Replies to post #40078 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[easymoney101]

oh my .. the Communists are on both sides of the isle, in case if you haven't noticed.. that's right. and they want you guys to fight each other instead of fighting their filth.. might want to find out who really created 911! they all use to shove this shit down our throats. until you figure it all out, you will keep fighting the bogeyman. Turn off the propaganda TV owned and operated by the war machine. Ike warned you about the military complex!
You have been fed lies....the reality is, they have ALL sold us out!

read this E book...http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ that will be a start

[easymoney101]

Independent video's of 911

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3498980438587461603&q=911+eyewitness

Loose change 2 is now number 1 on google video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848

[easymoney101]

The Armed Forces Day of Reckoning
by Laurence M. Vance
imbedded links@
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance79.html
The third Saturday in May has, since 1950, been designed as Armed Forces Day. Harry Truman, who was the president at the time, remarked that the U.S. military was "vital to the security of the nation and to the establishment of a desirable peace." On the occasion of the first Armed Forces Day while he was president, Dwight Eisenhower stated: "It is fitting and proper that we devote one day each year to paying special tribute to those whose constancy and courage constitute one of the bulwarks guarding the freedom of this nation and the peace of the free world." Since today is Armed Forces Day, it perhaps the best day to say, as unpopular as it may be, that rather than contributing to the peace of the world, the U.S. military has become the greatest force for evil in the world. Instead of being a force for peace, the U.S. military, through its numerous wars, interventions, and occupations, is a force for instability, death, and destruction.

Yes, I know, I am a liberal, a communist, a Quaker, a pacifist, a peacenik, a traitor, a coward, an appeaser, an America-hater, and an anti-war weenie.

Prior to the creation of Armed Forces Day after the unification of the various branches of the military into the Department of Defense, each branch of the military had its own special day. Army Day was April 6, Navy Day was October 27, Air Force Day was August 1, and Marine Corps Day was November 10. Only Marine Corp Day is still observed. Although the Coast Guard also participates in Armed Forces Day, it has its own day (August 4), and is actually part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Like perhaps many Americans, I did not realize that May 20 was Armed Forces Day until I was sent a Patriot Petition via e-mail from The Patriot Post, advertised as "The Conservative E-Journal of Record."

The e-mail encouraged me to:

Please join fellow Patriots and sign the Petition to pray for our Armed Forces and let them know you stand with them as One Nation Under God. Please forward this invitation to friends, family members and fellow American Patriots.

Please sign this Petition to pray for our Armed Forces and forward this invitation to friends, family members and fellow American Patriots. We intend to collect as many petition signatures as possible so that brave Patriots in uniform know that we stand behind them, united in prayer.

Let your voice be heard! Please join fellow Patriots in support of the Petition to pray for our Armed Forces.

The petition is called "A Call to prayer for our Armed Forces," and reads as follows:

We, your fellow Americans, resolve and commit to pray for you, our uniformed Patriots standing in harm’s way around the world in defense of our liberty, every day. We further resolve and commit to pray for your families awaiting your safe return. We thank God for you, your courage, tenacity and vigilance.

The words of George Washington’s First Inaugural Address are fitting: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." We, the American people, then turn that trust to God, who in His sovereign wisdom gave us the freedom we enjoy.

You Patriots – American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen – have plowed the ground for liberty. We remain the proud and the free because you have stood bravely in harm’s way, and remain on post today. For this, we, the American People, offer our heartfelt thanks. We commit to continually pray for you and your families.

I agree. We should pray for the men and women in the U.S. military. The Bible says that "supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks" should "be made for all men" (1 Timothy 2:1).

But how should we pray for them? Should we pray that God bless the troops while they drop their bombs, throw their grenades, launch their missiles, fire their mortars, and shoot their bullets? Should we pray that the troops are protected while they injure, torture, maim, and kill others? Should we pray that the troops are successful when they drive their tanks into a city and reduce it to rubble?

Why not? What do you think has been happening in Iraq for the past three years?

Yes, we should pray for the troops. We should pray that the troops come home. We should pray that the troops come home now. We should pray that the blood of not one more American soldier is shed on foreign soil. We should pray for the healing of the thousands of U.S. soldiers who have been injured in the senseless Iraq war. We should pray for an end to this unconstitutional, immoral, and unjust war. We should pray that Congress ends funding for this war. We should pray that Bush leaves office a disgraced commander in chief. We should pray that young, impressionable students are not ensnared by military recruiters. We should pray that pastors stop recommending military service to their young men (and women). We should pray that families stop supplying cannon fodder to the military. We should pray that the troops actually start defending this country instead of every other country. We should pray for a change in U.S. foreign policy that can make this all possible.

But as long as the U.S. military is garrisoning the planet, there is another group of people that we should pray for: the people our armed forces are putting in harm’s way. Pray that they will not be at home when the bombs start dropping and the bullets start flying.

The U.S. military is not "plowing the ground for liberty" or "standing in defense of our liberty." The military, as the coercive arm of the U.S. government, is at once the world’s policeman, bully, and troublemaker. The United States has, for over a hundred years, intervened in the affairs of other countries in every corner of the globe. This has been documented by a number of individuals in a variety of places.

Zoltan Grossman of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, has compiled a partial list of over 100 U.S. military foreign interventions from 1890 to 2006. Global Security has a report of U.S. military operations broken down into five periods from the eighteenth century to the post cold war period. At the 2002 annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in Savannah, Georgia, one of the papers documented 176 U.S. military operations since the Cold War. Although the Department of Defense admits to having 702 military installations in foreign countries, it has been documented by Chalmers Johnson that this number is far too low and perhaps actually numbers around 1,000. I have recently chronicled the presence of U.S. troops in 158 countries or territories.

No wonder former U.S. Attorney General William Ramsey Clark has said that "the greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy." I don’t often agree with Martin Luther King Jr., but he was right when he said during the Vietnam War that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government." And Murray Rothbard, the twentieth century’s greatest proponent of liberty, was certainly correct when he claimed that "empirically, taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States."

Professor Grossman has astutely characterized U.S. military interventions:

First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage."
Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites.
Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies.
Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives.
Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales.
How much wiser were the Founding Fathers than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice! If more Americans heeded the wisdom of the Founders, a militaristic United States would never have been tolerated. It was James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," who warned the country back in 1787:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

George Washington likewise warned against "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." He believed that "the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible." He counseled that our true foreign policy should be "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Here is Thomas Jefferson’s "Quaker" foreign policy:

Peace has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it. However, therefore, we may have been reproached for pursuing our Quaker system, time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit. And this, I believe, is the only legitimate object of government, and the first duty of governors, and not the slaughter of men and devastation of the countries placed under their care, in pursuit of a fantastic honor, unallied to virtue or happiness; or in gratification of the angry passions, or the pride of administrators, excited by personal incidents, in which their citizens have no concern.

