that allow U.S. personnel to violate the Geneva Conventions and other laws governing the handling and interrogation of foreign detainees. Under those policies, practices at odds with basic American values continue--even if there are no sensational photos to document them."

What a team!! What a group!! We have a government fit to make Americans PROUD!!


I spit.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 10:33 AM

The New York Times reports on NASA's feelings about Bushies bad attityudes on global warming and their failure to act thereon.

"Dr. Hansen stood by his assertions and said the administration risked disaster by discouraging scientists from discussing unwelcome findings."


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 12:43 PM

THe Washington Post examines the Bush adminitration's tepid series of accomplishments on nmuclear proliferation in this article. The Today's Papers summary:


In another impressive assessment, the Post looks at President Bush's record on counter-proliferation. The paper says Libya has been a success--albeit with a big assist by Britain--while the policies, or lack thereof, on North Korea and Iran have been disastrous. Iran has marked by paralyzing disputes within the administration, while the administration essentially put off Pyongyang, a policy one "participant" in decisions called "no carrot, no stick and no talk." The Post also says the U.S. had solid info about A.Q. Khan's order-nukes-by-mail business in early 2001 but waited a year and a half to deal, and then only after the strong urging of the British. "They made no attempt to get a handle on his activities abroad," said one former Bush assistant secretary of state.

---

It is interesting to note that Bush's fixation on Iraq may have been instrumental in allowing nuclear build up to occur in several more dangerous places.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:07 PM

A speech by Al Gore contained the following noteworthy phrases:

"The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then cloaks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities. Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America and give as much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged, who look at his agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul O'Neill, "this is our due."

The central elements of Bush's political – as opposed to religious -- belief system are plain to see: The "public interest" is a dangerous myth according to Bush's ideology – a fiction created by the hated "liberals" who use the notion of "public interest" as an excuse to take away from the wealthy and powerful what they believe is their due. Therefore, government of by and for the people, is bad – except when government can help members of his coalition. Laws and regulations are therefore bad – again, except when they can be used to help members of his coalition.

Therefore, whenever laws must be enforced and regulations administered, it is important to assign those responsibilities to individuals who can be depended upon not to fall prey to this dangerous illusion that there is a public interest, and will instead reliably serve the narrow and specific interests of industries or interest groups. This is the reason, for example, that President Bush put the chairman of Enron, Ken Lay, in charge of vetting any appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Enron had already helped the Bush team with such favors as ferrying their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt the counting of legally cast ballots. And then Enron went on to bilk the electric rate-payers of California, without the inconvenience of federal regulators protecting citizens against their criminal behavior. Or to take another example, this is why all of the important EPA positions have been filled by lawyers and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their respective industries in order to make sure that they're not inconvenienced by the actual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution. In Bush's ideology, there is an interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that support him and his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads. Their preferences become his policies, and his politics become their business
"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:58 PM

Paul Krugman writing for the New York Times provides an excoriating analysis of the Bush administrations "Culture of Coverups"

Excerpts:

"Although President Bush's campaign is based almost entirely on his self-proclaimed leadership in that war, his officials have thrown a shroud of secrecy over any information that might let voters assess his performance.

Yesterday we got two peeks under that shroud. One was The Times's report about what the International Atomic Energy Agency calls "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Ignoring the agency's warnings, administration officials failed to secure the weapons site, Al Qaqaa, in Iraq, allowing 377 tons of deadly high explosives to be looted, presumably by insurgents.

The administration is trying to play down the importance of this loss, arguing that because Iraq was awash in munitions, a few hundred more tons don't make much difference. But aside from their potential use in nuclear weapons - the reason they were under seal before the war - these particular explosives, unlike standard munitions, are exactly what a terrorist needs.

Informed sources quoted by the influential Nelson Report say explosives from Al Qaqaa are the "primary source" of the roadside and car bombs that have killed and wounded so many U.S. soldiers. And thanks to the huge amount looted - "in a highly organized operation using heavy equipment" - the insurgents and whoever else have access to the Qaqaa material have enough explosives for tens of thousands of future bombs.

If the administration had had its way, the public would never have heard anything about this. Administration officials have known about the looting of Al Qaqaa for at least six months, and probably much longer. But they didn't let the I.A.E.A. inspect the site after the war, and pressured the Iraqis not to inform the agency about the loss. They now say that they didn't want our enemies - that is, the people who stole the stuff - to know it was missing. The real reason, obviously, was that they wanted the news kept under wraps until after Nov. 2.

