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Shoe bomber attacks Bush

Updates



“Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes” at President Bush during a press conference yesterday, praising the journalist as a “hero.” The television station that employs the journalist has also demanded his immediate release, saying it “fear[ed] for his safety.”
H/T thinkprogress.org/

World condemns man for missing Bush's face




Sock and Awe

Web Game: Throw shoes at Bush.Torture not included.

http://www.sockandawe.com/



V
Via Rense

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28223089#28223089 

War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster

Published: Friday October 3, 2008

On Thursday's edition of The Colbert Report, bestselling author Naomi Klein argued that the Bush Administration creates crises in order to "enrich themselves and their friends," drawing parallels between the torture of prisoners and the economic bailout being provided to Wall St. by US leaders.

Previously, Klein called out the sprawling economic crisis as just another example of the Bush 'shock doctrine,' a key component to the ruling regime's corporate agenda.

"Now, the name of your book is 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,'" said host Stephen Colbert. "Okay now, what is the 'shock doctrine'? 'Cause, that sounds like a great way to get information out of a prisoner."

--MORE WITH VIDEO--

How  About Telling Me Where The Hell America's Oil Went?

Yea, i know it went down a while ago..(colloquially and literally)

You remember, that crazy huge sinkhole in Daisetta TX back in early May...

The story told is that a naturally formed salt dome collapsed as a result of oil drilling in the area. Here's my read...

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Reports of tragedy filtering out of Galveston and Bolivar

by: Robert Ryland

Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 03:44 PM CDT

The following is from an email sent to me by a good friend in Nacogdoches whose buddy has been over Galveston - names have been edited out to protect the folks those who relayed the report. Also relayed from this guy and others: persons going into the restricted area are apparently being patted down and cameras are being confiscated, by Army and Coast Guard personnel. Okay...I've got some news on this front.  Take it for what it's worth, but the guy I got it from is someone I trust to raise my children... He's never once lied to me...ever.  And we're close.

He's in a pretty high-up supervisory position for a refinery down on the coast.
His refinery has some equipment and lines in and around Galveston county, and before they were to bring them back on line he and his crew had to inspect the place for damage and potential hazards.  So they were given permission....after a background check....to helicopter in and inspect, which meant coming in over Galveston.

I kid you not when I say that he told me they saw AT LEAST 1500 bodies in trees scattered about Galveston.  They also saw a lot in various ditches and marshes, esp. on the north side of East Galv. Bay, east side of Trinity Bay, and in the marshes between I-45 and Seabrook/Clear Lake/Deer Park.

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If true, someone has called for a gag order. Who else could approve this?

Gingrich: ‘Final collapse of the Bush administration’
By Klaus Marre
Posted: 09/29/08 02:31 PM [ET]

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said the Wall Street bailout plan pushed by President Bush signaled the “final collapse” of the current administration.

“The Bush administration has now provided three case studies in arrogance, isolation and destructiveness: Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina, Ambassador Jerry Bremer in Baghdad and Secretary [Henry] Paulson at Treasury,” Gingrich said. “It is a tragic and very expensive legacy. No conservative and no Republican should doubt how much it has hurt our cause and our party.”

The former Speaker reiterated his call for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

“As long as Secretary Paulson is in charge, it is impossible to get a creative or significantly better solution,” Gingrich stated, adding that the Treasury chief was “an even greater obstacle to a good bill than the liberal Democrats who run the House and Senate.”

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29 Sep 2008

Will Mike Connell Avoid Testifying on Cyber Rigging Until after the 2008 Election?

By John Michael Spinelli

Columbus OhioTime Nigh on Whether Security of 2008 Election is Faulty

OhioNewsBureau - Opinion/Editorial

by John Michael Spinelli and Luaptifer

Columbus, Ohio: Attorneys representing Mike Connell, trusted cyber adviser for the Bush family and various Republican causes, have every reason to delay their client's testimony until after the November election.

Meeting Notes Touch on Security of White House Email

With 36 days left before Election Day 2008, attorneys representing Mike Connell, a so-called guru of GOP information technology who has been a trusted cyber adviser for the Bush family and various Republican causes, have every reason to delay until after the November election their client standing to testify in what effectively is a modern day, voting version twist to "The 39 Steps," Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 mystery.

The difference this year compared to a time when computers didn't exist, is that instead of the theft relying upon remembering machine parts, its about rerouting and re-tabulating public ballots through an architectural system that allowed partisan operatives to refashion them in a way that favors the Republican candidate, Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008. The question of whether our system of voting, now dependent upon black-box electronics and privately made voting machines that studies and experts say can never really be verified as secure, is secure is critical. Backtracking over a trail of cyber clues only another cyber expert could follow is needed if any of this far-flung theory about manipulating voting data is true.

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.

It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush’s watch.

The bailout plan now pending in Congress could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt – though President Bush said this morning he expects that over time, “much if not all” of the bailout money “will be paid back.”

But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion.

