With the news that Michael Chertoff may be Bush's top choice to replaceAlbert Gonazales, I thought it would be appropriate to post this video of his(what I believe to be) incompetence. So sit back and watch the show, then askyourself "is this the guy that deserves or is qualified to be the next AttorneyGeneral of The United States"? I'm sure if he is chosen, the petitions will start flying again (hopefully).
Tim Russert exposed the lies that came from the administration after Katrina
By a , not enough to override a likely veto, the Democratic-led House of Representatives passed a $37.4 billion Homeland Security budget bill aimed at strengthening national defense. The White House is upset because the bill Bush's request by $2.1 billion. He is planning to veto it.
So what will Bush be vetoing? Here is what the contains:
Funds the hiring of 3,000 additional border agents.
Ignores the Bush request to cut funds for first responders.
Doubles the amount of air cargo that is screened.
Doubles the amount of grants given to local communities for port security and mass transit.
Increases in medical funds for veterans.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer cannot quite understand why the bill with a straight face:
"We are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq," said House Majorityleader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "Given our continuing homeland securityvulnerabilities, we can surely find $2 billion to keep the Americanpeople safer at home."
Maybe Bush's veto promise came as a result of the unified pressure this week from , who asked for the White House to curb spending by vetoing more bills. Now it appears the White House will do just that.
By analogy, if you believe we went to war just for the sake of going to war, then this is an example of vetoing bill just for the sake of vetoing one.
I feel compelled to find and post the truth every time I hear Our GreatPresident open his mouth which has become synonymous with lying.Thanks again to "granny" for sending us the link for the video.
It didn't take the liberal bloggers and general long public to react and speak outagainst the dems for caving in on the funding bill. And it seems that theybetter grow a set quickly before we start shopping around. Think about this fora moment, you tell your spouse or significant other you are going shopping, butinstead go to a friends house...simple right? umm, NO!, you are confronted bythem and are told you lied. Maybe that's a simple minded analogy, but comparethat to The President of the United States lying on an ongoing basis, changingthe story and then his supporters actually lie further to support him. Wrong,just plain old everyday kindergartenly, fundamentally, unacceptably wrong.
Well lets start this thing....
'Let's Impeach The President' Song by Neil Youg. Check out Neils page of .(check out the )The Lyrics are
I do not like Andy Dick in just about everything I have ever seen himin...except this video
'Bush Idiot Speech'
Here is a huge list of worth a peak. .
There is just so much more content which could be added to this post, but Ineed to move on from this "consumption" of me.
Picnic baskets, fried chicken, face painting and a day of fun filled family activities! Sack races, egg toss, 3 legged races? ... nope, Machine Guns!
I am not an anti-gun advocate, and I do believe in the second amendment. The right to bear arms was very important back when bears were running through your backyard or outlaws could just "pop over" for a cup of coffee then rob you (or whatever). Educating family members in the use of firearms isn't a bad thing, and perhaps even a good thing. Learning the do's and don't's as well as respect of firearms isn't evil or necessarily a bad thing. However, I'm not quite sold on the need for an 8 year old girl to familiarize herself on a 50 cal. machine gun. Whatever happened to Malibu Barbie?
A video to warm the cockles of your heart. Que up to 2:25 to see the child rip a few rounds off.
Now onto the more disturbing issue at hand, the thinking of the (National Rifle Association)
to conduct a criminal background checkand deny sales if a gun purchaser falls under a specified prohibition,including a felony conviction, domestic abuse conviction or illegalimmigration. There is no legal basis to deny a sale if a purchaser ison a terror watch list.
A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of44 firearm purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known orsuspected terrorists were approved by the federal law enforcementofficials.
The NRA has a large conservative base, and these are the same people that are responsible for attempting to instill fear into everyone that the terrorist are on their way to America to take us out. So why do they feel its ok for the "potential" terrorists to get their hands on guns? I just don't understand.
In my younger years I considered myself a Republican, I wasn't sure why, butit probably had something to do with my traditional points of view, even though my ways ofthinking were liberal. I suppose the bottom line was Ihad no clue. As I grew older I learned how to understand my views and combine andmold them into what turned out to be mainstream liberal. I'm not easilyconvinced or swayed about everything left, I need to see it, hear it andunderstand it before I hop on any band wagons. That's why when I saw the title , I was taken back a bit and thought another (nutty) conspiracytheory. Then I read it.
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there arecertain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutionalfreedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to betaking them all
I knew Bush did some evil things, andshould be impeached (and flogged), but how are they going to equate Bush toHitler?
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the couptook a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list.In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down:the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residentialareas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press,tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
NowI had to keep reading, I had to see how this British paper was going to tie U.S.policy to that of a military coup in Thailand.
