British memo proves yet again that Bush lied.  More below.

In Iraq:

• 1,657 American soldiers have been killed (as of 5/29/05) and over 12,000 wounded.  (iCasualties.org)
• The regime's war costs $1 BILLION a week
• 70% of the population is unemployed.
• More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28.
• The new Iraqi government- dominated by the same clique of warlords and exiles who lobbied the Pentagon to go to war in the first place- remains hunkered down inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.
• Shiite militias are blowing up liquor stores and movie theaters, forcing women to wear Islamic dress and assassinating secular officials.
• Electricity flows for only three hours a day and there are long lines to buy gasoline.
• The Health Minister said the Bush regime had promised $1 billion in medical aid- almost none of which has been provided.
• It was two years ago that the idiot-in-chief declared major combat operations had ended.  160 troops had been killed.  Now, it's 10 times that many.
• Over 100,000 Iraqis, most of them innocent of any acts of terrorism, have been killed.  Here's some if them:

(source)

Bush's job approval is at 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a favorable opinion of the work being done by the Republican-controlled Congress, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

57% of Americans now believe it was not worth going to war in Iraq according to the latest Gallup poll- a fall of nine points since February.

Boasting of his regime's "success" in establishing democracy in Iraq, he said "That success is sending a message from Beirut to Tehran."   Indeed it has- they are sending their angry young men to kick the regime out of Iraq.

The death toll in Iraq of Guard and Reserve troops in May has matched the highest so far.  Overall 80 troops were killed.   (more)

"In a bold move that proves that Bush's and Rumsfeld's "Global War on Terror" truly knows no bounds, diligent terror-warriors have nabbed a prime and dangerous suspect -- sandwich-maker Cecilia Beaman, "a 57-year-old grandmother and principal of Pacific Middle School in Des Moines."  (more)

Job growth slowed to a crawl in May-  new hiring is at a two-year low- about four times less than the number of folks entering the workforce.  Wages are still are lagging behind inflation.   (more)

A report by a Havard professor says replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year. In response, a group of more than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman -- released an open letter to Bush and other officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."    Alas, the combined savings and taxes would only pay for 2.5 months of the chicken hawks' war in Iraq...    (more)

The regime's very own Overseas Basing Commission released a report criticizing the regime for its overly ambitious global redeployment plans at a time when "[s]ervice budgets are not robust enough to execute the repositioning of forces, build the facilities necessary to accommodate the forces, [and] build the expanding facilities at new locations…"   The report was promptly removed from the DOD website but it's been reposted at the Federation of American Scientists web site.  Bases, Bases Everywhere is an excellent write-up of the regime's plans for more overseas bases.

Reponding to the growing tales of prisoner abuse, Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded that the regime turn over all Afghan prisoners and also give it greater say in the regime's military operations in his country.  Of course Bush said no.

Although over 700 Iraqis have been killed since the new government there took over, Bush said "I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them."  (more)

In Wisconson alone,  3,000 employees of 10 huge profittable corporations were enrolled in the states medicad program for the poor- Wal-Mart led the list with 1,252.  This corporate subsidy cost the taxpayers nearly $6.4 million.   (more)

Monsanto was busted for bribes and cooking its books in trying to get its GMOs approved in Indonesia.  (more)

Convicted embezzler, proven liar, and regime flunky Ahmad Chalabi is now the Iraqi deputy prime minister where he has tremendous power over Iraq's finances.   Look for even more of Iraq's money to be siphoned off.   (more)

Next year the Bush regime will spend as much on "defense" as the rest of the world combined according to Jane's Defense Industry.  (more)

"During the Clinton administration, many Republican senators insisted that there were too many federal judges and that it was therefore unnecessary for the president to fill all the vacancies that came up at the time.  Republicans changed their story after President Bush's election, talking about a "vacancy crisis."  (more)

Right-wingnut zealot Sen. Stevens wants to apply indecency standards to cable and satellite TV and even to the Internet.  (more)

Regime and  chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Richard Myers conceded in a chilling classified report to Congress that the regime's quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan have restricted its ability to "handle other conflicts".  (more)   Good!  This will perhaps deter the chickenhawks from attacking another country which poses no danger to us.

The regime is demanding Congress make permanent all 15 provisions of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of the year.

Robert L. Hutchings, the former director of the National Intelligence Council, said John Bolton's speech on Syria  "took isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted.   It was a sort of cherry-picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest-possible case."  (more)

Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge revealed that the regime periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though there was only flimsy evidence for doing so.  Of course it did so to divert attention from it's other screwed-ups.