I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in the confederacy of Kings to war against the principles of liberty.

How well I remember the outrage in this country when the U.S. government shot, gassed, and burned men, women, and children in 1993 at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. So why no outrage when the U.S. military does the same thing in other countries?

The only explanation is that many Americans, and especially many conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians, are blindly in love with the U.S. military.

It is my hope and prayer that this Armed Forces Day serve as day of reckoning as to the true nature of the U.S. military. The troops must be brought home, not just from Iraq, but from every corner of the globe. The military must be scaled back to coincide with a return to the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Founders. U.S. soldiers should be limited protecting our shores, guarding our borders, and patrolling our coasts. The peace of the world depends on it.

May 20, 2006

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. He is also the director of the Francis Wayland Institute. His new book is Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. Visit his website.

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

[easymoney101]

Dr. Robert M. Bowman Head of Advanced Space Programs for DOD and retired Lt. Col for United States Air Force, a combat ... all » pilot who flew 101 missions in the Vietnam War, now a peace-activist criticizing the Star-Wars-program, talks about the impossibility of the official government story and the subsequent widespread and systematic destruction of evidence and cover-up. He also asks us to look at who benefited from 9/11.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6900065571556128674&q=robert+bowman

[easymoney101]

More from Lt. Col. Dr. Robert Bowman
http://prisonplanet.tv/audio/030406bowman.htm

[F6]

habu -- first off, let me be clear -- I am not deliberately looking to get crosswise with you -- far from it -- I've generally liked and found agreement with at least good parts of your posts over the years -- and I certainly respect your service, and you for having served, no matter how many times you pull it out of your butt that those who disagree with you and might at some time even engage in protest therefore necessarily disrespect either those who have served or their service, which in the first place is obviously beyond your ability to know, and in any event and just as obviously just is not true (see e.g. http://www.ivaw.net/ ) -- I know quite a few who have served, friends and relatives, and they're good folks, every last one of them; military service is ANYTHING but a negative to me when it comes to getting a sense of a person -- so anyway, I've long had a sense that you're a good stand-up guy, a straight-shooter -- but damn, some of the things you've said here and last evening -- wow . . . -- with all due respect, and without any ill will, I must disagree, and I must do so strongly

you begin "It's OK for you to speak out but not me. I see." -- no you don't, you don't see shit, you're just making things up -- I mean, what the &^%$ are you whining about anyway? -- just when did I ever say it's not OK for you (or anyone) to speak out? -- answer: never -- but when you say stupid shit, you should be prepared, like a man, to be called on it -- that's MY (and everybody else's) right to speak out -- or do you actually think your right to speak out means nobody else can criticize what you say, no matter how clueless or ridiculous? -- evidently so -- so, in sum, the truth is that you are the one saying it's OK for you to speak out, but not me -- even as you falsely accuse me of being the one in this conversation doing that to you -- that's called 'projection', or 'projecting', a term I used, correctly, in the post of mine to which you were replying -- try looking it up and actually thinking about it a little bit -- geesh

you then continue "THAT [saying it's not OK for those with other points of view to speak out] is typical FAR left speak." -- wtf are you talking about? -- now you've already apparently resolved your whole view of reality, never mind what that reality actually might be, by labeling, i.e. demonizing, dems in general as being 'FAR left' -- so you're saying dems in general are calling for repubs to be silenced? -- really? -- based on what, exactly? -- that's complete and utter bullshit -- and don't get mad at me for calling you on that -- you're the one who said it -- in the process of falsely accusing me, no less -- . . .

next you say "The threat to freedom today comes from Islamo Fascism and communism." -- oh, come on -- not even close -- did you even read what I said in the post to which you were replying? -- the only force on earth that is actually attacking our freedoms and has already done much to destroy them over the past few years is our current administration, and it is and has been doing so by using the very same (ooh I'm SO scared) 'Islamo Fascism' boogeyman which you invoke -- that is a fact -- and what the heck is your reference to 'communism' about? -- communism as such, in the true sense, never existed, and in any event the only significant 'communist'-labeled authoritarian regime left is mainland China, which is well on its way in evolving into an authoritarian capitalism, i.e. fascism -- which, apart from their particular cultural aspects and relative wealth versus ours, is not all that much unlike where we're well on our way to ending up thanks to our current administration

next comes "The far left is the home of communism today. Socialists who think they can do it better than those that came before them and failed." -- again, you've made clear that by 'far left' you mean dems in general -- so you're saying dems in general are communists -- that's fucking delusional -- no we're not -- and btw, 'socialist' does NOT equal 'communist', not even close -- and no, dems in general are not socialists either

and next "I for one do not wish to come under the rule of communist leaders nor religious rule of ANY kind. Far left nor far right." -- I'll let you in on a little secret -- nobody wants to 'come under the rule of communist leaders', not even us evil dems -- welcome to the club -- and as for 'religious rule of ANY kind' -- so, just for example, you therefore are vehemently opposed to dubya's faith-based initiative and similar and related -- and to his numerous appointments of religious fundamentalists for the explicit purpose of enabling them, through their positions, to impose (as they HAVE) their religious views and beliefs on others through/via the government -- and to all efforts based on religious views and beliefs to ban or restrict access to abortion, ban or restrict stem cell research and/or deny or restrict GLBT and/or women's rights, or to in any other way impose religious views and beliefs and/or deny or restrict the rights of others who do not share or fit in with such religious views and beliefs -- right? -- hey, honest question . . .

