Concordia Dis

The Things Republicans say these days...

2006-05-19T15:36:00.000-04:00

I watched the Tavis Smiley show last night. He had as his guest Congressman Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado (Chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus)

The Presidents plan sucks
NAFTA was a disaster
There is no such thing as an 'American Company' any more

Transcript

It's a good interview. Here are some of the things that Tancredo had to say about Bush and immigration reform:

Tancredo: Because he [Bush] ruins it. He ruins the, when he starts talking about enforcement, we can, as I say, get sort of enthusiastic. But it is ruined entirely by his commitment to amnesty. It is a terrible public policy. And I do not believe, first of all, I have to tell you I am leery about the administration’s commitment to the concept of enforcement. And so, I'm not willing to give them a package that includes amnesty and a guest worker plan.

Tancredo: Secondly, how do you deal with the people who are presently here? You do not have to do this, round them up, all this draconian talk about how we’re going to deport 13 million people.

All you have to do is something that I admit is a kind of a radical idea around here, and that is enforce the law. Enforce the law. If you do that, if you go after employers who are creating the demand side of this equation, you will see an attrition. People will leave the country and go back to the country of origin, because there really are no other alternatives.

Tavis: But back to the earlier point, though. So many of these employers, come on, you and I know the truth here. So many of these employers are your friends. They're Republicans. They ain’t trying to hear that.

Tancredo: Well, I don’t care what they're trying to hear, and yeah, I'm a Republican, and have been one all my life. But I'm telling you that we have to stop the demand side. It is imperative. It’s the core. It’s the core principle. You can do a lot of stuff on the border, but as long as the magnet of jobs still pulls people into the country, they’ll come. So you have to go after them.

Tavis: Yet there are a number of people who feel that the failure of NAFTA is always left out of this conversation about immigration, and you can’t separate those two things. Do you agree or disagree?

Tancredo: I agree. I agree. NAFTA was a disaster, especially for Mexico, especially for the small subsistence farmer in Mexico who can no longer compete. They went out of business. They came north; they went to the maquiladoras, the factories on the border. Then last year, of course, because of the globalization of the economy, the maquiladoras lost 800,000 jobs to China. So where did those people go? They came north.

Tavis: I got 45 seconds here, can we legitimately blame U.S. corporations for making more money at home, sending more jobs abroad? They don’t give a living wage to these people in the countries where they work, and because they get exploited there, they come here looking for a better life. You wanna blame American corporations at all?

Tancredo: I'm telling you, I don’t even know what an American corporation is anymore, frankly. For the most part, these multinational corporations have absolutely no loyalty to a particular country. They have a loyalty to the bottom line, and they couldn’t care less about what happens in the United States. They are looking at their profit margins. I think it’s getting more and more difficult to actually identify an American, quote, corporation.

I noticed a couple of points in Bush's speech the other night that I haven't heard being commented on in the MSM or the Blogosphere.

First, Bush talked about deporting illegal's and how his plan calls for increasing the number of 'beds' to hold these people while waiting for deportation. He talked about non Mexican immigrants taking more resources to deport because you can't just drop them off over the boarder. This got me to thinking about the reports recently about the $400 million contract with Halliberton to build 'detention centers' to hold 'mass migrations of peoples across our boarders or other future government programs'.

The second thing I noticed was the way he tried to protect those same corporations who, as Tancredo says, "couldn't care less about what happens in the United States" by claiming that with out his new worker ID program, have a real hard time distinguishing legal from non legal workers. That part says to me that Bush's plan has no interest in going after companies that hire non legal workers. Why is it that so many call un-documented aliens 'criminals' but we rarely hear that term used for the companies and businesses that illegally hire them?

Maybe we should save some space in those 'detention centers' for the criminals who hire illegal's!

In a 'News Hour' program about the issue they had one man saying that every job that an illegal worker takes is taking a job away from an American. But, in the same program that said that businesses have said that if the gravy train of cheap labor gets derailed by immigration reform they will have to send many of the jobs overseas to find other cheap (slave) labor. This brings me to a point that no one seems to make on the news. These workers who sneak over the boarder are not taking jobs that Americans won't do. They are taking jobs that companies won't pay more for.

One last thing about the Tancredo interview. He has a possibly telling slip of the tongue in the interview where he says:

I think that there are enough Republicans even in the Senate to perhaps sustain a veto.

