Life in OUR America, Volume 5, the Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

And did I already say another story in here was a story of OUR times, right now, here in OUR America?

Well ...

Okay ...

But this one is too ....

And by God, so is this one too .....

"Whitman, EPA short on truth"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman is probably not sleeping well these days.

Don't look for any sympathy here.

One particularly nasty bit of business still unresolved from 9/11 concerns what happened after the attacks.

Whitman broadcast dangerous assurances two days after the collapse of the World Trade Center, and continuously after, that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe.

"Don't concern yourselves, citizens, go about your business" was the gist of repeated announcements from Sept. 13, 2001 on.

What made it dangerous -- and plain outrageous -- is that Whitman had no right to offer those assurances.

She had no data to support it.

In fact, more sophisticated testing than the EPA was doing at the time would have shown heavy concentrations of airborne asbestos as fine particulate in the air and in buildings even miles away.

That would be true for years.

In addition, we later learned the EPA wasn't even testing for many common toxins that were hovering in lower Manhattan air at the time.

At the same time, there were scientists and doctors at the scene, particularly from nearby Mount Sinai Hospital, who were leery of the asbestos and toxin-laden air and suggesting it did pose a hazard.

We got wind of who was right when, in 2003, the EPA's own inspector general unexpectedly and pointedly criticized Whitman and her statements of assurance.

The sum of the inspector general's evaluation was that when Whitman made those statements, she didn't really know what she was talking about.

As a result of the inspector general's report, it came out that every statement and news release uttered soothingly by Whitman during those hellacious days had been vetted by the White House, and that warnings of health concerns raised by her own scientists were deleted from news releases and statements.

"We didn't want to scare people," she told Newsweek.

Now the other shoe has dropped on Whitman.

In a little-publicized ruling Thursday, Federal Court Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan cleared the way for class-action civil suits against Whitman personally and as the administrator of EPA, and against the agency.

Let the floodgates open, and let Whitman and the feds get hammered.

What an unspeakable thing to do to a stunned and helpless citizenry surely not expecting further misery from our own government.

The judge's ruling related to a 2004 class-action suit on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who claim they were subjected to contaminated air in buildings near the World Trade Center -- a situation the EPA either turned its back on or stated was not harmful.

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge stated, terming Whitman's cotton-mouthed assurances as "conscience-shocking."

Now this only clears the way for civil trials and settlements.

Those bringing the suits still have to prove they were hurt as a result of Whitman's words.

But there's no question the judge's ruling clearly establishes that as far as the court is concerned, Whitman and the EPA had a legal as well as a moral responsibility to speak the truth.

And that they did not.

Fred LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

And this following just goes to show ...

That in OUR America, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED .....

But that GOOD can come from that in the end, regardless .....

Which is something to consider ...

If you are one of those in that position ...

Of having your own good deeds punished by this government of somebody's ...

Here in OUR America .....

Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 5:17 PM

Subject: DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

READ ON .....

Sometime ago, then Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a posthumous award for "constructive dissent" to Hiram (or Harry) Bingham IV.

For over fifty years, the State Department resisted any attempt to honor Bingham.

For them, he was an insubordinate member of the US diplomatic service, a dangerous maverick who was eventually demoted.

Now, after his death, he has been officially recognized as a hero.

Bingham came from an illustrious family.

His father (on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru in 1911.

Harry entered the US diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France as American vice-consul.

The USA was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews.

Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his career, did all in his power to undermine it.

In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA visas to Jewish and other refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer, Thomas Mann.

He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe.

He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean, and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket.

In 1941, Washington lost patience with him.

He was sent to Argentina, where, later, he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.

Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely.

Bingham died almost penniless in 1988.

Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some letters in his belongings after his death.

Many groups and organizations including the United Nations and the State of Israel have now honored him.

His postage stamp will be out in 2006.

PLEASE honor his memory and resend.

[Abu Beacon]

Subject: DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

READ ON .....

Sometime ago, then Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a posthumous award for "constructive dissent" to Hiram (or Harry) Bingham IV.

For over fifty years, the State Department resisted any attempt to honor Bingham.

For them, he was an insubordinate member of the US diplomatic service, a dangerous maverick who was eventually demoted.

Now, after his death, he has been officially recognized as a hero.

Bingham came from an illustrious family.

His father (on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru in 1911.

Harry entered the US diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France as American vice-consul.

The USA was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews.

Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his career, did all in his power to undermine it.

In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA visas to Jewish and other refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer, Thomas Mann.

He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe.

He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean, and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket.

In 1941, Washington lost patience with him.

He was sent to Argentina, where, later, he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.

Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely.

Bingham died almost penniless in 1988.

Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some letters in his belongings after his death.

Many groups and organizations including the United Nations and the State of Israel have now honored him.

His postage stamp will be out in 2006.

PLEASE honor his memory and resend.

Excellent, wonderful post, Livyjr.

Harry Bingham IV. ----- A man with vision, with morals, and with the guts to do do what he knew was right.

I had never heard of him.

Thank you for posting that.

A.B.

[Livyjr]

And so it goes indeed ....

Saturday morning, I was someplace where there was a TV going and CNN was on, I believe it was ...

Anyway, they were doing a story about George W. Bush and Tony Blair being unlikely allies in something or other, and as they were doing the story, out come George and Tony and George is decked out in this leather jacket that makes him look like some crusty old sea captain whose carrier took a few rounds during the battle of Coral Sea in W2, but it didn't faze old Cap'n George not one bit ....

And I am looking at him, and wondering just what on earth has been done to that poor man to make him look the way he did ...

Which was very oddly proportioned, indeed ....

And then I realized what it was ....

