NANCY PELOSI watching over the chicken-coop of the US government treasury and taxpayer and citizen rights is like A CORRUPT COP being PAID to NOT NOTICE a BANK ROBBERY IN PROGRESS....
As long as Nancy and her fellow Democrat "leaders" get their oil industry, war industry, and AIPAC 'campaign donations' - SHE WILL ALLOW the Bush-Cheney administration to LOOT AND PLUNDER THE US TREASURY, LIE TO THE PUBLIC, and MANIPULATE the news-media WITH IMPUNITY....
NANCY PELOSI IS A CRIMINAL. She is like the CORRUPT COP ON THE TAKE... she STANDS BY IDLY, as the Bush administration not only LOOTS the residents of New Orleans of the disaster RECOVERY competence that THEY DESERVE AS AMERICAN TAXPAYERS... but AGAIN _ALLOWS_ the Bush administration to treat FEMA as a crony corruption dumping ground for INCOMPETENTS and LAIRS.
MADAM SPEAKER, YOUR TENURE AS SPEAKER is a DISGRACE and a DISASTER.
Your "leadership" ALLOWS the New York Time and Washington Post to effectively CENSOR the march of THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of anti-war protesters from critical front page discussions in their newspapers.... the same sort of PRO-WAR, CENSOR opposition 'news' coverage that allowed Germany's leaders to, in Gestapo chief Herman Goering's words, drag an unwilling populace to wars, with Germany's army marching on all of her neighbors in the late 1930s.
===========================================
WAR PROTEST story that DOES NOT MAKE the NEW YORK SLIMES or WASHINGTON COWARDLY POST frong pages... like Nazi death-camp victims, anti-war Americans DO NOT EXIST in the reality of America's CORRUPTED, war-mongering media elite...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-071027march,0,1247325.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout
===================================
White House: FAKE FEMA news conference won't happen again
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Friday October 26, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/White_House_apologizes_for_fake_FEMA_1026.html
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino assured reporters today that the staged news conference organized on Tuesday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would not happen again, and said the White House would never employ such tactics at its own press briefings.
"It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it," said Perino.
According to a report in the Washington Post, FEMA had instructed its own public relations staff to pose as reporters when no legitimate members of the media arrived in time for a hastily arranged briefing about the California wildfires.
"We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute," a FEMA deputy director of public affairs told the Post. "We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day."
Perino said FEMA alone was responsible for the decision to go ahead with the event.
"FEMA has issued an apology, saying that they had an error in judgment when they were attempting to get out a lot of information to reporters, who were asking for answers to a variety of questions in regard to the wildfires in California," she said. "It's not something I would have condoned. And they, I'm sure, will not do it again."
FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson, who fielded questions from the stand-in "reporters," issued a statement today claiming an "error in judgment."
"Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received," he said. "We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent."
Among the questions Johnson answered from FEMA employees was a query about the agency's performance during the fires:
"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson told his fellow FEMA employee. "This is a FEMA and a federal government that's leaning forward, not waiting to react. And you have to be pretty pleased to see that."
A full list of questions asked during the briefing is available at MSNBC's First Read.
The following video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast on October 26, 2007.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
NANCY PELOSI - WAR CRIMINAL.... Bush-Cheney's BIGGEST ENABLER, bigger even than Rupert Murdoch or Rush LImbuagh...
So much for Sally Field's notion that if we had more mothers as political and world leaders, we would have LESS WAR, corruption, crime, and imperial folly.
NANCY PELOSI, beause she is AFRAID, CO-OPTED (or corrupted by AIPAC) of impeaching Dick Cheney or George Bush, is now their NUMBER ONE ENEABLER, as they bang-the-drums for war with IRAN in a VERBATIM repeat of their "wmd LIES-to-WAR" lead up to the attack and invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003
Here, PM Carpenter lays out how the Elites at the Washington Post follow Nancy Pelosi's horrible lead: they REPACKAGE Criminal failures, war crimes, vast corruption, and cascade of news horrors as THE BLANDLY TOLERABLE.
(Because we, the great American juedeo-christ-ian empire, have every right to turn entire swaths of Iraq into FREE FIRE, KILL ALL HUMANS ON SIGHT zones)
CONGRATULATIONS, Nancy! We hope that SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN shares some of her (husband's) WAR CONTRACTING millions of dollars BOOTY WITH YOU, so you can purchase a new luxury condominium entirely isolated from those San Francisco scum war protesters you despise so much.
=============================
Something's Gotta Give: Portraits in Criminal Failure
by P.M. Carpenter
October 27, 2007
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/10/somethings-gott.html
There it is this morning -- the most representative snapshot yet of what the Bush administration has wrought: three adjacent stories of horror and despair cascading down the Washington Post's front page.
Before proceeding, it is first worth noting that the journalistic tension at the Post now seems to have reached the farcical level of the Wall Street Journal's: its reporters report -- see above; "stories of horror" -- then its elite editorial corps settles back and repackages the horrible contemporaneities into the blandly tolerable.
And this morning we have step one of the two-pronged process: three headlines, reading top to bottom, "CIA's 'Ghost Prisoners' Fade into Obscurity," "U.S. to Order Diplomats to Iraq," and "Not 'Worth Another Soldier's Life.'"
If you ever wanted a handy spot-check of the status quo's central front, there you have it: Those who are there want the hell out; those who aren't there want to stay the hell out; and some of those who lived on the edges have simply vanished, Pinochet style.
As for the latter, since a bit more than a year ago, when our memo-comforted commander in chief nevertheless declared an end to his archipelago of secret prisons (I still can't believe any American would have to write such a line) and he transferred some of the torture victims (there's goes that incredulity again) to Guantanamo Bay, there "has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other 'ghost prisoners' who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA." Some, the story reports, "have disappeared without a trace."
That's one way to beat habeas. It's ruthlessly efficient; still, I hope the international courts will demur and obtain the necessary writs when ordering war-crimes trials of America's finest. And I believe they know precisely where to find at least one of them.
The second story almost provides comic relief, however. It seems the State Department has figured a way around all its unanswered "Help Wanted in Iraq" ads. "On Monday, 200 to 300 [Foreign Service officers] will be notified of their selection as 'prime candidates' for 50 open positions." Very open -- despite the potential for world adventure, however short-lived that adventure may be. In fact, I'm so career and financially challenged I'm thinking of applying myself, thereby sparing one of these poor drafted bastards. Dear Condi: Please forward app.
One imagines, this very morning, 2000 to 3000 frenzied and terrified fingers clutching Foreign Service desks in, oh, say, Europe and sunny Southeast Asia. Budding democratic wonderlands are a thrilling professional challenge, no doubt, but some are less attractive than others, and yet others, it seems, are worthy of mandatory professional fulfillment. The State Department has kindly announced that "those who receive the selection letters will have 10 days to file a written notice of objection," and one further imagines a departmental expectation of roughly 200 to 300 of said objections -- and don't you know the vast majority will be pure poetry.
But switching from those who mouth dedication to those proving it, we have the improperly placed third story: "Not 'Worth Another Soldier's Life.'"
Forget the triumphalist drivel of right-wing radio and soothing testimony of the general staff. Baghdad, according to those who know best, is a living hell -- a wretchedly barren, bombed-out snake pit of ethnic and sectarian anguish that translates "stay the course" into the hopelessly endless.
More than a year ago, when "soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad," they possessed a good deal of that spirited patriotic hope. Now, after meeting reality, they are "deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions."
So discouraged, in fact, the battalion sergeant observed: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."
That place was, of course, never worth the first soldier's life. Nor the first dollar of the trillion and counting wasted. Nor America's world standing. Nor the secret prisons, nor the Gestapo tactics, nor the fraudulent menaces to democracy at home, nor any of the other countless official debaucheries.
Yet such is the loathsome folly the Bush administration has wrought; a folly that now blankets the front pages. Notwithstanding, there the administration sits -- securely in charge, despised and besieged by the world but virtually unopposed within the confines of the District of Columbia.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Edwards exposes Hillary's joining the GOP MARCH TO WAR vs Iran...
At long last, the grim truth - that Democratic "leaders" are ENABLERS of THE WORST TENDENCIES of the Bush-Cheney administration - is out in the open. For an entire decade, from the time of President Bill Clinton to present, the Democratic leaders have always PRETENDED to be incapable of stopping Republican thuggery. Even Saint Al Gore, grasped by "liberal" and progressive groups as being vindicated for his committment to global warming, was the Democrat who GAVELLED THE BLACK CONGRESSIONAL CAUCUS INTO SUBMISSION, when the Black Caucus sought a SIMPLE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION into massive voter disenfranchisement in Florida during the 2000 election. Put quite simply, Mr. Gore put process - a clean and uncontested inauguration for George Bush and Dick Cheney to become president - and his own pompous, stuffed-shirt self-dignity as Vice President, AHEAD OF THE VOTING RIIGHTS of thousands of disenfranchised voters in Florida, and thereby MILLIONS of voters across America who had voted for the Democratic candidates (Gore and Lieberman) over the Republican candidates. Mr. GORE, ELECTION 2000 was NOT about YOU.... it was about those MILLIONS of voters who came out to oppose the Right-Wing demagogues who had sought to impeach Bill Clinton for eight long years (finally settling on the Monica affair as impeachment rational), who were planning to DISENFRANCHISE minority voters even as Mr. Gore ran his condescending campaign.
"CONDESCENDING"? Well, not only did Mr. Gore select Joe Lieberman, the most outspoken Democrat critic of President Clinton to be his running mate, based on "Moral Values" notions despite Lieberman's trophy, younger, 2nd wife, but even more importantly than Gore's DISASTROUS judgement of character about the treacherous Lieberman, Gore REFUSED TO MAKE Texas schoolchildren thrown off of pre-school, after-school, and health care (insurance) programs by then Texas Governor George W. Bush's signature TAX CUTS FOR billionaires and multi-millionaires an important issue of his, Gore's campaign.
MR. GORE, YOU REFUSED to make health care for poor Texas schoolchildren an important issue of your 2000 campaign, and guess what?
SEVEN YEARS LATER, the Democrats STILL can not muster the support to break the Bush filibuster of HEALTH CARE FOR CHILDREN - the CHIPS programs!!
Because Al Gore thought the American public COULD NOT HANDLE the issue "TAX CUTS FOR RICH vs SOCIAL SERVICES for the most needy among us," he ROBBED us Democratic (if not American) voters of that discussion that is at the heart and soul of 100 years of progressive, liberal, democratic progress from the time of President Teddy Roosevelt to the present, over 200 years of progress if you go back to the Civil War to end the expansion of slavery, and the Declaration of Independence to end the Divine Right of Kings before that.
(Former) Senator John Edwards finally getting to the heart of the matter: that HILLARY CLINTON _ENABLES_ THE WORST attributes of Bush-Cheney war policies by greenlighting war preparations against Iran - is a welcome, but long overdue exposition of THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE this coming election.
=================================
Edwards raps Clinton, Romney on Iran
By Amy Lorentzen Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 25, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071025/ap_on_el_pr/candidates_iran;_ylt=AnLZfxfhX0A6mmf6Q0Z8JWus0NUE
CORNING, Iowa - Presidential contender John Edwards criticized Democratic and Republican rivals alike Thursday for threats and a vote against Iran, accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of helping a GOP march to war.
Earlier in the day, the Bush administration announced new sanctions against Iran and Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he would consider a military blockade or "bombardment of some kind" to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
"You expect that from Republicans, but the Democrats don't need to be helping," Edwards told a group gathered in an Iowa high school. "We need to stand up to these people. We need to stop them and we need to be strong in our opposition."
Edwards, a Democratic former senator, said Clinton made a mistake when she voted recently to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization because President Bush could use the designation to launch military attacks. Clinton, the only Democrat running for president to support the Senate measure, has vigorously denied that would be the result and says she was voting for stepped-up diplomacy and economic sanctions.
On Thursday, the administration declared the Revolutionary Guard a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and announced the new sanctions meant to isolate Iran. The Iranian government contends its nuclear program is aimed only toward providing nuclear power.
Clinton was supportive of the administration move.
"We must work to check Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support of terrorism, and the sanctions announced today strengthen America's diplomatic hand in that regard," she said. "The Bush administration should use this opportunity to finally engage in robust diplomacy to achieve our objective of ending Iran's nuclear weapons program while also averting military action."