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy -After we were hiton September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weekslater, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that hadlittle chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Wewere told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "globalwar" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe outcivilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the USaccepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincolndeclared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands ofJapanese-American citizens were interned.
2. Create a gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next stepis to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wantedthe American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal"outer space") - where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste - Thugs in America? Groups of angry youngRepublican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workerscounting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you canimagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the nextelection day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a pollingstation "to restore public order".
4. Set up an internal surveillance system - In 2005 and 2006, whenJames Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret stateprogramme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and followinternational financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans thatthey, too, could be under state scrutiny.
5. Harass citizens' groups - The fifth thing you do is related to stepfour - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a churchin Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, founditself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches thatgot Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, havebeen left alone.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - In 2004, America'sTransportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list ofpassengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried tofly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peaceactivists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member ofVenezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; andthousands of ordinary US citizens.
7. Target key individuals - Bush supporters in state legislatures inseveral states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fireacademics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants,the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spokeup for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publiclyintimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening tocall for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modernAmerica - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and SidneyBlumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false informationthat is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth fromuntruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying.When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands foraccountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason - Cast dissent as "treason" andcriticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as itelaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expandthe definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, thepublisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush calledthe Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", whileRepublicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, andrightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason"drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that onepenalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution
.10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense AuthorizationAct of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This meansthat in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers todeclare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that hehas declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and itscitizens.
Special Thanks to granny for pointing us to this information.
My thought's quickly changed. These steps are much more detailedin the article and can be .
2 other far left conspiracy theories that after seeing the information I was (conservatively) 65% convinced were true. Alex Jones's '' (w/ VIDEO), and Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale: ''.
famously predicted that technology and information would lead us to what he called a revolution of technology that would inevitably unite us and give us the ability to communicate to anyone in the world at anytime with just about any means.
I am a senior in and in three weeks I'll graduate with degrees in Advertising and Public Relations. One of my morning classes deals with : how to handle tough situations, having a plan in place, communicating facts and answering questions appropriately, etc. My morning class today, Persuasive Communication taught by Dr. Robin Meyers (author of the famous speech, and author of ,) took a detour from the syllabus - about Marshall McLuhan - to just talk. It's difficult to gauge how you're feeling as readers, but as a student I find myself not needing to see political banter or politics for a few hours, at least a few minutes, and rather find myself just wanting to talk.
As a student in , I felt the building shake as I sat in my fourth grade classroom at 9:02AM on April 19, 1995, the morning of the . I drove through the torrential rains and heard my mother scream as the phone disconnected the night she was buried underneath her own house by the - May 3, 1999. I sat in my 11th grade Government class and watched as the second plane crashed into the . Yesterday, I sat in an empty room, the living room where I'll soon occupy in my new home, and listened to the cries of a university, a city, a state, a country, about the horrors of what transpired at .
My life and the technology within it has allowed me to step out from a small suburban classroom, from a city-wide terrorist attack, from a statewide natural disaster, into what was the first of, unfortunately, many global tragedies. The global village has its ups and downs, and the down is that we must all experience the devastation of tragedy without ever feeling the ground shake or hearing the shots fired.
At the time of this publication, we have learned and and have begun to piece together the history of the individual: , , . We've watched a university stumble in crisis from , , and We've watched media outlets frantically interview second- and third- and fourth-hand witnesses and provoke emotional reactions. We've watched Fox News tell you how this will impact the stock market and the war on terror and the security and sanctity of our schools. Unfortunately, until now, we have yet to just talk.
McLuhan says, In this place, the home of inclusion and open-mindedness and intelligent dialogue, I hope the message can resonate from those values. I needed to engage the global village, to speak back to it instead of merely observing it. I hope you'll do the same.
If there's anything you'd like to share - comments, critiques,condolences, thoughts in general - please use the comments section todiscuss.
I don't know if this guy is telling the truth or not, and I am sure he hassome terrorist ties, but that isn't what this post is about. It's about our intelligence,or lack thereof.
"" - In September 2006, advocating legislation for a Guantánamo war court,President Bush described Abu Zubaydah as ''a senior terrorist leader and atrusted associate of Osama bin Laden'' who survived wounds suffered duringhis capture because of CIA-orchestrated medical treatment.
He resisted interrogations, Bush said -- until the CIA employed ''analternative set of procedures'' and he spilled a series of al Qaeda plots.
If "an alternative set of procedures" gets information, how do youknow its the truth? It seems to me that throughout history people have"spilled their beans" because something "bad" was happening orabout to happen to them.
I don't have any answers to securing factual information from the enemy or a suspectedenemy, but somebody in the government better come up with some answers becauseour nations intelligence has a low IQ.
Aside from the continuous death toll that we hear about on the news each day, the Iraq war is also negatively impacting efforts in Afghanistan and in our ability to fund security here at home.