The Deputy Dog look, I think you would call it ...

Small hips flaring upwards to a deep chest and huge shoulders ....

And I was wondering exactly how they got that look on George ...

Whether it was duct tape, or what ....

I remember that one general who was thinking of running for president talking about how his aides would use duct tape to have his uniform appear thus and so ..

And I wondered if maybe George's handlers caught wind of that and started using duct tape on him ...

Because they heard that that was what a real general did to make himself look like a real general on television ...

Whatever, it made George look like a damn fool so far as I could see, anyway .......

"Bush Urges Confidence in His Leadership"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - President Bush said Wednesday he understands why the nation he has led for five years has become more anxious, and he urged people to have confidence in him.

"How cool would it be to give a State of the Union address in a Porter Wagoner outfit?" he said, referencing the flashy singer who frequently played host on the stage.

Poor George .....

The one man here in OUR America without a clue ...

There he was ...

Living life large as the profligate son ...

And doing quite well at it ...

By all accounts ....

When one day ...

All of a sudden ...

Young George wakes up to find himself being called "Mr. President" ....

And it all began to go downhill from there ...

For all of us ...

And the candid world too ...

And still ...

Young George ...

Has no clue ....

EDITORIAL DESK, NY Times

"A President Who Can Do No Right"

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 26, 2006

We should be used to it by now.

There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, ''There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do.''

Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress.

He's amazing.

Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers.

George W. Bush does what he wants to do.

He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation.

He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself -- a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam -- as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.

Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush.

The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees.

That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29.

On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, ''I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.''

This guy is something.

Remember his ''Top Gun'' moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln?

And his famous taunt -- ''Bring 'em on'' -- to the insurgents in Iraq?

His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence.

And that's the real problem.

That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.

Fantasy may be in fashion.

Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch.

But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time.

Many thousands of people -- men, women and children -- have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush, counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war.

As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, ''At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land."

"Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?''

George W. Bush had no such concerns.

In fact, he joked about his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Like a frat boy making cracks about a bad bet on a football game, Mr. Bush displayed what he felt was a hilarious set of photos during a spoof that he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association in March 2004.

The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture in the Oval Office for the missing weapons.

Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, ''Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.''

And, ''Nope, no weapons over there, maybe under here.''

This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued, we learned from a draft report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction that, like the war itself, the Bush plan for rebuilding Iraq has been crippled by incompetence and extreme shortages of personnel.

I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any of his other failures.

He seems to truly believe that he can do no wrong.

The fiasco in Iraq and the president's response to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe were Mr. Bush's two most spectacular foul-ups.

There have been many others.

The president's new Medicare prescription drug program has been a monumental embarrassment, leaving some of the most vulnerable members of our society without essential medication.

Prominent members of the president's own party are balking at the heavy hand of his No Child Left Behind law, which was supposed to radically upgrade the quality of public education.

The Constitution?

Civil liberties?

Don't ask.

Just keep in mind, whatever your political beliefs, that incompetence in high places can have devastating consequences.

[Livyjr]

Harry Bingham IV. ----- A man with vision, with morals, and with the guts to do do what he knew was right.

A.B.

We sure could do with a lot more like him in OUR government, and that is for sure, Mr. A.B. .....

But can you imagine this guy signing a LOYALTY OATH to work for George W. Bush ....

[Livyjr]

Poor George .....

The one man here in OUR America without a clue ...

There he was ...

Living life large as the profligate son ...

And doing quite well at it ...

By all accounts ....

When one day ...

All of a sudden ...

Young George wakes up to find himself being called "Mr. President" ....

And it all began to go downhill from there ...

For all of us ...

And the candid world too ...

And still ...

Young George ...

Has no clue ....

"Bush's speech conjures up empty foe of isolationism"

By ANDREW J. BACEVICH

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

In his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders."

His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself."

Turning inward, the President cautioned, would provide "false comfort" because isolationism inevitably "ends in danger and decline."

But who exactly are these isolationists eager to pull up the drawbridges?

What party do they control?

What influential journals of opinion do they publish?

Who are their leaders?

Which foundations bankroll this isolationist cause?

The President provided no such details, and for good reason: In present-day American politics, isolationism does not exist.

It is a fiction, a fabrication and a smear imported from another era.

Isolationism survives in contemporary American political discourse because it retains utility as a cheap device employed to impose discipline.

Think of it as akin to red-baiting -- conjuring up bogus fears to enforce conformity in the realm of foreign policy.

In that regard, the beleaguered Bush, his standing in public opinion polls tumbling, is by no means the first president to sound the alarm about supposed isolationists subverting American statecraft.

The problem is that scaremongering about nonexistent isolationists pre-empts a much-needed debate over the principles that ought to inform our behavior as a world power.

Call that debate George Washington versus Woodrow Wilson.

After 9/11, Bush the born-again Christian became a born-again Wilsonian, embracing the American mission of spreading liberty around the world.

In his State of the Union address, the President affirmed his commitment to that mission, vowing that his administration will "act boldly in freedom's cause" and "seek the end of tyranny in our world."

The Wilsonian project derives from two convictions: that history has an identifiable direction and purpose, and that providence calls upon Americans to fulfill that purpose, which is the triumph of liberty.

On Tuesday, the President reaffirmed his adherence to those convictions, declaring, "we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed."

Responding to these calls from above, Wilsonians tend to neglect mundane details about feasibility.

Wilson had no patience with the idea of limits, and neither do his disciples.

Thus Bush asserts that there is nothing a righteous America acting in pursuit of a righteous cause cannot accomplish.

One will search Bush's speech in vain for any doubts regarding American omnipotence.