The ACLU filed suit against the regime's  spending federal tax dollars on an abstinence education program that promotes christianity.  They won a similar case in '02.    (more)

Tribal leaders of a Iraq town sought US help in fighting Syrians- what they got was Operation Matador- a slaugter of their townspeople.  They won't be asking for help again.   Paul Krugman said the operation, " sounds just like those from a 1960's search-and-destroy mission". (more)

Bush's '06 budget proposes slashing public housing subsidies, food stamps, energy assistance, community development, social services and community services block grants but adds $385 million in new money for christian zealots' "charity" programs.  The $2 billion given to these idiots in '04 just wasn't enough.   (more)

Chan Chandler's  East Waynesville Baptist Church kicked out 9 members for not suppporting Bush.  40 others in the 100-member congregation resigned in protest.   During the election last year, Chandler told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Kerry should either leave the church or repent- some then left.   (more)

Capt. MeLinda Morton, an Air Force Academy chaplain who complained that evangelical Christians were trying to "subvert the system" by winning converts among cadets at the Academy, was removed from administrative duties for complaining.    Morton said the evangelicals, " want to subvert the system" and "have a very clear social and political agenda. The evangelical tone is pervasive at the academy, and it's aimed at converting these young people who are under intense pressure anyway."  For example, one chaplain told freshmen that anyone not born again "will burn in the fires of hell."  A report from a team from Yale Divinity School invited to study the problem found a prevasive evangelical christian influence.  (more)   Later the Academy superintendent admitted the religious zealots were running amok.  (more)

"Fiscal conservative" ripublican Senator Stevens wants $1.5 million for a bus stop in his home state. Not to be outdone, the other Alaskan idiot demanded  $200 million for a bridge as long as the Golden Gate Bridge-  to serve 50 residents of an island!  Also in the bill- a national Packard museum.  (more)

As recently as 1992, more workers were covered under defined benefit plans that promised a fixed monthly pension than plans that provided only a defined contribution to a worker's retirement, such as a 401(k).   Now nearly three times as many workers rely on defined contribution than defined benefit plans, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.  Worse yet, just 13% of companies still provide health benefits for retirees- and more of those that do are capping the amount they pay for premiums.  The ripublican idiots want to do the same sort of thing to Social Security, Medicare and Medicad.   (more)

Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr came out of hiding Monday for the first time since his fight with regime troops in August.  He delivered a fiery speech demanding that coalition forces leave Iraq Immediately and, "The occupier is trying to make up a sectarian war between the Sunnis and Shiites."  (more)

In 1986 Mordechai Vanunu spilled the beans on Israel's nuclear weapons program.  The Israeli government  promptly kidnapped him in Rome and he since spent 18 years in their jail, mostly in solitary confinement.  Althought he was released a year ago, he's under a travel ban and a gag order.  Norman Solomon  writes, "If Vanunu were Iranian instead of Israeli, the U.S. press would be hailing him as a hero instead of giving him short shrift...   unlike Iran's government, Israel is not even a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. With a nuclear bomb stockpile now estimated at more than 200 warheads, Israel is fueling the nuclear arms race in the Middle East".

On 5/10/05, the regime gave Halliburton $72 million in bonuses for its "work" in Iraq.  That's on top of the billions in taxpayer money Cheney's corporation has already stolen.

As governor, regime Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns opposed the Department's policy of informing the public when the nation’s beef supply may be contaminated, and asked them revoke the policy of announcing when initial tests of cattle show they may be infected with mad cow.  I'm still not eating beef...

Coke won't pay its workers a decent wage (some are striking) yet has enough money to pay its CEO over $17 million and give its former CEO a golden parachute worth an astounding $119 million.  (more)

Standard and Poor's downgraded both Ford and General Motors bonds to junk status.

Two regime soliders were arrested in Colombia for trafficing in 40,000 rounds of ammo intended for outlawed right-wing (naturally...) paramilitary death squads.  (more)

Last year Scott Lee Jr., Wal-Mart's chief executive, was paid $17.5 million.  That means the idiot is paid in two weeks about as much as his average employee will earn in a lifetime.  Very few will actually spend a lifetime at Wal-Mart- more than 40% of them leave each year.  (more)

Yet another reason to boycott Walmart-  it has banned Jon Stewart's America (The Book).  It previously banned Mike Moore's film.

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote  recently: "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about it"  (more)

The employment rate for the nation's teenagers is just 36.3% - the lowest since it was first tracked in 1948.  Two-thirds of this generation are not living up to their parents' standard of living.   (more)

The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces.  Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.   That's the summary of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which, according to it's director, could be read as a parable about current American politics.    (more).

A bankrupcy court judge ruled that United Airlines can dump its $6.6 billion pension plan on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.   Look for a taxpayer bailout of the PBGC soon.   United is also asking the judge to throw out its wage-and-benefit contracts with its peons.  Later, Rueters reported that United CEO Glenn Tilton was paid a $366,000 bonus last year bringing his pay to over $1,100,000.  Other execs got a total of over $1 million in bonuses on top of their outrageous salaries.

