UnCommon Sense TV - “Greg Palast Reports” A special edition of UnCommon Sense TV featuring investigative reports produced by journalist Greg Palast. These video features, originally aired on BBC Television and provided to USTV courtesy of Greg Palast, include thorough examinations of the original purposes of the American invasion of Iraq, and the players behind the decision making process. The program also takes a more in depth look at the controversial but incontrovertible stories of George W. Bush’s going AWOL from duty in the Air National Guard, as well as the manipulation of the Florida election in 2000 through the purging of legal voters from the voter rolls by the Jeb Bush administration in order to help insure a victory for his brother for president (both stories originally broken by Greg Palast in 1998 and 2000 respectively).

UnCommon Sense TV - “DeMockracy: Bush Family Style” A look at some of the Bush family history of political and financial connections and the implications they pose to our democratic system. The program features special documentary videos originally produced for BBC Television by investigative journalist Greg Palast. For more on his groundbreaking investigative journalism, as well as information on the DVD release “Bush Family Fortunes”, please visit www.gregpalast.com

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UnCommon Sense TV - “The Bush Presidency: How Does It Rate?” A live call in edition from 2004 at the height of Bush’s popularity an power where the local citizenry weighs in with their thoughts and observations concerning his presidential administration. Has it been a good one for America or not - and why? Is it successful or failing in its missions and responsibilities? It asks if Bush should be replaced and if so, by whom and for what reasons?

I know everyone in the whole world is posting links to this and talking about it via blogs and such, but I can’t resist.

I’ve read how some people are calling for a collection of thousands of pairs of shoes to be delivered to the White House as an expression of solidarity with the ‘the thrower’. So where are they taking up the collection?

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Here’s some more insight on this event from Alistair Lyon of Reuters… Iraqi Shoe Thrower Captures Mideast Rage at Bush

Update: Seems this whole episode is spawning some creative response. Boing Boing weighs in with their Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy

And if you want to join in on the action, you can participate in a little Sock and Awe

Paul Krugman nails it once again, this time calling out the faux patriots and chickenhawks who have hidden behind the flag for too long…

This time around, Mr. Bush celebrated Mission Accomplished by cutting tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while handing out huge no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations. And in the four years since, as the insurgency Mr. Bush initially taunted with the cry of “Bring them on” has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and left thousands more grievously wounded, the children of the elite — especially the Republican elite — have been conspicuously absent from the battlefield.

The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost of those fights or bearing any of the risks. Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any personal or professional penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution.

For some reason I keep hearing that John Fogerty CCR classic “Fortunate Son” running through my head.

Read Krugman’s complete piece Here

He adds to his argument with this essay on the immoral philosophy that marks the meaning and purpose of the ideological agenda of the Bush administration and its adherents, particularly in regards to their conception of who should be helped and aided in our society, by our society.

“[President Bush] wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.”

Read The Full Editorial

Robert Parry, one of the better investigative journalists left standing, reports on a topic we have touched on with references in past episodes of USTV.

From petty local scams to international money-laundering, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s political/media/business/religious empire has all the looks of a global “ongoing criminal enterprise,” albeit one with enough powerful friends in Washington to protect it from serious consequences.

Benefiting from relationships with the Bush family and other prominent Republicans, Moon’s Unification Church slips away from one illegal scheme after another - despite overwhelming evidence and first-person admissions about the systematic pattern of the criminality. Somehow U.S. authorities never put two and two together.

This is a detailed and fascinating report on the width and breadth of this operation, and its deceptive and invasive connections to the most powerful elements of Washington politics, mainly the with the GOP and most particularly the Bush family.

Read The Complete Report in Consortiumnews.com

Seems like he is admitting that here. Of course, the dark ironies in all of this are pretty apparent on the face of it. Not that I am really surprised. There seems to be no way that anyone who displays such an utter lack of any recognizable human principles in the way that Karl Rove does, can really identify with any code or credo of a belief that is connected to any spiritual or religious identification. At least any that have their shared fundamental basis being an observance of the need and importance of love, empathy and compassion for one’s fellow human beings. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the rank hypocrisy of Rove and his political orchestration of the use of Christianity for cynical self-serving ends.

Read the TPM posting on it Here, with links to the Christopher Hitchens article detailing this story

This photo from a New York Times article regarding a Bush White House ‘news briefing’ sure has some creepy overtones. It seems to sum up rather metaphorically the nature of the relationship of power at work here. Cheney the puppet master lurking behind the Bush, so to speak, keeping a watchful eye from the shadows.

Go To The Article

The question seems to becoming who is in fact associated with the Bush administration that is not a criminal?

From Greg Palast, whose work we have often featured on USTV and is one of the few real investigative reporters left in American journalism…

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.

Read The Complete Report Here

As many people are slowly learning, Kevin Martin is the man behind the moves by the FCC to overturn local municipal authority and grant the telecom corporations free reign in their moves towards greater market consolidation and the next step in the re-merging of AT&T and the rise of the duopoly control of the telcom giants over our information systems.

Well it seems the neo-con ideology of ‘market based’ privatization of everything and belief in the dominance of the corporation as a player in governance runs deep in the family with FCC Commissioner Martin. His wife Catherine has some interesting connections, as you can read about here on these websites…

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021213-5.html

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6410235.html

Its all in the family for the mafia of the corporate state.

More Here from the Media General News Service, with this profile/puff piece on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

“Rumors are rife that Martin, a Harvard-trained lawyer, may use the FCC as a stepping-stone to politics with a capital “P” in North Carolina. Insiders point to his crackdown on indecency on television as an issue that plays well with the folks back home.”

How about a crackdown on the indecent and profane use of policy to benefit one’s personal donors and political cronies over the good and necessity of the public welfare?

Here’s more…

FCC Chairman’s Wife Testifies in Libby Trial

Cathie Martin, wife of Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin, testified Thursday at the perjury trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, offering a version of events that appeared to undermine her former colleague’s defense.

Libby Trial Offers Insight Into Media ‘Manipulation’

Speaking of “Media Manipulation”, why have there been so few articles about Cathie Martin’s testimony mentioning that she is the wife of Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC? I guess media manipulation runs in the family. Also missing is the fact that she seems to now be working in the White House for Karl Rove, as far as folks can figure at the moment. Where are all of the indignant investigative reporters and bloggers on this one?