Two Words They Don’t Want You to Hear…
If we truly had this supposed ‘liberal media’ I keep hearing about (you know, the vast left-wing conspiracy?), you’d be hearing about it 24 hours a day on every news channel about how it might be worth taking a look at the current situation and seeing if it informs it in any way.
Instead you have anyone who tries to bring it up, on say…Fox news, getting shouted down. Of course, I’m sure that if tables were turned and it was a candidate from the left, they would get the same favorable treatment, because you know, News channels hate a scandal. Too many pesky viewers.
Bail Out Plan Derailed
Perhaps there isn’t that big of a crisis after all, just a ploy for political gain.
Bush Tried to Extend Iraq War for ‘Domestic Political Considerations’
First the link to the article. My commentary follows the excerpt.
From ThinkProgress: Maliki Suggests Bush Pushed To Extend U.S. Presence In Iraq To Help McCain
Why did Bush go back on his word? A source tells ThinkProgress that White House communications staff were concerned that Maliki’s endorsement of the 2010 time line would damage Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign. Indeed, during an interview with Iraqi television last week (according to an Open Source Center translation), Maliki suggested that the U.S. presidential elections played a role:
Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they asked for a change [in date] due to political circumstances related to the [U.S] domestic situation so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date.
In fact, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that as part of the security agreement, Bush wanted U.S. troops to stay in Iraq even longer. “It was a U.S. proposal for the date which is 2015, and an Iraqi one which is 2010, then we agreed to make it 2011,” Talabani said.
This comes from the US Govt’s own translation. How many days (hours even) before they claim that the translation was incorrect?
This is how littleman Bush plays politics with the lives of our soldiers. He has arranged to keep them there a year longer than originally agreed because he wishes to use them as cheap political props to assist the Republican party that has followed him into the vacuous hole of his moral bankruptcy.
Mr. Bush you are a small, sniveling, coward of a man with no sense of decency, honor, or conscience. You are a narcissist, a sociopath, and a war criminal.
You and your enablers have done more to hurt this country, its values, it’s principals and its standing among nations than virtually any other person or force in its history.
How the apologists who play their coy word games and political cuteness with intentional obtuseness can live with themselves is a mystery to me. How they identify with and defend you is appalling. You people and your napoleon-complex president sicken my stomach. You disgust me.
The war was a lie from it’s inception, and although this man and his sycophantic party have been granted every power they’ve ever stolen or asked for, it’s still not enough. More of America’s sons and daughters will have to die so this man and his political hacks can save face. Never mind the lives of innocent Iraqi’s that will be collateral damage, caught in crossfire. You can ask the Afghani’s all about the air raids that kill innocent civilians as collateral damage. We all know that to this Administration and its supporters the lives of Middle-Eastern Brown People don’t really count.
I read some time ago that members of the administration had purchased many acres of land in politically neutral countries, potentially as havens used for escaping the laws that will eventually try to track them down and bring them to justice. Mr. Bush, you had better go there and go there fast upon leaving office, I mean right out of the White House and onto the plane.
I intend to spend the rest of my life doing everything I can do in my meager way to make sure that you get the justice you have denied so many, and stand before a jury of your peers, and receive true American Justice. Even if it requires “enhanced interrogation methods” to extract confessions.
You are a war criminal, and I hope to see that you answer for your crimes and are convicted as such.
More Reaction on ‘The Bailout’
Some more reaction as the paralysis from last week wears off and people start thinking about the record of this administration, which has a habit of introducing sweeping legislation to avert “crises” right before elections.
Also, let me just say, that Preznit Bush has done something which I thought could not be done, and which is more than anything else, unforgivable: he has put me on record agreeing with Michelle Malkin.
Shit.
From The National Review Online – The Bailout:
See if you can read through the whole of it without concluding that everyone in Washington has lost their minds. I’m not an economist, and I wouldn’t pretend to be one, but just as an observer of Washington, and as someone who has worked on the Hill and at the White House, it is simply apparent from this draft that this program will get completely out of control very quickly. It gives the Secretary of the Treasury essentially unlimited power to use $700 billion to make purchases the scope of which is defined very loosely and vaguely.
…Even if Hank Paulson were the all knowing god of economics, would it make sense to give this kind of power to the treasury secretary for the next two years just forty days before an election?
From the Washington Post – A Bad Bank Rescue:
With truly extraordinary speed, opinion has swung behind the radical idea that the government should commit hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to purchasing dud loans from banks that aren’t actually insolvent. As recently as a week ago, no public official had even mentioned this option. Now the Treasury, the Fed and congressional leaders are promising its enactment within days. The scheme has gone from invisibility to inevitability in the blink of an eye. This is extremely dangerous.