Then corrects himself:

I said that wrong. To perhaps sustain a filibuster.

Was this a slip of the tongue or a veiled threat to the President that if they put up a bill that gets vetoed by Bush, the Republicans can over ride it?

Every call you make, I'll be watching you.

2006-05-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

I watched some of the Senate hearings on the NSA data mining story last night. Now I understand that this is not a system that actually listens to any phone conversations, but rather a data mining system that keeps a record of virtually every call made. The system collects the phone number of the person calling and the phone number of the person called. This allows the NSA (theoretically) to run this data base thru a computer which looks for 'patterns'. They say this is not a problem because they are not collecting the name, social security number, or any other personal information about the phone numbers. But they are collecting the phone numbers. Isn't that like saying you didn't blow Valery Plame's cover because you said 'Joe Willson's Wife'? If they have your phone number they can get all the information that they say this system is not collecting. All they have to do is hit this data base up against any number of public databases that aren't in the NSA system, so they don't have to say they are collecting the information when actually they most likely are. If you go now to Google and type your phone number in the search bar there is a good chance that it will show your name and address (Unless you have asked Google to remove it).

The Democrats on the panel last night were concentrating on the fact that the NSA is deliberately going around the DOD and the Justice Dept. so no one will have to go on record OK'ing this program. One company, Quest out of Colorado, asked to get a letter from the Justice Dept. saying that it was legal for them to share this info with the NSA and the NSA stopped asking for the info.

The Republicans mostly harped on how any knowledge of this program weakens our security. But that opens a nasty can of worms. Are they saying that to be safe we must do away with all Congressional over site of the White House? The question the Republicans need to ask themselves, and think very seriously about, is would they be supportive of this program if Hillary Clinton were the President? How about Al Gore? How much money would you bet that if a Democrat becomes President the Republicans will immediately start working to curb the power of the White House.

One, two, three, four! We don't want your stinking war!

2006-05-03T10:20:00.000-04:00

I just read a great article on Juan Cole's 'Informed Comment' web site (one of my favorites and a must read for true in site to what is going on in the middle east). The piece starts out with Juan tearing into the drunken ramblings and lies of Christopher 'hic'-Hitchens.

Well, I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.

But the other reason for Hitchens's piece may be that he has become a warmonger, and it is possible that he wants a US war against Iran.

The whole post is on the drive by the current war mongers in power to push for military actions against Iran. Cole points out that:

As for the matter at issue, Ahmadinejad is a non-entity. The Iranian "president" is mostly powerless. The commander of the armed forces is the Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei. Worrying about Ahmadinejad's antics is like worrying that the US military will act on the orders of the secretary of the interior.

It ends with a very strong anti-war push by Cole to try and get students to organize and act out against a military conflict with Iran.

One, two, three, four! We don't want your stinking war!

We are not going to see any more US troops come home in body bags at Dover for the sake of some Cheney affiliate grabbing the petroleum in Iran's Ahvaz fields.

We are not going to have another 15,000 wounded vets flood onto our streets with spine damange and brain damage.

We are not going to put Yazd behind barbed wire to liberate it, as a millenarian Christian general did to Habbaniyah in Iraq.

We are not going to imprison and torture thousands of Iranians at Evin Penitentiary in Tehran, as worthy successors to the bloodthirsty Shah and Khomeini.

We are not going to kill 200,000 Iranians with aerial bombardments of Tabriz, Isfahan, Qom, Kerman, Shiraz and Mashahd.

We are not going to let dozens of US corporations loot the American people and the Iranian people alike with no-bid "contracts", embezzlement, corruption, and graft.

We are not going to let you have a war against Iran.

So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and American Heritage Institute, and this institue and that institute, and cable "news", and government "spokesmen", and all the pundit-ferrets you pay millions to make business for the American military-industrial complex and Big Oil.

We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little shit gives.

I call on university students across America to begin holding antiwar rallies. The only way you can have a war on Iran is to draft the young people. It is you who are on the line. Demonstrate! Demonstrate against the very hint of war! Demonstrate in front of the warmongering "institutes" in Washington, DC! Demonstrate to end the one we've already got! (See Speaker's Forum on Iraq

Here is what the real Iran experts think about the prospect of an Iran war.

