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Bush End Game
George W. Bush's presidency since 2007

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George W. Bush's presidency from 2005-06

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George W. Bush's presidency, 2000-04

Who Is Bob Gates?
The secret world of Defense Secretary Gates

2004 Campaign
Bush Bests Kerry

Behind Colin Powell's Legend
Gauging Powell's reputation.

The 2000 Campaign
Recounting the controversial campaign.

Media Crisis
Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals
Behind President Clinton's impeachment.

Nazi Echo
Pinochet & Other Characters.

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics.

Contra Crack
Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History
America's tainted historical record

The October Surprise "X-Files"
The 1980 election scandal exposed.

International
From free trade to the Kosovo crisis.

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Editorials

Editor’s Note: Over the past few weeks, readers have sent comments about George W. Bush’s tough talk, Errol Morris’s Abu Ghraib documentary, neocon banter about bombing Iran and the Democratic presidential race:

Why doesn't anyone challenge our (imbecile)president regarding his speech in the middle east where he references Obama wanting to negotiate  w/terrorist?  Uh hellooo!  Who is the idiot that is meeting w/Saudi  Arabia that sponsors terrorism?  Begging them for an increase in oil production.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  This president has a lot of nerve!  P.S. I won’t even talk about Iraq in which he terrorized its citizens.

Katherine Frisco

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Re Sam Provance’s “Abu Ghraib Film Obscures Truth”:

I was listening to an interview with Errol Morris on NPR and he echoed to a tee what this article proffered.  In fact, Errol went into greater detail on the subject of sexual harassment of females in the US military.  I thought this was strange as the subject was Abu Ghraib not the other.

Mr. Morris has done good work previously in his attempt to present a truer picture of a particular issue throughtout his career.  He had a stellar reputation as an icon in the world of unfettered documentarians.

But, his last film got a luke-warm reception among his peers and I read an in-depth analysis of his current state of health & direction.

The authors summed it up this way--maybe he has gotten tired, disinterested and just plain shoddy over the last years of his career.

Maybe it is time he took a deep look into his inner core an answer this question:

"Are my current efforts at truth-showing on a par with my past efforts and what are the reasons for this?"

Particularly when dealing with an event so earth-shattering as Abu Ghraib.

I tend to agree with the author's assessment of "SOP" even though I have not seen the film.

David T. Gray
Claremont, NH

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Please listen to Senator Lieberman talk with Bill Bennett on his radio show and make a "joke" about bombing IRAN - and how it "has an appeal" to Lieberman!!  Don't these people know what on earth they are laughing about and the number of dead people that would get that way from their "JOKE"??

It's high-time for the media to make sure they get this out there for all to hear or read as to the joke it would be to nuke a country, according to Lieberman!!

This deserves page one news!!

Tom Wieliczka
 Windsor Locks, CT
 
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/14/lieberman-bennett-bomb-iran/

Lieberman Says Bombing Iran ‘Has An Appeal To It’

On right-winger Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) expressed his openess to bombing Iran, saying that there is “an appeal to it.” Discussing the West Virginia primary results, Bennett praised what he claimed was Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) transformation into his “style” of politician, which he said is someone who “throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran.”

Lieberman whole-heartedly endorsed the “appeal” of the hawkish caricature Bennett had created:

ENNETT: Listen, I give her credit. She has found her…three things. She’s found her voice. He is very much in the background now, it’s not this, you know, ventriloquial thing, it’s definitely her voice.

LIEBERMAN: That’s true.

BENNETT: And Joe, you know, this is my style. This is a girl who puts on her pearls, goes down, throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran, you know. This is…lookout Mrs. Bennett, this is my kind of girl.

LIEBERMAN: Hehehe, it does have an appeal to it.

Listen to it:

Neither Lieberman nor Bennett is shy about his willingness to militarily strike Iran.

Almost a year ago, Lieberman declared on Face The Nation that “we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians.” Earlier this week, he called airstrikes against Iran “a distinct possibility.”

In April, after Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker testified before Congress, Bennett told the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol that the “conclusion” he drew was that their testimony was “less an argument for getting out of Iraq than going into Iran.”

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Since last week’s revelation that McCain’s convention manager had worked to burnish the image of Myanmar’s junta, four other lobbyists have resigned, all because of their ties to entities with business before the federal government. One, however, will not go quietly. That would be super-lobbyist Charlie Black, who, in a New York Times article today, both defends the practice of lobbying while working for McCains campaign, and denies having done recent lobbying. Of course, he’s lying. Follow this link for a list of companies Mr. Black has recently represented:  http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/02/7302_charlie_black_j.html

Why such a furor over McCain’s ties to lobbyists? Because of the nature of the product they sell. They peddle access. They sell access to the men who run this country, men who have the ability to alter laws in favor of those who hired the lobbyist. This is especially an issue with McCain’s campaign, because while he continues to burnish his image as an independent thinker, McCain actually has more lobbyists in his employ than most members of congress.