Children from military families are twice as likely to die from severe abuse as other children are, according to a North Carolina study.

The Bush regime  lied about former football star Pat Tillman's friendly fire death in Afghanistan.  His parents are speaking out... His mother said, "The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic.  The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."  Even after the facts were known, Bush exploited her son's death.  His father said, "Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore.  Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."  (more)

$100 million which was susposed to be disbursed for Iraqi reconstruction projects is missing and a criminal inquiry is underway.  The special inspector general reports that one offficial fired for mishandling funds was allowed to continue disbursing money nearly a month after his termination.  Since these are federal employees and not contractors, I'm sure they will be swiftly and severely punished.  (more)

A Senate committee approved $441.6 billion for defense in FY 06- including an additional $50 billion for the regime's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Human Rights First reports that 108 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 30 of them are suspected or confirmed to be murder victims.  (more)

Tainted lobbiest Jack Abramoff and his team had over 200 meetings with the Bush regime and he's given over $100,000 to Bush.  (more)

A government commission studying overseas military bases sent Congress a report critical of Rummy then removed the document from the commission Web site after the regime complained that it divulged classified information.  Its authors say the report is based only on public sources and say their  harsh criticism of Rummy's  strategy for streamlining the military was the reason the report was squelched.  (more)

Karen Hughes is back- as a PR flak for the regime.  She'll be spewing propaganda globally to try to repair the damage Bush has done to the US image abroad.

An analyst in Rummy's office was arrested for giving the notorious zionist lobbying and spying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee top secret information.  I think he was likely ordered to do so by Rummy.  (more)
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The oil industry is awash in profits- enough to give its CEOs an median pay of $16.5 million- yet the ripublicans' energy bill contains billions for the greedheads.  (more)

Arthur Finkelstein, prominent ripublican consultant who directed a series of smear campaigns to elect conservatives in the U.S. and Israel, admitted he'd married his male partner in civil ceremony in Mass.  He said that he had married his partner to ensure couple had same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

Robert Greenwald  is scheduled to release a documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" in November.  (more)  Until then, there's recent Kelly Hearn's article which documents Wal-Mart's myriad transgressions and it's new PR "charm" offensive. http://www.prwatch.org/cgi/spin.cgi also has good info on their campaign of lies.

http://www.boycott-republicans.com  is urging a boycott of two big funders of the regime- Wendy's and Outback.

"Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it." - George Tenet as per former case officer Lindsay Moran.

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about." - CIA supervisor responding to analyst who doubted Curveball's lies about Iraq WMDs. (more)

"If Bush's ambitious proposal to convert the world's repressive regimes to multi-party democracies becomes a reality, the United States will run out of countries where prisoners could be tortured."  An Asian diplomat

"I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world."  Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed by Bush in Iraq

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices," - Voltaire

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."--Abraham Lincoln

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official". – Theodore Roosevelt

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both."  -  Louis Brandeis

"The right will always criticize reasonableness as softness... When they speak of total victory they invite total annihilation. They aren't brave but suicidal. There is a curious superficial pugnacity about the American people, which, I am persuaded, does not go very deep. They applaud the noisy man but they reconsider if they think him dangerous. We must make it clear that these men are dangerous."  John Kenneth Galbraith letter to JFK in '61 which is still true today....

Jon Stewart asked historian Stephen Colbert whether the press could break a story like Watergate today. Colbert replied no, that "it just no longer has the credibility."   Stewart aked in clarification,  "the media?" Colbert responded, "No. The truth."  (video)

"How, can our State Department denounce countries for engaging in torture while the C.I.A. secretly transfers detainees to the very same countries for interrogation?" - Senator Patrick Leahy  (surely a rhetorical question....)

"I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal." -- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial for refusing to go to Iraq.

"War has become a constant of U.S. foreign policy, and media flackery for the war-makers in Washington is routine -- boosting militarism that tilts the country in more authoritarian directions. The dominant news outlets provide an ongoing debate over how to fine-tune the machinery of war. What we need is a debate over how to dismantle the war machine."   Norman Solomon in News Media and "the Madness of Militarism"

"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"   Pentagon mouthpiece Lawrence Di Rita on the Newsweek/Koran abuse flap.  He should have said this about any his bosses- Rumsfelt, Cheney or Bush.

"Our goal is a Christian Nation.... We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want Pluralism. We want theocracy.   -- Randall Terry, Head of Operation Rescue

"... they're not happy they're occupied. I  wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either" - the idiot-in-chief on Iraq

"Under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, the notion of command accountability has been discarded. In Mr. Bush's world of war, it's the grunts who take the heat. Punishment is reserved for the people at the bottom. The people who foul up at the top are promoted"- A  Bob Herbert column on the whitewash on the regime's torture of  prisoners.