The story of the looted explosives has overshadowed another report that Bush officials tried to suppress - this one about how the Bush administration let Abu Musab al-Zarqawi get away. An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal confirmed and expanded on an "NBC Nightly News" report from March that asserted that before the Iraq war, administration officials called off a planned attack that might have killed Mr. Zarqawi, the terrorist now blamed for much of the mayhem in that country, in his camp.

Citing "military officials," the original NBC report explained that the failure to go after Mr. Zarqawi was based on domestic politics: "the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq" - a part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam Hussein - "could undermine its case for war against Saddam." The Journal doesn't comment on this explanation, but it does say that when NBC reported, correctly, that Mr. Zarqawi had been targeted before the war, administration officials denied it.

What other mistakes did the administration make? If partisan appointees like Mr. Goss continue to control the intelligence agencies, we may never know."

---

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 02:13 PM

From the NY Times, again:

Making Things Worse

Published: October 26, 2004

President Bush's misbegotten invasion of Iraq appears to have achieved what Saddam Hussein did not: putting dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists and creating an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The murder of dozens of Iraqi Army recruits over the weekend is being attributed to the forces of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been identified by the Bush administration as a leading terrorist and a supposed link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That was not true before the war - as multiple investigations have shown. But the breakdown of order since the invasion has changed all that. This terrorist, who has claimed many attacks on occupation forces and the barbaric murder of hostages, recently swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed his group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The hideous murder of the recruits was a reminder of the Bush administration's dangerously inflated claims about training an Iraqi security force. The officials responsible for these inexperienced young men sent them home for leave without weapons or guards, at a time when police and army recruits are constantly attacked. The men who killed them wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms.

A particularly horrific case of irony involves weapons of mass destruction. It's been obvious for months that American forces were not going to find the chemical or biological armaments that Mr. Bush said were stockpiled in Iraq. What we didn't know is that while they were looking for weapons that did not exist, they lost weapons that did.

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn't hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump.

Iraqi and American officials cannot explain how some 760,000 pounds of explosives were spirited away from a well-known site just 30 miles from Baghdad. But they were warned. Within weeks of the invasion, international weapons inspectors told Washington that the explosives depot was in danger and that terrorists could help themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 04:33 PM

From the New Yorker Magazine's assessment endorsing John Kerry for President of the United States:

As a variety of memoirs and journalistic accounts have made plain, Bush seldom entertains contrary opinion. He boasts that he listens to no outside advisers, and inside advisers who dare to express unwelcome views are met with anger or disdain. He lives and works within a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation. Nowhere has his solipsism been more damaging than in the case of Iraq. The arguments and warnings of analysts in the State Department, in the Central Intelligence Agency, in the uniformed military services, and in the chanceries of sympathetic foreign governments had no more effect than the chants of millions of marchers.

The decision to invade and occupy Iraq was made on the basis of four assumptions: first, that Saddam's regime was on the verge of acquiring nuclear explosives and had already amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; second, that the regime had meaningful links with Al Qaeda and (as was repeatedly suggested by the Vice-President and others) might have had something to do with 9/11; third, that within Iraq the regime's fall would be followed by prolonged celebration and rapid and peaceful democratization; and, fourth, that a similar democratic transformation would be precipitated elsewhere in the region, accompanied by a new eagerness among Arab governments and publics to make peace between Israel and a presumptive Palestinian state. The first two of these assumptions have been shown to be entirely baseless. As for the second two, if the wishes behind them do someday come true, it may not be clear that the invasion of Iraq was a help rather than a hindrance.

In Bush's rhetoric, the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, with precision bombings of government buildings in Baghdad, and ended exactly three weeks later, with the iconic statue pulldown. That military operation was indeed a success. But the cakewalk led over a cliff, to a succession of heedless and disastrous mistakes that leave one wondering, at the very least, how the Pentagon's civilian leadership remains intact and the President's sense of infallibility undisturbed.

The failure, against the advice of such leaders as General Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, to deploy an adequate protective force led to unchallenged looting of government buildings, hospitals, museums, and—most inexcusable of all—arms depots. ("Stuff happens," Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld explained, though no stuff happened to the oil ministry.) The Pentagon all but ignored the State Department's postwar plans, compiled by its Future of Iraq project, which warned not only of looting but also of the potential for insurgencies and the folly of relying on exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi; the project's head, Thomas Warrick, was sidelined. The White House counsel's disparagement of the Geneva Conventions and of prohibitions on torture as "quaint" opened the way to systematic and spectacular abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American-run prisons--a moral and political catastrophe for which, in a pattern characteristic of the Administration's management style, no one in a policymaking position has been held accountable.

