Friday, September 26, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Bush Urges Democrats to Act Quickly on Bailout Plan
WASHINGTON — As President Bush urged lawmakers to act quickly on the bailout legislation, Senate Democrats on Monday put forward their version of the rescue plan, including a bold addition aimed at helping homeowners at risk of foreclosure.
President Bush urged the legislators to resist the temptation to add provisions that, he said, “would undermine the effectiveness of the plan.” But it is becoming clear that Democrats have their own ideas about what should be in the plan, who should be helped and who should not.
Oh, of course-- it is all because failure to pass the Bush-Paulson plan "would threaten small business owners and homeowners on Main Street."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Bush Was Doing Something Very Illegal from 2001 to 2004
For the second consecutive day, The Washington Post has published an excerpt from reporter Barton Gellman's new book on the Cheney Vice Presidency, and it provides still more details on the intense confrontation in March, 2004 between the Bush Justice Department and the Cheney-led White House over the DOJ's refusal to certify the legality of the NSA's domestic spying activities. As has been known ever since Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate in May, 2007, all of the top-level DOJ officials -- including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- told President Bush they would resign immediately because Bush ordered the NSA surveillance program to continue even after his own Justice Department told him it was patently illegal. Comey drafted his resignation letter, calling Bush's spying activities "an apocalyptic situation" because he had "been asked to be a part of something that is fundamentally wrong."
Such an en masse resignation in the middle of an election year was averted only when Bush finally agreed to change certain aspects of the surveillance program in order to persuade these DOJ officials to endorse its legality. The illegal NSA spying program revealed by The New York Times in December, 2005 that created so much political controversy -- whereby the Bush administration was spying on Americans without the warrants required by law -- was a program that was actually endorsed and authorized by these same DOJ officials. The program we learned about was the "compromise" program that Bush implemented in 2004 in order to avoid their resignation. That's how extreme -- what right-wing, executive-power-loving ideologues -- these DOJ officials are: they are the ones who authorized and endorsed the illegal NSA program that we came to learn about.
But whatever it was that the Bush administration was doing in spying on Americans for years prior to March, 2004 was so extreme, so patently illegal, so unconscionable that even these right-wing DOJ Bush appointees, who approved of the ultimate warrantless eavesdropping program, were ready to resign en masse if those spying activities continued.
Bush: Iranians Are ‘Assholes’
While serving as CentCom commander between March 2007 and March 2008, Adm. William Fallon consistently pressed the Bush administration for more engagement with Iran and criticized the calls for another war. “This constant drumbeat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful,” Fallon told al Jazeera last year.
In his new book “The War Within,” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward details a telling White House meeting on Iran in spring 2007 (p. 334):
“I think we need to do something to get engaged with these guys,” Fallon said. Iraq shared a 900-mile border with Iran, and he needed guidance and a strategy for dealing with the Iranians.
“Well,” Bush said, “these are assholes.”
Fallon was stunned. Declaring them “assholes” was not a strategy. Lots of words and ideas were thrown around at the meeting, especially about the Iranian leaders. They were bad, evil, out of touch with their people. But no one offered a real approach.
Bush Grills Newly Elected Democratic Leadership of Pakistan
In July all that changed. Pakistan’s new democratically elected government made its first visit to Washington. Instead of the congratulations and aid packages they expected, ministers received what they described as a “grilling” and left reeling at “the trust deficit” between Pakistan and its most significant financial backer.
Bush confronted Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, with evidence of involvement by its military intelligence (ISI) in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.
“They were very hot on the ISI,” said Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister. “Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away.’ ”
Monday, September 08, 2008
Bush: Iraqis Not Grateful Enough for the US Fucking Over Their Country
Last night on 60 Minutes, host Scott Pelley interviewed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to discuss his new book “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.” Pelley noted that one part of the story Woodward tells is President Bush’s “frustration with the attitude of the Iraqi people”:
WOODWARD: He has a meeting at the Pentagon with a bunch of experts and he just said, ‘I don’t understand that the Iraqis are not appreciative of what we’ve done for them,’ namely liberated them.
PELLEY: But tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in the invasion and through the occupation. He didn’t understand why they might be a little ungrateful about what had occurred to them?
WOODWARD: His beacon is liberation. He thinks we’ve done this magnificent thing for them. I think he still holds to that position.
Either Bush is in such a bubble, he has no clue what has happened in Iraq, or he is such a psychopath that he thinks over a hundred thousand Iraqis dying and the country being ravaged is a "good thing".