Egale33

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It wasn't just Race-Baiting that made Hillary's campaign so awfully ugly....
Over at HuffPost, Thomas Edsall wrote:
"Clinton's success among white voters is very likely to continue to raise questions concerning Obama's viability among whites, who play a larger role in general elections than in Democratic primaries."
Obama was doing JUST FINE with "white voters"...  until the Rev. Wright video hit the endless network media loop, the media trying to do with the Rev. Wright video what they had done to Gov. Dean with the "Dean Scream."
The good news is that Hillary's base "race-baiting, gas-tax-pandering, gun pandering, beer pandering, 'nuke Iran', make friends with Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife campaign"  highlighted what we "Democratic wing of Democratic Party" voters have been saying (shouting) for years - that the top levels of the inside-beltway DC Democrats have become entirely too cozy with Big Business, corporate America, K St. lobbyists, Wall St. loan sharks... & especially the major-media pooh-bahs, who at every opportunity tout the "Tax cuts for wealthy in time of war, screw the peons" agenda.  (Not to forget the "More War Now" lobby.)
We Democratic voters don't reflexively hate corporations - just when their greed and influence is so strong that they can blatantly lie to us.
I was staying at a home near a big city that had no cable TV... so I had no choice but to watch the 3 or 4 broadcast channels. The "news" content of their Network nightly newscast was... ZERO! Twenty minutes of weather, twenty minutes of local-interest stories and banter between the anchors, and twenty minutes of commercials was all you get for watching. One night, they did a full 5 minute (plus) segment on... a Daschund dog that had recovered from cancer surgery! NO similar time is ever spent on our WOUNDED, TRAUMATIZED, returning war VETERANS!
It is beyond simply shameful and disgraceful.... we are into the realm of the German media during WWII, a relentless propaganda machine to white-wash the regime and ignore the "disappeared," even our own war-hero veterans, whose coverage would make the media's pandering for tax-cuts for the rich and the glitzy story of the day look, well, shameless. …
All the above just as a preamble to the worst aspects of Hillary's campaign, how right across the board, from Race-Baiting to Fear-mongering to blatant Bush-Cheneyesque corruption and insider no-bid, no-oversight profiteering contracts, Hillary ran her campaign as a Karl Rove Republican fear-and-smear, race-baiting and fear-mongering campaign.
Hillary's "obliterate Iran" comment TOPPED anything Bush or Cheney have said to date... pretty amazing, given that Cheney's "Attack Iran Now!" comment brought the 2007 AIPAC convention to its feet in a standing ovation. [http://www.aipac.org/2785_2859.asp]
Let's face it, a huge portion of Hillary's once "INEVITABLE!" campaign war-chest came from making promises... promises for consideration as Ambassador or other government positions in a future Clinton administration... or even worse, more blatantly Bush-Cheneyesque whispers of favorable tax breaks, or (worse yet) huge insider, no-bid contracts dealt out to her big-biz supporters. (Come to think of it - JUST WHAT did Hillary promise Murdoch and Scaife?)
I can still barely believe that the Obama campaign did not even bring up - Bill Clinton's TEN MILLION DOLLAR PAYOFF for lobbying Kazakhstan's version of SADDAM HUSSEIN for a billion-dollar uranium mining contract in that brutally oppressed country!
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html]
(Note: almost impossible to believe, the $10 million payoff Bill Clinton got for lobbying that Giustra/Kazakhstan uranium deal, is only the down-payment of a $130 million, ONE-HUNDRED-AND-THIRTY-MILLION DOLLAR payoff, mining financier Frank Giustra has pledged to the Clinton foundation, according to the Times reporting, at the expense of political opponents in Kazakhstan and human rights advocates worldwide.)
And the above doesn't even mention President Clinton's ill-advised approval for the sale of Indiana company Magnaquench Techologies to China, a company that manufactured the rare-earth magnet electric motors vital to US fighter jets and rockets, a company that has now completely closed its doors in Indiana and moved lock, stock, and barrel to China!
[http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4757257]
Regardless of how much Bill and Hillary tout their campaign to heartland, working-class America, their real message was undeniable: the DC and corporate fat-cats will continue to get fat, making billions of dollars off of taxpayer's and strapped consumers' wallets.... and the only "shaking up" Hillary would do, is to continue SHAKING DOWN big donors.
(Not to mention, Hillary shamelessly pandered her support for the ridiculous 18-cent per gallon gas-tax holiday - an estimated whopping $27 per family in tax savings between labor day and memorial day, which would, #1, rob desperately needed jobs from desperately needed highway and infrastructure repairs; and #2. would never in a million years get by the George Bush veto pen between now and November, Hillary's cheap promises notwithstanding).
Shameless pandering, shameless shakedowns, shameless race-baiting, shameless fear-mongering, shameless cozying up to Murdoch and Scaife, Bill Clinton cozying up to Kazakhstan's murderous dictator for a $130 million payoff... how is the real essence of the Hillary 2008 campaign any different from the Karl Rove led campaigns of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004?