And, no matter how Bush may cleave to his arguments about a grand coalition ("What's he say to Tony Blair?" "He forgot Poland!"), the coalition he assembled was anything but grand, and it has been steadily melting away in Iraq's cauldron of violence.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 07:58 PM

Allawi charge is boost for Kerry
By Tim Reid in Washington and James Hider in Baghdad






IRAQ'S interim Prime Minister yesterday delivered another blow to President Bush just a week before the US election when he blamed American-led forces for failing to prevent last weekend's massacre of 49 Iraqi Army recruits.

Mr Allawi, who only last month lavished praise on Mr Bush during a White House visit, said that "gross negligence" on the part of the US and its coalition partners was to blame for the massacre of the recruits, 95 miles north of Baghdad.




Mr Kerry had already moved onto the attack against Mr Bush over Monday's news that hundreds of tons of explosives were stolen from an Iraqi military facility after the US-led invasion, and reports yesterday of an imminent White House request for another $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Amos JR
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 12:19 PM

Bush is both arrogant and an asshole. But that's enough of this.

AJ

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 12:25 PM

OG, I liked it better when you used your original handle instead of this sort of back-door insult. For an Old Guy you are acting immature.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 12:44 PM

From Richard Cohen writing in the Washiongton Post a week ago:

"Historians may someday say that the beginning of the end for Bush came last April when Time magazine's John Dickerson asked the president at a televised news conference, "What would your biggest mistake be . . . and what lessons have you learned from it?" Bush, who said the question took him by surprise, said he could not come up with one.

Essentially the same question was asked by Linda Grabel, an ordinary voter, at the St. Louis debate. This time, it could not have been a surprise. But this time, too, Bush could offer not a single substantive example. Aside from making "some mistakes in appointing people," everything had gone swimmingly.

This was a preposterous, dishonest answer. It was either the response of someone who is vastly deluded or sticking to a political strategy conceived by people who do not value truth. Either way, it harkens back to that "learning curve" Stewart mentioned and it demolishes Bush's pose as a regular guy, someone approachable -- someone you could like. It is not possible to like someone who cannot admit a mistake. Iraq is the crazy aunt in the attic that Bush will not acknowledge. When she throws the furniture, Bush says you're just hearing things. Yeah, sure."

Charming metaphor. But "conceived by people who do not value truth" is a ringing, categorical, recognizable and resonant condemnation of Bush's team, IMNSHO.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 08:28 PM

American Conservastive Magazine, endorsing Kerry mainly because Bush is too unacceptable for them to endorse:

" George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to
> almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international
> policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign
> peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies-a notion more
> grounded in Leon Trotsky's concept of global revolution than any sort
> of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies-temporarily put
> on hold while he runs for re-election-are just as extreme. A
> re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions
> of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans "won't do." This election
> is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render
> him unworthy of any conservative support. "

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 01:16 PM

In Closing of the Presidential Mind Franklin Foer shows that while Conservatives have long distrusted experts, inside the Bush administration, that distrust has grown into a war against scientists, economists, intelligence analysts--and the very idea of objective truth.

In Power from the People , Jonathan Chait argues that President Bush isn't an aspiring dictator, and he's not planning to rig the election. But, with his love of secrecy, his penchant for misinformation, and his use of the machinery of government for partisan ends, he has made America less democratic.

In Hero Worship , Noam Scheiber writes that while President Bush styles himself as a man of deep principle, in fact, he switches principles all the time. What he abides by are story lines--especially ones that cast him as the hero.

ALl from the New Republic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Amos JR
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 01:42 PM

The Crawford Iconoclast

AJ

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 01:46 PM

"Smith started the Iconoclast after Bush bought his ranch in Crawford. He began publishing the paper in late 2000, offering school news and plenty of pictures of Crawford Pirate sporting events. As the 2000 election's outcome was battled out in the courts, the new paper endorsed Bush.

But in the recent editorial, the Iconoclast said it supports Kerry and accused the president of having a "smoke-screened agenda" and leading the United States into a "quagmire" in Iraq on flimsy pretenses.