Because Hitchens's dirty tricks and lies against me are only the beginning. Whoever stands against the Perpetual War machine will be attacked, slimed, marginalized, and destroyed if the warmongers get their way. I don't care. Thus far and no farther.

"I'm Mad,...It's not Fair" -- Ken Lay.

2006-04-27T22:04:00.000-04:00

The Department of Justice has launched a new website:

The Enron Exhibits Website will contain publicly released documents, including exhibits entered into evidence by the government and any press releases related to court proceedings. - U.S. Dept. of Justice website

In Lay's hand written notes for his speech he says "True character is born in times of crisis". I guess times of crisis can show off your lack of character as well.

Notes (handwritten) of Kenneth Lay - All Employee Meeting

· Very turbulent (very tough) times
· Expect we still have more to come
· I will do everything I can to turn it around
· I'm mad.
· I'm frustrated
· It’s not fair
...
· True character is born in times of crisis.
· Need to show our character
· I'm hear till the board throws me out or until we restore Enron to its greatness most of us have experienced.
· Hope you do to. I really need your commitment to Enron and to making it great again.

Enron Trial Exhibits and Releases

The Bush'es in Connecticut

2006-04-25T22:26:00.000-04:00

Two headlines caught my eye tonight. Both had to do with some one named Bush and my home state of Connecticut.

The first is not surprising, and something I expect to see in many states soon.

Bush Sinks To 24% In State Poll

The second one is about Laura Bush attending a fund raiser for three Connecticut Republicans: Joe Lieberman, Nancy Johnson, Christopher Shays and Rob Simmons. O.K., Joe wasn't actually at the event.

Laura Bush Visits Stamford For GOP

I think Laura is going to be very busy stumping for congressional Republicans, seeing how they don't seem to want to appear in person with Bush.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher Snubs Bush

And speaking of Lieberman:

Scripts Of Lieberman Ads

Joe is kicking his campaign to stay in office into gear. He launched two adds, both addressing the opposition he has been getting because of his support of the Iraq war and the Bush policies related to that war.

"I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position on Iraq.

"I respect your views, and while we probably won't change each others' minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree.

Says one.

"You may not always agree with him, but you can depend on his integrity, his compassion and his willingness to listen and hear all sides.

Says the other.

The first ad is a folksy 'I've always been there for you and I always will' piece. The second is an attempt to highlight his differences from Bush.

according to the Hartford Current:

As of March 31, the last campaign finance filing period, Lieberman had raised $4.7 million and Lamont $712,000.

Ned Lamont has been doing a lot of town hall meetings around the state. You can see his speeches here:

Ned Lamont on www.youtube.com

The Dollar, The Euro, and what the Red Herring saw.

2006-03-16T15:45:00.000-05:00

Here is a very interesting article in Information Clearing House that outlines the Dollar v. Euro aspect of U.S. foreign policy.

The basics of it are this:

The U.S. economy used to be based on the Gold standard. That means that the Dollar was back up by it's value in gold.

The Definition from wickopedia is:

The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold.

Under the gold standard, currency issuers guarantee to redeem notes in that amount of gold. Nations that employ such a fixed unit of account, and which will redeem their notes to other nations in gold, share a fixed currency relationship.

The gold standard system is claimed to be resistant to credit and debt expansion, since money cannot be created through government fiat currency, and will therefore be protected against artificial inflation by the devaluation of currency. This is supposed to remove "currency uncertainty", supposed to keep the credit of the issuing monetary authority sound, and supposed to encourage lending.

The basic idea is that governments can not just print as much money as they feel like, that have to back it up with something of real value (i.e. gold)

In the 1960's the U.S. started printing more and more money to pay for the Vietnam war, with out the gold to back it up.

In the early 70's other countries started asking to be repaid for loans to the U.S. in gold, but we didn't have the gold to back it up, so the U.S. was essential bankrupt.

The U.S. had to find a way to convince the rest of the world to continue to do business in U.S. Dollars and the best leverage that had was oil. So the U.S. government made a deal with Saudi Arabia and OPEC to do business only in U.S. Dollars in exchange for our military protection of the House of Saud. This, in effect, created a new standard based not on gold but on oil.

This brings us to our current situation in the middle east. In 2001 Saddam Hussein made the announcement that he no longer wanted to sell oil for U.S. Dollars but would instead sell based on the Euro. This would have the effect of devaluing the Dollar.