Romney, who has been advocating a hard line against Iran throughout his presidential campaign, also applauded the administrations' move. He said military action would be necessary if severe economic and diplomatic sanctions don't persuade Iranian leaders to abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
He added: "That's an option that's on the table. And it is not something which we'll spell out specifically. I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that's something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said he supports tough sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard, but he contended the measure Clinton supported "made the case for President Bush that we need to use our military presence in Iraq to counter Iran — a case that has nothing to do with sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard." Obama missed the Senate vote on the Revolutionary Guard, campaigning in New Hampshire.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., criticized the administration's announcement Thursday as well as Clinton's vote.
"The aggressive actions taken today by the administration absent any corresponding diplomatic action is exactly what we all should have known was coming when we considered our vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with Iran," Dodd said.
Clinton's campaign, apparently worried about how her vote on Iran is being perceived, sent a letter to Iowa voters in recent days to defend it.
Edwards said it's all too similar to the lead-up to the Iraq war.
"I've learned my lesson. I learned it the very hard way on Iraq," said Edwards, who voted to give Bush power for war with Iraq five years ago but has apologized for it. "You cannot give this president any authority because he will abuse it."
___
Associated Press Writer Glen Johnson in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this report.
"CONDESCENDING"? Well, not only did Mr. Gore select Joe Lieberman, the most outspoken Democrat critic of President Clinton to be his running mate, based on "Moral Values" notions despite Lieberman's trophy, younger, 2nd wife, but even more importantly than Gore's DISASTROUS judgement of character about the treacherous Lieberman, Gore REFUSED TO MAKE Texas schoolchildren thrown off of pre-school, after-school, and health care (insurance) programs by then Texas Governor George W. Bush's signature TAX CUTS FOR billionaires and multi-millionaires an important issue of his, Gore's campaign.
MR. GORE, YOU REFUSED to make health care for poor Texas schoolchildren an important issue of your 2000 campaign, and guess what?
SEVEN YEARS LATER, the Democrats STILL can not muster the support to break the Bush filibuster of HEALTH CARE FOR CHILDREN - the CHIPS programs!!
Because Al Gore thought the American public COULD NOT HANDLE the issue "TAX CUTS FOR RICH vs SOCIAL SERVICES for the most needy among us," he ROBBED us Democratic (if not American) voters of that discussion that is at the heart and soul of 100 years of progressive, liberal, democratic progress from the time of President Teddy Roosevelt to the present, over 200 years of progress if you go back to the Civil War to end the expansion of slavery, and the Declaration of Independence to end the Divine Right of Kings before that.
(Former) Senator John Edwards finally getting to the heart of the matter: that HILLARY CLINTON _ENABLES_ THE WORST attributes of Bush-Cheney war policies by greenlighting war preparations against Iran - is a welcome, but long overdue exposition of THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE this coming election.
=================================
Edwards raps Clinton, Romney on Iran
By Amy Lorentzen Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 25, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071025/ap_on_el_pr/candidates_iran;_ylt=AnLZfxfhX0A6mmf6Q0Z8JWus0NUE
CORNING, Iowa - Presidential contender John Edwards criticized Democratic and Republican rivals alike Thursday for threats and a vote against Iran, accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of helping a GOP march to war.
Earlier in the day, the Bush administration announced new sanctions against Iran and Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he would consider a military blockade or "bombardment of some kind" to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
"You expect that from Republicans, but the Democrats don't need to be helping," Edwards told a group gathered in an Iowa high school. "We need to stand up to these people. We need to stop them and we need to be strong in our opposition."
Edwards, a Democratic former senator, said Clinton made a mistake when she voted recently to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization because President Bush could use the designation to launch military attacks. Clinton, the only Democrat running for president to support the Senate measure, has vigorously denied that would be the result and says she was voting for stepped-up diplomacy and economic sanctions.
On Thursday, the administration declared the Revolutionary Guard a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and announced the new sanctions meant to isolate Iran. The Iranian government contends its nuclear program is aimed only toward providing nuclear power.
Clinton was supportive of the administration move.
"We must work to check Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support of terrorism, and the sanctions announced today strengthen America's diplomatic hand in that regard," she said. "The Bush administration should use this opportunity to finally engage in robust diplomacy to achieve our objective of ending Iran's nuclear weapons program while also averting military action."
Romney, who has been advocating a hard line against Iran throughout his presidential campaign, also applauded the administrations' move. He said military action would be necessary if severe economic and diplomatic sanctions don't persuade Iranian leaders to abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
He added: "That's an option that's on the table. And it is not something which we'll spell out specifically. I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that's something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said he supports tough sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard, but he contended the measure Clinton supported "made the case for President Bush that we need to use our military presence in Iraq to counter Iran — a case that has nothing to do with sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard." Obama missed the Senate vote on the Revolutionary Guard, campaigning in New Hampshire.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., criticized the administration's announcement Thursday as well as Clinton's vote.
"The aggressive actions taken today by the administration absent any corresponding diplomatic action is exactly what we all should have known was coming when we considered our vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with Iran," Dodd said.
Clinton's campaign, apparently worried about how her vote on Iran is being perceived, sent a letter to Iowa voters in recent days to defend it.
Edwards said it's all too similar to the lead-up to the Iraq war.
"I've learned my lesson. I learned it the very hard way on Iraq," said Edwards, who voted to give Bush power for war with Iraq five years ago but has apologized for it. "You cannot give this president any authority because he will abuse it."
___
Associated Press Writer Glen Johnson in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this report.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Hillary's disastrous, PRETEND IGNORANT vote to GREENLIGHT the Bush-Cheney-AIPAC bombing of Iran...
Fortunately, BRENT BUDOWSKY (former senior staff member of senate committees) comes to the rescue: DISSECTING Hillary Clinton's DISASTROUS "AIPAC whispers in my ear" vote to GREENLIGHT WAR TALK, or bombing, of Iran.
Budowsky CONNECTS THE DOTS that Democratic 'leaders' and the derelict press refuse to connect:
That JOE LIEBERMAN does NOT WANT DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS with Iran.. he wants to UNLEASH the US miltiary on that country IMMEDIATELY. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, we can even call up Senator Lieberman PRACTICALLY BEGGING US military commander in Iraq, General David Patraeus, to ATTACK IRAN when General Patraeus appeared before Senate committee on 9-11-2007.
HILLARY CLINTON is LESS INFORMED - LESS qualified to be a leader, much less THE leader of the entire United States of America - than anyone reading this post,, or WATCHING SENATOR LIEBERMAN, the SPONSOR of the Kyle-Lieberman bill, ASKING GENERAL PATRAEUS TO PURSUE Iranian forces IN TO IRAN!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibpyameu5Zc&eurl=http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/9/11/194232/811
HILLARY, FOR SHAME! YOUR PRETEND IGNORANCE meme is wearing thin, quickly. Are you going to ALLOW the Bush-Cheney adminsitration to ATTACK IRAN at their time and choosing, thereby inciting "BRING IT ON" terror attacks, and giving the election-stealing duo an excuse to DISBAND ELECTIONS altogether?
Hillary THINKS she is being clever, having it BOTH WAYS on US wars of invasion in the Mideast; but just as KERRY was WORSE than Gore, Hillary (and all of us) may not even have an election to be stolen out from under us.
========================================
Hillary Clinton’s Bad Iran Vote
by Brent Budowsky
October 25, 2007
http://pundits.thehill.com/2007/10/25/hillary-clinton’s-bad-iran-vote/
When Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Kyl offered the Iran resolution that Hillary Rodham Clinton and some other Democrats unfortunately supported, trust me, folks, Sen. Lieberman was not pushing for a diplomatic solution.
Sen. Clinton has a problem, and it cannot and will not be solved through oppo research about Obama, or through the assault of spinmeisters claiming, falsely, that it was a vote for diplomacy.
What Sen. Clinton wants to do is maneuver to the right for the general election, then, when the backlash comes, maneuver to the left with claims she has been wronged and claims she was voting for diplomacy, as she claimed when she supported the original Iraq war resolution.
The Lieberman proposal was a vote about war, not a vote about diplomacy. The Lieberman proposal was pushed by those who want to drive the country to war, with language that may well be used to someday, possibly soon, justify a war, by those who favor a war.
The Lieberman Iran proposal was done in a Washington atmosphere that borders on hysteria on matters involving Iran, with far too many senators on both sides of the aisle surrendering to the hysteria by voting for this resolution.
The Lieberman proposal was done in a Washington where the president speaks of World War III, and Democrats, far too often, fail to offer the opposition that voters sent them to Washington to offer in the election of 2006.
If other Democrats voted for this, it does not make Hillary Clinton right; it makes them wrong.
Virtually all Democrats around America and the overwhelming majority of independents as well believe they were disenfranchised after 2006, that the vote was effectively stolen after the fact by both parties — one led by a reckless president, the other unable to offer strong and effective opposition.
Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she maneuvered to vote for the Iraq resolution in 2002, which turned out to be an effective declaration of war. She maneuvered between 2002 and 2006 when she resisted the pleas from Democrats and countless Americans and continued to oppose the most important proposals to change the policy.
Now she maneuvers, again, in 2007, with an Iran vote that looks like, smells like, and sounds like the Iraq vote in 2002.
If Sen. Clinton wants the benefits of moving tactically to the right, she should accept the responsibility for the consequences, as should all other Democrats who took the same course and speak with the same uncertain trumpet.
If Hillary Clinton is nominated, I will support her, holding my nose with one hand and a certain part of my anatomy with the other.
The problem Sen. Clinton has is she is not trusted by many voters who could vote for her, to act with conviction, courage and clarity. As a result, she is a polarizing figure who might win a close election, but runs the risk, for herself and the party, of motivating more conservatives to vote, of turning off some Democrats and independents, and losing a close election the Democrats should win in a landslide.
The question is not whether Hillary is left or right, or whether she maneuvers this way or that way during this week or that week. The question is whether she is tough enough and principled enough to function as the credible leader of the opposition to policies that 75 percent of the American people oppose, without the endless maneuvering and calculations that make Americans cynical about her, about Congress, and about Democrats nationally.
Hopefully she will stand up, and Democrats in Congress will stand up, far more boldly than they have been standing up since George W. Bush began his obsessive march to war in Iraq with the support of Sen. Clinton and far too many Democrats in Congress.
No amount of spin can ever make the 2002 Iraq vote, or the 2007 Iran vote, a vote for diplomatic solutions. With a president who speaks of World War III, Democrats and independents throughout America want and deserve far better leadership than that, and far more respect for what the voters decided in the last election, in 2006.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Nancy Pelosi, YOU ARE ALREADY FUNDING Bush's IRAN WAR. Congratulations, in advance, for all the blood on your hands...
CONGRATULATIONS, NANCY PELOSI! When the bombs start falling on Iran, IT WILL BE YOUR WAR, because YOU TOOK IMPEACHEMENT of the Bush-Cheney administration "OFF THE TABLE" - despite their SERIAL CRIMES and CRIMINAL CONDUCT, including CONVICTIONS, from a sympathetic jury, of the Vice President's Chief of Staff.
Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs
White House Bomber Request Leaves Some Wondering if U.S. Is Preparing Action in Iran
By JONATHAN KARL
Oct. 24, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3771522&page=1
Tucked inside the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.
The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.
Related Stories
Cheney: 'We Will Not Allow' Iran Nukes
US Military Opens Camp on Iranian Border
[NOTE: The US military has occupied Iraq for 4 years now... if smuggling across the Iran border is taking place, it is CRIMINAL DERELICTION OF DUTY of the American command/leadership, all the way to the White House]
The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders."
What urgent need? The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command.
ABC News called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent operational need" is. CENTCOM spokesman Maj. Todd White said he would look into it, but, so far, no answer.
There doesn't appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there.
So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran's flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.
"You'd use it on Natanz," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly."
"It's kind of strange," Pike said. "It sends a signal that you are preparing to bomb Iran, and if you were actually going to bomb Iran I wouldn't think you would want to announce it like that."
The MOP is a massive bomb -- 20 feet long and encased in 3.5 inch thick high-performance steel. It is designed to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before exploding.
Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs
White House Bomber Request Leaves Some Wondering if U.S. Is Preparing Action in Iran
By JONATHAN KARL
Oct. 24, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3771522&page=1
Tucked inside the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.
The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.
Related Stories
Cheney: 'We Will Not Allow' Iran Nukes
US Military Opens Camp on Iranian Border
[NOTE: The US military has occupied Iraq for 4 years now... if smuggling across the Iran border is taking place, it is CRIMINAL DERELICTION OF DUTY of the American command/leadership, all the way to the White House]
The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders."
What urgent need? The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command.
ABC News called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent operational need" is. CENTCOM spokesman Maj. Todd White said he would look into it, but, so far, no answer.