It was Bush channeling Wilson that landed us in Iraq.

Even today, many Americans agree with the President's view of the U.S. invasion as an act of liberation, although many others view the war as patently misguided and morally unjustifiable.

What can hardly be denied is that it has exacted enormous, unsustainable costs.

Put bluntly, we don't have enough soldiers, enough money or enough friends to persist in this crusade, much less to implement the Bush doctrine elsewhere to bring freedom and democracy to the entire Mideast.

This is where the tradition of George Washington comes in.

As even a glance at the first president's Farewell Address affirms, Washington was anything but an isolationist.

He was instead the founding father of American realism, a school of thought based on a lively appreciation for the limits of power and for the fragility of the American experiment in republican government.

Washington did not counsel his countrymen to turn away from the world but to approach it warily and without illusions, choosing "war or peace, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."

The Wilsonian tradition, emphasizing universal values, is an authentic expression of the American purpose.

So too is the tradition of Washington, emphasizing freedom of action.

There is no easy way of reconciling these two views.

Yet in the tension between them may lie our best hope of navigating safely through a perilous world.

Can America be America absent Wilsonian ideals?

Perhaps not.

But an America intoxicated with its self-assigned mission of salvation while disregarding prudential considerations will court exhaustion, both moral and material.

Our present circumstances may not dictate a full retreat.

But they do require a revived appreciation of what we can and cannot do.

Contriving phony charges of isolationism to dodge tough, practical questions is not only dishonest, it is reckless and irresponsible.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War." He wrote this article for The Washington Post.

[Livyjr]

EDITORIAL DESK, NY Times

"A President Who Can Do No Right" 
       
By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 26, 2006

Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers.

George W. Bush does what he wants to do.

He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation.

He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself -- a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam -- as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.

Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush.

This guy is something.

Remember his ''Top Gun'' moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln?

And his famous taunt -- ''Bring 'em on'' -- to the insurgents in Iraq?

His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence.

And that's the real problem.

Many thousands of people -- men, women and children -- have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush, counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war.

As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, ''At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land."

"Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?''

George W. Bush had no such concerns.

This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued, we learned from a draft report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction that, like the war itself, the Bush plan for rebuilding Iraq has been crippled by incompetence and extreme shortages of personnel.

I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any of his other failures.

Just keep in mind, whatever your political beliefs, that incompetence in high places can have devastating consequences.

"It's a delicate balancing act about Bush for GOP hopefuls"

By RUTH MARCUS

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

The early glimmerings of presidential separation anxiety, 2008-style, were on display at a recent event in Washington with Mitt Romney, the not-yet-announced but oh-so-obviously-running governor of Massachusetts.

When it comes to President Bush, Romney seems to have chosen distance over embrace, clarity over subtlety.

Running to replace a retiring president of the same party inevitably entails a fine calibration of competing interests: embracing the departing administration vs. establishing independence; hewing to the policies of the incumbent vs. charting a different course; pleasing the loyal base vs. alienating the up-for-grabs voter.

When the retiring president is unpopular, achieving the proper political balance can be an even more precarious undertaking.

Speaking at a gathering sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor -- it was lunch, but Romney not only didn't eat a bite, he also didn't sit down, the better to address the crowded room.

He was relentlessly analytical, Romney kept saying; he liked -- nay, he demanded -- to be challenged by his aides: "I don't want to hear just one side of the argument."

Forget the Harvard Business School CEO-style delegator; meet the Harvard Business School case-studier.

Though he blandly demurred when asked whether he was contrasting himself with Bush, the governor might as well have hung a sign over his head pointing to the White House several blocks away and reading, "I'm Not Like Him."

"No one would have slam-dunked me on weapons of mass destruction."

Likewise, on matters of substance -- Iraq, the Medicare prescription drug bill -- Romney wasn't shy about distinguishing himself from Bush.

Indeed, he edged about as close as he could to saying that the administration had messed up and that President Romney would have done better.

So far in the run-up to the 2008 campaign, the chatter about how to separate the candidate from the president has focused on the Democratic side: How will Hillary Rodham Clinton, if she runs, remove herself from, or wrap herself in, the aura of Bill?

Eight years ago the twin challenges faced by Vice President Al Gore were to reap the benefits of Clintonism without being loaded down with Clinton's baggage and to establish his autonomy from an administration in which he had served for eight years.

In the 2008 election, none of the not-yet-candidates faces the conundrum of a sitting vice president required to finesse his relationship with the incumbent.

Yet Republicans in 2008 have to grapple with the fact of a similarly polarizing -- but far less popular -- president of their own party.

They confront a restless electorate, even to some extent a restless base -- one that still supports Bush but that has been holding its nose over some Bush policies (the Medicare drug bill, deficit spending) and has been waiting to exhale.

The test for these candidates will be to sell themselves as a sort of new, improved version of the GOP brand -- without alienating those who are satisfied with the current model.

Voters, or so the candidates hope, may not be prepared to try an entirely new type of laundry detergent, but they do seem ready for something more than a little different.

And so, there was Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, on NBC's "Meet the Press" last weekend -- looking like he was counting the days until he could stop being shackled to the President and going so far as to say that, in hindsight, Bush should have put more troops on the ground in Iraq at the outset.

Virginia Sen. George Allen distanced himself from the President over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

Of all the 2008 possibilities, Arizona Sen. John McCain, R-Iconoclast, may have the most latitude when it comes to Bush: He can run on Being John McCain.

For now, though, the closest analogue to 2008 could be a half-century ago, when another unpopular president waging a controversial war was leaving the White House without a vice president running to succeed him.