Now Iran has said it will change over to the Euro as well. I believe they have already started just last week. What was the responce from the U.S. Government, besides talk of pre-emptive attacks for their nuclear program, a bill that would punish any country that invests money in Iran's energy sector.

Several other countries are thinking about doing the same thing, and you can bet that the U.S. will use all of it's economic, military, and political might to prevent it. But they'll never tell us the real reason for their actions. Instead they give us more reasons like WMD and stock piles of chemical weapons and other red herrings.

You can read the article here Information Clearing House

Democrats = Impotence, Ignorance, and Incompetence. A three 'I'ed monster with no teeth

2006-03-15T11:39:00.000-05:00

The Democratic party in this country is impotent, ignorant, and incompetent. A three 'I'ed monster with no teeth. Faced with the most arrogant, incompetent, and criminal administration in modern history, the Democrats have decided that the only way to win in 06 is to become just as ignorant and incompetent as their opponents.

Senator Russ Feingold introduced censure legislation on Monday and the rest of the Democratic party ran and hid under their beds, hoping Russ would just go away. The Republicans even offered to vote on censure, Majority Leader Bill Frist, tried to hold a vote Monday on Feingold's resolution but was blocked by Democrats. That's right the Democrats blocked a vote to censure George W. Bush. I think they should change the name of their party from Democrats to Dependsocrats, because they piss themselves every time they have an opportunity to actually make a change in this country.

People are talking about the Republicans loosing the House or the Senate in the 06 mid-term elections, But which Democrats are we talking about replacing them with? I'm all for electing 'new' Democrats to replace these flaccid, thumb suckers who currently cower from or kowtow to the Republicans and their bankrupt administration.
It is for this reason that I am encouraging all Democratic voters to kick these appeasers and incompetents out and replace them with candidates that still have a backbone.

In my state of Connecticut we have one particular Senator who really needs to go. Joe Lieberman is the poster boy for Republican subservience by Democrats. Joe is what we call a DINO, Democrat in name only. He spends more time hugging and kissing George W. Bush, and supporting Bush's policies than Laura Bush. I don't know what goes on in Joe's mind but he seems to be stuck in that 'Democrats are perceived as week on security so I can't say anything but good things about Bush and the war'. Joe, you are so wrong and so out of touch with the people.

It is Republicans who are week on Defense. Yes, that's right, the Republicans are very strong on 'offence' but weak as hell on 'defense'. The war in Iraq was said to be going well while the U.S. was attacking Saddam, but now that we have to defend Iraq from insurgents and outside forces the military seems incapable of doing anything right. Can't Joe see this?

Getting back to the censure, here is what Joe Lieberman said in a press conference about the censure resolution:

QUESTION: Would you support censuring the president?

LIEBERMAN: Well, in fairness, I want to -- first off, I respect Senator Feingold, and I certainly respect him enough to take a look at his resolution of censure. It's a very unusual measure. I don't believe it's happened in more than a century and a half. But frankly, I'd prefer to spend our time figuring out ways to bring this very important program of surveillance of potential terrorists here in the United States under the law.

I've said before that I disagree with the Bush administration's legal judgment on this one. I don't believe that they have operated within the law as it exists. But this is a critically important program -- the prevention of terrorist acts here in the United States. And I don't know a person here in the Senate who is against this program. If this place was operating as it should, we'd all be figuring out how to sit down around a table and bring it within the law. And I hope that's what will happen. But I'll look at it and let you know how I feel after that.

QUESTION: Will you likely vote no? I just want to be clear on where you would be on this.

LIEBERMAN: I haven't even seen it. As I said, I don't think -- I don't want to see us get into -- look, Russ is a very thoughtful senator, a friend. He has a right to put before the Senate whatever he chooses, and I feel a responsibility to respect it and look at it. I'd prefer to see us solve the problem. And the problem is that we have a critically important national security program -- how do we listen to the conversations and read the e-mails of people we have reason to believe are terrorists, who want to strike the United States. I don't think the administration program has been conducted within the existing FISA law. We ought to figure out a way together to make sure that that's the way the program goes forward.

He comes right out and says the President violated the law (that's what most people refer to as a 'crime') but all he wants to do is make it legal for Bush to continue to break the law. Joe hems and haws and talks about how much respect he has for his fellow Dem, and then says that he willing to look at what he has already decided to vote 'no' on.

Joe has got to go!