There doesn't appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there.
So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran's flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.
"You'd use it on Natanz," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly."
"It's kind of strange," Pike said. "It sends a signal that you are preparing to bomb Iran, and if you were actually going to bomb Iran I wouldn't think you would want to announce it like that."
The MOP is a massive bomb -- 20 feet long and encased in 3.5 inch thick high-performance steel. It is designed to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before exploding.
Cowardly Reid and Pelosi can't even express the concern... of PEGGY NOONAN?? Time to FIRE the INCOMPETENT duo.
SPEAKER PELOSI, if YOU can't vocally and articulately express the concern of ardent CLINTON HATER and Bush supporter PEGGY NOONAN for the President's frat-boy conduct of American government and foreign affairs, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO RESIGN.
What's wrong with Bush?
by Peggy Noonan
I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find,
a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who'd previously supported him. She said she'd had it.
"I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth." I was startled by her vehemence only because she is,
as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago:
"I took the W off my car today," it said on the subject line. ...
As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling
somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was
the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering,
which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands.
Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and
ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since
polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.
Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he's right and you're wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain
steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither
beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can't sit around and moan. But it doesn't look like an act.
People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them.
His stock answer is that of course he feels the sadness of the families who've lost someone in Iraq.
And of course he must. Beyond that his good humor seems to me disorienting, and strange.
In arguing for the right path as he sees it, the president more and more claims for himself virtues that the
other side, by inference, lacks. He is "idealistic"; those who oppose him are, apparently, lacking in ideals.
He makes his decisions "based on principle," unlike his critics, who are ever watchful of the polls. He is
steadfast, brave, he believes "freedom isn't just for Americans" but has "universal . . . applications,"
unlike those selfish, isolationist types who oppose him. ...
Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon
it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist,
the tough customer who understands harsh realities.
With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic.
He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural.
Actually it's weird.
What's wrong with Bush?
by Peggy Noonan
I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find,
a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who'd previously supported him. She said she'd had it.
"I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth." I was startled by her vehemence only because she is,
as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago:
"I took the W off my car today," it said on the subject line. ...
As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling
somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was
the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering,
which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands.
Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and
ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since
polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.
Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he's right and you're wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain
steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither
beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can't sit around and moan. But it doesn't look like an act.
People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them.
His stock answer is that of course he feels the sadness of the families who've lost someone in Iraq.
And of course he must. Beyond that his good humor seems to me disorienting, and strange.
In arguing for the right path as he sees it, the president more and more claims for himself virtues that the
other side, by inference, lacks. He is "idealistic"; those who oppose him are, apparently, lacking in ideals.
He makes his decisions "based on principle," unlike his critics, who are ever watchful of the polls. He is
steadfast, brave, he believes "freedom isn't just for Americans" but has "universal . . . applications,"
unlike those selfish, isolationist types who oppose him. ...
Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon
it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist,
the tough customer who understands harsh realities.
With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic.
He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural.
Actually it's weird.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Senators on Judiciary Committee outraged at SENATOR ROCKEFELLER's Intel Committee "DEAL" to approve IMMUNITY for telecom spying on Americans!
AT LONG LAST, THE MECHANISM by which cowardly Democratic Senators ENABLE the CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush administration is out in the open for the whole world to see: After being DELUGED with TELECOM company CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, Senator JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER wrote the bill to RETROACTIVELY PROVIDE IMMUNITY for telecom companies complying with Bush administration requests to SPY ON AMERICAN CITIZENS.
FOR SHAME! Senator Rockefeller: You represent THE WORST of KBG-STALINESQUE SURVEILLANCE, under a thin patina of "FREE ENTERPRISE WAR ON TERRA" "national secuirty" right-wing propaganda that in reality is a text-book exposition of "Democratic" TREACHERY and BETRAYAL!
=======================================
Senators Say White House Cut Deal With Panel on FISA
Documents Said to Be Traded for Telecom Immunity
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 23, 2007; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/22/AR2007102202268.html?nav=rss_politics
Senate Judiciary Committee members yesterday angrily accused the White House of allowing the Senate Intelligence Committee to review documents on its warrantless surveillance program in return for agreeing that telecommunications companies should get immunity from lawsuits.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the ranking Republican, said any such agreement would be "unacceptable," signaling that legislation granting immunity to certain telecom carriers could run into trouble. Leahy and Specter demanded that the documents, which were provided only to the Intelligence Committee, be turned over to the Judiciary Committee as well.
At issue is a White House-endorsed measure that would give immunity to telecom carriers being sued for allegedly helping the National Security Agency spy on Americans after September 11, 2001. It is part of a larger bill to rework the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Intelligence Committee has approved the bill and sent it to the Judiciary Committee for deliberation.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said yesterday that what the White House did was "not exactly" a quid pro quo but that the intelligence panel "expected to legislate on the liability" and so "we've been accommodative on sharing information."
Fratto said that the White House could not make documents containing presidential authorizations and the Justice Department's legal opinions underpinning the surveillance program available to members not already briefed on the NSA program, as members of the Intelligence Committee were. He said talks are ongoing on that point.
On Friday, White House press secretary Dana Perino said that Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and ranking member Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.)'s staff "showed a willingness" to include immunity in their legislation. "Because they were willing to do that, we were willing to show them some of the documents that they asked to see."
But an Intelligence Committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "no quid pro quo," and that the immunity decision was based not on a determination of the program's legality but on the members' having previously reviewed written requests sent by the government to the carriers. "The documents we'd already received and carefully reviewed certainly led Rockefeller to the opinion that immunity was justified in this case," said the aide. "But we felt it was an important principle to not allow the administration to deprive the committee of the full panoply of documents before they proceeded to markup."
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary panels, said in an interview yesterday that the documents revealed that the NSA program was illegal. He said the presidential authorizations and the Justice Department opinions do not make it legal. "That makes it an executive power grab that is not justified by the statute or by the Constitution," he said.
Feingold had not seen the documents, however, saying he based his assertion on briefings from his Intelligence Committee aide, who reviewed the documents for several hours last Tuesday.
"Everything he saw and reported to me would indicate that the terrorist surveillance program involved was illegal and not something permissible given the clear exclusivity language in the statute," said Feingold, referring to current law, which specifies that FISA, along with Title III of the 1968 Wiretap Act, shall be the "exclusive" means to authorize domestic wiretaps.
Feingold voted against the bill, which would allow the government to begin wiretaps of foreign targets and then seek FISA court approval of the targeting procedures. It also would allow a court to dismiss lawsuits against phone carriers if the attorney general certified that the aid was part of a counter-terrorism program authorized by the president between September 11, 2001, and January 17, 2007, congressional aides said.
Feingold said that the documents revealed "the absence of a legitimate justification under the law" for the program.
As such, he said, he could not vote to grant immunity to telecom carriers. "I don't think we should be in the business of granting immunity in situations where a company has every opportunity to determine whether something is legal or not," he said. "Otherwise, that sets a precedent encouraging any company, especially those that have great access to our private information, to just do what they want and rely on immunity."
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said it wasn't given enough time to review the White House's documents and that he tried to strip the immunity provision from the bill. "I want to know if there was any complicity of the telephone companies in this," he said. Nelson, whose amendment failed, said he was "favorably disposed" toward carriers but did not want to halt lawsuits aimed at finding "the truth as to the legality of the program."
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), also on the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, said the documents did not change his position that the surveillance activities "were and are" lawful.
Companies Seeking Immunity Donate to Senator
By Eric Lichtblah and Scott Shane
Published: October 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/washington/23nsa.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.
The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.
FOR SHAME! Senator Rockefeller: You represent THE WORST of KBG-STALINESQUE SURVEILLANCE, under a thin patina of "FREE ENTERPRISE WAR ON TERRA" "national secuirty" right-wing propaganda that in reality is a text-book exposition of "Democratic" TREACHERY and BETRAYAL!
=======================================
Senators Say White House Cut Deal With Panel on FISA
Documents Said to Be Traded for Telecom Immunity
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 23, 2007; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/22/AR2007102202268.html?nav=rss_politics
Senate Judiciary Committee members yesterday angrily accused the White House of allowing the Senate Intelligence Committee to review documents on its warrantless surveillance program in return for agreeing that telecommunications companies should get immunity from lawsuits.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the ranking Republican, said any such agreement would be "unacceptable," signaling that legislation granting immunity to certain telecom carriers could run into trouble. Leahy and Specter demanded that the documents, which were provided only to the Intelligence Committee, be turned over to the Judiciary Committee as well.
At issue is a White House-endorsed measure that would give immunity to telecom carriers being sued for allegedly helping the National Security Agency spy on Americans after September 11, 2001. It is part of a larger bill to rework the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Intelligence Committee has approved the bill and sent it to the Judiciary Committee for deliberation.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said yesterday that what the White House did was "not exactly" a quid pro quo but that the intelligence panel "expected to legislate on the liability" and so "we've been accommodative on sharing information."
Fratto said that the White House could not make documents containing presidential authorizations and the Justice Department's legal opinions underpinning the surveillance program available to members not already briefed on the NSA program, as members of the Intelligence Committee were. He said talks are ongoing on that point.
On Friday, White House press secretary Dana Perino said that Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and ranking member Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.)'s staff "showed a willingness" to include immunity in their legislation. "Because they were willing to do that, we were willing to show them some of the documents that they asked to see."
But an Intelligence Committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "no quid pro quo," and that the immunity decision was based not on a determination of the program's legality but on the members' having previously reviewed written requests sent by the government to the carriers. "The documents we'd already received and carefully reviewed certainly led Rockefeller to the opinion that immunity was justified in this case," said the aide. "But we felt it was an important principle to not allow the administration to deprive the committee of the full panoply of documents before they proceeded to markup."
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary panels, said in an interview yesterday that the documents revealed that the NSA program was illegal. He said the presidential authorizations and the Justice Department opinions do not make it legal. "That makes it an executive power grab that is not justified by the statute or by the Constitution," he said.
Feingold had not seen the documents, however, saying he based his assertion on briefings from his Intelligence Committee aide, who reviewed the documents for several hours last Tuesday.
"Everything he saw and reported to me would indicate that the terrorist surveillance program involved was illegal and not something permissible given the clear exclusivity language in the statute," said Feingold, referring to current law, which specifies that FISA, along with Title III of the 1968 Wiretap Act, shall be the "exclusive" means to authorize domestic wiretaps.
Feingold voted against the bill, which would allow the government to begin wiretaps of foreign targets and then seek FISA court approval of the targeting procedures. It also would allow a court to dismiss lawsuits against phone carriers if the attorney general certified that the aid was part of a counter-terrorism program authorized by the president between September 11, 2001, and January 17, 2007, congressional aides said.
Feingold said that the documents revealed "the absence of a legitimate justification under the law" for the program.
As such, he said, he could not vote to grant immunity to telecom carriers. "I don't think we should be in the business of granting immunity in situations where a company has every opportunity to determine whether something is legal or not," he said. "Otherwise, that sets a precedent encouraging any company, especially those that have great access to our private information, to just do what they want and rely on immunity."
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said it wasn't given enough time to review the White House's documents and that he tried to strip the immunity provision from the bill. "I want to know if there was any complicity of the telephone companies in this," he said. Nelson, whose amendment failed, said he was "favorably disposed" toward carriers but did not want to halt lawsuits aimed at finding "the truth as to the legality of the program."
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), also on the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, said the documents did not change his position that the surveillance activities "were and are" lawful.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, IN HER OWN WORDS, notices GIGANTIC WAR COSTS of Bush-Cheney's war. SO, Madam Speaker, WHERE IS THE FIGHT?
Again we insist, Madam Speaker, that you NOTICE the UNCONSITUTIONAL ATROCITIES of this Bush-Cheney White House, and that you FULFILL YOUR OATH to OPPOSE such Constitution-gutting criminal conduct by the US government!
<< The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons. >>
(posted by Senator Chris Dodd at his website)
http://action.chrisdodd.com/signUp.jsp?key=1570
To which WE add: PERJURY before Congress re Lies-to-war; using AL QAIDA as an EXCUSE TO ATTACK IRAQ, while Al Qaida's actual leader ROAMS FREE (and sends VIDEOS on eve of American elections) FOUR YEARS into the Afghanistan war; using MERCENARY SOLDIERS under United States DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY; and of course BILLIONS in war contracts spending corruption.