Lawrence BK

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When I first became interested in following the political atmosphere developing in this nation, it was like sticking your toe into a bathtub full of water, to see, if it was cold or hot, turns out someone put acid in and I got my toe burned. This is not a game for "pikers", so to speak, and what has transpired since, has me reeling, with disbelief, anxiety, and disgust. I thought, in my own ignorance, as just a plain citizen, I could, just by chance, help, with the business of restoring a measure of honesty and integrity, to the process. My first awakening, was the "chicanery", going on, within the Bush administration. The way they went about stealing this nation away from us, was, at best, mind boggling. With the help of progressive web sites like yours and others, I was able to put in place an understanding of what was going on.

This whole thing is not a pretty sight, and to most, who do not venture out of the mainstream, their awakening would be just as jolting as my own. It is amazing how by manipulation, lies and deceit, these powerful people, can change the landscape of the whole world, without most, not knowing how and why, it all came about. Iraq, was my first experience in this. So now, this nation is being blinded by a political power play, by powerful people in the money markets, media, and politics, whose only goal is gaining this power to insure a kind of status-quo, that seems to always prevail, over all.

For the Clintons, it is a given why they want to retain their lifelong goals, his and hers, at any cost, which seems to be their dynamic. Some in the progressives, say, this will continue, even if, Obama gains the presidency. What kind of hell, that will create, for the people of this nation, who for all intents and purposes, will continue to be, insignificant and innocent, bystanders, bewildered at, how this all transpired. It will surely keep the power, just where it is now. I hate to be so pessimistic, but looking at what is happening, and what the eventual outcome will be, does not look very bright. A political system in a more chaotic state than it is in now. Which again, will benefit those, striving to maintain their grip on this nation.

Obama, if he gets out of this and prevails, will need more than just prayers. Will he get the help in needs while in office from those who want as much change as he does, or will he have to face all kinds of obstacles that will be thrown at him.  That will be a much wrote about subject, I`m sure. 

I agree with some, that the mainstream media, that was profiting by this fray between Hillary and Obama, have over analyzed the exit polling, to the point, where it helped, in my view also, to create more dissension, on the race and gender issues. These media pundits or celebrity commentators, who in some cases, know, less than some of us, and are hailed as the "gurus" of the industry, I say, what a crock. The conservative media pundits will continue to have a field day with all of this, probably on into the GE. God help the people of this nation, who again are at the mercy of the all powerful. I hope, I am wrong, and can be invigorated, enough to be more positive.

Bill

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When Mike Huckabee joked that a loud sound at the NRA convention was Obama jumping at the sound of a gun, he wasn’t making a mindless gaffe, he was expressing nostalgia. Huckabee knew that the following day, he would force his way into consideration as Vice President, and understood that as a result, he’d be in the limelight again. Huckabee is not stupid, and when he raised the specter of a black man running from a white man’s gun, he understood his audience, their frustrations, their feelings about themselves. These men remember a happier time, those bygone days when people in this country knew their place, and if some uppity nigra forgot it, well, a shot or two fired into the air would make him remember very quickly.

If a person of color decided to press one claim or another, the result would be very similar to the scene that Mike Huckabee “joked” about. Stand on the front porch, produce the firearm, and shoot it:  Get off my property, get out of my business, stay away from my daughter. It was a lovely and simple way to solve a conflict, and back then, the government knew better than to prevent a man from defending what was rightfully his. What’s rightfully his? Well, a man’s land, his family, and his right to own slaves. Less than 200 years ago, one-third of the South’s population was in chains, and with such ratios, guns were necessary. Guns were necessary in case the Chained Ones got uppity, in case they forgot who they were. In case one of them ran for President.

Brianna226

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