Bush Calls Kettles Black

I know Bushieboy probably can't spell hypocrisy, let alone pronounce it. But you'd think he'd at least know what it is and have a minor sense of shame and irony for the situation he and his minder Dick have put America in. Last week before attention was diverted to the Caucasus, the Torturor-In-Chief was lecturing China on its human right record. This is a man who through his lies and criminal acts created a humanitarian crisis in Iraq where some 5 million people are refugees and tens to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead and more than 30,000 Americans where mislead to there deaths and dismemberment. This is a man who has knowingly presided over the imprisonment, torture and murder of the innocent along with the guilty and consistently shredded the very bedrock of what America is, the Constitution, all in the name of an imperial presidency.

This week Bush and his neocon bretheren are waging their fingers at Russia for invading a sovereign nation and calling on the U.N. Security Council (on which Russia sits) to condemn the action because it wasn't authorized by by the Security Council. Russia is claiming that its response is humanitarian because Georgian president Saakashvili attacked his own people (he did) and that Russia is acting its own interest, pre-empting a threat to national security. Oh and by the way, there is control of natural gas and oil at stake as well.

If this doesn't all sound familiar it should. Bush did not have the U.N Security Council authorization required for all military action against another nation with the exception of when actually attacked and he used the rationale that Saddam had attacked his own people. And we're not in Dafur why? Oh right, no oil there. Bush and Cheney have also claimed and acted on the right to attack another country if there is even a perceived 1% threat that they might threaten America's security (The Bush Doctrine AKA the 1% Doctrine).

The bushites have undermined international law and America's moral standing in the world. Bush condemning the Chinese and Russians for their actions simply exposes him for the empty-headed hypocrit that he is and the world is laughing at him. Putin isn't just laughing though, he's using Bush's own actions to poke him right in the eye. And since we're so bogged down in his Iraq boondoggle there's nothing Bush can do about it because he has also undermined America's strategic position by bring America's all volunteer military to the breaking point. And Vlad, the man whose soul Bush gazed upon with approval when he looked into his eyes is calling Georgie's Georgian bluff and proving that when Bush look into his eyes he saw only exactly what his "friend" Vlad wanted him to see. Just another piece of evidence among many that Bushieboy was never really up to the task that he thought was his by right of descent. The more Bush wags his finger the more foolish he looks for paving Putin's way (and perhaps others) in justifying his actions by mirroring those of Dubya.

CIA Forged Letter Linking Saddam to Al Qaeda

Ron Suskind's new book The Way of the World, with the support of on-the-record CIA officials, states that the Whitehouse ordered the CIA to forge a letter from Iraq's head of intelligence to Saddam stating that 9/11 ring leader Mohammed Atta was trained in Iraq for the attacks.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/05/10809/

This letter published by the Sunday London Telegraph in December 2003 was designed to provide justification for the invasion that had been planned since Bush took office before 9/11.

Suskind further claims that based on a report by British Intelligence (among other sources, including inspectors on the ground) that the bushites knew that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and no programs to produce such weapons. They of course ignored this information because it didn't suit their goals of war on Iraq and war on reality.

This provides one more set of evidence in an ever mounting pile of evidence that George W. Bush is murderer and a traitor and should be brought to legitimate justice before the law.

Paul Ryan's Reform Misses The Mark

Paul Ryan completely missed the mark with his opinion piece about the need to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in last week’s Standard Press. Although perhaps that was intentional since what really needs reform is the Republican Party. The problems faced by these two institutions are not the result of internal flaws, but rather the deeply flawed and greed motivated deregulation agenda of the GOPsters. You see in 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed under the sponsorship of none other than former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), millionaire and McCain’s “economic advisor” before he had to be thrown under the Straight Talk Express for among other things, calling the American People “whiners”.

Glass-Steagall was enacted after the Great Depression to prohibit banks from owning brokerage firms and vice versa, to prevent conflicts of interest between these two sectors of the financial system and it worked well for 60 years. But greed got the better of the banking industry and our representatives and upon repeal the big banks went on a feeding frenzy, buying up the brokerage firms. So when all these bad loans were made and sold as quickly as possible to the big banks to keep the fees but offload the risk, the big banks in turn used their brokerage arms to bundle these loans into securities to sell for investment. But whereas there was once an incentive for the brokerage to check the teeth of what they were buying from the banks for bundling and resale to their customers, now there is in fact a disincentive to question the value of your own assets. Bad for business don’t you know. So they passed along bad paper and Freddie and Fannie along with financial institutions and investors around the world bought it on good faith in the American financial system, faith that was unfortunately misplaced.

Of course Paul Ryan isn’t going to point out these facts. Instead he sees it as another opportunity to push the shock doctrine capitalism and privatization agenda of the far right who don’t believe that we should share in anything in this country, that nothing should be public. Paul makes the laughable argument that, if privatized, the citizenry would not be called upon to bail out these entities again in the future should the need arise. Apparently Ryan has never heard of Bear-Stearns & Co., a private “too big fail” firm bailed out by the Federal Reserve just last spring.

There is a constantly repeated theme of GOPish deregulation followed by financial meltdown and public bailout from the savings & loan crisis to WorldCom, to Enron (also the result of Sen. Gramm’s manipulations) to the current sub-prime mortgage mess. I know that it’s an article of faith in the GOP that all corporate regulation is bad, but it’s an article of blind faith that in revelation has been shown to be wrong over and over again. You’d think the American people would learn from this history. A certain amount of regulation actually makes sense for the public good and obviously in the end for the good of the overall business sector as well, except for the few greedy and corrupt individuals who manage to profit from debacles like these. Not that Mr. Ryan will ever come around to see that, but at least if you’re going propose cures you ought to treat the cause of the disease and not just address its symptoms, or we’ll be right back here again in a few years with another GOP inspired fiasco, throwing more good money after bad. That’s just plain old common sense.

Sign Of The Times

Last week I was afforded a sight that warmed the cockles of my heart (whatever they are). I was coming back down from the north woods and went past the Hummer dealership on HWY 45 in Menominee Falls. I've been driving past and cursing this this temple to glutonous excess for several years now, but this time to my delight it was being torn down. And to add a knife twist to to GM's nearsightedness, there was a Smart Car dealership going up right next to it.

I've never figured out just exaclty what deficiency the drivers of these monstrosities are trying to compensate for, but I do know this HUMMERS ARE FOR DICKHEADS!>