Historian David McCullough writes in his biography of Harry Truman about how the Democratic nominee in 1952, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, was "frantic to distance himself from Truman."

So far, at least, the 2008 candidates aren't showing anything like that kind of alarm.

But they're clearly starting to calculate the optimal degrees of separation from the President they hope to succeed.

Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post.

[Livyjr]

"It's a delicate balancing act about Bush for GOP hopefuls" 
 
By RUTH MARCUS

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

The early glimmerings of presidential separation anxiety, 2008-style, were on display at a recent event in Washington with Mitt Romney, the not-yet-announced but oh-so-obviously-running governor of Massachusetts.

When it comes to President Bush, Romney seems to have chosen distance over embrace, clarity over subtlety.

Running to replace a retiring president of the same party inevitably entails a fine calibration of competing interests: embracing the departing administration vs. establishing independence; hewing to the policies of the incumbent vs. charting a different course; pleasing the loyal base vs. alienating the up-for-grabs voter.

When the retiring president is unpopular, achieving the proper political balance can be an even more precarious undertaking.

"Democrats hold all the cards"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, February 6, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove is whistling in the dark if he thinks his trademark political attacks on Democrats can work again in the mid-term elections this fall.

The American people are finally waking up, and the Democrats have the cards.

Americans know that President Bush's strategy for victory in Iraq is costing more lives -- American and Iraqi -- almost every day as he heads into the third anniversary of the invasion of that oil-rich country.

It was supposed to be a "cakewalk," remember?

Rove -- deputy White House chief of staff and the Republican Party's political guru -- seems to forget that Bush has picked up a lot of baggage since the last election.

The Hurricane Katrina debacle and the Iraq quagmire come to mind and partially explain his decline in public opinion polls.

Rove will continue operating under a cloud until special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald completes his investigation of the unlawful leak of the identity of former CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame to some Washington journalists.

Rove headlined a recent pep rally for the nervous Republican Party faithful and made it clear that he believes accusations that the Democrats are weak on national security will resonate with the voters in November.

Bush boasted after his triumph in that election that he had earned a lot of political capital to spend.

Then the roof fell in.

The first year of Bush's second term has been marked by spectacular ineptitude, highlighted by failures in handling the hurricane catastrophes.

His performance has raised doubts that the administration can handle other national crises.

Those doubts deepen against the background of the endless U.S. occupation of Iraq, with its links to the torture of prisoners in American and Iraqi custody, the secret CIA-run prisons and Bush's pathetic insistence that he could simply ignore the law and spy on Americans without a court order.

Bush's party is deeply mired in the Jack Abramoff influence-buying scandal.

And Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tex., was forced to resign as House Republican leader because of his own ethics morass.

None of this bodes well for the GOP.

That may explain Rove's resort to his favorite tactic of resorting to a national security scare.

"The United States faces a ruthless enemy," Rove said in the campaign's opening salvo, "and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in."

"President Bush and the Republican Party do."

"Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

At a recent news conference, Bush insisted that the November "election is about peace and prosperity."

Well, hardly.

Where is the peace?

And where is the prosperity for thousands of American workers facing layoffs in auto factories?

Senate hearings begin this week into Bush's decision to order eavesdropping inside the U.S. by the National Security Agency, the government's giant electronic ear.

The White House spin doctors are trying to paint that as the "terrorist surveillance program," more of the administration's strategy of scare-the-heck-out-of everyone and you can get away with anything you want to do.

It's interesting to note that the law Bush has ignored -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- allows domestic surveillance only with a court warrant that must be obtained either before the eavesdropping or within 72 hours afterward.

The law was written in 1978.

"We're having this discussion in 2006," he said.

"It's a different world."

If Bush thought the law needed updating, he should have asked Congress to change it.

Bush should be reminded that he twice has sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

Helen Thomas' e-mail address is hthomas@hearstdc.com.

[Livyjr]

"Democrats hold all the cards" 
 
Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, February 6, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove is whistling in the dark if he thinks his trademark political attacks on Democrats can work again in the mid-term elections this fall.

Bush's party is deeply mired in the Jack Abramoff influence-buying scandal.

And Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tex., was forced to resign as House Republican leader because of his own ethics morass.

None of this bodes well for the GOP.

That may explain Rove's resort to his favorite tactic of resorting to a national security scare.

"Hard facts outweigh President's lofty goals"

By MOLLY IVINS

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, February 6, 2006

"We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory."

"First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized."

"Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefit of freedom."

"And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy."

-- George W. Bush

"The Iraq war has been a disaster." -- CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour

The number of terrorist attacks per day in Iraq grew from 55 in December 2004 to 77 per day in December 2005.

Electricity production in Iraq has not yet recovered to prewar levels, and the electricity in Baghdad is on less today than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Telephone and Internet uses are up.

No hard numbers but repeated reports of the loss of educated, middle-class Iraqis, especially doctors, fleeing Iraq because of lack of security.

Iraq today produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein.

The current oil minister is Ahmad Chalabi, onetime darling of the neo-con set and convicted of bank fraud in Jordan.

The majority of Iraqis favor complete American troop withdrawal; time frames they prefer vary.

"To the extent we stay there with big forces indefinitely, Iraqis will come up with all these theories that we really want to stay here for their oil."

"We want to use their country as a springboard for more aggression."

"They still see us as occupiers. ..."

-- Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institute

"A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our allies to death and prison ... and put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country."

-- George W. Bush

Actually, the insurgency in Iraqi is comprised mostly of native Iraqis -- old Baathists and others who don't like being occupied by infidels.

International terrorist jihadists are a negligible fraction of those fighting, and they are there to fight Americans, not to take over Iraq.

