Greg Palast explains here why and how Bush and Cheney broke numerous laws regarding criminal investigations, and why they should be charged with numerous felonies on those counts. Its just inconceivable that they should be allowed to walk free after it has become clear they have deceived and deterred the work of a federal grand jury.
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, “whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
I seem to have a vague memory of some statement that once said something about refusing ‘his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good…. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers’…and on and on…
Read The Full Article Here
A detailed report from Jason Leopold for Truthout reports that with the guilty verdicts against Lay and Skilling on numerous counts of accounting fraud, conspiracy, and dozens of other charges, perhaps Enron should be remembered as - in addition to a symbol of greed - the first in what has become a long list of scandals that can be directly linked to the White House.
By the way, do you remember that it was a private Enron corporate jet provided personally to W by Kenny Boy that flew Bush to his January inaugural in Washington? Enron was Bush’s biggest political bankroller up to the time of the companies collapse in 2001.
This relates to something we at USTV have expressed our concerns about for some time. That has the Bush cabal begins to disintegrate, its overriding, in fact, singular principle will come to play; the preservation and sustainment of power at any cost. And with most delusional regimes, that means ANY cost.
The carefully layered walls of Bush’s bubble are closing in as the outer layers of purchased politicos are beginning to peel away, revealing the core ideologues of the cabal.
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The real danger is in the mindlessly callous manner the Bush regime has set the bulk of the world against our nation by acting on their manufactured mandate to conquer. Their aggressive and violent expansionism has provoked lesser equipped nations to unconventional defenses in support of basic expressions of liberty and self-determination, which the Bushites false authority disregards as mere threats to their consolidation of power.
Read Ron Fullwood’s he Piece Here
Remember this golden moldie? Kinda puts things in perspective as to why we are where we are these days.
The aide said that guys like me were ‘’in what we call the reality-based community,'’ which he defined as people who ‘’believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘’That’s not the way the world really works anymore,'’ he continued. ‘’We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'’
- Ron Suskind, NY Times writer, quoting a senior Bush administration official, summer of 2002
I never cease to be amazed at the cosmic hubris that prompted someone in the administration to make such a palpably ridiculous assertion. This administration wouldn’t know reality if it smacked them upside the head with a cat-o-nine-tails soaked in jellyfish venom, which I suspect is about to happen, but the public may receive the backlash. Their idea of reality is a numbered account in a tax-free foreign bank. The longer they stay in charge, the greater the odds of them taking us down with them when they go.
- Ed Lacy
UnCommon Sense TV Media
Josh Marshall posted this interesting photo on TPM. Seems like our friends the Goss’, Bushs’ and Mr. Negroponte go back aways. Nothing like small bands of fraternity brothers running our so-called democracy.
Another thorough article by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone, this time on the GOP’s poster boy of arrogance and corruption, Jack Abramoff. Taibbi doesn’t shy away from colorful (and in the case of Abramoff, appropriate) linguistic descriptions of who Abramoff is and what he and his co-conspirators are really all about. Some of this information relates directly to what we featured on the USTV episode “In Their Own Words”, which you can read more about here.
En route to his day of reckoning, Abramoff really did travel each and every right-wing highway, from Jo-burg in the old days to the Bush White House. But he’s being sentenced for only the last few miles of that trip. It’s almost an insult to a criminal of Abramoff’s caliber that the charge he’ll go to jail for is a low-rent wire-fraud scheme committed in a pickpocket capital like Miami Beach. In that one, Jack and his cronies claimed to have $23 million in assets when he didn’t have a dime, and he persuaded financial backers to purchase a $147.5 million cruise-ship casino empire. A nice score for a Gotti child, maybe, but a bit gauche for the wizard of the Republican fast lane.
The other charges are a little more respectable. He took tens of millions from Indian tribes that sought relief from Washington on gaming-industry questions, illegally pocketed millions in lobbying fees and evaded taxes on his ill-gotten gains. He also used their money to provide, in exchange for favors, a “stream of things of value” to elected officials, including golf junkets to Scotland, free meals and other swag.
It’s that last bit that made Abramoff a national celebrity, the poster boy for the way the Bush administration does business and the most feared name around in a Washington political society that is still waiting with bated lizard breath for the other shoe to drop. To most Americans, Jack Abramoff is the bloodsucking bogeyman with a wad of bills in his teeth who came through the window in the middle of the night and stole their voice in government. But he was much more than that. Abramoff was as much of a symbol of his generation’s Republican Party as Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater was of his.