then "The likes of Gore, Dean and others of that control the Dem party worship a religion of their own. It's called the environmental and/or 'we only want to help you cause your too damn stupid to run your own life' cause." -- now where the %$#^ did that come from? -- that's pure gibberish laced with one recognizable repetition of a very old 'demonize 'em, never mind any facts' trademark bullshit repub slam on the dems -- absolutely reasonable, appropriate and legitimate (and in fact highly beneficial) environmental laws and regulations, and the environment itself (and accordingly public health), suffered badly (and continue to suffer badly) in TX thanks to Gov dubya, and now are suffering badly nationwide thanks to Prez dubya -- and his deliberate attack on real science specifically at NOAA and the EPA in respect of global warming (another little secret, it's quite real, overwhelming scientific consensus at this point, with cascades of new evidence coming in all the time) has been widely reported and COMPLETELY documented (see [items linked in] http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6645910 AND preceding and following)

next "Why cant we build more nuke plants and drill for oil on our own land?" -- based on recently-developed new reactor tech ('pebble bed', I think), and in light of the by now obvious global warming, some leading greens have actually come out saying 'build more nuke plants' -- which you might know if you actually paid any attention to what greens actually say -- re drilling for oil, there's a lot involved with that, but a couple of quick points -- we already have drilled much of what we've got -- ANWAR would be at most a year's worth for this country at current usage levels (and yes there IS value in keeping certain places as they are and it IS absolutely legitimate and NOT in any way 'communist' or 'socialist' to take that into account, and no there is NO way to drill on land/in wetlands without inevitably doing a lot of damage to local water tables/supplies etc etc leading inevitably to significant negative environmental/ecological impacts) -- and in any event, what is so smart to begin with about the idea of rushing ahead to drain whatever reserves we've got left as quickly as we can?

you continue "those that say it's big oil need only look to who is preventing BIG OIL from getting the resources we have. China is going to drill off Cuba and wala, there goes the oil we should be getting to break our dependence." -- well, then, you 'need only look to' the idiotic long-standing U.S. policy preventing business with Cuba (even as business was permitted with China and others) -- no ban on biz, our bigs have that oil, no sweat, no problem, because with no ban on biz we would have long since absorbed Cuba economically, which of course is and at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the real strategic point in any event, Castro (who clearly has been eager for trade and more than willing to negotiate) or no Castro -- we left them with no choice to do biz with our big oil -- wtf did you expect them to do?

enough parsing -- the rest of your post goes on similarly

I am not in any way attacking you as a person or saying or implying that you're a bad or ill-willed or dishonest guy -- but I am saying that it is quite clear to me that you desperately need 1) to get away from your largely nonsensical repub happy talk ideological generalizations and labelings and demonizations, and 2) to start paying more attention to facts and (dare I say it) actually start thinking for yourself

[F6]

Liberty Over Safety

By Robert Parry
May 19, 2006

Until now, every generation of Americans has traded safety for liberty. From the Lexington Green to the Normandy beaches, from the Sons of Liberty to the Freedom Riders, it has been part of the American narrative that risks are taken to expand freedom, not freedoms sacrificed to avoid risk.

The Founders challenged the most powerful military on earth, the British army, all the while knowing that defeat would send them to the gallows. The American colonists spurned their relative comfort as British subjects for a chance to be citizens of a Republic dedicated to the vision that some rights are “unalienable” and that no man should be king.

Since then, despite some ups and downs, the course of the American nation has been to advance those ideals and broaden those freedoms.

In the early years of the Republic, African-American slaves resisted their bondage, often aided by white Abolitionists who defied unjust laws on runaways and pressed the government to restrict slave states and ultimately to eliminate slavery.

With the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves, the United States underwent a painful rebirth that reaffirmed the nation’s original commitment to the principle that “all men are created equal.” Again, the cause of freedom trumped safety, a choice for which Lincoln and thousands of brave soldiers gave their lives.

In the latter half of the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth, the Suffragettes demanded and fought for extension of basic American rights to female citizens. These women risked their reputations and their personal security to gain the right to vote and other legal guarantees for women.

When fascist totalitarianism threatened the world in the 1930s and 1940s, American soldiers turned back the tide of repression in Europe and Asia, laying down their lives by the tens of thousands in countless battlefields from Normandy to Iwo Jima.

The march of freedom continued in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights fighters – both black and white – risked and sometimes lost their lives to tear down the walls of racial segregation.

For two centuries, this expansion of freedom always came with dangers and sacrifices. Yet, the trade-off was always the same: safety for liberty.

Reversed March

Only in this generation – only on our watch – has the march reversed.

Instead of swapping safety for liberty, this generation – traumatized by the 9/11 attacks and under the leadership of George W. Bush – has chosen to trade liberties for safety.

Instead of Patrick Henry’s stirring Revolutionary War cry of “give me liberty or give me death,” this era has Sen. Pat Roberts’s instant-classic expression of self over nation. “You have no civil liberties if you are dead,” the Kansas Republican explained on May 18 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he chairs.

Roberts’s dictum echoed through the mainstream media where it was embraced as a pithy expression of homespun common sense. But the commentators missed how Roberts’s preference for life over liberty was the antithesis of Henry’s option of liberty or death.

Roberts’s statement also represented a betrayal of two centuries of bravery by American patriots who gave their own lives so others could be free.

After all, it would follow logically that if “you have no civil liberties if you are dead,” then all those Americans who died for liberty were basically fools. Roberts’s adage reflects a self-centeredness, which would shame the millions of Americans who came before, putting principle and the interests of “posterity” ahead of themselves.

If Roberts is right, the Minutemen who died at Lexington Green and at Bunker Hill had no liberty; the African-Americans who enlisted in the Union Army and died in Civil War battles had no liberty; the GIs who died on the Normandy beaches or Marines who died at Iwo Jima had no liberty; Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights heroes who gave their lives had no liberty.

If Sen. Roberts is right, they had no liberties because they died in the fight for liberty. In Roberts’s view – which apparently is the dominant opinion of the Bush administration and many of its supporters – personal safety for the individual tops the principles of freedom for the nation.

This security-over-everything notion has emerged as the key justification for stripping the American people of their “unalienable rights,” liberties that were promised them in the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But the American people are now told that the President is exercising “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as long as the indefinite “war on terror” continues. Bush has been ceded these boundless powers with only a meek request from the populace that he make life in the United States a little safer from the threat of another al-Qaeda attack.

Discretionary Rights

So, Bush holds discretion over the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial, the right to know the charges against you and to confront your accuser, the protection against warrantless searches and seizures, the delicate checks and balances designed by the Founders, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the power to wage war, even the right to freedom of speech.

In claiming “plenary” powers as Commander in Chief and arguing that the United States is part of the battlefield, Bush has asserted that all rights are his, that they are given to the people only when he says so, that the rights are no longer “unalienable.”

Like before the Declaration of Independence, the American people find themselves as “subjects” reliant for their rights on the generosity of a leader, rather than “citizens” possessing rights that can’t be denied. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The End of Unalienable Rights [ http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012406.html (F6 note -- my next post, also a reply to the post to which this post is a reply)].”]