The war in Iraq costs the United States $1 billion per week, $251 billion so far.

Bush originally said it would cost $70 billion.

Before the war, he fired his top economic adviser, Larry Lindsay, who said it would cost $200 billion.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economist, now estimates the total cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.

He includes lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of resources diverted to the war.

More than 2,200 Americans have been killed in action in Iraq and 16,000 seriously wounded.

Because we are doing a better job saving lives of the wounded, those who survive often have devastating injuries from which there is no recovery.

After our main purpose in invading Iraq stopped being the presence of weapons of mass destruction (the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud), or the nonexistent linkage between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, or alleged links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists in general, our main purpose in invading Iraq became the spread of democracy in the Middle East.

So far, we've boosted the electoral results for Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, next, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The remaining allies in Iraq plan to withdraw 25 percent or more of their 22,000 troops this year.

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction released an audit last week containing extensive findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion.

Among the billions of dollars listed as wasted, I especially liked the $100,000 someone decided to spend to refurbish an Olympic-sized swimming pool, except that all that got done was shining the pumps.

Soldiers used reconstruction money for gambling, and millions were stored in footlockers and bathrooms.

Three Iraqis fell to their deaths in a supposedly rebuilt hospital elevator that had been certified as safe.

Because of its total misjudgment of the war in Iraq, the administration has failed to enlarge the regular Army and has therefore put the entire institution under immense strain.

The "stop-loss" refusal to let people leave at the end of their enlistments now affects 50,000 soldiers, and mobilization of the reserves and extended service are a form of draft.

Despite chipper denials from the Pentagon, the Army has serious problems with recruiting, especially getting quality recruits, and with regular Army re-enlistment.

The reason the numbers are not worse is because of the bonuses being offered.

The officer corps is also being hollowed out, as younger officers quit in such numbers that 100 percent of those remaining are automatically moved up the ladder.

For example, last year the Army promoted 97 percent of all eligible captains, up from a historical average of 70 percent to 80 percent.

This information is from Pentagon data in a report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

It is quite possible this administration is destroying the professional Army.

The most important question about the war in Iraq is whether it is doing any good, and an increasing pool of evidence shows that it has become a rallying and recruiting tool for global terrorists.

Like the other information in this article, the evidence comes from official reports.

I do hope this is responsible criticism that aims for cures, not defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure.

end quotes

Stay the course, there, Molly ...

You are right on the mark ...

And you are doing quite fine ...

As a result ...

And yes ....

I would say your criticism of this seeming madman's regime ...

Is right on the money ....

[jeffmoskin]

The Democrats hold all the cards????

Who are these Democrats???

I have heard NOTHING from any Democrats.

Are they in the witless protection program?

[Snuffysmith]

Forget the witless protection program. What cards?

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8503

February 6, 2006
Prepare for Perpetual War
The real State of the Union
by Justin Raimondo
The Bizarro World illogic started right off the bat when George W. Bush intoned that what we need more of in public life is "a civil tone." This from a man who has repeatedly impugned the patriotism of his opponents, and just the previous week declared that critics of the Iraq war are giving "comfort to our enemies." That the president of "the United States of Amnesia" – as Gore Vidal puts it – doesn't remember what he says from one week to the next is not at all surprising. What's astonishing, however, is that we accept as normal behavior what, in a different (and better) era, would have been considered evidence of madness.

The megalomaniacs who rule us have no compunctions about the brazenness of their lies: they don't care how it looks, how it sounds, or even, in the end, how it sells. They know what they want, and they are single-minded in going after it. The message came through loud and clear in the president's State of the Union speech: prepare for perpetual war.

In the face of the abysmal failure of their policies, from Iraq to the occupied territories to New Orleans, Bush and his neoconservative Praetorian Guard are not backing down – far from it, they are going forward with their plans for the "liberation" and "democratization" of the Middle East, confident in the knowledge that the sheer momentum of the forces they unleashed in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" will carry them onward to their objective.

Well, then, what is their objective, anyway? The president reiterated his goal, enunciated in his second inaugural, of spreading "democracy" far and wide:

"In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership, so the United States of America will continue to lead. Abroad, our nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal: We seek the end of tyranny in our world."

At least we were spared the retro-Marxist rhetoric of the "fire in the mind" sort the president's speechwriters have regaled us with before. Yet the speech gave voice to the same neo-Trotskyite balderdash that so disturbed many conservatives, including Peggy Noonan and the editors of The American Conservative. This time, however, a new and dangerous note intruded itself on the highfalutin' rhetoric: as soon as Bush enunciated the words "retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life," alarm bells should have gone off all across America. The president of a nation founded on the idea that "the pursuit of happiness" is an end in itself is telling his citizen-subjects that they have no right to an "easy life." Instead, they must devote themselves to an ascetic "idealism" in the name of an abstract "freedom." But if we aren't free to have "an easier life," then what, exactly, is the value of this "freedom" we hear so much about?

The president raises the specter of "isolationism," but where oh where are the "isolationists? Not in Congress – which handed him a blank check to wage war wherever and whenever he pleases. Not in the highest councils of the president's advisers, teeming as they are with neoconservatives bent on war. Not on the Left, which applauded Clinton's wars even as they opposed Republican interventionism. Not on the Right, which, for the most part, is marching off in lockstep with the War Party. So how, pray tell, are these mythical "isolationists" luring us down the road to "danger and decline"? If the president wants to see intimations of decline, then let him look to the war debts he's piling up and the $100,000 per minute price tag of the Iraq war.

The president, though, is blind to these political and economic realities and sees himself as a noble "idealist":

"Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it. On September 11th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. Dictatorships shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, and so we will act boldly in freedom's cause."