========================================
Colossal Cost of Iraq War Grows Every Day
by Speaker Pelosi
October 22nd, 2007
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=869
Demanding nearly $200 billion for Iraq while vetoing health care for 10 million children exemplifies the Bush Administration’s misplaced priorities. On key issues – from the Iraq war to children’s health insurance – the President continues to oppose the will of the American people and obstructs the New Direction Congress’ bipartisan agenda.
For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year.
The colossal cost of this war grows every day – in lives lost, dollars spent, and to our reputation around the world. The American people long ago rejected the President’s planned 10-year occupation of Iraq and want the Administration to provide a concrete plan to bring our troops home.
The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment of our troops and the President’s plan to spend another trillion dollars for a 10-year war in Iraq. We must end this war.
<< The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons. >>
(posted by Senator Chris Dodd at his website)
http://action.chrisdodd.com/signUp.jsp?key=1570
To which WE add: PERJURY before Congress re Lies-to-war; using AL QAIDA as an EXCUSE TO ATTACK IRAQ, while Al Qaida's actual leader ROAMS FREE (and sends VIDEOS on eve of American elections) FOUR YEARS into the Afghanistan war; using MERCENARY SOLDIERS under United States DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY; and of course BILLIONS in war contracts spending corruption.
========================================
Colossal Cost of Iraq War Grows Every Day
by Speaker Pelosi
October 22nd, 2007
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=869
Demanding nearly $200 billion for Iraq while vetoing health care for 10 million children exemplifies the Bush Administration’s misplaced priorities. On key issues – from the Iraq war to children’s health insurance – the President continues to oppose the will of the American people and obstructs the New Direction Congress’ bipartisan agenda.
For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year.
The colossal cost of this war grows every day – in lives lost, dollars spent, and to our reputation around the world. The American people long ago rejected the President’s planned 10-year occupation of Iraq and want the Administration to provide a concrete plan to bring our troops home.
The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment of our troops and the President’s plan to spend another trillion dollars for a 10-year war in Iraq. We must end this war.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid: STOP BEING PROPAGANDA LIARS! Dodd "hold" PROVES Pelosi, Reid could do same...
David Swanson, one of the most succinct and articulate defenders of the US Constitution in America today (which is to say, "one of the most articulate and succinct IMPEACHMENT ADVOCATES in America today") hits a home run commenting on the senatorial "HOLD" on a Senate bill calling for "retroactive LEGALIZATION of telecom surveillance on American citizens in contravention of FISA law" (that is, spying on American citizens WITHOUT WARRANTS OR OVERSIGHT) by Senator Chris Dodd.
Mr. Swanson merely points out that what Senator Dodd is doing, by himself, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Nancy Pelosi, and SENATE MAJORITY LIEADER Harry Reid, could EASILY DO with their legislative minions and power vested in them to bring bills to the floor or HOLD bills - INCLUDING BUDGET AUTHORIZATIONS requested by the Bush-Cheney White House - OR TO HOLD BILLS from COMING TO THE FLOOR.
That is, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid both have the AUTHORITY to KILL BILLS before they ever reach the floor - and they both, REPEATEDLY LIE to the American public, saying "THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO!"
Reid and Pelosi's ABJECT FAILURE to CONFRONT the LIES and CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney administration - PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE *PROVEN* in a US court of law coming from THE HIGHEST LEVELS of the Bush_Cheney White House; a SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PREISDENT who was contemporaneously CHIEF OF STAFF to the Vice President (i.e. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby) - IS, in itself, CRIMINAL DERELICTION OF DUTY.
When Reid and Pelosi say "THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO" THEY ARE LYING.
As Mr. Swanson has pointed out, Senator Dodd has "made a mistake" - in one EFFORTLESS moment, he has illustrated that NANCY PELOSI and HARRY REID are LIARS.
===============================================
Dodd Ends Spying, No Senator Will Do Same for War
Thu, 2007-10-18 20:32
by David Swanson, Democrats.com
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27832
Senator Chris Dodd on Thursday single-handedly blocked a bill to legalize unconstitutional spying and immunize criminals who have engaged in it. But by doing so, Dodd may have made the biggest blunder Washington has seen in many months. He advertised the fact that a single senator with nerve has the power to block a bill, including – of course – every bill to further fund the occupation of Iraq. Now, how will Dodd explain his past and future failure to use the same power to end the war that he has used to end warrantless spying? How will other senators, including Harry Reid, explain their own failure? How will Nancy Pelosi manage to keep asserting in every conversation that only 67 senators can end a war?
Dodd released the following statement:
It's been a busy day, but I wanted take a moment and let you know that I have decided to place a "hold" on legislation in the Senate that includes amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.
I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution.
But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document.
That's why I am stopping this bill today.
But blocking a bill, not passing one, is exactly what's needed to get our troops and mercenaries home from Iraq. It is a lie that Congress must pass a bill to end the occupation of Iraq. The occupation can be ended with an announcement by Congressional leaders that there will be no more funding. Any proposal to fund it can be blocked by 41 senators filibustering or by a single senator putting a hold on the bill. Bush has plenty of money for withdrawal and could be given more for that exclusive purpose. When your television tells you the Democrats need 60 or 67 senators to end the occupation, your television is lying to you.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could if they wanted announce today that the House and Senate will no longer bring to a vote any bills to fund anything other than withdrawal. They have many colleagues already on board with that position, not to mention two thirds of the country. It would take 218 signatures on a discharge petition to force a bill to the floor of the House without Pelosi's approval. It is unlikely enough Democrats would oppose their party to fund Bush's war in that way. In the Senate, Reid alone could refuse to bring a bill to the floor, or another senator could put an open or secret hold on a bill. And, while not all bills can be filibustered (appropriations bills can be, budget reconciliation bills cannot), you can hardly claim you need 60 votes to get past a filibuster without admitting that with only 41 you could launch your own filibuster and that with 51 you could defeat any bill. Once you understand the goal as blocking bills rather than passing them, the number of allies you need shrinks dramatically.
In fact, Senator Dodd has just very publicly advertised his ability to take action on Iraq in January, thereby earning the right to be president. This would be a major shift from his current proposal that we elect him president first, after which he'll see about ending the war.
Thank Dodd and urge others to join him in blocking the FISA bill here:
http://www.democrats.com/hold-the-wiretap-bill
Mr. Swanson merely points out that what Senator Dodd is doing, by himself, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Nancy Pelosi, and SENATE MAJORITY LIEADER Harry Reid, could EASILY DO with their legislative minions and power vested in them to bring bills to the floor or HOLD bills - INCLUDING BUDGET AUTHORIZATIONS requested by the Bush-Cheney White House - OR TO HOLD BILLS from COMING TO THE FLOOR.
That is, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid both have the AUTHORITY to KILL BILLS before they ever reach the floor - and they both, REPEATEDLY LIE to the American public, saying "THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO!"
Reid and Pelosi's ABJECT FAILURE to CONFRONT the LIES and CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney administration - PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE *PROVEN* in a US court of law coming from THE HIGHEST LEVELS of the Bush_Cheney White House; a SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PREISDENT who was contemporaneously CHIEF OF STAFF to the Vice President (i.e. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby) - IS, in itself, CRIMINAL DERELICTION OF DUTY.
When Reid and Pelosi say "THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO" THEY ARE LYING.
As Mr. Swanson has pointed out, Senator Dodd has "made a mistake" - in one EFFORTLESS moment, he has illustrated that NANCY PELOSI and HARRY REID are LIARS.
===============================================
Dodd Ends Spying, No Senator Will Do Same for War
Thu, 2007-10-18 20:32
by David Swanson, Democrats.com
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27832
Senator Chris Dodd on Thursday single-handedly blocked a bill to legalize unconstitutional spying and immunize criminals who have engaged in it. But by doing so, Dodd may have made the biggest blunder Washington has seen in many months. He advertised the fact that a single senator with nerve has the power to block a bill, including – of course – every bill to further fund the occupation of Iraq. Now, how will Dodd explain his past and future failure to use the same power to end the war that he has used to end warrantless spying? How will other senators, including Harry Reid, explain their own failure? How will Nancy Pelosi manage to keep asserting in every conversation that only 67 senators can end a war?
Dodd released the following statement:
It's been a busy day, but I wanted take a moment and let you know that I have decided to place a "hold" on legislation in the Senate that includes amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.
I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution.
But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document.
That's why I am stopping this bill today.
But blocking a bill, not passing one, is exactly what's needed to get our troops and mercenaries home from Iraq. It is a lie that Congress must pass a bill to end the occupation of Iraq. The occupation can be ended with an announcement by Congressional leaders that there will be no more funding. Any proposal to fund it can be blocked by 41 senators filibustering or by a single senator putting a hold on the bill. Bush has plenty of money for withdrawal and could be given more for that exclusive purpose. When your television tells you the Democrats need 60 or 67 senators to end the occupation, your television is lying to you.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could if they wanted announce today that the House and Senate will no longer bring to a vote any bills to fund anything other than withdrawal. They have many colleagues already on board with that position, not to mention two thirds of the country. It would take 218 signatures on a discharge petition to force a bill to the floor of the House without Pelosi's approval. It is unlikely enough Democrats would oppose their party to fund Bush's war in that way. In the Senate, Reid alone could refuse to bring a bill to the floor, or another senator could put an open or secret hold on a bill. And, while not all bills can be filibustered (appropriations bills can be, budget reconciliation bills cannot), you can hardly claim you need 60 votes to get past a filibuster without admitting that with only 41 you could launch your own filibuster and that with 51 you could defeat any bill. Once you understand the goal as blocking bills rather than passing them, the number of allies you need shrinks dramatically.
In fact, Senator Dodd has just very publicly advertised his ability to take action on Iraq in January, thereby earning the right to be president. This would be a major shift from his current proposal that we elect him president first, after which he'll see about ending the war.
Thank Dodd and urge others to join him in blocking the FISA bill here:
http://www.democrats.com/hold-the-wiretap-bill
Senator Chriss Dodd steps up where COWARDLY Reid fails to: Dodd to FILIBUSTER (hold) Bush's "TELECOM IMMUNITY for VIOLATING FISA laws" bill...
This short list of the ATROCITIES requested by the Bush-Chneney White House: << The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons. >> is posted at Senator Chris Dodd's on-line website. The Senator has vowed to block Bush-Cheney's FISA oversight-gutting TELECOM IMMUNITY bill.
THE OBVIOUS QUESTION IS: "WHERE IS COWARDLY SENATOR HARRY REID? WHY has HE not been able to pust a similar list, in short, concise, understandable English, and FORCED the "major media" TO COVER IT in respectful, honest tones, these past 9 months?
The fact is, that Harry Reid was choosen by his fellow Democratic Senators NOT to be a "LEADER," but because he would be the most unobtrusive, least-likely to step-on-their-perogitives placeholder. And it was NOT Senator Reid and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee who was responsible for bringing about a Democratic Majority in the Senate: IT WAS OUTSIDER CANDIDATES like CLAIRE McCASKILL and JAMES WEBB who did the Heavy Lifting, EXPOSING the CORRUPTION of the Bush administration that the COWARDLY Demcoratic Senate Leadership REFUSES TO CONFRONT.
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Senator Chriss Dodd puts senate "HOLD" on FISA-gutting Telecom Immunity bill. By Senator Chris Dodd
http://action.chrisdodd.com/signUp.jsp?key=1570
THE OBVIOUS QUESTION IS: "WHERE IS COWARDLY SENATOR HARRY REID? WHY has HE not been able to pust a similar list, in short, concise, understandable English, and FORCED the "major media" TO COVER IT in respectful, honest tones, these past 9 months?
The fact is, that Harry Reid was choosen by his fellow Democratic Senators NOT to be a "LEADER," but because he would be the most unobtrusive, least-likely to step-on-their-perogitives placeholder. And it was NOT Senator Reid and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee who was responsible for bringing about a Democratic Majority in the Senate: IT WAS OUTSIDER CANDIDATES like CLAIRE McCASKILL and JAMES WEBB who did the Heavy Lifting, EXPOSING the CORRUPTION of the Bush administration that the COWARDLY Demcoratic Senate Leadership REFUSES TO CONFRONT.
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Senator Chriss Dodd puts senate "HOLD" on FISA-gutting Telecom Immunity bill. By Senator Chris Dodd
http://action.chrisdodd.com/signUp.jsp?key=1570
The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.in the comment section below.
No more.
I have decided to place a "hold" on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.
I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document. That's why I am stopping this bill today.
Indicate your support for my hold as well as your thoughts on this issue
Saturday, October 20, 2007
More on Nancy Pelosi's TREACHERY: GUT the Dem OPPOSITION to Bush, ROB Dem voters of the OUTRAGE we should see on FRONT PAGES of papers & TV news....