As a trade-off for accepting Bush’s unlimited powers, the American people have gotten assurances that Bush will make protecting them his top priority. Yet, the presidential oath says nothing about shielding the public from danger; rather it’s a vow to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Since George Washington first took the oath, it has been the Constitution that is paramount, because it enshrines the liberties that define America.

Within that presidential oath and within the nation’s historic commitment to freedom, there is no assurance against risk or danger. There is no government guarantee of safety, nor is there a promise that harm might not come to American citizens.

Indeed, it has been assumed by all previous generations of Americans – dating back to the beginning of the Republic and ending only with today’s fearful generation – that risk and danger were part of the price for maintaining and spreading freedom.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at http://www.secrecyandprivilege.com . It's also available at Amazon.com [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1893517012/102-6417841-4919329?v=glance&s=books ], as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Copyright 2006 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/051806.html

[F6]

The End of 'Unalienable Rights'

By Robert Parry
January 24, 2006

Every American school child is taught that in the United States, people have “unalienable rights,” heralded by the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Supposedly, these liberties can’t be taken away, but they are now gone.

Today, Americans have rights only at George W. Bush’s forbearance. Under new legal theories – propounded by Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and other right-wing jurists – Bush effectively holds all power over all Americans.

He can spy on anyone he wants without a court order; he can throw anyone into jail without due process; he can order torture or other degrading treatment regardless of a new law enacted a month ago; he can launch wars without congressional approval; he can assassinate people whom he deems to be the enemy even if he knows that innocent people, including children, will die, too.

Under the new theories, Bush can act both domestically and internationally. His powers know no bounds and no boundaries.

Bush has made this radical change in the American political system by combining what his legal advisers call the “plenary” – or unlimited – powers of the Commander in Chief with the concept of a “unitary executive [ http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/011106.html ]” in control of all laws and regulations.

Yet, maybe because Bush’s assertion of power is so extraordinary, almost no one dares connect the dots. After a 230-year run, the “unalienable rights” – as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Founding Fathers – are history.

Legal Analysis

The Justice Department spelled out Bush’s latest rationale for his new powers on Jan. 19 in a 42-page legal analysis defending Bush’s right to wiretap Americans without a warrant.

Bush’s lawyers said the congressional authorization to use force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “places the President at the zenith of his powers” and lets him use that authority domestically as well as overseas. [NYT, Jan. 20, 2006]

According to the analysis, the “zenith of his powers” allows Bush to override both the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against searches and seizures without court orders, and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a special secret court to approve spying warrants inside the United States.

In its legal analysis, the Justice Department added, “The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States.”

While the phrase “consistent with the Constitution” sounds reassuring to many Americans, what it means in this case is that Bush believes he has unlimited powers as Commander in Chief to do whatever he deems necessary in the War on Terror.

Since the War on Terror is a vague concept – unlike other wars the United States has fought – there also is no expectation that Bush’s usurpation of traditional American freedoms is just a short-term necessity. Instead it is a framework for future governance.

For a time, some Americans also may have thought that Bush’s commander-in-chief powers applied only to foreigners linked to al-Qaeda and to the occasional American who collaborated with the terrorist group. So they didn’t mind much when Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and locked up without charge as an “enemy combatant.”

That indefinite detention might have violated the constitutional principle of habeas corpus – the requirement that every citizen has a right to due process and a fair trial – but many Americans were swayed when Bush called Padilla a “bad guy” who was getting what he deserved.

Now, Americans have learned that Bush considers his powers to extend to a much broader category of citizens. That is the significance of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program directed against hundreds of American targets at any one time.

In bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Bush demonstrated his belief, too, that he has the power to ignore specific laws as well as broader constitutional principles.

Lies and Lies

Another factor complicating the ability of Americans to understand the emerging constitutional crisis is that Bush has shown a readiness to lie about the cases.

For instance, though he secretly approved the wiretap program in 2002, he kept telling the public that wiretaps could only be done with court warrants. In a speech [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040420-2.html ] in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 20, 2004, Bush went out of his way to state that he had not abrogated the rights of American citizens under the Fourth Amendment.

“By the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order,” Bush said. “Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

After the warrantless wiretaps became public in December 2005, Bush continued to misrepresent the program, calling it “limited” to “taking known al-Qaeda numbers – numbers from known al-Qaeda people – and just trying to find out why the phone calls are being made.”

In his folksy style, he told an audience in Louisville, Kentucky, on Jan. 11 that “it seems like to me that if somebody is talking to al-Qaeda, we want to know why.”

But Bush’s reassuring tale wasn’t true. The program that Bush described could easily be accomplished under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act using a provision that lets the government wiretap for 72 hours before going to the special court for a warrant.

The reality is that Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to scoop up a vast number of calls and e-mails. The operation is so large that it has generated thousands of tips each month, which are passed on to the FBI.

“But virtually all of [the tips], current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans,” the New York Times reported. “FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. … Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.” [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006]

Another example of Bush’s assertion of his supremacy over laws enacted by Congress came in December 2005 when he signed Sen. John McCain’s amendment barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

Bush then issued a so-called “signing statement” that reserved his right to ignore the law.

“The Executive Branch shall construe [the torture ban] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power,” the signing statement read.

In other words, since Bush considers his commander-in-chief authority boundless, he can waive the torture ban whenever he wants, making it virtually meaningless.

The Bush/Laden Symbiosis

But just as public skepticism about Bush’s exercise of authority was approaching critical mass, Osama bin-Laden resurfaced on Jan. 19 in a new audiotape sent to al-Jazeera TV, ending more than a year of silence.

The voice on the tape – identified as that of bin-Laden both by al-Jazeera and the CIA – predicted America’s defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq while warning of new attacks inside the United States.

“Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished,” said bin-Laden, according to a transcript of the tape [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4628932.stm ].

So, Bush can now cite this new threat from al-Qaeda as well as the bloody conflict in Iraq as justifications for continuing to consolidate his powers as the “unitary executive.”

The latest bin-Laden audiotape also continues a long – and curious – symbiotic relationship between the Bush family and the bin-Ladens, dating back to Bush’s days as a young businessman.

In 1979, Bush’s friend James Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin-Laden, scion of the wealthy Saudi bin-Laden family and Osama’s half-brother. While fronting for Salem bin-Laden, Bath helped bankroll Bush’s first company, Arbusto Energy, by investing $50,000 for a five percent stake.