There is nothing "idealistic" about the dream of world conquest. Every tinpot dictator and two-bit demagogue down through the ages has entertained the same crazy delusion and imagined themselves to be great world-historical figures, giants towering over the pygmies of the earth and shaping their destiny. In the end, all these madmen met an appropriate fate, their "empires" turned to dust and ashes, their people reduced to starving semi-savagery. Every totalitarian system that sought to aggressively impose its strictures on the world did so in the name of "idealism" – and the results are to be seen in the bloody history of the last century, 100 years of world war and genocide. These "conservatives" who hold the reins of power today are a strange bunch indeed: they neither recognize nor understand the lessons of history, but instead seek to use a highly distorted version of it to advance their agenda of endless aggression:

"Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on Earth. Today, there are 122. And we are writing a new chapter in the story of self-government, with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom. At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require their freedom as well."

One-hundred twenty-two democracies? Exactly how this measure was taken is hard to fathom, and the president doesn't say. No doubt he means to include Iraq among that number – where Shi'ite death squads terrorize their political opponents under the colors of state authority and Kurdish writers are imprisoned for exposing the rampant corruption of Kurdish warlords. Yes, more countries hold elections in which the winners are given a mandate to tyrannize minorities and loot the public purse. I'm not impressed. Far more important is the irrefutable fact that, in 1945, America, the fountainhead of human freedom on earth, was a far freer country. This is one factor – perhaps the essential factor – the president left out of his equation. Government in America is bigger, more oppressive, and eats up more of our income than ever before – thanks largely to our noble president and his party of "smaller government."

Why in the name of all that's holy should we get worked up about "women lining up to vote in Afghanistan" when our own electoral system is so biased in favor of incumbents that congressional elections have all but ceased to be competitive? And why, one has to ask, is it a great step forward to empower Afghan women to vote the Taliban back into office? Purple fingers, my a** – I'd like to give the president another kind of finger as he chews up the American military in a futile war and spends the nation into penury.

The awkwardness of trying to tie in the occupation of Iraq to our fake "war on terrorism" is underscored by the president's claim that bin Laden and his legions aim to "seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world." This is absurd. The terrorists don't need a "safe haven" in the form of a state: they just need a few hundred thousand dollars and a bottomless well of fanaticism to stage a repeat of 9/11. That was and is the lesson of 9/11: asymmetrical warfare of the sort favored by al-Qaeda is all about not needing the resources of a state in order to bring down a much more powerful enemy. The conquest of Iraq is not a defense against this tactic: it is, instead, a source of strength for the worldwide Islamist insurgency.

The president burnishes his "idealistic" credentials by assuring us that "no one can deny the success of freedom," but the reality is that freedom, far from being on the march everywhere, is a rare and precious blossom, one that only sprouts in hothouse conditions, and even then is easily threatened by the slightest gust of cold, wilting on the vine at the first hint of autumn. The history of humankind is a tale of virtually unending oppression, violence, and unrestrained cruelty; the few bright spots – Athens during the golden age of Greece, the early Roman Republic, the Renaissance, the American republic up until around 1900 – only underscore the long periods of unrelieved darkness. In the face of this record, it is not only possible to deny the alleged "success of freedom" – one also has to ask whether this presidential optimism is a form of madness. What world is the most powerful man on earth inhabiting?

"America rejects the false counsel of isolationism" – so says the prez, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it. A Pew poll shows that what is generally derided by the elites as "isolationism" (i.e., minding our own business) is the most popular foreign policy doctrine among the great unwashed masses. What America rejects is the doctrine of "liberation" espoused by Bush and his neocon cronies. This speech won't put a dent in the "isolationist" wave: all the president and the War Party can do is brace themselves for the moment of impact and hope it doesn't wash them away.

Standing on the ramparts of his delusions, the president reiterated a by-now-familiar litany of our "achievements" in Iraq: these mystery achievements are on a par with our other alleged victories in Afghanistan and in the war on bin Laden. As the Taliban regroups and waits out the inevitable American withdrawal, the progress of Afghan "democracy" and liberty is measured by the growing hegemony of drug-dealing warlords. That bit about going "on the offensive" against al-Qaeda is unfortunate, in view of the recent failed attempt to kill a top bin Laden lieutenant – and is rendered absurd by the administration's preoccupation with Iran, another diversion from the task of rooting out the international terrorist gang that pulled off 9/11.

"The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home," says the president: in other words, they are never coming home, if he can help it, because "victory" in any sense is meaningless in this context. Does it mean that Iraq is transformed into a Jeffersonian republic, or will we take a Shi'ite theocracy with "democratic" trappings in order to save face? The president doesn't say: all he can say is that we continue to "make progress on the ground." This is the neo-Trotskyite theory of permanent revolution put into practice: perpetual war in the name of the "democratic" revolution.

Sure, we've made mistakes, Bush implies, but

"Our coalition has learned from experience in Iraq. We have adjusted our military tactics and changed our approach to reconstruction. Along the way, we have benefited from responsible criticism and counsel offered by members of Congress of both parties. In the coming year, I will continue to reach out and seek your good advice.

"Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

"With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor."

Let's stop the tape right there. Yes, we've "adjusted our tactics," all right. We've stepped up the air war against the insurgents, bombing large swaths of Iraq – how large, we don't know, because the reporters "embedded" in the U.S. government's propaganda machine aren't reporting it – and inflicting high casualties on civilians. This, in the president's view – and also Satan's – is "progress on the ground."

Why, one wonders, should opponents of this war hope for the "success" of an act they hold to be counterproductive to the interests of the United States and/or profoundly and unforgivably immoral? The Bushies want to conquer the whole damned world and we're supposed to wish them "success"?