Said Jawad, Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United States, told that terrorists in his country are paying close attention to the successes of Iraqi insurgents:
"The Taliban and terrorists in Afghanistan are drawing motivation fromwhat they call success in Iraq. Also, they are getting expertise onsuicide bombing, roadside bombing."
Jawad said he expects an increase in U.S. funds for security efforts in his country this spring. The funds will be needed more than ever, especially after a large quantity of U.S. resources and manpower were following Bush's troop escalation proposal.
Afghanistan is not the only place where our security efforts will be put in jeopardy. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-VA), the new Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday that Bush's narrow-minded focus on the Iraq war is to fit costly homeland security expenditures into the budget. Rockefeller added that "everything is going to close up and get tougher, and it's all becauseof the budget and the result of something called Iraq. I am furious about that."
As their first act in Congress, House Democrats voted overwhelmingly to implement the findings of the 9/11 Commission, which called for a number of security measures at home -- such as increased port, bridge and railway security -- which the President has yet to fully fund. But as is true with all bills, even if a bill gets signed into law, it has to be put on an appropriations bill for it to actually be funded. Thanks to ballooned Pentagon expenditures in recent years, it will be a miracle if there is enough room left in the budget to fully fund security in our own country. And as long as Joe Lieberman chairs the Homeland Security Committee, you can expect Iraq to continue to trump all other security-related funding.
The legislation would create a cabinet-level position dedicated to protecting the country from nuclear terrorism. Could this be a sign if Hillary Clinton were elected president in 2008 that she would make the United States rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
In an effort to bolster her national security credentials for her almost certain run at the presidency in 2008, Hillary Rodham-Clinton is a bill that would create a senior White House adviser on nuclear terrorism. Clinton recently wrote a letter to new Armed Services Committee Chairman and new Foreign Relations Committee Chairman , informing them that the bill has been submitted for January's Congress. The bill's House sponsor was Congresswoman (D-CA).
Here are some of the specifics in the bill, as explained on s Senate web page:
The Nuclear Terrorism Prevention Act of 2006 legislation introducedtoday would create the post of Senior Advisor to the President forPreventing Nuclear Terrorism. The advisor will beresponsible fordeveloping a strategy to prevent nuclear terrorism, coordinating theefforts of the Departments of Energy, Defense, State and otheragencies. The advisor will lead efforts to work with the internationalcommunity to develop specific standards for the security ofweapons-usable nuclear material and assist countries in meeting thesestandards. The advisor will also be responsible for providing Congresswith a yearly report on all sites with weapons-usable material, plansfor securing or removing material from these sites, details ofcountry's efforts to secure their own weapons-usable material and anupdate on efforts to create specific international standards for theprotection of these materials. The bill would also authorize anadditional $50 million for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative(GTRI) to encourage countries to replace highly enriched uranium (HEU)with less proliferation-sensitive low enriched uranium (LEU).
Among the more than six international treaties that the Bush Administration has violated, Hillary seems to be suggesting from this bill that she wants the United States to return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In other words, we can only encourage other countries to enact nuclear-safe policies if we set an example by doing the same ourselves.
Also, having a cabinet post that focuses specifically on nuclear terrorism might be very valuable, especially after one-time presidential candidate John Kerry considered nuclear proliferation to be the number one national security threat to the United States. This excerpt was what Kerry said during the back on September 30, 2004:
LEHRER: New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry.
If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?
KERRY: Nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation. There's some 600-plus tons of unsecured material still in the former Soviet Union and Russia. At the rate that the president is currently securing it, it'll take 13 years to get it.
If it's the number one threat, then we might as well create a cabinet level position to help deal with it. It's only common sense. And it's only common sense for Hillary, since she will need to use her party's new majority status to pass as many similar bills as she can before 2008.
Instead of shying away from this foreign policy debate and focusing all of our attention on Congressional corruption, we need to stand up to Bush on national security. When he distorts our record, we need to hit back. President Bush forgets that the Democrats have the credentials to prove they are stronger on defense. Yesterday Bush tried to :
"Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways," he tolddonors here. "They talk tough on terror, but when the votes arecounted, their softer side comes out."
Oh, okay. You want to talk about the votes? Let's talk about votes:
In 2002, Democrats were the first ones to call for the . Republicans and Bush opposed it, but then caved into the pressure.
The 9/11 Commission was originally a Democrat idea. And after the commission asked the President for $8 million to conduct their investigation, .
Democrats voted to pass a bill that would have guaranteed $322 million to fully , but the GOP rejected it.
In March of 2006, every single House Republican voted to block the Democrats' that would have also strengthened disaster preparedness. Once again, not one Republican voted for that bill.
Last month, Republicans voted to kill a Democratic bill that would have provided .
I could keep going on forever. The GOP can paint us what they wish. But once the Congress turns blue in November, starting January we will see a shift towards real national security.
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