Smith, who co-wrote the editorial, said it gave a voice to a minority of Crawford residents who do not feel they can speak their minds without being "pounced upon."

"People are telling us that they read the editorial and that it reflects the way they feel," Smith said. "They felt like we had stepped out and done that in a very bold way right in the heart of where the problem is."

To many in Crawford, though, the editorial was a slap in the face on the same week as the town's biggest event of the year -- the annual Tonkawa Traditions Festival, which features a parade, a street dance and lawnmower races. "

(From the wise-guy link offered above. It demonstrates a certain interesting contrast in priorities, wouldn't you say?) (And just to set the record straight there is no such person as Amos Jr. except for some anonymous yahoo's impulse to commit identity theft.)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 01:51 PM

TNR's description of the Medicare Flim-FLam:

"Last summer, President Bush and the Republican congressional leadership had a problem. The legislative linchpin of the president's reelection effort, a bill to add prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, lacked the votes in Congress, where conservative Republicans were chafing at the expense. GOP leaders finally secured a bare majority by consenting to the demands of 13 Republican House members, who agreed to vote yes if the cost would not exceed $400 billion over ten years. But that created another problem: The administration knew the bill would cost considerably more--$534 billion, to be exact.

The only non-loyalist who seems to have known the real number was Richard Foster, a 31-year veteran of the bureaucracy who was serving as chief actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The job of putting a lid on Foster fell to his boss, Thomas Scully, appointed by Bush to run Medicare. Scully instructed Foster not to reveal the number, or even to answer queries from Democrats, without his approval. Foster later said he understood Scully to be operating at the White House's direction. In one e-mail obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Foster asked Scully for permission to answer congressional queries that "strike me as straightforward requests for technical information." No, replied Scully's assistant, who then warned, "The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe." (Scully, by the way, later admitted to having negotiated a job with lobbying firms while he helped craft the bill, in which they had a massive interest.)

The Medicare bill was therefore widely understood to cost $400 billion when, at three o'clock in the morning on November 23, the House of Representatives assembled to vote on it. Surprisingly, a majority voted no. In response, the GOP leadership violated the customary time limit on votes, holding the vote open for nearly three hours and twisting enough arms to reverse the result shortly before dawn. (A hint as to their methods of persuasion came from retiring Republican Representative Nick Smith, who offhandedly revealed a few days later that certain "members and groups" had offered to contribute $100,000 to the congressional campaign of his son Brad, who was running for Smith's seat, if he voted yes.) When Democrats controlled Congress, they had extended a vote once, in 1987, for 15 minutes, after a member inadvertently caused a budget bill's defeat and then left town--provoking spasms of indignation from Republicans. The three-hour Medicare vote, congressional scholar Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute later wrote, was "the ugliest and most outrageous breach of standards in the modern history of the House." (...)

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040726&s=chait072604

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Johnjohn
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 02:37 PM

"The governments of France, Russia, China and Syria blocked U.S. efforts within the United Nations to stop Saddam Hussein from misusing the oil-for-food program, a State Department official told Congress yesterday.
    Patrick F. Kennedy, a State official who is a representative to the United Nations for management and reform, told a House hearing that other U.N. member states "resisted" U.S. efforts to end bribery and contracting corruption under the program aimed at providing humanitarian relief from anti-Saddam sanctions. ..
France, Russia, China and Syria were among the members of a special committee overseeing the oil-for-food program that opposed U.S. efforts to stop corruption that led to more than $10 billion being stolen by Saddam and his regime, Mr. Kennedy said."
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041006-012159-1086r.htm
JJ

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 03:12 PM

Johnjohn:

I think the Washington Times might be ummmmm....a somewhat slanted source of news. I am not sure what the facts (if they are facts) in your post have to do with the purpose of this thread.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Johnjohn
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 03:37 PM

"Saddam's U.N. Payroll
Oil for Food bribery means sanctions against Iraq were doomed to fail.

Thursday, October 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Out on the campaign trail, John Kerry continues to diminish our allies in Iraq and decry President Bush for "rushing" to war without U.N. Security Council approval. But we hope his would-be Secretaries of State, Biden and Holbrooke, are paying attention in private to revelations about the crumbling sanctions regime they would have had us continue and the related corruption in the U.N.'s Oil for Food program.

These folks are in for a rude awakening if they really think Old Europe will be rushing to help a President Kerry in Iraq, or that the United Nations is competent and trustworthy enough to manage their foreign policy projects.