No thanks, buster: give me "defeatism" or give me death. If we should ever "succeed" in conquering the entire Middle East, and much of the rest of the globe to boot, it would be an albatross hung round our necks. Our republic would eventually be brought down by the sheer weight of it, strangled by the hubris of its leaders. A more likely scenario is that we will sink into bankruptcy long before we get that far.

I won't go here into the utter absurdity of the president's born-again conversion to the cause of "alternative" fuels and anti-petroleum crackpot-ism, except that one shudders to think he may one day discover we are also addicted to water, air, and indoor plumbing. Rather than tear into the extreme dottiness of the claim that we are "addicted" to oil, I'll just note that he seems to have stolen this idea from Arianna Huffington and leave it at that.

This rhetoric is scary because it is so clearly an effort to prepare us for the inevitable consequences of a wider regional war in the Middle East, one that sends the price of oil skyrocketing and plunges America and the rest of the world into an economic abyss. Won't someone stop this madman before he wrecks the country? Is there no one left in any position of authority who will step forward to say: Enough! Are there no patriots left in all the U.S. Congress, the national security bureaucracy, and the military? If there are, why do they remain silent, except for a relative few?

I long ago pronounced George W. Bush the worst president ever, and history has proven me right. Every day this modern day Caligula stays in office is a nail driven into the coffin of American liberty – and that is the real state of the Union in the year 2006.

[jeffmoskin]

I long ago pronounced George W. Bush the worst president ever, and history has proven me right. Every day this modern day Caligula stays in office is a nail driven into the coffin of American liberty – and that is the real state of the Union in the year 2006.

Sad, but true

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/debatto.php?articleid=8509

February 7, 2006
From the Founders
to the Felons
The end of the republic is upon us
by Dave DeBatto
For the past several weeks now, we have had to deal, as a country, with the realization that the Pentagon, the White House, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, and who knows how many other federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been secretly tapping into untold thousands of telephone conversations by U.S. citizens since 9/11, all without a warrant. President Bush has admitted these acts on national television and radio and has told us all repeatedly that he has both the legal and the "moral" authority to do so. The congressional vote in 2001 for the president to use "whatever means necessary" to protect America, as well as his role as commander in chief, gives him that authority, Bush claims.

This week, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is testifying before Congress on the legal justifications the administration has for the warrantless wiretaps. Gonzales, a staunch Republican ally of President Bush and the subject of raucous confirmation hearings in late 2004, will try to explain why his DoJ feels that the federal government owes no explanation to anyone when conducting warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens, as long as they, the feds, believe the citizens being illegally bugged are in some way connected to terrorism. We need to just trust them.

Nonsense.

What the Bush administration has been committing since 9/11 is just a good old-fashioned felony, pure and simple. You can dress it up all you want, divert the issue, credit the Almighty for the authority, call critics traitors, and launch retaliatory investigations. But at the end of the day, you will still have a felony being committed – actually, in this case, multiple felonies.

There is no wiggle room in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." In addition, every state has its own laws prohibiting warrantless wiretaps. Some are actually more prohibitive than federal law. When I was in training to be a police officer, as well as during my Army Counterintelligence Special Agent course, it was drilled into our heads that we were not, under any circumstances, to secretly tape-record any conversation without a warrant. We were also told to ask the other party we were speaking with on the telephone if it was all right if we did tape the conversation. If they said no, you did not record the conversation. That sounds pretty clear to me. It was also pretty clear to every police officer and counterintelligence agent I have ever met. There is no "gray area" within that policy. It is solidly based in federal and state law as well several precedent-setting cases decided in many local, state, and federal courts over the past two centuries. No ambiguity, no confusion, no special "wartime" clause; nothing, nada, null, zilch, zip. Cut and dry.

What makes this particularly infuriating to me and most law enforcement and intelligence professionals is that there is no reason for it. The administration has staked its claim on the necessity to move at lightning speed in order to tap the phones of suspected al-Qaeda and other terrorists before they catch on and change phones, or some such logic. Again, this is unnecessary and misleading. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows for application for a warrant up to 72 hours after the wiretap has been established. Now I'm not very good at math, but it seems to me that FISA gives someone up to three days to notify the special intelligence court after they have listened in on the suspect's phone conversations. Does that sound like enough time to let the court know you that you have just eavesdropped on an American citizen's private conversation without due process? It sure does to me. You also need to know that since the establishment of the FISA court in 1978, over 10,000 warrants have been applied for and only one has ever been denied. Pretty much a slam dunk, wouldn't you say? Regardless of whether or not you buy into their ludicrous ticking-time-bomb scenario, why in God's name can't the Bush administration do their warrantless wiretaps, then notify the court as the law stipulates?

For the life of me, I have not heard one administration official answer that one simple question in all the weeks this controversy has been on the front burner, and I have tried to hear it, believe me! Why is the after-the-fact warrant or court notification so much of a burden on these people? Surely they have enough law clerks at DoJ to can follow up on these cases. I mean, with a recently announced $2.7 trillion budget, there must be some small change left over for such low-level paper-pushers, no?

Folks, cliché or not, what we are witnessing here with this blatant shredding of one the most important of our constitutional guarantees is the beginning of the end of the republic. Make no mistake about it. When a sitting administration, through its highest officials, willfully, knowingly, and arrogantly violates the laws of the land as well as the sacred trust it has with the American public, then the end of the republic as we know it is right around the corner.

If nothing else, we have been a nation of laws. That has been one of the primary differences that set us apart from the other countries of the world. In order to remain so, however, the nation's government and leaders must also obey those laws. To do otherwise is tyranny.

