January 28, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE DANGEROUS DICK CHENEY

There have been some people in history who make a Mafia Don look like a moral and upright guy. Dick Cheney is one of those people. When George W. Bush was looking for a vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney was appointed to find the candidate. Cheney selected himself. It put him into a great position to help himself and his oil buddies. Cheney made millions as CEO at Halliburton and continues to make a fortune with Halliburton's no-bid contracts. From a financial standpoint, the Iraq war has been very good for Halliburton and Dick Cheney. Cheney talks about democracy from one side of his mouth, but sneeringly dismisses it from the other. He and Bush won't pay attention to any Congressional resolutions against the war, he said. This column by Maureen Dowd is at www.welcome-to-pottersville.com:

It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.

BUSH THE PREVARICATOR

In one of his most memorable manglings of English George W. Bush declared himself "the Decider." It might be more accurate to describe himself as "the Liar." We can dress it up a bit and call him "the Prevaricator." From the beginning Bush has lied to the American people. He called himself a "compassionate conservative," which should have set off alarm bells for anyone who knows anything about conservatism. He and his political operatives stole the 2000 presidential election. He used the tragic and horrendous attacks on 9/11 to build a phony case for a war against Iraq, a war he and neocons wanted anyway. He continues to lie about the violence in Iraq. The motives he ascribes to the insurgency are not in line with the facts. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

Since 2001, rather than focusing on the al-Qaeda Sunni fundamentalist terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, Bush has expanded the conflict exponentially – tossing in unrelated enemies such as Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein, Shiite-led Iran, Syria and Islamic militants opposed to Israel, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

In effect, Bush has transformed what began as a definable military objective – the defeat of “terrorist groups with global reach” – into an endless war against what he regards as evil, a conflict so vague that it is claiming as collateral damage America’s “unalienable rights” and the Founders’ checks and balances on the powers of the Executive.

In Bush’s State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, there could be heard a requiem for the Republic.

“The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that’s the case, America is still a nation at war,” Bush told Congress.

But that “evil” will always be “at work in the world,” so America will always be “a nation at war” and thus, under Bush’s theories of unlimited Commander-in-Chief powers, the American Republic will be banished permanently.

October 30, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR

There are lies and then there are lies. Lies that get people killed, lies that get people tortured, lies that gut the financial security of working people, lies that deny health care to people who need it, lies that claim there is no global climate change, somehow go beyond the usual lie. The George W. Bush presidency has established some pretty unsavory history. He's the president who knowingly and willingly lied the country into a war that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. He's the president who shamelessly lied to get tax cuts for his fat cat friends and created an economic system that shafts the middle class and the poor. He's the president who piously claims to be a Christian so he can deny funding for stem cell research that would give people who suffer from hideous diseases hope of a cure. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

While Bush says Democrats don’t want to try terrorist, their real complaint about his Military Commissions Act of 2006 comes from its denial of habeas corpus for non-citizens and its vague wording that could apply its draconian provisions to American citizens as well. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Who Is ‘Any Person’ in Tribunal Law?”]

Bush’s defenders may argue that the President was just using some oratorical license in the Indiana stump speech. But all the points he made to the crowd, he also has expressed in more formal settings.

The distortions also fit with Bush’s long pattern of slanting the truth or engaging in outright lies when describing his adversaries, both foreign and domestic.

Yet Bush is almost never held to account by a U.S. news media that seems almost as cowed today as it was when Bush misled the nation into the Iraq War or – after the invasion – when he lied repeatedly, claiming that he had no choice but to invade because Saddam Hussein had barred U.N. weapons inspectors from Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush & His Dangerous Delusions.”]

POP GOES THE ECONOMY

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been warning for some time now about the housing bubble bursting. It appears his forecast is coming true. The housing market has sustained the U. S. economy during the Bush years. As jobs have been outsourced and middle class wages have stagnated or declined, about the only money to be had has been in housing. Interest rates were kept low and people refinanced or took out home equity loans. They used that cash to buy things. But the Federal Reserve has been increasing interest rates, and those higher interest rates translate into higher payments for people with adjustable rate mortgages. Now there is a glut of unsold houses. This article by Jeremy W. Peters is at www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/27/business/usecon.php:

The U.S. economy grew more slowly in the third quarter than at any time since early 2003, held back by a deflating housing market, the Commerce Department reported Friday,

The total output of goods and services in the United States expanded at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30. That preliminary estimate compares with a revised rate of 2.6 percent in the second quarter and the robust 5.6 percent rate recorded in the first. The figures are seasonally adjusted.