That is why I am supporting Ned Lamont for Senator in Connecticut in 06.

On religion and war...

2006-03-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

Another great article, this one in the the International Herald Tribune It's all about the contradiction of using religion as a context for war. The last paragraph really says it all.

Hence, convinced of their own self-righteousness, Blair and Bush are blind to the reality of their actions. With religious zeal, they pursue their shared project to make Western hegemony irreversible. In so doing, they have embraced a profoundly secular logic - the destruction of traditional religion at home and abroad and the merciless expansion of market democracies across the globe. Blair and Bush seek to create a brave new world in the image of their faith, a vision that just happens to be irreconcilable with Christianity.

The twisted religion of Blair and Bush

"The American objective in Iraq has failed."

2006-03-09T14:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of good articles from The Idependent on how several neo-cons are coming out and openly saying that the war in Iraq has been a FAILURE!.

today's mess is above all a testament to American overconfidence and false assumptions, born of arrogance and naïveté.

-- Andrew Sullivan, once editor of the New Republic,

William Buckley Jnr

INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT

'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'

Andrew Sullivan

PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER

'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'

Francis Fukuyama

AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM

'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'

Richard Perle

ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK

'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'

George Will

RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT

'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'

Of all the critiques however, the most profound is that of Francis Fukuyama, in his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads. Its subtitle is "Democracy, Power and the Neo-Conservative Legacy" - and that legacy, Mr Fukuyama argues, is fatally poisoned.

Like the Leninists of old, he writes, the neo-conservatives reckoned they could drive history forward with the right mixture of power and will. However, "Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States."

Read on:
and here:

Joe's got to go!

2006-03-04T13:40:00.000-05:00

No, I Won't Retract My Statements, Senator Lieberman

Sticking to the Ned Lamont theme,
here is a great post by Howie Klein that breaks down the problems many people have with supporting evil that is Joe Lieberman.

"sided with Jesse Helms on removing federal money from public schools that counsel suicidal homosexual teens that it's OK (or 'an acceptable lifestyle,' in Lieberman's and Helms' disapproving parlance) to be gay."
Lieberman worked with Georgia's Sam Nunn to fashion the destructive 'don't ask, don't tell' policy
Joe told a Detroit congregation never to imagine 'that morality can be maintained without religion.'
Lieberman just last year joined with rabid gay basher Rick Santorum -- the Pennsylvania Republican who compared same-sex love to bestiality and incest-- to co-sponsor George Bush's faith-based initiatives, praising Bush's 'leadership' in tearing down the constitutional barrier between church and state.
1994 Lieberman supported an amendment offered by reactionary Republican Senator Jesse Helms, which cut off federal funds to any school district that used educational material that in any way 'supported homosexuality.'
Lieberman embraced California's Proposition 209 in 1996, which outlawed affirmative action programs in that state.

Impeach Bush, part II

2006-03-04T08:27:00.000-05:00

Go to this site and send the

'ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH'

to your congressional rep.

Melville House Publishing

or go to

Democrats.com

Bush Nukes the World/The Anti-China Alliance

2006-03-03T09:52:00.000-05:00

So what do you think of Arbustos nuke deal with India, a nation that has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

Read this article in the Asia Times by:
Dr Joseph Cirincione (jcirincione@carnegieendowment.org) is the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington,
DC.

Bush has now unilaterally shattered those guidelines, and his action would violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) proscription against aiding another nation's nuclear-weapons program. It would require the repeal or revision of several major US laws, including the US Nonproliferation Act. Nor has he won any significant concessions from India. India refuses to agree to end its production of nuclear-weapons material, something the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China have already done.

Pakistani officials have already said they expect their country to receive a similar deal, and Israel is surely waiting in the wings. Other nations may decide that they can break the rules, too, to grant special deals to their friends. China is already rumored to be seeking a deal to provide open nuclear assistance to Pakistan - a practice it stopped in the early 1990s after a successful diplomatic campaign by the United States to bring China into conformity with the NPT restrictions. Will Russia decide that it can make an exception for Iran?

This looming congressional battle will pit the proliferation fighters against the nuclear lobby and the increasingly powerful India lobby. Companies and countries (including France, Canada and Russia) are lining up to sell fuel and reactors to India. They will be joined by the US neo-conservatives who seek to construct an anti-China alliance. For them, as one architect of the India deal reportedly said, "The problem is not that India has too many nuclear weapons, it is that they do not have enough."