What we are witnessing today in the United States at the hands of the Bush administration is nothing less than tyranny. Therefore, we must, as a nation of laws and as a free republic, stop this tyrannical behavior from bringing our form of government down. Sadly, we must begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Nothing else, it seems, will prevent a cataclysmic ending.

God bless America.

[Livyjr]

Forget the witless protection program.

What cards?

"Get Out of Jail Free" cards from a Monopoly game, perhaps ....

They'll be a "HOT ITEM" in the marketplace right now .....

[Livyjr]

The Democrats hold all the cards????

Who are these Democrats???

I have heard NOTHING from any Democrats.

Sad but true, jeffmoskin ....

I don't know if the Democrats are in the witless protection program, however ...

So much as the gutless protection program, perhaps ....

BUT ....

Not all of them are .....

I know a lot has been said about John Kerry ...

And much of it is not at all flattering ...

HOWEVER ...

Whatever else his faults might be, John Kerry does communicate ...

And he does stay in touch ...

And to me, a common American ...

That in and of itself is something of note .......

This is from so many days ago, and I am just now getting around to posting it ....

Thanks to your incentive above, jeffmoskin ....

Dear Livyjr,

Yesterday, 25 Democratic Senators joined our effort to filibuster the Alito nomination -- that's more votes to filibuster the Alito nomination than there were votes against Justice Roberts' nomination itself just a few months ago.

This morning, 42 Senators voted against Alito's nomination.

That's the highest number of votes against any Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas in 1991.

It's hard to lose -- but it's important to fight for what we believe in.

I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of you who signed our petitions, called your senators, wrote letters to the editor and, most important, refused to stand silent while President Bush worked to pack the highest court in the land with far right ideologues.

We fought a fight that needed fighting.

We made sure the nation knew the truth about the Alito nomination.

We made sure America heard how a right wing ideological coup sandbagged Harriet Miers' nomination and replaced her with Judge Alito.

No one will be able to say, in five to ten years, that he or she is surprised by the decisions Judge Alito makes from the bench.

People who believe in privacy rights, who fight for the rights of the most disadvantaged, who believe in balancing the power between the President and Congress had to take a stand.

We also made it clear to the Bush administration that no matter what they throw at us in 2006 -- whether it's extreme nominees, special interest giveaways, shortsighted policy or Swift Boat-style attacks against Democratic candidates -- we will never surrender.

We will always fight back.

Now, we must be clear about something else.

Winning the 2006 congressional elections is the only way to change the dangerous path George W. Bush has put us on.

We need to defeat those Republicans who have overlooked this administration's incompetence, turned a blind eye to its failures, and lent a helping hand to its dangerous ideology.

Together, we have to act to make sure 2006 is the year Americans, led by Democrats, stand up to incompetence, cronyism and corruption, take back Congress, and get our nation moving in the right direction again.

I look forward to fighting alongside you.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

[Livyjr]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8503

February 6, 2006 

"Prepare for Perpetual War - The real State of the Union"
 
by Justin Raimondo

"Abroad, our nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal: We seek the end of tyranny in our world."

The REPUBLICANS and George W. Bush DO NOT SEEK THE END of tyranny in OUR world ....

That is crap ...

Since they are the PURVEYORS of it, themselves ...

What they seek is simply an end to competition ....

THERE SHALL BE NO TYRANNY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD BUT AMERICAN TYRANNY ......

And that tyranny shall be in the exclusive control of the REPUBLICAN PARTY OF AMERICA AND THE WORLD .....

SO ...

Let us have some real "TRUTH IN ADVERTISING", here, George .....

Tell it like it is ....

We can handle the truth, George ...

SO WHY CAN'T YOU?

[Livyjr]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8503

February 6, 2006 

"Prepare for Perpetual War - The real State of the Union"
 
by Justin Raimondo

"Dictatorships shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction."

I wonder where George W. Bush gets any of his ideas from .....

Besides off of the piece of paper, or the teleprompter screen before him ....

Because this is all a bunch of unsubstantiated BULL**** .....

SULLA was a real DICTATOR of Rome, and he restored order to Rome ....

And ended radicalism .....

And he put into place laws and codes which were intended to maintain some degree of stability in Rome ...

Which they did for years after his death .....

And POMPEY THE GREAT was also a DICTATOR of Rome in a time of turmoil ...

And he restored order ...

And put in place laws and codes intended to restore stability in Rome ...

Which they did ....

And to this day, POMPEY and his adherents are credited with being very concerned with reform of government in Rome at that time ....

And INTEGRITY ....

At the time of SULLA and then POMPEY, there was great devisiveness in Rome ...

And so ..

A firm hand was required ....

While George W. Bush came into a nation that was relatively at peace with itself ...

AND HE HAS DONE NOTHING BUT TEAR THINGS ASUNDER .....

While spinning transparent lies to us ..

That are intended to keep us scared ...

And thus, "non-thinking" .....

So that we won't realize that the only real DICTATOR on the face of this earth right now that anyone has to fear ....

Is the one we have right on down there in the big WHITE HOUSE in Washington, D.C. right now ...

The one named George W. Bush .....

[Livyjr]

"IF, at some point in your life, you should come across ANYTHING better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage - than a MIND satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what is beyond its control - IF you find ANYTHING better than that ...."

"Embrace it without reservations ..."

"It must be an extraordinary thing, indeed ..."

"And enjoy it to the full ..."

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

[jeffmoskin]

I look forward to fighting alongside you.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

Sadly, Kerry is always looking forward to fighting, not actually engaging in it.

"There you go again." - The Great Constipator