NANCY PELOSI's TREACHERY: SHE is fully aware of that 2004 White House Correspondent's dinner where President Bush, in a video made in the Oval Office, pretended to look for WMDs, and at the dinner presenting that video to the audience of INSIDE THE BELTWAY ghouls who find Mr. Bush's ghastly humor funny, Mr. Bush declares "NO WMDs HERE!" Yet Nancy Pelosi RESERVES HER OUTRAGE, not for President Bush or "OUT A CIA AGENT" Vice President Dick Cheney - - - but instead demands that Rep. PETE STARKE APOLOGIZE for stating the obvious! That President Bush runs this war like an Entitled university frat boy running a beer party.
NANCY PELOSI is now a CHARTER MEMBER of that craven, ghoulish inside DC leadership elite culture: AS LONG AS SHE, and the "Democratic" party, get THEIR CAMPAIGN DONATIONS from war contractors, and favorable MEDIA COVERAGE from the MEDIA MOGULS, she, too, will IGNORE THE ATROCITIES of the Bush-Cheney administration and their wars of conquest in the Mideast - and instead join the Republican media machine in IGNORING WOUNDED SOLDIERS, IGNORING war contracts CORRUPTION, and IGNORING the CRIMINAL CONDUCT and raw arrogance of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.
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Pres. Bush [AND NANCY PLEOSI]should apologize and not Rep. Pete Stark
(Caution: Graphic photos embedded in this piece)By Mary MacElveen
October 20, 2007
Congressman Pete Stark has caught flak for saying these words “You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” He stated those words lashing out at both President Bush and his Republican colleagues concerning how much the United States government is spending in Iraq as opposed to the SCHIP program.
Having seen the most horrific photos no one should ever have to view which are a product of this illegal war, I would advise Rep. Stark to stick to his guns. I would also tell him not apologize or retract his comments made of the president and the comments directed at his Republican colleagues who failed to come to the aid of our children. The time has come for any protection of Bush to come to an end. That is also directed towards all who feel he should apologize.
I do believe that anyone who can knowingly lie sending our men and women in the armed services to their death is both morally corrupt, and is unable to empathize let alone sympathize with those that have died. In my opinion, Bush is as demonic as they come. By lying us into this war, he has proven to all, he has no soul.
In this video, you will clearly see him joking about not being able to find WMDs at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner. This was taped at the 2004 dinner and interspersed in this video are the laughs coming from those attending. I would like to know what is so funny about sending our men and women to die. I would like to know what is so funny when the L.A. Times reported one million innocent Iraqis died. Also you will see throughout this video are images of pure suffering. By joking about this grave matter, Bush is showing signs of “amusement”. So, what Rep. Stark said was correct.
Stark in mentioning “heads blown off”- below are some graphic photos of our soldiers which prove his point. I think it is about time these pictures are viewed by all even if they turn your stomach viewing them. I have even included pictures of innocent Iraqi children.
photo: A soldier's face blown off
photo: Denzel Washington with female soldier
photo: Hole on the side of a dead U.S. soldier
photo: Dead U.S. soldier missing an eye
photo: Iraqi boy injured as mom kisses him
photo: Iraqi child with tubes
photo: Three dead Iraqi children sharing a single coffin
I have seen far more graphic photos coming out of this heinous war and you tell me if Rep. Pete Stark should apologize. I think that it is President Bush who owes an apology to our military, those who have died while serving and especially to the Iraqi people.
Author's email address is, xmjmac@optonline.net
Friday, October 19, 2007
Nancy Pelosi a COMMON THIEF: ROBBING Democratic Voters of the OUTRAGE we should be feeling vs Mr. Bush's serial atrocities...
IN yet another example of how clueless, craven, complicit, and (even) cowardly the DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP is, NANCY PELOSI - nominal "leader" of Congress - directs her OUTRAGE at FELLOW DEMOCRATIC Representative PETE STARKE, (D-CA), who stated the obvious: that the SMIRKING PRESIDENT who STOLE THE ELECTION of 2000, then DID NOTHING to prevent 9-11 despite being PERSONALLY WARNED on NUMEROUS OCCASIONS "Al Qaida terrorists determined to attack in America" - the president who SQUANDERS US military lives, and taxpayer treasure in Iraq; who DRAGS THE US REPUTATION into the mire of HIRED GUNMEN (Blackwater) OPERATING UNDER DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY... the president who AWARDS HIS CRONIES WITH BILLION-DOLLAR CONTRACTS while NEW ORLEANS HOMEOWNERS must PAY MORTGAGES on homes THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO REBUILD...
FOR SHAME, NANCY PELOSI! YOU ARE _ROBBING_ us Democratic voters of TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of PR and campaign advertising costs. You GIVE CONVICTED DRUG ADDICT RUSH LIMBAUGH the moral values media/PR HIGH GROUND... You give RUPERT MURDOCH a FREE PASS for BUSTING UNIONS throughout his career - while making business deals with COMMUNIST CHINA senior officials... You give GENERAL ELECTRIC co. a FREE PASS for PROFITING FROM WAR while their "news" network reports on war; You GIVE Dick Cheney a FREE PASS for OUTING an entire undercover CIA operation in order to SMEAR a war critic (if not as a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT to GUT America's best WMD surveillance program in Iran), and then GIVE Mr. Bush a FREE PASS for PARDONING Scooter Libby, after the Independent Prosecutor DID YOUR JOB of PROVING OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE in the CIA outing/PERJURY case....
NANCY PELOSI, YOU ARE COMPLICIT with the CRIMES, ABUSES, and EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB of the Bush-Cheney White House. You are ROBBING US, as John Kerry did before you, of an HONEST FIGHT, ROBBING US of an outraged and vocal exposition of the CRIMES and ABUSES of the Bush White House.
When Mr. BUSH SMIRKS, before cameras of the entire world, about WORLD WAR III, it it because YOU ARE TOO COWARDLY to perform your CONSTITUTIONAL DUTIES of INVESTIGATING (through impeachment process) HIGH CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS.
=========================
Pelosi Rebukes Stark for Iraq Comments
Erica Werner
October 19, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071019/congressman-s-outburst/
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked a fellow San Francisco Bay-area liberal Friday for what she said were "inappropriate" comments about Iraq during a congressional debate.
During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
Condemnations rolled in from Republican politicians, right-leaning bloggers had a field day, and a White House spokesman declined to "dignify those remarks" with a response.
Pelosi issued a statement Friday evening rapping Stark, who is in his 18th term representing the liberal East Bay. He's California's longest-serving House members.
"While members of Congress are passionate about their views, what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate and distracted from the seriousness of the subject at hand _ providing health care for America's children," Pelosi said.
Stark's comment came as the House failed Thursday to override President Bush's veto of legislation to expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.
"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark accused Republicans. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
After numerous Republicans called on him to apologize, Stark said it was they who should be apologizing, for failing to provide the votes to override Bush's veto.
Asked for a White House response Friday, spokesman Tony Fratto said: "I see absolutely no reason to dignify those remarks with a comment."
FOR SHAME, NANCY PELOSI! YOU ARE _ROBBING_ us Democratic voters of TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of PR and campaign advertising costs. You GIVE CONVICTED DRUG ADDICT RUSH LIMBAUGH the moral values media/PR HIGH GROUND... You give RUPERT MURDOCH a FREE PASS for BUSTING UNIONS throughout his career - while making business deals with COMMUNIST CHINA senior officials... You give GENERAL ELECTRIC co. a FREE PASS for PROFITING FROM WAR while their "news" network reports on war; You GIVE Dick Cheney a FREE PASS for OUTING an entire undercover CIA operation in order to SMEAR a war critic (if not as a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT to GUT America's best WMD surveillance program in Iran), and then GIVE Mr. Bush a FREE PASS for PARDONING Scooter Libby, after the Independent Prosecutor DID YOUR JOB of PROVING OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE in the CIA outing/PERJURY case....
NANCY PELOSI, YOU ARE COMPLICIT with the CRIMES, ABUSES, and EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB of the Bush-Cheney White House. You are ROBBING US, as John Kerry did before you, of an HONEST FIGHT, ROBBING US of an outraged and vocal exposition of the CRIMES and ABUSES of the Bush White House.
When Mr. BUSH SMIRKS, before cameras of the entire world, about WORLD WAR III, it it because YOU ARE TOO COWARDLY to perform your CONSTITUTIONAL DUTIES of INVESTIGATING (through impeachment process) HIGH CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS.
=========================
Pelosi Rebukes Stark for Iraq Comments
Erica Werner
October 19, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071019/congressman-s-outburst/
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked a fellow San Francisco Bay-area liberal Friday for what she said were "inappropriate" comments about Iraq during a congressional debate.
During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
Condemnations rolled in from Republican politicians, right-leaning bloggers had a field day, and a White House spokesman declined to "dignify those remarks" with a response.
Pelosi issued a statement Friday evening rapping Stark, who is in his 18th term representing the liberal East Bay. He's California's longest-serving House members.
"While members of Congress are passionate about their views, what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate and distracted from the seriousness of the subject at hand _ providing health care for America's children," Pelosi said.
Stark's comment came as the House failed Thursday to override President Bush's veto of legislation to expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.
"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark accused Republicans. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
After numerous Republicans called on him to apologize, Stark said it was they who should be apologizing, for failing to provide the votes to override Bush's veto.
Asked for a White House response Friday, spokesman Tony Fratto said: "I see absolutely no reason to dignify those remarks with a comment."
Senator HARRY REID should RESIGN as Dem Senate Leader: CHRIS DODD, SINGLEHANDEDLY, holds up telecom SURVEILLANCE bill...
SENATOR CHRIS DODD illustrates THE BETRAYAL of Senate Majority 'leader' HARRY REID - Dodd, SINGLEHANDEDLY, holds up the TELECOM SURVEILLANCE IMMUNITY bill, while in the normal Democratic RETREAT, SURRENDER, and FAIL fashion, Harry Reid CAN NOT DEFINE THE REPUBLICANS as "OBSTRUCTIONIST" on ANY issue....
The ONLY question is - just how much in Harry Reid's version of "LEADERSHIP" worth to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Republican Party?
$100 million?
$200 million?
$300 million?
EVERY TWO YEARS, the Democratic "leaders" and candidates solicit millions of dollars in donations from Democratic voters... and every year, the "leadership" not only hands a princely sum of that amount over to the very media robber barons (Rupert Murdoch/Fox 'news', CBS/Viacom, General Electric/NBC, etc) whose agenda is ANTITHETICAL to most Democratic voters... but then, given the VAST AMOUNTS OF CORRUPTION, LIES, OBSTRUCTION, and INCOMPETENCE coming from the Bush White House, the Democratic "leadership" can't even INSIST on FAIR MEDIA COVERAGE regarding TORTURE, ILLEGAL SPYING, Lies-to-war, electronic vote fraud, Nine TRILLION dollar US government deficits; New Orleans hurricane victims paying mortgages on homes they are not even allowed to rebuild - the list of Bush-Republican ATROCITIES the Demcoratic "leadership" FAILS to bring to public and media scrutiny is ENDLESS.
HARRY REID and NANCY PELOSI are, easily, worth HALF A BILLION DOLLARS ($500 million) to the Republican/corporate-media/Bush White House spin machine, in the media/PR battle they NEVER FAIL TO LOOSE.
(It is ONLY the gross impact of 7 straight years of Bush-Cheney folly; starting with stolen election 2000, on to Dereliction of Duty 9-11-2001; on to Lies-to-War 2002, on to gross failure to administer a peaceful occupation, to today's running hte US military and economy into the ground, that has seen the Democrats gain a tenuous control of the Senate and House.)
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Senator Chris Dodd Takes Stand Against Telecom Immunity
Posted by Richard Esguerra
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/senator-chris-dodd-takes-stand-against-telecom-immunity
In the face of news that the Senate Intelligence Committee intends to approve new surveillance legislation that includes immunity for telecoms that participated in the NSA's illegal domestic surveillance program, reported in both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Senator Chris Dodd has taken a stand: he will be putting a "hold" on any such legislation, to prevent it from being considered by the broader Senate. EFF commends Senator Dodd for standing up for Americans' privacy rights and demanding that companies that broke the law be held accountable. You can do your part to help in the fight against telecom immunity -- visit our Action Center today!
The ONLY question is - just how much in Harry Reid's version of "LEADERSHIP" worth to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Republican Party?
$100 million?
$200 million?
$300 million?