Read the rest here:
The US's nuclear cave-in

"the best way to lure your enemy into an ambush is to get him to do what he wanted to do all along."

2006-03-01T13:23:00.000-05:00

I always thought that the Bush administration fell right in to Bin Laden's trap when they went into Iraq. The whole point of Sept 11th seemed to me to be to drag the United States into a prolonged war in the middle east. It must have been difficult to rally people in the middle east to rise up and kill the infidels when we were so far away.

I just read a very good article by Scott Ritter (former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq) entitled The Insurgency: Advantage Ba'athists

When the United States initiated its ill-advised de-Ba'athification program shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Ba'athists quickly exploited the American paranoia of Al Qaida by creating and managing the Zarqawi myth, diluting the anti-Ba'athist focus of the American campaign by having the U.S.-led coalition chase shadows across Iraq. The Zarqawi myth also enabled the Ba'athists to initiate a campaign of violence against the Shi'a in Iraq, which radicalized that population, guaranteeing that the radical pro-Iranian elements of that community would emerge as the dominant force, as opposed to any U.S.-supported force for moderation.

By helping to facilitate the coming to power of a radical pro-Iranian government in Baghdad that is inherently incompatible with the goals and objectives of the United States in Iraq, the Ba'athists have not only set in motion a looming conflict between the American occupation forces and the Iraqi government they helped create, but by extension, between the United States and the strategic enemy of the Iraqi Ba'athists, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

...the attack on the Al-Askari shrine was designed to drive together the Iraqi theocratic government with their counterparts in Iran, creating a unified entity which the United States government could no longer treat separately, and which would further fuel the Bush administration's predilection for action against Iran.

The Bush administration is already chomping at the bit to attack Iran, using the vexing Iranian nuclear program as a diplomatic smokescreen to cover broader regime-change intent. The developing close ties between Baghdad and Teheran will only reinforce this tendency towards confrontation. Therein lies the awful genius of those who attacked the Al-Askari shrine: the Ba'athist insurgents in Iraq are playing the policy planners in the Bush administration like a fine-tuned fiddle.

The soundest solution to this problem would be to de-escalate both the American presence in Iraq and the level of tension regarding Iran. The greatest fear on the part of the Ba'athist insurgents would be an early withdrawal of the American military from Iraq. Such a withdrawal would in one fell swoop eliminate the primary source of friction within Iraq that fuels the cycle of violence. It would also de-link the Iraq problem from the Iranian problem in the minds of U.S. policy formulators.

The Iraqi insurgents are only too happy to help feed that addiction (to oil and endless war) by creating the conditions that continually wave a red flag in the face of the American war machine, making us lash out blindly much like a bull in the arena, exhausting ourselves until we reach the point of being utterly powerless to prevent our opponents from slipping in behind and driving a blade through our heart.

There is much more in the article, a must reed.

Ned Lamont

2006-03-01T10:39:00.000-05:00

I decided to put a link up for Ned Lamont. Ned is running against longtime Connecticut U. S. Senator Joe Lieberman. I'm sure many people remember George W. Bush giving Joe a big wet kiss on the cheek after the State of the Union speech last year. Joe has been a long time supporter/enabler of Emperor Arbustos policies much to the disappointment of the people who he purports to represent.

He has been called the Republicans favorite Democrat for some time, and now the Republicans are even talking about endorsing Joe in his upcoming senate run. Check out this story in the Daily Kos.

Here is an excerpt:

It's been the subject of whispered conversations among top Republican officials for the past month. Now, U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4th District, has let slip the secret: GOP officials have discussed cross-endorsing Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman this fall.

In an interview today with the editorial board of The Advocate of Stamford, Shays said he intends to vote for Lieberman and is encouraging a Republican endorsement of the three-term senator.

There is a more in depth version of the story in the The Hartford Courant:

One GOP operative who was aware of the discussions said premature public disclosure of the possible cross-endorsement probably would kill the idea. That seems to be case.

By Tuesday evening, spokesmen for top Republicans publicly distanced themselves from the possibility of backing Lieberman, who faces a Democratic primary over his support of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

And a spokeswoman for Lieberman, who previously had refused to rule out appearing on any but the Democratic line on the November ballot, said he would not accept a cross-endorsement.