The latest pieces of news are last week's data dump from Paul Volcker's U.N.-blessed investigation of Oil for Food, and U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer's report to Congress earlier this month. Everybody is still digesting these massive documents. But the most important conclusion is already clear: Saddam Hussein exploited the program to run the largest bribery scheme in the history of the world.

Yes, we mean that literally. Total turnover between 1996 and 2003 was about $97 billion, or $64.2 billion in oil sales and $32.9 billion worth of food and other "humanitarian" goods. Crucially, Saddam was able to manipulate the program largely because U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan--who was given more or less complete discretion to design Oil for Food by the Security Council resolution that created it--allowed him to pick and choose the buyers of his oil and the sellers of the humanitarian goods.

This meant the Iraq dictator could reward his friends and political allies with oil at below market prices and goods contracts at inflated ones. In the middle of the program, he also started demanding kickbacks on the contracts to add to the stream of unmonitored revenue he was already getting from oil smuggling.

It can't be stressed enough that both the Duelfer and Volcker investigations confirm that this global web of corruption is no mere allegation trumped up by Ahmed Chalabi and "neoconservatives," as U.N. officials tried to pretend in January when Iraq's al Mada newspaper published a list of the oil voucher recipients.

Mr. Duelfer's list of recipients--which more or less confirms al Mada's--was compiled based on information from current and former Iraqi officials and lists maintained by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan (now in U.S. custody) and the former Iraqi Oil Minister. Mr. Volcker's lists--which include the 248 companies that bought Iraqi oil under the program and the 3,545 companies supplying humanitarian goods--are compiled from the U.N.'s own records and cross-checked against Iraqi and other sources, including the French bank BNP Paribas that administered program revenues.

High-level officials of Saddam's regime have told investigators that oil and goods contracts were always awarded with an eye to helping Saddam politically, particularly to promote the lifting of the sanctions. The Volcker data bears this out. Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list.

Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N. Just this week our news side colleagues reported that French authorities have placed under formal investigation a top official of French oil giant Total, for possible misuse of funds including payment of the Iraqi kickbacks. Before the war Total was also openly courting Baghdad for the rights to develop two large Iraqi oil fields."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005818

JJ

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 04 - 02:14 PM

JohnJohn:

What is the title of this thread?

A

Four Years of Lost Liberties
posted by Dan Gillmor 08:02 AM
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010960.shtml
(This is also my column today in the San Jose Mercury News.)

If you believe that political and social liberty go hand in hand
with economic freedom -- and that they form an underpinning of a
vibrant free market -- you should be worried about another four
years like the four we've just had.


Let's grant that George W. Bush plainly believes in a free
market, largely unconstrained by government intervention. But he
has made it clear that he doesn't have the same devotion to
other kinds of liberty.

He and his allies have used terrorism to launch a massive
assault on civil liberties. They are not just indifferent to
liberty, they are actively hostile to it.

Bush's first term has been a catalog of encroachments. He has
expanded surveillance -- electronic and otherwise -- without
adequate safeguards. He has had a mania for secrecy, shielding
more and more government information from public view. This
amounts to telling Americans they have no right in many cases to
know how our money is being used or what government is doing in
our names.

This president has curbed dissent through intimidation. His
attorney general practically labeled as traitors people who
questioned the outrageously named ``Patriot Act,'' for
example. More recently, the Bush forces have excluded anyone who
is not a declared supporter from being even in the vicinity of
campaign events, and have even fenced off protesters in
Orwellian ``free speech zones'' far from the scenes.

The Bush years have emboldened rights and privacy invaders
everywhere. A national ID card is making a back-door entrance
via a scheme by the state agencies that issue driver's licenses,
for example.

He has given corporate interests carte blanche to buy, sell,
massage and trade our most personal information -- mocking his
vows in the 2000 campaign to be a president who would protect
privacy.

The federal government now encourages (and buys) all kinds of
data collection and ways to manipulate it, and offers barely a
hint of safeguards. Do you imagine for even a second that the
radio-chip ID implants being sold to track patients inside
hospitals won't be used for much broader kinds of surveillance
someday? Ditto the radio tags the government says it wants to
put into our passports (and soon, no doubt, our driver's
licenses). Surveillance is big business now.

Insidiously, the Bush administration has turned the corporate
data mongers into partners in the dawning surveillance
state. Evading even the most trivial safeguards, including
federal laws protecting privacy, it buys or uses data collected
by private companies that are under no such restrictions.