EVERY TWO YEARS, the Democratic "leaders" and candidates solicit millions of dollars in donations from Democratic voters... and every year, the "leadership" not only hands a princely sum of that amount over to the very media robber barons (Rupert Murdoch/Fox 'news', CBS/Viacom, General Electric/NBC, etc) whose agenda is ANTITHETICAL to most Democratic voters... but then, given the VAST AMOUNTS OF CORRUPTION, LIES, OBSTRUCTION, and INCOMPETENCE coming from the Bush White House, the Democratic "leadership" can't even INSIST on FAIR MEDIA COVERAGE regarding TORTURE, ILLEGAL SPYING, Lies-to-war, electronic vote fraud, Nine TRILLION dollar US government deficits; New Orleans hurricane victims paying mortgages on homes they are not even allowed to rebuild - the list of Bush-Republican ATROCITIES the Demcoratic "leadership" FAILS to bring to public and media scrutiny is ENDLESS.
HARRY REID and NANCY PELOSI are, easily, worth HALF A BILLION DOLLARS ($500 million) to the Republican/corporate-media/Bush White House spin machine, in the media/PR battle they NEVER FAIL TO LOOSE.
(It is ONLY the gross impact of 7 straight years of Bush-Cheney folly; starting with stolen election 2000, on to Dereliction of Duty 9-11-2001; on to Lies-to-War 2002, on to gross failure to administer a peaceful occupation, to today's running hte US military and economy into the ground, that has seen the Democrats gain a tenuous control of the Senate and House.)
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Senator Chris Dodd Takes Stand Against Telecom Immunity
Posted by Richard Esguerra
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/senator-chris-dodd-takes-stand-against-telecom-immunity
In the face of news that the Senate Intelligence Committee intends to approve new surveillance legislation that includes immunity for telecoms that participated in the NSA's illegal domestic surveillance program, reported in both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Senator Chris Dodd has taken a stand: he will be putting a "hold" on any such legislation, to prevent it from being considered by the broader Senate. EFF commends Senator Dodd for standing up for Americans' privacy rights and demanding that companies that broke the law be held accountable. You can do your part to help in the fight against telecom immunity -- visit our Action Center today!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
LYING Senator Larry Craig as metaphor for our LYING, CRAVEN, CORRUPTED, COMPLICIT, COWARDLY Senators....
THANK GOD for Senator Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) ELITIST HYPOCRITE sense of ENTITLEMENT!
Being the right-wing demagogue hypocrite senator he has been from a "Heartland Moral Values" state all these years, Mr. Craig thinks he is ENTITLED to GO BACK ON HIS OWN CRIMINAL GUILTY PLEA in court - even as he has done his career level best to CRIMINALIZE himself and others in that very "I AM NOT GAY" lifestyle.
More to the point, Mr. Craig is THE PERFECT METAPHOR, icon, or personification of our CORRUPTED, COWARDLY, COMPLACENT, COMPLICIT, CALLOW and DECEITFUL United States SENATE.
TIME after TIME after TIME, SENATE Majority "leader" HARRY REID tells us "WE DON'T HAVE THE VOTES to OVERCOME a REPUBLICAN FILIBUSTER, or a presidential VETO."
THAT IS BULLSIT, Senator Reid! YOU COULD fight FIRE with FIRE: YOU, the LEADER of the MAJORITY, could mount DAILY FILIBUSTERS of ALL SENATE BUSINESS, until YOU DEFINE _REPUBLICAN-OBSTRUCTIONISM_ on those issue near and dear to American voter's hearts, and FORCE THE LYING, CRAVEN, COWARDLY, COMPLICIT MEDIA to FAIRLY COVER the real story.
YOU COULD _SUBPOENA_ RUPERT MURDOCH, owner of FOX 'news,' to appear before SENATE COMMITTEE - and have him DECLARE and DEFINE *HIS CLOSE RELATIONS with the senior cadres and families of the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY.* For EIGHT GOD-DAMNED YEARS, Right-Wing Republicans and demagogues of Hate Radio and the right-wing press/media (eg, former NIXON SPEECHWRITER Wllm. SAFIRE at the NEW YORK TIMES, the enitire contingent of Fox radio and TV) were able to accuse President Clinton of "TREASON! SELLING OUT TO COMMUNIST CHINA!" for campaign donations received; yet now, when the granddaddy of Right-Wing media ruthless robber barons has cozy ties with those same China Communists, NO ONE in Congress or the Media is INFORMING AMERICAN VOTERS and viewers of Mr. Murdoch's treacherous duplicity!
This, Senator Reid, is a de facto THEFT of MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of media spin and coverage FROM DEMOCRATIC VOTERS AND DONORS, to the very right-wing media barons whose agenda is antithesis to democratic public policy. We, American voters, are FORCED TO SPEND MILLIONS on an "opposition party" to have any semblance of democracy - and you, the 'leaders' of the Democratic Party, turn around and hand millions of dollars of our donations over to those very media barons (to purchase prime-time ad time during campaign season), and even give them a "FREE PASS" for what THEIR MINIONS accused President Clinon of doing!
THAT IS $300-MILLION DOLLAR or HALF-BILLION DOLLAR disparity (in media/PR value) Democratic "leaders" force Democratic-voting citizens to bear!
And while you're at it, Senator Reid, SUBPOENA GENERAL ELECTRIC's Chairman or CEO, and ask THEM HOW MUCH GE WILL PROFIT FROM BREAKING TREATIES (the ABM treaty) by - MILITARIZING SPACE (up to and including NUCLEAR WEAPONS and nuclear-powered lasers IN SPACE).
ALL THESE THINGS Harry Reid and his Senate COULD DO, but REFUSE TO DO!
And yet he, and the senate, will daily LIE to the American public, saying "THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO!"
For all the cowardly AWOL horrors of this senate, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales LYING BOLD FACED to Senator Leahy's committee, and Senator Leahy PRETENDING NOT TO NOTICE - at least we Americans have the grim satisfaction of those videos of COWARDLY SENATOR JOHN KERRY standing by, approvingly silent, as campus POLICE MOB a student communicatons major asking a simple question....
and now we have the image of "WIDE-STANCE" Senator Larry Craig THINKING HE IS ABOVE THE LAWS that he tries to inflict on thousands of other Americans.
FOR SHAME!
=================================
Sen. Larry Craig's interview with Matt Lauer
Idaho senator regrets guilty plea, blasts Romney in exclusive NBC interview
By Matt Lauer
'Today' anchor, NBC News. MSNBC
ET Oct 16, 2007
MSNBC video, transcripts at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21303825/
Arrest was ‘entrapment,’ says Sen. Craig
Oct. 15: His arrest in a Minneapolis bathroom was part of a sting operation, according to Sen. Larry Craig in an exclusive interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer. Watch the broadcast
'Larry Craig: On the record'
Part 1: Craig says controversy like 'hurricane season'
2: Idaho senator on efforts to ‘out’ him
3: Larry Craig tells his bathroom story
4: Sen. Craig responds to arrest tape
5: Craig kept his arrest secret -- even from wife
TRANSCRIPT
Larry Craig: I liken it to we're in the middle of hurricane season. And we were. And there were no hurricanes. I became the political hurricane that everybody wanted to talk about. And did it-- did they talk about it? You bet they did.
For Idaho Senator Larry Craig and his wife Suzanne, the hurricane started six weeks ago, when the news broke that Craig had been arrested, accused by a police officer of soliciting sex in an airport men's room. He later pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
The arrest catapulted Senator Craig from relative obscurity, to front pages and web pages and late night comedy shows.
transcript continuesat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21303825/
Monday, October 15, 2007
NANCY PELOSI takes herself TOO SERIOUSLY: REFUSES to DO THE RIGHT THING, "Impeachment OFF THE TABLE."
NANCY PELOSI, YOU TAKE YOURSELF WAY TOO SERIOUSLY!
Like Al Gore in 2000, you are falling victim to STUFFED SHIRT SYNDROME.
VP Gore was SO WORRIED ABOUT LOSING the election of 2000, that he walked on egg-shells, refusing to highlight Texas Governor George W. Bush's dismal record of budget deficits, CORRUPTION scandals in Texas state contracts, and Governor Bush's SIGNATURE SLASHING or pre-school, after-school, and health-care (insurance) programs for CHILDREN... while Gov. Bush gave Texas' wealthiest corporations and individuals huge, multi-million dollar TAX CUTS and outright tax-funded subsidies. (In what would become the infamous Halliburton/Blackwater/Enron/Carlyle model of rewarding crony donors with billion-dollar government contracts.)
SEVEN YEARS LATER, following Vice President Gore's cowering example, the DEMOCRATS ARE STILL UNABLE to push forward the fight to PROVIDE HEALTH INSURANCE TO CHILDREN despite Republican obstructionism and control of media message (propaganda)!
WHAT did Al Gore get for all of his timif RESTRAINT in 2000?
answer- he will go down in history as the candidate who WON THE ELECTION, only to have it STOLEN OUT FROM UNDER HIM.
Al Gore will go down in history as the President of the Senate (sitting Vice President) who GAVELED the Black Democratic Congressional Caucus INTO SUBMISSION, NOT ONE damn Democratic Senator signing on to the Black Congressional Caucus demand for ONE SENATOR to co-sponsor a CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO MASSIVE VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT (by Republican authorities, i.e. Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, & co.) in Florida in 2000 - despite ALMOST EVERY Democratic Senator having won their elections to office by depending to at least some extent on Black and minority voters! FIFTY Democratic Senator and a sitting Democratic Vice President; ZERO votes in support of VOTING FAIRNESS and JUSTICE - a mere request for an investigation! FOR SHAME!
Vice President Gore put PROCESS and 'dignity'- a blemish-free inauguration for George Bush & Dick Cheney and their Right-Wing "moral values" supporters despite the stolen votes of election 2000 - AHEAD OF THE VOTING RIGHTS of THOUSANDS of Black and minority voters DISENFRANCHISED in Florida in 2000. As atrocioius at the media portrayals of Al Gore through the summer of 2000 were (led by Maureen Dowd, Wllm Safire, and the Lying Editors of the New York Slimes), Mr. Gore DID GIVE THOSE COMMENTATORS more than just a GRAIN OF TRUTH in their "Gore is a pompous elitist who will sell out common Americans" running commentary!
NANCY PELOSI IS FOLLOWING IN AL GORE's MISBEGOTTEN FOOTSTEPS!
She is too full of herself to realize that, given the balance of 49 Republican seats in the Senate, a CONGRESSIONAL IMPEACHMENT INQUIREY will ONLY RESULT IN A HUNG JURY, that it would be in effect NO MORE THAN A CENSURE.
NANCY PELOSI is ROBBING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS of even THAT SYMBOLIC gesture, effectively only a censure INVESTIGATION, based on her perception of political expediency!
LIKE AL GORE in 2000, she will SELL THOUSANDS OF DISENFRANCHISED AMERICANS DOWN THE RIVER, rather than CONFRONT the Bush-Cheney dirty tricks, bordering on UNCONSTITUTIONAL powers and abuse of Bill of Rights NIGHTMARE!
Nancy Pelosi, FOR SHAME! You are ROBBING YOUR OWN GRANDCHILDREN of CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINTS over a president and vice president who have NO RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION in the first place.
FOR SHAME!
===========================================
Radio hosts slam top Democrats for reluctance to consider impeachment Jason Rhyne
Published:
Raw Story
Monday October 15, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Radio_hosts_slam_top__Democrats_1015.html
Reid: Impeachment is a 'foolish idea;' Pelosi doesn't see justification
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- the top Democratic leaders from each of their respective chambers of Congress -- are drawing fire for a pair of recent radio appearances in which they reiterated their opposition to pursuing the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
In an interview Oct. 9 with nationally syndicated liberal radio host Ed Schultz, Pelosi defended previous statements in which she had promised that "impeachment was off the table."
"I don't see a connection between this and impeachment," Pelosi said, asked about a newly released secret memo on US interrogation tactics. A moment later, she side-stepped a repeat of the same question by elaborating on her goal to "bring the country behind a return to an America that honors the vision of our founders."
"I don't see that impeachment is in furtherance of bringing the people together in that way," she said.
"If somebody else out there has reason to think that they have evidence that the president has committed an impeachable offense that can pass the Congress, please let me know that," she continued, "but at the present time, I don't think that the justification is there for that."
Late Friday, Schultz told RAW STORY that the speaker's unwillingness to realistically discuss the impeachment option -- or even to entertain a theoretical scenario in which it might merit real consideration -- was tantamount to giving President Bush a "license to do whatever he wants to do."