He was an amazingly ubiquitous figure, a sort of Zelig of the political right - you could find him somewhere, in the foreground or the background, in almost every Republican political scandal of the past twenty-five years. He carried water for the racist government of Pretoria during the apartheid days and whispered in the ear of those Republican congressmen who infamously voted against anti-apartheid resolutions. He organized rallies in support of the Grenada invasion, showed up in Ollie North’s offices during Iran-Contra, palled around with Mobutu Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi and the Afghan mujahedin.
All along, Abramoff was buying journalists, creating tax-exempt organizations to fund campaign activities and using charities to fund foreign conflicts. He spent the past twenty years doing business with everyone from James Dobson to the Gambino family, from Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist to Karl Rove to White House procurements chief David Safavian. He is even lurking in the background of the 2004 Ohio voting-irregularities scandal, having worked with the Diebold voting-machine company to defeat requirements for a paper trail in elections.
Hopefully this will not be the last we’ll hear of the Diebold scam and its connection to a much larger and more insidious racket being run by the Busheviks.
Read the Rolling Stone article in full Here
An excellent must read assault on the Neocons and what this lying, criminal neo-Trotskyite administration is all about. From Paul Craig Roberts, who, as a assistant secretary of the Treasury Department and a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, is about as conservative as they come. So the typical reich-wing noise machine are out of luck on this one when it comes to relying on the old standby claim that this is part of the ‘liberal media conspiracy’ against the GOP and Bush.
Created on the principle that “you are with us or against us,” Bush’s administration is all of one mind. They are all neocons. There are no real conservatives or traditional Republicans in the Bush administration. This is the first administration in my lifetime in which there is no debate. The absence of debate means there is no check on reckless and ill-advised policies and corrupt schemes.
Neocons don’t believe in debate. They specialize in slandering critics and stamping out debate. Dissent is not possible within the Bush administration, because dissent is equated with treason and anti-Americanism. “You are with us or against us.” Increasingly, Republicans demonize their critics as “abettors of terrorism.” The Republicans’ intolerance for debate makes many Americans uneasy about the real purpose of the $385 million detention camp that Halliburton is building in the US for the Bush administration.
Neocons don’t believe in diplomacy. They believe in coercion. Neocons denigrate diplomacy as the epitome of weakness. Neocons slap down diplomacy before it can rise. The Iranians offered talks, and neocon National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately slapped down the offer as “simply a device by the Iranians to try to divert pressure that they are feeling.” The Bush neocons are bent on war with Iran. They don’t want any talks. In their books, neocons have demonized Muslims in the same way that the Nazis demonized Jews. Demonization makes talks impossible.
The closing money shot lines from Mr. Roberts go straight for the bullseye…
Neocons are incapable of debate, because they don’t believe in it. Neocons rely on disinformation and deceit to impose their agenda.
Neocons do not believe in the US Constitution, civil liberties, the separation of powers, or the Geneva Conventions. According to published reports, President Bush described the Constitution as “a scrap of paper.” Bush’s attorney general, vice president, and secretary of defense have openly defended the Bush administration’s practice of torture, violations of habeas corpus, and illegal spying. These high officials, in violation of their oath of office, have openly declared that Bush, as commander-in-chief, is above the law.
Neocons are Jacobins. They are a foreign import and do not share our American values. Neocons are a grave danger to the United States and to the world. Neocons have led America into two gratuitous on-going wars that cannot be won, and they are determined to lead us into more wars. It is our duty to defend our country and to oppose these evil people.
Read The Full Piece on LewRockwell.com
If the president wasn’t a deserter, what was he?
This question is raised and discussed in this piece by James Ridgeway of the Village Voice (who has since been fired from the paper, due to the corporate ideological bent of the new ownership of The Voice).
Despite Silverado and Voodoo, Fortune Still Smiles on the President’s Brother
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Ah, it’s nice to be Neil Bush.
When you’re Neil Bush, rich people from all over the world are eager to invest money in your businesses, even though your businesses have a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.
When you’re Neil Bush, you’ll be sitting in a hotel room in Thailand or Hong Kong, minding your own business, when suddenly there’s a knock at the door. You answer it and a comely woman strolls in and has sex with you.