In the 1980s, Osama bin-Laden established himself as an Islamic fighter by battling side-by-side with Afghan rebels whose guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and its surrogates was staunchly supported by George H.W. Bush, first as vice president and then as president.

By the late 1990s, bin-Laden had become recognized as a major terrorist threat against the United States. Still, when the CIA warned George W. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, that bin-Laden was determined “to strike in U.S.,” Bush went fishing and continued a month-long vacation, failing to rally the government to examine available clues and tighten security.

A little more than a month later, on Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the senior George Bush and members of the bin-Laden family were participating in a Carlyle Group investment meeting in Washington.

In the days that followed, as George W. Bush’s Justice Department rounded up hundreds of Arab cab drivers and other Muslims on minor visa violations, the bin-Ladens were spirited out of the United States after only cursory questioning. [For details, see Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud.]

Ironically, too, Bush’s accumulation of power since the Sept. 11 attacks has gone hand-in-hand with his failures connected to Osama bin-Laden. For instance, if Bush had finished off al-Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002, he would have a weaker foundation for his new authority now.

By letting bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders escape when they apparently were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush kept alive a plausible scenario for additional al-Qaeda attacks inside the United States and thus the justification for his unrestrained powers as Commander in Chief.

The escape from the Americans in Afghanistan helped bin-Laden, too. He emerged as a folk hero to many Islamists.

By invading Iraq in 2003, Bush breathed more life into his presidential powers. But another winner was bin-Laden, who exploited Islamic resentment about the Iraq War to recruit new terrorist cadre and train them in direct conflict with American soldiers.

Just as Bush’s boasts about getting bin-Laden “dead or alive” boosted the Saudi’s standing with radical jihadists, bin-Laden’s public hostility to Bush has helped the president’s standing with the American people at key junctures.

In fall 2004, when Bush was locked in a tight race with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, bin-Laden released a videotape that conservative pundits billed as Osama’s endorsement of Kerry, a development that predictably helped Bush gain ground in the campaign’s closing days.

Now, as Bush faces increased U.S. public skepticism about the Iraq War and his accretion of powers, bin-Laden shows up again with a statement that calls on the United States to admit defeat in Iraq and threatens new terror attacks on U.S. soil.

Not surprisingly, the reaction of many Americans to the bin-Laden tape is to harden their commitment to keep U.S. troops in Iraq – the outcome that both bin-Laden and Bush favor, albeit for different reasons.

Bin-Laden’s warning of a new terrorist assault also stokes the fears of Americans who are likely to react by giving Bush greater leeway in the War on Terror.

A day after bin-Laden’s audiotape was aired, Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove signaled that the Republicans would again try to ride the War on Terror to another round of victories in November 2006.

“Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview,” Rove told a Republican National Committee meeting on Jan. 20. “That doesn’t make them unpatriotic – not at all. But it does make them wrong – deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.” [Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2006]

Like the symbiotic relationship that exists when birds feed off ticks burrowed into the hides of rhinos, the Bush/Laden symbiosis may be entirely unspoken and even unintentional. But there can be little doubt that Bush has raised bin-Laden’s stature among radical Islamists while bin-Laden has helped Bush consolidate his authoritarian powers inside the United States.

Today’s Challenge

But the crucial question now is whether the American political system will acquiesce to Bush’s historic power grab – or resist it.

So far, the major U.S. news media and leading Democrats have closed their eyes to the totality of Bush’s claims to unprecedented Executive power. Senate Democrats have even shied away from threatening to filibuster [ http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012106.html ] Bush’s Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, one of the legal architects of the Imperial Presidency.

One of the few political leaders who has sounded the alarm is former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the issue in a speech [ http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011606Y.shtml (F6 note -- also at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=9279146 , see also [items linked in] preceding and following)] on Jan. 16, the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

“An Executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an all-powerful Executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free,” Gore said.

“As the Executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.”

Except for Gore, however, few national leaders or news commentators have dared to draw clear conclusions about Bush’s authoritarian tendencies.

No one, it seems, wants to give up on the most memorable passage of the Declaration of Independence, that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Today, however, these truths are no longer “self-evident,” nor are the rights “unalienable.” They depend on the beneficence and generosity of George W. Bush.

Despite his assertion of unlimited power, Bush surely will not interfere in the lives of most Americans; just the small number who somehow get in his way. Most Americans probably won’t even notice their altered status, from citizens to subjects.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at http://www.secrecyandprivilege.com . It's also available at Amazon.com [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1893517012/102-6417841-4919329?v=glance&s=books ], as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Copyright 2006 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012406.html

[F6]

The beasts who would destroy us

"The demonic appears most terrible when it assumes dominance in some one person. They are not always the most admirable persons, either in mind or in gifts. But a tremendous force goes out from them, and they exercise an unbelievable power over all creatures. It is in vain that the brighter part of mankind tries to throw suspicion on them as betrayers or betrayed; the masses are attracted by them." ~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By Sheila Samples
05/22/06
Information Clearing House

America has lost its way. We are a confused nation, beset on all sides by fear and paranoia. After the orchestrated 9-11 attack on New York City and Washington D.C., and its follow-up anthrax attack on Democratic legislators, Americans of all stripes rushed en masse to George Bush's Fools' Gate to trade their morality and compassion for empty promises of security. The consequences of that Faustian trade are unbelievable. In order to be safe we signed a pact with Decider Bush to condone any atrocity he could dream up so long as it happened in other lands to other men, other women, other children. He agreed, and further decided that no law conjured up by mere man applied to him, especially the U.S. Constitution, and demanded we sacrifice our freedoms as collateral for this evil pact.

How easily we were fooled! Fat, indolent, and full of self-righteous pus, we were ripe for harvest. We are at the mercy of The Decider, who is manipulated from behind the scenes by unelected neo-Straussian thugs lusting for the matrix of a One World Order. They are joined by Christo-fascists soiling themselves at the thought of gaining dominion over the government apparatus and realizing their dream of stoning gays and liberals to death, and by rapacious corporations intent on ransacking the universe until it is stripped of all treasure and resources. Although their agendae differ, this greedy axis shares a single goal -- that of complete power and control -- an area where morality dies aborning. They also share one other critical attribute -- they are aggressively anti-American -- traitors contemptuous of representative democracy who will not rest until every last vestige of it is wiped from the face of the earth.

The war they are waging is on us.