An intrusive airline passenger screening system, relying on
commercial data and other information, was officially scrapped
after protests. But as the Washington Post reported earlier this
month, one of the former government officials behind that
project has launched a private company that will collect and
provide data for the project's new incarnation -- and
established the company offshore in Bermuda, ``outside the reach
of U.S. regulators.''

The most frightening assault on liberty has had nothing to do
with the Patriot Act, surveillance or privacy. Bush has
systematically ignored the law when it suited his purpose,
treating the Constitution as a suggestion box, not the bedrock
of liberty. He asserted the right to declare American citizens
as enemy combatants here at home and to jail them indefinitely,
with no right even to see a lawyer.

The Supreme Court, thankfully, rejected Bush's dictatorial views
in two pivotal decisions earlier this year. But presidents
nominate justices, and this one means to nominate the kind who
will let the government do pretty much what it pleases.

Early last week, William Rehnquist, chief justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, had surgery for thyroid cancer. His
condition reminded people that whoever is president during the
next four years will probably nominate three or four justices to
the highest court.

A court with two, three or four judges of Bush's preference
would not be friendly, on balance, to our rights as
individuals. The president has made clear his intention to
appoint judges who would overturn abortion rights. That, too, is
a question of liberty.

Is John Kerry any better? He voted for the ``Patriot'' law,
after all.

But while Bush vows to expand that law's reach over our lives,
Kerry has said he would work to repeal some of the more odious
provisions, such as the one that lets government agents rifle
through our lives -- including what library books we read --
with few safeguards.

I believe that a free economy rests in large part on people's
willingness to feel free -- to take chances, to be different
from others. The surveillance state is a conformist state, where
a fog of fear deadens initiative and the willingness to take
risks.

No sane person wants to make law enforcement impotent. But risk
is part of a free culture, and the more we clamp down on things
that have any element of risk the more we clamp down on freedom
itself.

--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: [phone]
http://www.ibd.com

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 04 - 02:29 PM

HEADLINE: Public Opinion Poll Indicates Iraqis Favor Kerry over Bush in U.S. Presidential Race


INTRO: A new public opinion poll shows more Iraqis favor Democratic challenger John Kerry than President Bush, who launched the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But as VOA's Greg Lamotte reports from Baghdad, more than half of the two-thousand peopled polled throughout Iraq don't care who wins the U.S. presidency in next week's election.


TEXT: The new survey of Iraqi public opinion was conducted last week by Iraq's Center for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad. The group, which has been operating in Iraq for about a year, says its latest survey indicates that among Iraqis with a preference, Mr. Kerry leads President Bush by six-and-a-half percentage points. The poll has a margin of error of four percent.

But the director of the center, former Iraqi exile Sadoun al-Dulame, says 58-percent of the respondents said they don't care who wins the U.S. presidential election.


(From the VOA website)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 01:16 AM

Dan Gillmore posts a weblog editorial in the Silicon Valley Press concerning the reduction in liberty that has occurred int he last four years.

"Bush's first term has been a catalog of encroachments. He has
expanded surveillance -- electronic and otherwise -- without
adequate safeguards. He has had a mania for secrecy, shielding
more and more government information from public view. This
amounts to telling Americans they have no right in many cases to
know how our money is being used or what government is doing in
our names.

This president has curbed dissent through intimidation. His
attorney general practically labeled as traitors people who
questioned the outrageously named ``Patriot Act,'' for
example. More recently, the Bush forces have excluded anyone who
is not a declared supporter from being even in the vicinity of
campaign events, and have even fenced off protesters in
Orwellian ``free speech zones'' far from the scenes."

...

But while Bush vows to expand that law's reach over our lives,
Kerry has said he would work to repeal some of the more odious
provisions, such as the one that lets government agents rifle
through our lives -- including what library books we read --
with few safeguards.

I believe that a free economy rests in large part on people's
willingness to feel free -- to take chances, to be different
from others. The surveillance state is a conformist state, where
a fog of fear deadens initiative and the willingness to take
risks.