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U.S. Rep. Baldwin: Baldwin calls for executive accountability to reverse illegal actiosn and prevent further abuses
9/26/2008

Contact: Jerilyn Goodman
608-251-8737
Cell: 608-347-6557
jerilyn.goodman@mail.house.gov

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has introduced the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2008, calling on the next President to reverse the damaging and illegal actions taken by the Bush/Cheney Administration and to collaborate with Congress to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power.

"Over the past several years, serious questions have been raised about the conduct of high ranking Bush/Cheney Administration officials in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights," said Baldwin. "The list of abuses of executive branch power is long, as are the Administration's attempts to impede congressional oversight.

Indeed, Congress has presented President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other Bush/Cheney Administration officials with ample opportunities to reverse these abusive actions and restore our democracy. At each step, they have, instead, chosen to show contempt for the Congress and the American public. We must look to the next administration - and the next President - to show leadership in restoring executive branch accountability," Baldwin said.

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Independent.co.uk
Robert Fisk's World: Bush rescues Wall Street but leaves his soldiers to die in Iraq

Until the elections, the people in the Middle East are yesterday’s men

Saturday, 27 September 2008

It was a weird week to be in the United States. On Tuesday, secretary of the treasury Henry Paulson told us that "this is all about the American taxpayer – that's all we care about". But when I flipped the page on my morning paper, I came across the latest gloomy statistic which Americans should care more about. "As of Wednesday evening, 4,162 US service members and 11 Defence Department civilians had been identified as having died in the Iraq war." By grotesque mischance, $700bn – the cost of George Bush's Wall Street rescue cash – is about the same figure as the same President has squandered on his preposterous war in Iraq, the war we have now apparently "won" thanks to the "surge" – for which, read "escalation" – in Baghdad. The fact that the fall in casualties coincides with the near-completion of the Shia ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims is not part of the story.

Indeed, a strange narrative is now being built into the daily history of America. First we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the evil, terrorist-protecting misogynist Islamist crazies called the Taliban, setting up a democratic government under the exotically dressed Hamid Karzai. Then we rushed off to Iraq and overthrew the evil, terrorist-protecting, nuclear-weaponised, secular Baathist crazies under Saddam, setting up a democratic government under the pro-Iranian Shia Nouri al-Maliki. Mission accomplished. Then, after 250,000 Iraqi deaths – or half a million or a million, who cares? – we rushed back to Kabul and Kandahar to win the war all over again in Afghanistan. The conflict now embraces our old chums in Pakistan, the Saudi-financed, American-financed Interservices Intelligence Agency whose Taliban friends – now attacked by our brave troops inside Pakistani sovereign territory – again control half of Afghanistan.

We are, in fact, now fighting a war in what I call Irakistan. It's hopeless; it's a mess; it's shameful; it's unethical and it's unwinnable and no wonder the Wall Street meltdown was greeted with such relief by Messrs Obama and McCain. They couldn't suspend their campaigns to discuss the greatest military crisis in America's history since Vietnam – but for Wall Street, no problem. The American taxpayer – "that's all we care about". Mercifully for the presidential candidates, they don't have to debate the hell-disaster of Iraq any more, nor US-Israeli relations, nor Exxon or Chevron or BP-Mobil or Shell. George Bush's titanic if mythical battle between good and evil has transmogrified into the conflict between good taxpayers and evil bankers. Phew! No entanglement in the lives and deaths of the people of the Middle East. Until the elections – barring another 9/11 – they are yesterday's men and women.

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What Did Bush Tell Gonzales?

 

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

The hospital visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room, were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s grievously ill state—pressing him to sign the certification possibly without even comprehending what he was doing—and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department had concluded was of questionable legality.

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Related
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill: Bush Doesn’t Understand Crisis, ‘It Shows’

WASHINGTON -- Wrangling among the nation's top political leaders threw the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout plan into disarray late Thursday, despite a dramatic day of negotiations on Capitol Hill that seemed to promise a deal.

Negotiators broke off talks Thursday night with no agreement and with plans to reconvene in the morning, without House Republicans. It was the Republicans' surprise championing of a competing plan late Thursday that derailed a carefully crafted compromise previously taking shape.

Also raising the stakes: The demise of Washington Mutual Inc., the largest banking failure in U.S. history, sent a fresh message to Washington of the fragility of the financial system.

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The plan of throwing $700 billion at a problem cannot possibly work. What's worse is the structured $700 billion is a mere down payment.


Anthony M. Freed | September 25, 2008

Lawmakers: Financial bailout agreement reached

Capitol Hill Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 -- "You MUST reject the Paulson/Bernanke plan for bailing out and propping up reckless banks at taxpayer expense."

Action Alert

Related
Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime


Added: September 24, 2008

Mortgage crisis from Bush speech in 2002 encouraging Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will give people with low income or a bad credit history a chance to buy the same house as everybody else".

Related
Wall Streets Trillion Dollar Swindle

Unbelievable...