We have lost much over the past five years, but nothing as profound as our spirituality. The religious among us are little more than blind sheep milling around, stumbling in single file in the direction of the loudest voice blaring from Tower of Babel churches and media ministries. They are unable to discern good from evil and incapable of recognizing the filthy hypocrisy of the religious right's fundamentalist theocracy. And there are more of them every day -- God's warriors eagerly following the divinely inspired Bush into a dark world of assassination, torture, murder and madness. Bush is "born again." He said so himself. God talks to him. Would he do anything that was not God's will?

I wonder if there is just one true Christian who can look at what Bush has done in the last five years, and what he is threatening to do in the next three and say that Bush is "born again"? Do Christians not know their own God? Did not God warn us to be vigilant against the "Deceiver" masquerading as a messenger of light lest we fall prey to, and become a part of, the evil swirling around us? Are we not responsible for discerning the nature of the beast -- the false prophets sent out into the world?

I do not recognize this devilishly destructive, violent god of the evangelical religious right who has sent Bush on his genocidal mission. The God I am familiar with is the One to whom my mother knelt in tearful prayer each night and raised her sweet, wonderful voice in praise each day. He is the One to whom David sang in Psalm 5:4 --"For thou are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with thee. The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. Thou destroyest those who speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men."

Do not be deceived. Emerson says that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment, and each breath Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the hypocritical Republican Christo-fascist machine emit are putrid blasts of evil lies. As Carolyn Baker writes [ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8816.htm ] so succinctly..." The religious right of twenty-first century America is anti-American, inherently violent, and a cruel, tyrannical, punitive, force of death and destruction. "

Baker says the "unredeemed, the unbelievers, the poor, the feminists, the gay and lesbian, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, and those who are conscientiously following divergent spiritual paths of their choice, are suffering in the wake of Christian fundamentalism’s devastation of the economy, the earth, and the human race." She says adult human lives do not matter to these people and, unless we follow their tenets, we deserve to "burn in hell for all of eternity. Hence, we are expendable, inconsequential, and a force to be conquered, broken, imprisoned, or killed."

How easily these creatures who have never served their country in uniform send others to be maimed, broken and killed in an endless "war on terror," which is nothing but an abstraction whose reality lies in the mind of the beholder. Day after weary day the bodies pile up at the feet of the stubborn, mean-spirited Bush and the beast he has unleashed upon the world whose thirst for blood cannot be quenched. There have been 2,471 Americans slaughtered [ http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm ] because of the shameful lies told by Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and others -- and especially by the dishonorable Colin Powell who carried the beast's water all the way to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghanistani men, women and children have perished on the alter of Bush's god, who is even now panting to bury his fangs in the throat of Iran.

The present-day "religion" has little to do with Christianity. It is all bloody politics. The Republican party is little more than a fascist religious cult whose goal is to take over this republic and rule it by the cold compassion of the Old Testament God. For those who doubt that consolidating power and controlling politics is far more important to the religious right than saving souls, Katherine Yurica reports in her The New Messiahs [ http://www.yuricareport.com/Art%20Essays/The%20New%20Messiahs%20Excerpts.htm ] text that Pat Robertson announced publicly on his 700 Club at a time when the religious right was gaining dominance, “We have enough votes to run the country -- and when the people say, ‘we’ve had enough,’ we’re going to take over the country.”

Yurica said there was never any doubt of the ultimate goal of not only Robertson, but Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and many others. "What is dominion?" Pat Robertson asked his television audience, “Well," he said, "dominion is lordship, to reign and rule."

And kill. The scent of innocent blood sends these guys into nearly as wild a frenzy as it does Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Falwell recently announced in trembling excitement, “You’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I’m for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

Robertson has called on his followers to pray for the deaths of Supreme Court justices. He has called for the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez no less than three times. Both Falwell and Robertson openly blamed the attacks of 9-11 on gays, lesbians and pagan liberals. If Robertson weren't so dangerous the blasphemous "chats" he claims to have, wherein he trivializes, demeans and ridicules the Creator of the entire Universe, would be hilarious. Just last week Robertson babbled that God gave him a heavenly weather report. "If I heard the Lord [ http://www.wftv.com/news/9235304/detail.html ] right," he said, "storms and possibly a tsunami would hit US coasts this year."

And, in April, God helped him cure a woman of her asthma. Robertson said fortunately he had his wife with him -- "this haunting woman...very attractive -- striking brunette, 45 years old, you know thin, 5'8" kinda thing..." Robertson said he prayed, "Lord, what's wrong with her?" And God said, "ask her about her sex life [ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/07/sunday/main1481775.shtml#top ]." Robertson and God argued for a bit before Robertson asked her about her marriage, which she said was "wonderful." He turned back to God, reminding us again that he had his wife with him, and asked, "Lord, what's the matter?" God insisted, "Ask her about her sex life." So, as soon as ol' Pat asked her about her sex life and she said she didn't have any, God cured her of her asthma.

The beasts who would destroy us -- will destroy us -- if we are not vigilant -- walk among us not as the hideous demons they are, but hide their true nature behind the masks of their twisted ethos, disguised as bumbling, arrogant fools. Thanks to them, America is no longer a Beacon of Freedom to the rest of the world, but a flickering ray of shame and derision. Thanks to them, God has become a symbol of hate and terror. Because of their lust, the American Flag is now America's funeral shroud.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: [e-mail].

© 2006 Sheila Samples (emphasis in original)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13148.htm

[F6]

Al Gore's Unlikely Helpers


"An Inconvenient Truth, " featuring Al Gore, opens this week.
Photo Credit: By Eric Lee -- Copyright 2006 Paramount Classics

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, May 22, 2006; Page A17

Liberals famously love John McCain, but that's not the weirdest political coupling. The oil industry and its Republican allies are rooting for Al Gore, albeit unintentionally.

Gore stars in a movie that opens this week in New York and Los Angeles. The film features the once and maybe future presidential candidate lecturing about climate change: There are charts, bullet points and diagrams; there are maps of ocean currents and endless iceberg pictures. It's hard to say which menaces the nation more: movie stars who go into politics or politicians who go into movies.

Ordinarily this film would never have been made, let alone scheduled for release in hundreds of theaters. But President Bush and the congressional Republicans have created a Ross Perot moment: a hunger for a leader with diagrams and charts, for a nerd who lays out basic facts ignored by blinkered government. By their contempt for expert opinion on everything from Iraqi reconstruction to the cost of their tax cuts, Republicans have turned Diagram Gore into a hero. By their serial dishonesty, Republicans have created a market for "An Inconvenient Truth" -- the title of Gore's movie.

