Republicans:

The Party of the Very Rich and the Gullible

Which are you?

Some Fair and Balanced Links:

Headlines Media Matters Truthout BuzzFlash Democrats GOP Politics Cursor FloridaGate

MisLeader Smirking Chimp Election Fraud PNAC Common Sense AlterNet MoveOn.org Crisis Papers Toons

2004-01-31 - 8:58 p.m.

What is Bush Hiding?

The Bush Administration continues to stonewall the 9/11 Commission, regarding the intelligence briefings given to Bush before 9/11. And he and the Republican leadership in Congress are opposed to extending the Commission's tenure beyond the end of May. The Commission may have to use subpoenas to get the information needed.

The White House, already embroiled in a public fight over the deadline for an independent commission's investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is refusing to give the panel notes on presidential briefing papers taken by some of its own members, officials said this week.

The standoff has prompted the 10-member commission to consider issuing subpoenas for the notes and has further soured relations between the Bush administration and the bipartisan panel, according to sources familiar with the issue. Lack of access to the materials would mean that the information they contain could not be included in a final report about the attacks, several officials said.

...

The disagreement is the latest obstacle to face the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which is racing to complete its work by a May 27 deadline after months of fighting over access to government documents. The commission has asked that the deadline be pushed back at least two months, but the White House and leading congressional Republicans oppose that idea.

Go here to read this entireWashington Post article by Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer.

2004-01-26 - 11:46 a.m.

George Soros: 'The US is now in the hands of a group of extremists'

In an excerpt from his recent book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, published in the Guardian, billionaire investor George Soros, describes some of the reasons he feels that it is imperative for us to remove George W. Bush from office in 2004. To this end, he has pledged over ten million dollars to organizations working toward that end.

Some excerpts from the article in The Guardian follow;

The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the pernicious Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action, and it elicited an allergic reaction worldwide - not because anyone had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein, but because we insisted on invading Iraq unilaterally without any clear evidence that he had anything to do with September 11 or that he possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The gap in perceptions between America and the rest of the world has never been wider. Abroad, America is seen as abusing the dominant position it occupies; opinion at home has been led to believe that Saddam posed a clear and present danger to national security. Only in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion are people becoming aware they have been misled.

Even today, many people believe that September 11 justifies behaviour that would be unacceptable in normal times. The ideologues of American supremacy and President Bush personally never cease to remind us that September 11 changed the world. It is only as the untoward consequences of the invasion of Iraq become apparent that people are beginning to realise something has gone woefully wrong.

We have fallen into a trap. The suicide bombers' motivation seemed incomprehensible at the time of the attack; now a light begins to dawn: they wanted us to react the way we did. Perhaps they understood us better than we understand ourselves.

And we have been deceived. When he stood for election in 2000, President Bush promised a humble foreign policy. I contend that the Bush administration has deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American public would not have otherwise tolerated. The US can lose its dominance only as a result of its own mistakes. At present the country is in the process of committing such mistakes because it is in the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude.

This distorted view postulates that because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must have right on our side. That is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy.

...

Whatever the justification for removing Saddam, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over our allies' opinions.

...

There is no easy way out. The Bush administration is eager to get the United Nations more involved but is unwilling to make the necessary concessions. We have no alternative to sticking it out and paying the price for our mistake. Eventually a different president with a different attitude to international cooperation may be more successful in extricating us.

...

If Bush is rejected in 2004, his policies can be written off as an aberration and America resume its rightful place in the world. But if he is re-elected, the electorate will have endorsed his policies and we will have to live with the consequences. But it isn't enough to defeat Bush at the polls. The US must examine its global role and adopt a more constructive vision. We cannot merely pursue narrow, national self-interest. Our dominant position imposes a unique responsibility.

© George Soros 2004

This is an edited extract from The Bubble of American Supremacy, by George Soros, published on Thursday by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at £12.99. To order a copy for £10.99 plus p&p, call the Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979

Go here to read the entire article.

2004-01-23 - 9:36 a.m.

Top Fiscal Watchdog Delivers Stinging Attack on Deficit

Here's an article by Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau, in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that gives us a scary look at the future of runaway deficits, and reinfores the necessity of voting out this irresponsible administration.

Some excerpts follow:

WASHINGTON --The U.S. comptroller general, David Walker, laid out a blistering attack on the nation's growing deficit yesterday, saying it is undermining the future of the nation and putting an all-but-intolerable tax burden on future generations.

"The path we're on is imprudent and unsustainable,'' he said.

...

In a session with reporters, Walker, who also heads the General Accounting Office, the non-partisan watchdog arm of Congress, said he has become convinced that neither the Bush administration nor members of Congress nor the public understand how serious a problem the nation's public debt and rising deficit are becoming.

...

Although Walker said that making President Bush's tax cuts permanent, as he demanded in his State of the Union speech Tuesday, would be more expensive than anyone has publicly stated, he insisted that his comments were not intended to be political. He only sought to sound a "wake-up-call,'' he said. "All major tax proposals need to be examined carefully,'' he said.

Asked about Vice President Dick Cheney's remark -- reported by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, whom Cheney had fired -- that deficits do not matter, Walker said Cheney may believe that deficits don't matter politically, but that the vice president can't possibly believe that they don't matter for the economy.

"Deficits do matter -- especially when they are large, structural and growing,'' Walker said.

The nation now has a total debt of $7 trillion -- $4 trillion of it held by the public or foreign investors -- and is expected to have a record deficit this year of $500 billion.

If foreign investors decide that they don't want to hold U.S. debt anymore, it could be catastrophic, he said.

Go here to read the rest of this alarming and important article.

previous - next - Index - CLIX - top

Please CLIX here,
to spread the word.
Thanks!

All links open in a new window.

Recent Entries:
(scroll down)

Peak Oil: The Looming Catastrophe That Overshadows All Other Issues - 2005-04-05
Widespread Election Fraud in Ohio - 2004-12-31
Stolen Election Evidence Overwhelming - 2004-12-16
W. David Jenkins III: 'The seeds of the American Taliban' - 2004-12-10
Stolen Election! - 2004-12-09

More Entries