"I think the Democratic leadership has signaled to the American people that there is no set of facts, no turn of events that would rise to the level of impeachment," Schultz said, adding that he thought the party's leaders had "pretty much given up."
"Our callers are extremely passionate about the truth," he continued. "They're extremely passionate about the Constitution, and poor Democrats feel like the leadership is letting them down."
Reid, too, dismisses impeachment
For those Democratic voters who believed a majority in Congress might have greased the wheels for possible action on impeachment, another recent interview with top Senate Majority Lead Harry Reid did little to kindle hope.
In a recent Q&A with left-leaning host Christiane Brown of Reno's KJFK radio, Reid dismissed the notion as a "waste of time" that would succeed only in handing the White House to Vice President Dick Cheney.
"The clincher of it all," added Reid, "is that we'd end up with Cheney as president. Does anybody want that?"
"What people want to know is why do we want to wait for more deaths over the next year because we say our hands are tied," said Brown of the war in Iraq, adding that Cheney could be impeached as well.
"Well, I respectfully suggest to anyone that suggests impeachment," the senator replied, "that it's a very foolish idea."
Brown, however, who shot back on-air that "respectfully, I disagree and I know there are a lot of people that do," told RAW STORY that she couldn't grasp Reid's "strange thinking."
"It just seems to me that they've already made their mind up that impeachment isn't an option," she said of Reid and other Democrats, like Pelosi, that brush off even the notion of impeachment.
"We just hear a lot of excuses all the time," Brown said, citing Reid's insistence on her program that the trappings of an impeachment would be an unneeded distraction that served little effective purpose in the waning days of Bush's final term.
"None of these arguments stand up," she continued. "You have to do what's right...I think Americans want to see some accountability, and we're now being told that we're foolish to even consider it. It seems like [Congress] is looking for every reason not to get rid of this president."
'It's all about '08'
The logic, Brown says, doesn't play out. She theorizes that "maybe they think that having Bush in power is going to help them with their numbers in 2008."
According to impeachment activist David Swanson, that's precisely the reason. Co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, and the Washington director of Democrats.com and ImpeachPAC.org, Swanson believes that reluctance among Democratic leaders has nothing to do with the a lack of justification for drafting impeachment articles and everything to do with politics.
"The Bush Administration is throwing out impeachable offense after impeachable offense," Swanson said. He counts Bush's "refusal to honor subpoenas," frequent signing statements and controversial intelligence gathering techniques as part of a roster of administration actions that warrant impeachment.
But Congress, in his opinion, isn't making a push for the president's removal because "Nancy Pelosi actually believes the best way to win elections is to keep Bush in office."
In Swanson's view, top Democrats have quietly committed to an electoral strategy that seeks to hang the albatross of an unpopular but still-serving President Bush around the necks of 2008 GOP contenders -- both the eventual Republican presidential nominee as well as the party's House and Senate candidates down ticket.
"And there's a view of history that says that isn't only morally disgusting, it's also wrong politically," he continued, adding that not only did Democrats have a responsibility to prosecute what he considers impeachable offenses, but also that impeachment itself wasn't inherently detrimental politically.
"Never has a party suffered for bringing impeachment," Swanson said, going on to mention that impeachment measures led by Democrats against former President Richard Nixon actually preceded a landslide victory for congressional Democrats in the 1974 mid-term elections.
Even after impeachment against President Bill Clinton, a very unpopular impeachment Swanson points out, Republicans lost fewer seats in the 2000 election than historical norms for a six-term congressional majority.
"They held onto both houses and the White House," he said. "Democrats should be thankful to suffer that kind of fate."
Schultz enthusiastically agrees. He believes that looming election concerns are powering much of the reluctance among House and Senate leadership.
"It's all about '08," he said. "They want the White House. They can't turn the country around unless they have the White House. They're serious about change, they're concerned about the country, but they think it would divide the country's future if impeachment were brought. And they're not willing to roll those dice."
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Does HILLARY CLINTON _SUPPORT_ Wllm Kristol's call for BOMBING, WAR against Iran?
ThinkProgress.com captures BILL KRISTOL pinning for a massive US bombing campaign against Iran.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/14/iran-williams-kristol/
WE here at DemocraticNationUSA agree with the sentiment that NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION is an EVIL to be avoided... which makes this article about possible US government/CIA COMPLICITY with Pakistan's NUCLEAR BOMB development program extremely disturbing. (If true, the article hints at treason from within the highest levels of US government.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2188777,00.html
We also find HILLARY CLINTON's VOTE for the US Senate Resolution declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guards to be a "terrorist organization" to be extremely disturbing, in effect a back-door authorization for the BUSH-CHENEY administration to BOMB IRAN AT ANY TIME OF THEIR CHOOSING.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071014/ap_po/edwards_clinton;_ylt=AkzycbDOXHc6VqkKlN7M6bas0NUE
Unfortuanately, with American laucnhing not one, but TWON INVASIONS of Muslim countries in the aftermath of 9-11, INTERNATIONAL LAW has been thrown to the wind, and, specifically, both the United States and Israel maintain that they have no requirement to ABIDE BY INTERNATIONAL TREATIES on nuclear-proliferation or international aggression, EVEN AS THEY TRY TO RAM SECOND-CLASS nuclear energy status DOWN IRAN'S THROATS.
Indeed, America under the Bush-Cheney administration has authorized a FIVE BILLION DOLLAR SALE of top US nuclear processing technology to INDIA - with the "understanding" that India can use that technology on its seven "secret" military - nuclear weapons processing - reactors.
==============================
Juan Williams: Kristol Is Pushing For ‘The Next World War’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/14/iran-williams-kristol/
On Fox News Sunday, right-wing pundit Bill Kristol continued to beat the war drums for a strike against Iran. “I hope the administration is willing to do what it takes to back Iran off,” he said, adding that “we may need to do stuff across the border.”
NPR’s Mara Liasson claimed that the Bush administration could politically “withstand” an attack against Iran, and that a bombing raid inside Iran would not count as “an all-out war.”
NPR’s Juan Williams noted that Liasson and Kristol were in effect condoning “the next world war”:
WILLIAMS: I think what Bill Kristol is saying is he wants some action against Iran in a way that Israel apparently took action against Syria. And I think what you’re looking at then is the next world war. […]
And if we now say the U.S. is going to take action against Iran, and it’s not as a result of some specific provocative action, then you’re talking about spreading war.
Kristol responded by citing the recent Israeli airstrike on Syria as evidence for his claim that a strike on Iran would not have deeper consequences. “Has the Israeli action against Syria spread war? Has that destabilized the region?” Kristol asked. Watch it:
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The #1 question to ask Speaker Pelosi: "WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?" When will Democrats regain the "moral values" high ground of 200 years of progress?
Over at HuffingtonPost.com, Arianna Huffington asks "What one question would you have me ask Speaker of the House [i.e. the leader of Congress] Nancy Pelosi when I talk to her Monday night?"
The Number one question, bar none, is "WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?"
Republicans can create vast amounts of outrage in an instant - on wholly trivial 'issues' such as "Lincoln bedroom 'scandal'" and "White House Trashing 'scandal,'" or turn molehills into mountains (Whitewater, Foster suicide, Cisneros prosecution)...
And, conversely, Republicans can take entire mountains of genuine scandals, and turn them into puffs of dust, as with Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate/BCCI, swiped elections 2000, 2002, 2004, and even 2006 (Florida's 13th Congressional District recorded 18,000 "undervotes," seating a Republican in Katherine Harris' old seat), Dereliction-of-Duty leading up to 9-11, and of course vast corruption in Iraq war contracts or the systematic lies-to-war themselves.
Ms. Pelosi seems to think that merely going through the motions - routine, ineffectual (legislative) protests against the Bush-GOP agenda - is fulfilling her leadership compact with voters and the constitutional responsibilities vested through her in the Congress. Robert Parry has posted on-line the first chapter of his Secrecy & Privilege" book, illustrating how in 2001 President Clinton helped quash on-going criminal investigations into the Reagan-Bush administration abuses of power.
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html
Clearly, President Clinton hoped Republicans would reciprocate with bipartisan comity. A more cynical view is that Clinton was willing to forgive Republican crimes, if it would boost his power and privilege in the White House.
Is Nancy Pelosi following in Clinton's misbegotten steps? When will Democrats finally CONFRONT the Right-Wing smear, attack, slime, and Swift-boat machine, and put the liberal-progressive agenda of the past 200 years - hard-fought progress always towards greater enfranchisement, civil liberties, and economic empowerment - BACK on the MORAL HIGH GROUND? Will Democrats continue to beg us for money every election season, then hand over a great proportion of that money (to buy prime-time campaign ads) to the very media barons whose policies and editorial agenda we so vehemently oppose? Or will Ms. Pelosi continue to allow the Media thugs to portray all Katrina victims as criminals ("untermensch", even), justifying billions of dollars of crony contracts to Blackwater, Halliburton, and other connected corporations, even as New Orleans residents must pay mortgages on homes they are not even allowed to rebuild?
(Note: We realize how tough it is for the Democrats to confront the business and theological wings of the Radical Right Republican Party: in "whack-a-mole" fashion, any Democrat who tries to stand up to the abuses of the Right-Wing theocrats - whether the Vatican influencing American elections on abortion, the Protestants Kennedy/Falwells/Robertsons/Bob Jones U advocating Christian evangelism in public schools and the US military, or the AIPAC lobby taking billions of dollars of US donations to Israel and directing it right back into influencing American politics - will be "WHACKED" (defeated) by the faithful of those religions should that Congressman/woman publicly oppose those sacred cow issues. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN that we Americans no longer have a right to oppose that radical-right, theological agenda that is the cornerstone of the Big Business wing of the Republican Party connecting with enough voters to win elections.)
The Number one question, bar none, is "WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?"
Republicans can create vast amounts of outrage in an instant - on wholly trivial 'issues' such as "Lincoln bedroom 'scandal'" and "White House Trashing 'scandal,'" or turn molehills into mountains (Whitewater, Foster suicide, Cisneros prosecution)...
And, conversely, Republicans can take entire mountains of genuine scandals, and turn them into puffs of dust, as with Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate/BCCI, swiped elections 2000, 2002, 2004, and even 2006 (Florida's 13th Congressional District recorded 18,000 "undervotes," seating a Republican in Katherine Harris' old seat), Dereliction-of-Duty leading up to 9-11, and of course vast corruption in Iraq war contracts or the systematic lies-to-war themselves.
Ms. Pelosi seems to think that merely going through the motions - routine, ineffectual (legislative) protests against the Bush-GOP agenda - is fulfilling her leadership compact with voters and the constitutional responsibilities vested through her in the Congress. Robert Parry has posted on-line the first chapter of his Secrecy & Privilege" book, illustrating how in 2001 President Clinton helped quash on-going criminal investigations into the Reagan-Bush administration abuses of power.
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html
Clearly, President Clinton hoped Republicans would reciprocate with bipartisan comity. A more cynical view is that Clinton was willing to forgive Republican crimes, if it would boost his power and privilege in the White House.
Is Nancy Pelosi following in Clinton's misbegotten steps? When will Democrats finally CONFRONT the Right-Wing smear, attack, slime, and Swift-boat machine, and put the liberal-progressive agenda of the past 200 years - hard-fought progress always towards greater enfranchisement, civil liberties, and economic empowerment - BACK on the MORAL HIGH GROUND? Will Democrats continue to beg us for money every election season, then hand over a great proportion of that money (to buy prime-time campaign ads) to the very media barons whose policies and editorial agenda we so vehemently oppose? Or will Ms. Pelosi continue to allow the Media thugs to portray all Katrina victims as criminals ("untermensch", even), justifying billions of dollars of crony contracts to Blackwater, Halliburton, and other connected corporations, even as New Orleans residents must pay mortgages on homes they are not even allowed to rebuild?
(Note: We realize how tough it is for the Democrats to confront the business and theological wings of the Radical Right Republican Party: in "whack-a-mole" fashion, any Democrat who tries to stand up to the abuses of the Right-Wing theocrats - whether the Vatican influencing American elections on abortion, the Protestants Kennedy/Falwells/Robertsons/Bob Jones U advocating Christian evangelism in public schools and the US military, or the AIPAC lobby taking billions of dollars of US donations to Israel and directing it right back into influencing American politics - will be "WHACKED" (defeated) by the faithful of those religions should that Congressman/woman publicly oppose those sacred cow issues. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN that we Americans no longer have a right to oppose that radical-right, theological agenda that is the cornerstone of the Big Business wing of the Republican Party connecting with enough voters to win elections.)