Republican dishonesty reaches its extreme on the issue of global warming. Yes, climate science is complex, and nobody can forecast the earth's temperature with complete confidence. But the fact that scientists don't know everything isn't a license to ignore what they do know: that the earth is warming, glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising at an accelerating pace -- and that these changes are driven at least partly by fossil-fuel consumption. The U.S. National Academies [ http://www4.nas.edu/onpi/webextra.nsf/web/climate?OpenDocument ] have confirmed [ http://www.nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf ] this; their foreign counterparts have confirmed this; and so has the world's top authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [ http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/syreng/spm.pdf ]. None of this is controversial.

Except among Republicans. Candidate Bush acknowledged that climate change was a problem; once elected he denied it; then he denied the denial but refused to let his administration do anything about climate. Lately he has talked about ridding the nation of its oil addiction, but that's because oil finances Arab extremism. Bush has been silent [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060425.html ] on the link between oil and global warming.

Meanwhile, others have been vocal. James Inhofe, the Republican who ironically chairs the Senate environment committee, has described global warming as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He avoids scientists who might put him right: His star witness at a hearing last year was Michael Crichton, a science-fiction novelist.

Then there is Conrad Burns, a Republican senator from Montana. "You remember the ice age?" he asked Environment and Energy Daily this month. "It's been warming ever since, and there ain't anything we can do to stop it."

Every quote like this plays into Gore's hands, turning his statements of scientific conventional wisdom into heroic actions. But the Republicans and their allies don't see what they're doing. Last week, in anticipation of Gore's movie launch, conservatives unleashed two TV ads [ http://streams.cei.org/ ] on what they called "the alleged global warming crisis."

The ads are the work of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a group backed by the oil industry that supplies the anti-scientific crowd with arguments. "Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life," both scripts conclude, as the camera homes in on a girl with a dandelion. The ads' main scientific contention is that the talk of melting ice caps is all wrong: "Greenland's glaciers are growing, not melting."

Well, the most authoritative and up-to-date statement on climate science is contained in a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is circulating in draft form. According to scientists who have seen it, Chapter Four says: "Taken together, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking." As to the possibility that the melting of some ice caps is offset by the growth of others, the draft also says: "Thickening in central regions of Greenland is more than offset by increased melting near the coast."

In other words, the ads are nonsense. So are some of the assertions on the CEI Web site. The group suggests, for example, that polar bears have nothing to fear from the melting of their habitat. But the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment [ http://amap.no/acia/ ], a top-notch peer-reviewed source on this subject, has something different to say: "the reduction in sea ice is very likely to have devastating consequences for polar bears."

Six years ago, Bush narrowly defeated Gore, apparently because voters thought he'd be a nicer guy to have a beer with. But after years of governmental bungling, of willful indifference to truth, the national mood seems to be changing. Voters have seen that nice guys can screw up. And technocrats with diagrams and charts have never seemed so interesting.

[e-mail]

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/21/AR2006052101183.html

[F6]

Bush ‘Doubts’ He’ll See Gore Movie; Wants To ‘Set Aside’ Global Warming Science



Posted by Faiz May 22, 2006 3:27 pm

President Bush was asked this morning whether he will watch Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth [ http://www.climatecrisis.net/ ]. “Doubt it [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-bush-gore-global-warming,1,2294097.stor... ],” the president answered. He went on to argue that we need to “set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects.”

Two important points need to be made:

1. Bush casts his answer in terms of a debate that exists on whether greenhouse gases are caused by human activity. In fact, as ThinkProgress has repeatedly [ http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/03/global-warming-myths/ ] documented [ http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/attack-on-gore/ ], there is no scientific debate on this issue. Not a single peer-reviewed study conducted between 1993 and 2003 challenged the consensus that the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

2. Bush cannot solve the problem of global warming if he does not understand its root cause. By “setting aside” the issue of why the globe is warming, Bush wants to also sidestep the need for his administration to begin efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions [ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0829-02.htm ], as he once pledged [ http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200103/NAT20010314c.html ] to do.

Sounds like Bush is someone who could really benefit from watching the movie. (It’s playing close to the White House [ http://www.climatecrisis.net/findatheater/ ]. Here’s a map [ http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=555+11th+St+NW,+Washington,+DC+20004+(Landmark+E+Street+Cinema)+%4... ].)

Full transcript below:

QUESTION: Will you see Al Gore’s new movie?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: Doubt it.

(LAUGHTER)

But I will say this about the environmental debate: that my answer to the energy question also is an answer to how you deal with, you know, the greenhouse gas issue. And that is new technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars, which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment.

And in my judgment, we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and, at the same time, protect the environment.

© 2006 Center for American Progress Action Fund

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/22/bush-gore-movie/ [F6 note -- extensive comments also at this link]

[F6]

In the Northwest, Nuclear Power Takes a Hit



By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 22, 2006; Page A02

KALAMA, Wash., May 21 -- It was ironic -- for an explosion.

Just as nuclear power begins to emerge as a possible savior from global warming -- the co-founder of Greenpeace said last month it might avert catastrophic climate change, a New York Times editorial said last week that it deserves a "fresh look" -- the cooling tower from what had once been the nation's largest nuclear plant is blown to smithereens.

The explosion occurred near here on Sunday morning. After a carefully controlled kaboom, the 499-foot cooling tower of the Trojan Nuclear Plant tilted gently to the east and melted in a cloud of whitish-gray dust that drifted upstream with the wind along the Oregon side of the Columbia River.

For most of the past three decades, the concrete cooling tower -- a spookily gigantic industrial apparition visible for miles above the evergreens along Interstate 5, the busiest highway in the Pacific Northwest -- has loomed in the region's imagination as a symbol of all that was sneaky, leaky and insanely expensive about nuclear power.

The softening of political opposition to the nuclear industry that seems to be occurring elsewhere in the United States, with tentative plans by utilities in the Midwest and Southeast to build new plants, is not yet changing hearts and minds in Oregon or Washington.

For that, the Trojan plant, which began making electricity in 1976 and was shut down in 1993, has much to answer for. Besides chronic technical, safety and reliability problems, it cost local utility customers more than $400 million to build and is costing them $409 million to decommission.

The Trojan plant came online in an era when Northwest politicians and corporate leaders were besotted by the promise of clean nuclear power. In a spectacularly ill-conceived scheme, work began on five other nuclear power plants as part of a consortium of utilities called the Washington Public Power Supply System, which quickly became infamous as Whoops.