"Would he accept the endorsement of the Republican Party? No, he is seeking the Democratic Party nomination," said Casey Aden-Wansbury, his communication director. She said no one representing Lieberman has discussed a cross-endorsement with Republicans.

While I'm not sure if there is enough support right now to knock Joe out of office, I do hope enough people will support Ned Lamont to at least make Lieberman take notice. Maybe he will start to remember the he is supposed to work for us. To represent the people of Connecticut and not just his own personal beliefs.

To this end I have also put a link in the sidebar for a web site called act blue which is set up to support and raise funds for Democratic candidates.

Hopefully, if there is enough support, we can get many of the Republicans out of office in this mid-term election. Maybe the tidal wave of corruption by entrenched Republicans will stir people to act. If we can get Democratic control of the ethics committee and some other important committees then maybe Impeachment hearings will finally be possible.

and the fairy leprechaun people will come flying over the rainbow with pots of gold for all of us

I can dream at least.

Impeach Bush!

2006-02-27T16:25:00.000-05:00

This is a copy of a letter I sent to my reps a little while back about the whole FISA/NSA warrentless wire tapping deal.

In a 2002 speech to Congress DOJ official James A. Baker said:

"One simple but important change that Congress made was to lengthen the time period for us to bring to court applications in support of Attorney General-authorized emergency FISAs. This modification has allowed us to make full and effective use of FISA's pre-existing emergency provisions to ensure that the government acts swiftly to respond to terrorist threats. Again, we are grateful for the tools Congress provided us last fall for the fight against terrorism. Thank you."

Now the President, the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and General Michael Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, claimed that the 72-hour window for warrantless eavesdropping was insufficient because the requirements for invoking it were still too cumbersome.

If, as the Administration is now claiming, FISA was inadequate to allow it to eavesdrop, why was it telling the Congress in June, 2002 that FISA was perfectly adequate to enable all the eavesdropping it wanted and even praising Congress for amending FISA (via the Patriot Act) and therefore giving the Administration everything it needed?

Bush’s secret, FISA-bypass eavesdropping program began in late, 2001 more than 6 months before Baker’s Statements were made. Thus, as of the time that the secret FISA-bypass eavesdropping was underway, the Administration’s own DoJ was not aware of any of the supposed problems with FISA which the Administration is now claiming caused it to bypass FISA, and the Administration specifically told Congress then the opposite of what it is now claiming (that FISA’s probable cause requirement impeded necessary eavesdropping).

What is the real reason the Administration operated outside of FISA and in secret, with no oversight, rather than within FISA and with oversight?

Its own explanations contradict previous statements by the same administration.

The President is either ignorant, incompetent, or (most likely) lying through his teeth.

As I see it the Congress has no other choice then to start impeachment hearings against this criminally negligent administration.

Just can't hide those lying eyes..

2006-02-07T13:52:00.000-05:00

In testimony before a Senate committee Attorney General Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales stated:

"We all agree that it's a necessary and appropriate use of force to fire bullets and missiles at Al Qaeda strongholds, Given this common ground, how can anyone conclude that it is not necessary and appropriate to intercept Al Qaeda phone calls? The term `necessary and appropriate force' must allow the president to spy on our enemies, not just shoot at them blindly, hoping we might hit the right target."

The Attorney General defeats his own arguments. Every thing that has been revealed about Emperor Arbusto's wire tapping program says that "shoot at them blindly, hoping we might hit the right target" is exactly what the NSA program is doing.

Experts and whistle blowers have said that the program targets thousands of phone calls to see if maybe they might find something worth looking further into. So far the Administration has only asked to obtain FISA warrants (follow ups to the NSA phishing expedition) on
a hand full of suspects.

Even subservient Senate Republicans aren't buying the AG's tall tale. The Republican chair of the committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, told Gonzales Bush does not have a "blank cheque" to fight terror by whatever means he chooses.

The Washington Post reported that about 5,000 people in the last four years have had their communications monitored by U.S. intelligence. Almost all have been cleared of any wrongdoing, it said.

Even Gonzo's gushing love for his emperor can not hide the blatant lies and subterfuge of this kleptocratic administration.

Meanwhile back at the ranch:

Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president with being put on an 'enemy list' and cut off from White House support in upcoming elections. (Can't you just feel how much love these guys have for liberty and democracy. (actually, no...you can't)