No sane person wants to make law enforcement impotent. But risk
is part of a free culture, and the more we clamp down on things
that have any element of risk the more we clamp down on freedom
itself.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Johnjohn
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 09:27 AM

"Measure Number:H.R. 3162 (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001 )Kennedy (D-MA), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea"

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00313

JJ

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:20 AM

JJ:

Your point, sir?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:52 AM

A poignant testimony from one heartbroken sister. Requires Quicktime.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:56 AM

There once was a campaigner named Amos
On Mudcat he become very famous
He trys beyond hope
Still his candidate's a dope
If we disagree with him he will flame us!!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:00 PM

Really on topic, and the scansion is inspired.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 05:27 PM

From the Op Ed section of the Times:

"Taking Bush at His Word
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: October 30, 2004

I often criticize statements by President Bush, so today let me praise some of his real wisdom:

• Oct. 11, 2000: "If we're an arrogant nation, [foreigners] will resent us. If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us. ... We've got to be humble."

It's a good thing Mr. Bush tried to be humble, or the U.S. would have an approval rating even lower than 5 percent in Jordan, and Osama bin Laden's approval rating in Pakistan would be higher than 65 percent.

• Feb. 27, 2001: "I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. ... We should approach our nation's budget as any prudent family would."

But Mr. Bush, with the help of a weak economy, has transformed the Clinton budget surpluses into huge deficits. Since Mr. Bush took office, the federal debt has increased by $2.1 trillion, or 40 percent.

• Sept. 25, 2000: "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."

Hmm. And many of our exports go abroad. Meanwhile, despite the lackluster economy, oil imports are 1.3 million barrels per day higher than in Mr. Clinton's last year in office.

• June 11, 2001: "My administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change."

Great! Because America's carbon dioxide emissions, associated with global warming, have risen 1.7 percent since then.

• June 26, 2003: "Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors."

It takes a big man to admit mistakes, like his administration's practice of hiding certain Arab prisoners from Red Cross and other inspectors.

• Nov. 5, 2003: "In the debate about the rights of the unborn, we are asked to broaden the circle of our moral concern. ... We're asked by our convictions and tradition and compassion to build a culture of life, and make this a more just and welcoming society."

Abortions declined in the U.S. in the Clinton years; the abortion rate dropped by 22 percent in the 1990's. But while data are incomplete, abortions appear to have increased sharply since Mr. Bush took office. Glen H. Stassen, a Christian pro-life theologian, estimates that 52,000 more abortions occurred in 2002 than would have been expected based on the previous trend. Professor Stassen attributes the rise in abortions in part to the troubled economy and concerns among pregnant women that they cannot afford to have babies.

• May 25, 2004: "One of the challenges we face is to make sure the health care system responds to the needs of the citizens."

But five million more Americans don't have health insurance, compared with when Mr. Bush took office.

• Sept. 9, 2003: "We must focus early to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract."

But Mr. Bush's budget guidelines translate into inflation-adjusted reductions in 2006 alone of more than $900 million for Head Start and childhood education.

• May 24, 2003: "We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea."

On Mr. Bush's watch, North Korea is generally believed to have gone from two nuclear weapons to about eight.

• 2001: "Not on my watch."

Scrawled note by Mr. Bush on a report to him about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that had occurred under President Clinton.

That's reassuring to the 100,000 or more people in Darfur who have died in a spasm of murder and rape that Mr. Bush acknowledges as genocide.

• Sept. 30, 2004: "The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network."

But the single most important step to reducing the risk that a nuclear weapon will destroy New York is to secure loose nukes abroad, and Mr. Bush has been lackadaisical about that. Only 135 out of 600 metric tons of Russian nuclear materials have been given comprehensive upgrades, and Mr. Bush initially proposed cutting funds for that program.

• Sept. 2, 1999: "Effective reform requires accountability. ... It is a sad story. High hopes, low achievement. Grand plans, unmet goals. My administration will do things differently."

Oh?

---

Hmmmmmm....



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Rosencranz & Guildenstern
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 05:42 PM

:Employment Growth Accelerated in October: US Economy Preview

US employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists shows."

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=avn64.gOLNdI&refer=home
RG

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Rosencranz & Guildenstern
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 07:07 PM

"Nancy Reagan Strongly Endorses President Bush"

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/2/161745.shtml

RG

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 08:37 PM

The New York TImes Dowd column puts the issue of Osama's new tape versus Bush's eligibility into its best and most natural perspective.

That Dowd gal is hotter than a Saturday night special.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 09:47 PM

AN INTERESTING ASSESSMENT BY THE Christian Science Monitor discusses the view of Bush held by various nations around the world, where his pockets of support are, and who sees him which way, and more interestingly, why.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 09:50 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 03 Nov 04 - 05:31 AM

399

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 03 Nov 04 - 05:32 AM

400. I thank you. God that felt good!