Tag: George W. Bush

HUCKABEE: There’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush. George Bush inherited an economy when he became president back in 2001 that was already beginning to show real signs of the stress from the breaking of the technology bubble. George Bush didn’t go out whining and complaining every day, he stood up like the president of the United States and he worked on trying to get it fixed.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/…

    Really? Are you sure about that Huck?

   Remember how bad it was under Clinton? Having a job you had to go to and money to pay bills with sure was a drag. I mean, considering the fact that Clinton left Bush with the longest rate of economic growth and prosperity in our nation’s history, you can see just how unfair it is for Obama to blame Bush for the economic clusterfuck he was handed on 1/20/09. Seriously. It isn’t like Bush would have done that to his predecessor?

    Oh. Wait. He did.

   “When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession.” – Bush, 8/7/02

   “The president inherited a Clinton recession and turned it into the early stages of Bush prosperity.” – Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, 9/2/04

   “In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.” – Bush, 1/12/09

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/…

    Damned history. It constantly gets in the way of pretend reality we would love to live in.

    Quit spending money so we can use it for tax cuts. That seems to be the root of every “Gov spending is evil” complaint.

    Guess why the stimulus wasn’t enough? It is because the crooked corporatists in the GOP just had to have 40% of the stimulus as tax cuts, tax cuts that return only cents for every dollar the Government invests into them, and tax cuts that mainly benefit only the rich. Nevermind that the Obama bailout itself went straight to the rich as well. And what did we get for the $300 Billion or so in tax cuts that the GOP demanded had to be in the stimulus? 3 measly votes.

    The only thing better than having your cake and eating too must be making sure no one else gets cake and then telling them when they are mad “Let Them Eat Cake.”

    I thought religious people were supposed to be empathetic?

    On the face of things, Mike Huckabee looks like a sane, rational person. Some even find that he has a certain charisma. I feel the same way about the carnival barker who sells elixir at the county fair. Sure he talks a good game, but if you buy his shtick watch out. The elixir selling carnival barker, much like Huckabee, is selling you crap, and, much like Huckabee and the rest of the GOP, if you want your money back you will never be able to find him again.

   Remind me never to take political or economic advice from someone who doesn’t believe in evolution or a woman’s right to chose.

   If it was up to Huck we would just cut taxes, halt Government spending on everything but the Military and Faith based initiatives, and pray for the Bush Depression to go away.

   Good luck with that.

   And for future reference, the next time someone  ( especially if that someone is Mike Huckabee) thinks Mike Huckabee has advice for us on the economy or anything President Obama should do regarding the Bush Administration, would someone please tell him to Shut The Huck Up!

     

Please support Torture Awareness Day

Simulposted at Daily Kos

Medical reports corroborated the detainee’s account, stating that the detainee had a broken nose, fractured leg, and scars on his stomach. In addition, soldiers confirmed that Task Force 20 interrogators wearing civilian clothing had interrogated the detainee. However, after initially reporting the abuse, the detainee said that he was forced by an American soldier to sign a statement denouncing the claims or else be kept in detention indefinitely. He agreed.

    An investigator who reviewed the signed statement concluded that “[t]his statement, alone, is a prima facie indication of threats.” However, despite the medical report and testimony from other soldiers, the criminal file was ultimately closed on the grounds that the investigation had “failed to prove or disprove” the offenses.

ACLU.org

    Does anything stand against the American concept of the rule of law more than this?

Article 129

The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.

Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.

Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches defined in the following Article.

In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the present Convention.

Article 130

Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.

Article 131

No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu…

     I interpret this as meaning that nobody gets to pick and choose which articles they will or will not follow. There is either the rule of law applied equally to all, or there is lawlessness.

    This goes for EVERYONE, including the Obama Administration.

    After the Geneva Convention was ratified by the United States of America it became American law. An American Law that the Bush/Cheney Administration broke. An American law that the Obama Administration has not broken yet, but that day is quickly approaching.

    There are 1311 days until the next inauguration ceremony in 2012. President Obama has until the day before then to bring Bush/Cheney to justice. If he gets re-elected the clock gets set back and he will have until 2017 to do so. Each day that passes by is another day closer to complicity.

    Is it really worth protecting the Bush Administration for Obama?

    Better yet, should the new phrase be It Doesn’t Count When Obama Does It?

    I did not vote for more War Crimes or more violations of the Geneva Convention, among other things.

    On this one I will not give up on President Obama or his Administration. Still, my patience has limits. Right now, there are 1311 days of my patience left.

    How much more patience should I have?

Simulposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Of all the people to criticize President Obama, or any President for that matter, this is by far and away the dumbest and most criminal of them all.

    Ex President and future War Criminal Geogre W Bush had some words to share with Uhmerica yesterday at an event in Erie, PA

   “There are a lot of ways to remedy the situation without nationalizing health care,” Mr. Bush said. “I worry about encouraging the government to replace the private sector when it comes to providing insurance for health care.”

   Asked by the evening emcee at the 104th annual Manufacturer and Business Association meeting if he finds the new president’s policies “socialist,” Mr. Bush started then stopped.

   “I hear a lot of those words, but it depends on…,” he said, breaking off. He later offered a more diplomatic assessment: “We’ll see.”

thinkprogress.org

    Let your Congress critter know that if they stand against a public option on health care reform, they stand with George W Bush.

     Which President was really palling around with terrorists?

Via Kos himself, from back in May 17, 2004

RIGGS BANK FINED FOR LAX OVERSIGHT OF SAUDI MONEY, WHICH MIGHT HAVE GONE TO TERRORISTS

According to the 5/14/04 New York Times, Federal regulators fined the Riggs National Corporation, the parent company of Riggs Bank, $25 million yesterday for “failing to report suspicious activity, the largest penalty ever assessed against a domestic bank in connection with money laundering. The fine stems from Riggs’s failure over at least the last two years to actively monitor suspect financial transfers through Saudi Arabian accounts held by the bank.” The 5/14/04 Wall Street Journal reported that of particular concern, Riggs failed to monitor “tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian embassy,” including “suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier’s checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan.” According to the 4/18/04 Washington Post, Saudi Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, “may have used a Riggs account to donate money to a charity that then gave some of it to the Sept. 11 terrorists.” According to the Washington Post, federal regulators “called Riggs actions a “‘willful, systemic’ violation of anti-money-laundering law.” Riggs officials have “acknowledged years of deficiencies in reporting to law enforcement hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious financial transactions by foreign customers, particularly those connected with the embassies of Saudi Arabia.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

     In Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, a suit filed by several insurance companies who sought to recover over $300 billion for losses incurred by the 9/11 attacks, the following men are named as defendants.

   Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, president of SHC, who was warned in 2000 of his organization’s ties to al Qaeda;

   Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the designated successor to King Abdullah, who received warnings as early as 1994 that some Muslim charitable groups were fronts for al Qaeda;

   Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who as Saudi Minister of the Interior monitors and controls the charities operating in Saudi Arabia;

   Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who was the director of the Kingdom’s Department of General Intelligence (“DGI”) until August 2001; and

   Prince Mohamed al Faisal al Saud, who unlike the other princes named is not a government official but a bank manager alleged to have knowingly provided material sponsorship to international terrorism.

cbs2chicago.com

    When the crown prince and successor to the throne of Saudi Arabia is warned back in 1994 that charities his family supports are funneling money to terrorist organizations, and then those groups attack America, you would think that somebody in the executive branch would find that interesting.

    But not Bush/Cheney. They spent every minute between the Inauguration and 9/10/2001 trying to find a way to attack Iraq. Defending America from terrorism was not very interesting until after the attack had already occurred.

    This is not the only evidence that the royal family and absolute rulers of Saudi Arabia directly aided Al Qaeda before and up to the attacks against America on September 11th. This evidence is well documented, and yet it went ignored.

    Why was this evidence ignored? I will not speculate on that point, rather, here is more evidence. You may decide for yourself.

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week – immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives – former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a “wedge issue,” as noted on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

[snip]

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does.

[snip]

As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, “Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation’s adherence to the rule of law…. Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it.

Read the whole thing here…

Torturing Democracy originally aired on PBS January 21st, 2009

You can watch “Torturing Democracy” here in three segments, or watch the full  one hour program below.

I originally posted this here at the Great Orange Satan. I stated then and I will state now that my rights are not for sale. Now, Philip Gourevitch seeks to sell my right to know what is being done in my name down the river in the New York Times. I will repost here and then add a rebuttal to Mr. Gourevitch down below.

Crazed & Confused thinks that Obama was right not to release the torture photos. But he ignores the basic problems with Obama’s rationale — transparency is essential to a functioning democracy. It was the clear intent of the Founding Fathers that the government follow a policy of transparency — in fact, the Constitution requires that Congress publish a journal of its proceedings. If we do not have maximum transparency in our government, then how will we know if we are still a functioning democracy? How will we know if our elected officials are following the Constitution? This is the very sort of thing that Obama ran on. I suggest that he do what he was elected to do and provide more transparency in government by releasing these pictures.