Friday, October 12, 2007
General Sanchez, former Iraq US military commander, blasts "INCOMPETENCE" of Bush-Cheney NIGHTMARE in Iraq....
General Sanchez, Former Top General in Iraq Faults Bush Administration
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: October 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/washington/12cnd-general.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12— In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.
“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.
General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities. General Sanchez, who is said to be considering a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.
“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”
The White House had no initial comment.
But his role as commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal leaves General Sanchez vulnerable to criticism that that he is shifting the blame from himself and exacting revenge against an administration that replaced him as the top commander in the aftermath of the scandal and declined to nominate him for a fourth star, forcing his retirement.
Though he was cleared of wrongdoing in the abuse matter by an Army investigation, he nonetheless became a symbol, along with officials like L. Paul Bremer III , the chief administrator in Iraq, of the ineffective American leadership early in the occupation.
Questioned by reporters after his speech, he included the military and himself among those who made mistakes in Iraq, citing the failure to insist on a better post-invasion stabilization plan.
But his main criticism was leveled at the Bush administration, which he said he said has failed to mobilize the entire United States government, other than the military, to contribute meaningfully to reconstructing and stabilizing Iraq.
“National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone,” he said. “Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.”
Asked after his remarks what strategy he favored, General Sanchez ticked off a series of steps — from promoting reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sectarian factions to building effective Iraqi army and police units — that closely paralleled the list of tasks frequently cited by the Bush administration.
But he said that the administration had failed to craft a detailed strategy for achieving those steps that went beyond the use of military force.
“The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” General Sanchez said.
Burma mass-murder Purge betrays America, world indifference, greed, lust for oil...
Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges
By Rosalind Russell
11 October 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3047606.ece
Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away.
Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising.
The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime's soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.
The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.
"There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
"The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o'clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn't eat. The smell was so bad.
"Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came."
On his release, the monk spoke to a Western aid worker in Rangoon, who smuggled his testimony and those of other prisoners and witnesses out of Burma on a small memory stick.
Most of the detained monks, the low-level clergy, were eventually freed without charge as were the children among them. But suspected ringleaders of the protests can expect much harsher treatment, secret trials and long prison sentences. One detained opposition leader has been tortured to death, activist groups said yesterday. Win Shwe, 42, a member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has died under interrogation, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, adding that the information came from authorities in Kyaukpandawn township. "However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead." Win Shwe was arrested on the first day of the crackdown.
It was the russet-robed Buddhist clergy, not political groups, who had formed the backbone of demonstrations during days of euphoric defiance and previously undreamed-of hope that Burma's military regime could be brought down by peaceful revolution. That hope has been crushed under the boots of government soldiers and intelligence agents and replaced by fear and dread.
A young woman, a domestic worker in Rangoon, described how one woman bystander who applauded the monks was rounded up. "My friend was taken away for clapping during the demonstrations. She had not marched. She came out of her house as the marchers went by and, for perhaps 30 seconds, smiled and clapped as the monks chanted. Her face was recorded on a military intelligence camera. She was taken and beaten. Now she is so scared she won't even leave her room to come and talk to me, to anyone."
Another Rangoon resident told the aid worker: "We all hear screams at night as they [the police] arrive to drag off a neighbour. We are torn between going to help them and hiding behind our doors. We hide behind our doors. We are ashamed. We are frightened."
Burmese intelligence agents are scrutinising photographs and video footage to identify demonstrators and bystanders. They have also arrested the owners of computers which they suspect were used to transmit images and testimonies out of the country. For each story smuggled out to The Independent, someone has risked arrest and imprisonment.
Hein Zay Kyaw (not his real name) received a telephone call last week telling him to be at a government compound where the military were releasing 42 people, among them Mr Kyaw's friend, missing since he was plucked from the edge of a demonstration on 26 September. Mr Kyaw told the aid worker: "The prisoners were let out of the trucks. Even though now they were safe, they were still so scared. They walked with their hands shielding their faces as if they were expecting blows. They were lined up in rows and sat down against the wall, still cowering. Their clothes were dirty, some stained with blood. Our friend had a clean T-shirt on. We were relieved because we thought this meant that he had not been beaten. We were wrong. He had been beaten on the head and the blood had soaked his shirt which he carried in a plastic bag."
The United States yesterday threatened unspecified new sanctions against Burma and called for an investigation into the death of Win Shwe.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: "The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States."
The scale of the crackdown remains undocumented. The regime has banned journalists from entering Burma and has blocked internet access and phone lines.
Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says the number of dead is possibly in the hundreds. "The regime covers up its atrocities. We will never know the true numbers," he said.
At the weekend the government said it has released more than half of the 2,171 people arrested, but exile groups estimate the number of detentions between 6,000 and 10,000.
In Rangoon, people say they are more frightened now than when soldiers were shooting on the streets.
"When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching," said a professional woman who watched the marchers from her office.
"But now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us."
By Rosalind Russell
11 October 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3047606.ece
Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away.
Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising.
The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime's soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.
The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.
"There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
"The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o'clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn't eat. The smell was so bad.
"Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came."
On his release, the monk spoke to a Western aid worker in Rangoon, who smuggled his testimony and those of other prisoners and witnesses out of Burma on a small memory stick.
Most of the detained monks, the low-level clergy, were eventually freed without charge as were the children among them. But suspected ringleaders of the protests can expect much harsher treatment, secret trials and long prison sentences. One detained opposition leader has been tortured to death, activist groups said yesterday. Win Shwe, 42, a member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has died under interrogation, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, adding that the information came from authorities in Kyaukpandawn township. "However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead." Win Shwe was arrested on the first day of the crackdown.
It was the russet-robed Buddhist clergy, not political groups, who had formed the backbone of demonstrations during days of euphoric defiance and previously undreamed-of hope that Burma's military regime could be brought down by peaceful revolution. That hope has been crushed under the boots of government soldiers and intelligence agents and replaced by fear and dread.
A young woman, a domestic worker in Rangoon, described how one woman bystander who applauded the monks was rounded up. "My friend was taken away for clapping during the demonstrations. She had not marched. She came out of her house as the marchers went by and, for perhaps 30 seconds, smiled and clapped as the monks chanted. Her face was recorded on a military intelligence camera. She was taken and beaten. Now she is so scared she won't even leave her room to come and talk to me, to anyone."
Another Rangoon resident told the aid worker: "We all hear screams at night as they [the police] arrive to drag off a neighbour. We are torn between going to help them and hiding behind our doors. We hide behind our doors. We are ashamed. We are frightened."
Burmese intelligence agents are scrutinising photographs and video footage to identify demonstrators and bystanders. They have also arrested the owners of computers which they suspect were used to transmit images and testimonies out of the country. For each story smuggled out to The Independent, someone has risked arrest and imprisonment.
Hein Zay Kyaw (not his real name) received a telephone call last week telling him to be at a government compound where the military were releasing 42 people, among them Mr Kyaw's friend, missing since he was plucked from the edge of a demonstration on 26 September. Mr Kyaw told the aid worker: "The prisoners were let out of the trucks. Even though now they were safe, they were still so scared. They walked with their hands shielding their faces as if they were expecting blows. They were lined up in rows and sat down against the wall, still cowering. Their clothes were dirty, some stained with blood. Our friend had a clean T-shirt on. We were relieved because we thought this meant that he had not been beaten. We were wrong. He had been beaten on the head and the blood had soaked his shirt which he carried in a plastic bag."
The United States yesterday threatened unspecified new sanctions against Burma and called for an investigation into the death of Win Shwe.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: "The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States."
The scale of the crackdown remains undocumented. The regime has banned journalists from entering Burma and has blocked internet access and phone lines.
Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says the number of dead is possibly in the hundreds. "The regime covers up its atrocities. We will never know the true numbers," he said.
At the weekend the government said it has released more than half of the 2,171 people arrested, but exile groups estimate the number of detentions between 6,000 and 10,000.
In Rangoon, people say they are more frightened now than when soldiers were shooting on the streets.
"When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching," said a professional woman who watched the marchers from her office.
"But now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us."
Thursday, October 11, 2007
President Jimmy Carter says what cowering Dem. Congressional 'leaders' won't: the Bush-Cheney administration ORDERS TORTURE on captive prisoners...
Last Friday, President Bush defended techniques used by the U.S., saying, "This government does not torture people." His comments came after a leaked report that said America supports "harsh interrogation techniques."
NY Times: TORTURE turns American military personel into sadists and murderers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html
STEPPING UP WHERE COWARDLY CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS FEAR TO TREAD,
former President Jimmy Carter explicitly informed American citizens that, IN COMPLETE CONTRAST to President George W. Bush's LYING denials, AMERICAN troops under the command of the Bush-Cheney White House DO indeed ENGAGE IN TORTURE of captured prisoners and 'terrorist suspects.' Note: We know, from testimony and investigations into torture and conditions of prisoners held at the US prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, that many of the prisoners held there were accused of being "terrorists" simply because American CIA/military counter-terror officers in Afghanistan paid Warlord allies A BOUNTY for every "terror suspect" they turned in or named to those American agents; a practice which of course encouraged the warlords to accuse anyone they disliked in return for a cash payment from those US authorities.
BBC TV production recreates TORTURE by US agents at Guantanamo on captive prisoners; using conditions known to be used by US authorities, including hypothermia, exposure, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, and extreme positions for hours on end. These are the dehumanizing, painful tactics that we know about. We know that prisoners have died in US custody in Abu Ghraib and other American prisons, and that far more violent and brutal methods are used in many cases at the secret discretion of the US command.
<< In an interview Wednesday, former President Jimmy Carter denounced Vice President Cheney as a "disaster" for the country and a "militant" who has excessive influence in determining foreign policy.
In the same interview he said of the secretary of state: "I'm filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to [Cheney]." Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the U.S. tortures prisoners captured in the war on terror. "I don't think it. I know it." In a separate Carter criticized the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. "Our country for the first time in my lifetime has abandoned the basic principle of human rights." Carter also condemned Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential hopefuls who recently said they wouldn't pull all troops from Iraq by the end of their first terms if they were to be elected in 2008. >>
=======================================
Jimmy Carter Calls Cheney a 'Disaster'
AP
October 10, 2007
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/jimmy-carter-calls-cheney-a-disaster/n20071010165509990001
Washington: (Oct. 10) - Former President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a "DISASTER" for the country and a "MILITANT" who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.
Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.
"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC in an interview to air later on Wednesday.
"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."
Asked to comment on Carter's remarks, Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the Republican vice president, said, "We're not going to engage in this type of rhetoric."
Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace prize for his charitable work, is a strong critic of the Iraq war and has often been outspoken in his criticism of President George W. Bush .
In a newspaper interview in May, Carter called the Bush administration the "worst in history" in international relations.
Carter did have kind words in the BBC interview for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice .
"I'm filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to (Cheney) which she did even when she was in the White House under President George W. Bush ," Carter said, referring to Rice's former role as White House national security adviser.
"Now secretary of state, her influence is obviously greater than it was then and I hope she prevails," Carter added.
========================================
America Tortures Prisoners, Carter Says
Calls Vice President Cheney 'Disaster for Our Country'
AP
Posted: 2007-10-11
http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/america-tortures-prisoners-carter-says/20071010165209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
WASHINGTON (Oct. 11) -- The U.S. tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday, adding that President Bush makes up his own definition of torture.
Photo Gallery: Former President on the Offensive
Philip Cheung, Getty Images Former President Jimmy Carter, seen in September, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the U.S. tortures prisoners captured in the war on terror. "I don't think it. I know it," Carter said.
"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Carter said on CNN. "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime."
Bush, responding to an Oct. 4 report by The New York Times on secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques," defended the techniques Friday by proclaiming: "This government does not torture people."
Carter said the interrogation methods cited by the Times, including "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures," constitute torture "if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored _ certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.
Tell Us
"But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them," Carter said.
In an interview that aired Wednesday on BBC, Carter ripped Vice President Dick Cheney as "a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military."
Carter went on to say Cheney has been "a disaster for our country. I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush."
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell declined to speak to Carter 's allegations.
"We're not going to engage in this kind of rhetoric," she said.
In the CNN interview, the Democratic former president disparaged the field of Republican presidential candidates.
"They all seem to be outdoing each other in who wants to go to war first with Iran, who wants to keep Guantanamo open longer and expand its capacity _ things of that kind," Carter said.
He said he also disagreed with positions taken by Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have declined to promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq over the following four years if elected president next year.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-10-10 16:53:03
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