The plan is being marketed under false pretenses. Supporters have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust…
From Michelle Malkin – Henry Paulson Must be Contained:
Stop.
My question for fellow conservatives: Do you trust this man?
I don’t.
Do you trust Hank Paulson’s judgment?
I don’t.
…And now, Washington is on the verge of handing this man unchecked power to grab $700 billion-plus in taxpayer money to stabilize a market he said was “healthy” in order to fix a crisis he said had been “contained” more than a year ago?
Henry Paulson must be contained.
Bailout Now to Include Foreign Banks?
Starting Monday, I’ll be banging the phones, email, and fax machines to my so-called ‘Representatives’.
Like I did for FISA. I doubt it will do any good, but I will do it all the same.
Much like this blog. It doesn’t really accomplish anything but I do it anyway, because I’m too stubborn or too stupid to give up and just let these fascists steal my country.
No, recent history being any indicator, Pelosi, Hoyer and Reed will roll over and pass the pain to the taxpayer.
Unless some of you people start doing something too…
The Financial Stewardship of G.W. Bush
Think Progress has a short-list of the financial management record of the Bush administration. It alone is reason enough to think twice, and then think again before giving the kind of money and control to this administration that they’re proposing.
I emphasize that this is a short list. A comprehensive list would take days to compile.
IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION
-$142 million wasted on reconstruction projects that were either terminated or canceled. [Special Inspector General for Iraq, 7/28/08]
-“Significant” amount of U.S. funds for Iraq funneled to Sunni and Shiite militias. [GAO Comptroller, 3/11/08]
-$180 million payed to construction company Bechtel for projects it never finished. [Federal audit, 7/25/07]
-$5.1 billion in expenses for Iraq reconstruction charged without documentation. [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report, 3/19/07]
-$10 billion in spending on Iraq reconstruction was wasteful or poorly tracked. [GAO, 2/15/07]
-Halliburton overcharged the government $100 million for one day’s work in 2004. [Project on Government Oversight, 10/8/04]
-$1 trillion unaccounted for by the Pentagon, including 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. [GAO, 5/18/03]
KATRINA
-Millions wasted on four no-bid contracts, including paying $20 million for an unusable camp for evacuees. [Homeland Security Department Inspector General, 9/10/08]
-$2.4 billion in contracts doled out by FEMA that guaranteed profits for big companies. [Center for Public Integrity investigation, 6/25/07]
-An estimated $2 billion in fraud and waste — nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June. [New York Times tally, 6/27/06]
-“Widespread” waste and mismanagement on millions for Katrina recovery, including at least $3 million for 4,000 beds that were never used. [GAO, 3/16/06]
DEFENSE CONTRACTS
-A $50 million Air Force contract awarded to a company with close ties to senior Air Force officers, in a process “fraught with improper influence, irregular procedures, glaring conflicts of interest.” [Project on Government Oversight, 4/18/08]
-$1.7 billion in excessive fees and waste paid by the Pentagon to the Interior Department to manage federal lands. [Defense Department and Interior Department Inspectors General audit, 12/25/06]
All You Need to Know About the ‘Bailout’
From http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/09/bailout-proposal.html
“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency“
Why?
The party of ’smaller government’ wants close to $1 Trillion dollars of your tax money transferred to the private sector, and they want you to shut the fuck up about it and mind your own business. You, The Judiciary Branch, and the Legislative Branch (Congress) can all go pound sand. The Executive Branch will start running the financial sector. Works great in most dictatorships and fascist regimes.
I had wondered what the last abomination of this administration would be. I had assumed it would be a war with Iran (which could still happen), but this appears to be it. The last massive transfer of money and power to the Executive branch and our Corporate overlords.
Congratulations America, the Republic is Dead.
Other Links you should read:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/20/bailout/index.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/218423.php
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_09_14_archive.html#6187592536358678953
St. Paul Mayor Says Charges Dropped for ‘Journalists’
…but not sure what constitutes a ‘journalist’, so not sure how many cases it will affect.
This is of course how we knew it would be, a couple of weeks after the convention, with everyone’s attention elsewhere, buried late on a Friday afternoon.
So Mr. Coleman, you got away with it. You should feel proud. You subverted free speech long enough to make sure your cadaver of a candidate (not a reference to McCain’s age, it’s a reference to the death of his honor, decency, and integrity) got a 2 week bump with nary a blemish or an unfavorable news story.
Hard to write a story from jail. Nice to see even in your statement that you’ve left some wiggle room to charge those that don’t meet your definition of ‘Journalist’. Artists, photographers, activists, bloggers, etc. In other words citizens who disagree with you. The slimiest sort of people who got what they deserved and should be considered guilty until proven innocent.
Thanks Mayor Coleman, really really big of you.
One more thing: Kindly go fuck yourself.