Whoops indeed. Construction of the five plants -- only one of which ever produced electricity, none of which was then needed -- led to what, at the time, was the country's largest municipal bond default. Consumers across the Northwest are still paying for Whoops in their monthly electricity bills -- a catastrophe that in one five-year stretch pushed up electricity rates by about 600 percent. Washington and Oregon have since passed laws that restrict the construction of nuclear power plants.

If all that were not enough, the Trojan plant was also widely reported and popularly believed to have been the real-world inspiration for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, the laughably mismanaged, wildly dangerous workplace of television's Homer Simpson. Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons," grew up in nearby Portland, Ore., during troubled times at Trojan.

That rumor, though, turns out not to be true. "There is no connection between the Trojan Power Plant and the one in 'The Simpsons,' " according to Groening's handlers.

In any case, it took just a few seconds for the towering symbol of bad nuclear times gone by to disappear in dust. The "Trojan Implosion," as it was billed, was the handiwork of Controlled Demolition Inc., a Baltimore company that blows up lots of large concrete things, most notably sports stadiums such as the Kingdome in Seattle and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

Mark Loizeaux, who owns the demolition company and joined reporters to watch the blast from the Washington side of the Columbia, cheerily rated the tower's implosion as "a textbook job." He noted that a rather large bit of concrete from the tower was still standing -- about 45-feet high in one spot -- but said that he had expected as much. A 20,000-pound wrecking ball, he said, would soon clean up the mess.

About a minute after the tower fell in on itself, Loizeaux barked into a radio, telling police that they could unblock traffic on I-5 and the Coast Guard that it could unblock shipping on the Columbia.

The plant owner, Portland General Electric, was also pleased. Tower demolition was a major step in the utility's long, costly and embarrassing effort to extricate itself from a plant whose problems ranged from chronic steam leaks to an exceedingly unfortunate location -- on a major earthquake fault, sitting on the southern bank of the West's largest river and just upwind from Portland, the second-largest city in the Northwest.

With ratepayers footing the bill, PGE has been taking Trojan apart for more than a decade. The plant's nuclear reactor and nearly all of its radioactive machinery have been barged upstream on the Columbia for burial at the federal Hanford nuclear reservation. Highly radioactive fuel rods remain in storage at the site, waiting for the federal government to decide where they can be safely buried.

Scott Simms, a PGE spokesman who watched the implosion, was eager on Sunday to talk about how his company has shifted its focus to wind power and high-efficiency, gas-driven turbines.

Asked about the irony of knocking down a nuclear plant when other utilities are planning similar plants, Simms noted that Trojan was "outmoded compared to anything that might be built today." He did not mention irony.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/21/AR2006052100933.html

[F6]

Molly Ivins: Can Things Get Any Worse?

Posted on May 21, 2006
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas — Looking at the wreckage of the Bush administration leaves one with the depressed query, “Now what?” The only help to the country that can come from this ugly and spectacular crackup is, in theory, things can’t get worse. This administration is so discredited it cannot talk the country into an unnecessary war with Iran as it did with Iraq. In theory, spending is so out of control it cannot cut taxes for the rich again; the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bushies is already among its lasting legacies.

As we all know, things can always get worse, and often do. I rather think it’s going to be up to the Democrats to hold the metaphoric hands of this crippled administration until it limps off stage. The Republican National Committee has a new scare tactic for the faithful: You must give to the party, or else the Democrats will spend the next two years investigating the administration (horror of horrors). Those who recall the insanely trivial investigations of the Clinton years may indeed regard this as the ultimate waste of time and money (as even Ken Starr concluded, there never was anything to Whitewater), but in fact it could be a therapeutic use of the next biennium. In fact, the offenses are not comparable.

Suppose we really did stop to investigate why and how and who is responsible for the lies, the deformed policies and the inability to govern in this administration. There is a wealth of lessons to be learned about the dangers of ideological delusion and of contempt for governance.

Trouble is, the world is not apt to hold still for two years. It seems to me pointless to impeach Bush. In the first place, the Republicans so trivialized impeachment into partisan piffle it would look like little more than payback. In the second place, I believe Dick Cheney is seriously off the rails, apparently deeply paranoid—let’s not put him in charge. The minimum we should expect of Bush in return for dropping any impeachment attempt (or not) is that he cease breaking the law. Despite the opinions of Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, etc., the president of the United States does not have the authority to set aside the law.

(If Bush were impeached, I would use as evidence his astounding statement in March that the matter of getting American troops out of Iraq “will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.” What a contemptible statement.)

It would be easier to contemplate a two-year holding period if Bush hadn’t already wasted so much time. Of particular note in this department is “the inconvenient truth”—global warming. Wasting eight years in the face of what we already knew when Bush came in is not only insane but also unforgivable. A recent poll showed that the majority of Americans feel the war in Iraq will be the overriding issue of Bush’s presidency. I think that future historians will fixate instead on his global warming record—not only doing nothing to stop it but letting the hole get dug deeper.

Barring emergency, I suspect the wisest thing Democrats can do in the next two years is to begin steadily undoing what Bush hath wrought—on tax and spending, on global warming, and on surveillance and other illegal lunges for power. George W. Bush ran in 2000 as a moderate. He did not bother to inform us at the time that he felt the government of this country needed a much stronger executive, one above the law. Congress has sat by passively while this administration accrued more and more power. If members of Congress think the legislative branch should be equal, it’s time for them to stir their stumps.

Am I jumping to conclusions? Can Karl Rove yet steer his party away from electoral disaster in the fall? I learned long ago never to call elections further out than six weeks, and normally I stick to that rule. But I do not think George W. can be put together again, so Rove’s only option is to go negative against the Democrats—no surprise there. At this point, the Republicans could attack Democrats on almost anything, but that would leave the large question, “Compared to what?” And, we must watch out for those voting machines.

It would be interesting to see an election in which Bush is not a factor and the whole fight is over what Tom DeLay and the K Street Project have made of the Congress. If ever a gang of corrupt jerks deserved to be held accountable, this one does.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com .

Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060521_molly_ivins_bush_worse/ [F6 note -- extensive comments, a number quite trenchant, also at this link]

[F6 comment -- to habu, and to all -- we dems, indeed all Americans, have very good reason to view dubya&co as we do -- we are the moderates -- and all who speak out in defense of the Constitution and the rule of law and seek to end the failed policies and the outrageous abuses and corruption of this administration and its lap-dog Congress are patriots]