"He used his fame to suck up to those in power, and then write books like Bush at  War that simply told power's story, ultimately becoming just another bloviating cardboard cutout on the pundit circuit." - David J. Sirota  article on Bob Woodward

Roy "10 commandments" Moore is  "just another ayatollah wearing Christian garb instead of Muslim."   -  Letter from a conservative christian to the Huntsville Times

 "I resent deeply being constantly lied to." - Hardball's Chris Matthews of Clinton's lies about Monica.  Matthews is of course silent about all of the lies from the Bush regime.

"The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany"  - Harold Pinter
"
This unelected regime---Hitler also came to power with a minority of votes---has used the terrible tragedies of September 11 in much the way the Nazis jumped on the Reichstag fire."  Harvey Wasserman

"But, really, you almost have to laugh when administration officials get all huffy about the U.S. losing respect in the Muslim world - and the fact that 'people have lost lives' - because of the nugget in Newsweek, when this follows Abu Ghraib, the confirmed deaths of dozens of prisoners in U.S. custody, the outsourcing of torture to Egypt and other countries, not to mention the killing of tens of thousands in Iraq in a war largely based on bogus tips from unreliable sources."   Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher

Tthis is an administration that has brought that art, the art of lying not only to the world, not only to foreign reporters, but lying to the American press, systematic misrepresenting and lying, they brought it to a new art form.   Seymour Hersh interview

"Bush wants to remove Saddam through military action, justified by a conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence and facts are being 'fixed' around the policy....  Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."   A top secret British memo of 7/23/02 summarizing a report by Sir Richard Dearlove  (more below)

"Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology." - Joseph Goebbels- whose advise the Bush regime has obviously taken

"... between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted....  This systemic and illegal abuse was intentionally perpetrated." -  the very first Abu Ghraib report by Major General Antonio Taguba   Of course, Rummy has repeatly  lied about this.   Asked if he'd seen any reports that characterized the abuses as systematic or systemic, it said he hadn't.  (more)

Blair's office has not disputed the authenticity of the memo, but the Bush categorically denies the assertions in it. The memo confirms former Sen. Bob Graham's widely ignored statement that he was told by the regime's Gen. Tommy Franks in Feb, '02 that  "Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan....  Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,"

The memo also provides further support for Paul O'Neill's, Richard Clarke,  Roger Cressey, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Donald Kerrick and Tom Maertens' statements that Bush wanted to attack Iraq from the get-go and lied to get the stupid American public to back him and his fellow chickenhawk warmoungers.   It even backs George Tenet's famous quote "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Foreshadowing the Iraq quaqmire which has resulted, the memo reported, "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

89 members of Congress sent a letter to Bush demanding answers to several pointed questions reguarding the memo.  Of course they will be lied to or, at the very least, stonewalled.

For more info:   12345,  the memo DowningStreetMemo.com

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Congressman John Conyers has called the latest revelations about the illegal attacks and the leaked memo,  "the smoking bullet in the smoking gun" and is considering starting impeachment procedings against Bush.  Here's more from Conyers:

"First, the memo appears to directly contradict the administration's assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the
minutes, in July 2002, the administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq."

"Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether
the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction was a mere 'failure' or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained
conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue
stating that in the Unted States the intelligence and facts were being 'fixed' around the decision to go to war."

-------------
As if the above was not enough, a Nation article documents that Bush was attacking Iraq long before Congress gave its OK.  He lied about the airstikes by saying they were for enforcement of the no-fly zones.  The real goal was to provoke Saddam into an attack to justify the regime's long planned invasion.    Even on the eve of his attack, the idiot-in-chief was still lying by saying, "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq."

Executive Director of Amnesty International U.S.A, William Schultz" responded:
"...when Amnesty International took on Saddam Hussein 20 years ago, when Donald Rumsfeld was courting him, and even in the run-up to the Iraq war; when Amnesty International was regularly quoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials about Saddam Hussein's brutality — under those circumstances, this administration didn't think we were absurd at all. When we criticize Cuba, when we criticize North Korea, when we criticize China, as we have repeatedly, this administration applauds Amnesty International. But when we criticize the United States, we are suddenly absurd. I think the administration doth protest too much.

Amnesty International first complained to Rummy about the regime's abuse of prisoners in its gulags in '02.  His reponse was to ban their investigators from visiting the gulags.   Even such notorious countries as Libya and Sudan allow the group to visit their prisons.

Other gulag news
The regime has admitted its troops abused the Koran.  As is always the case with news it doesn't like and wants to bury, the report was released late on a Friday.  What the regime did not admit was that it was wrong in tarring Newsweek for reporting the abuses.

A judge ordered the regime to give the ACLU videos and photographs it's hiding of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.  The ACLU said the material would show that the abuse was "more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers."  After having repeatly violated the Geneva Conventions and calling them "quaint", the regime's lawyer argued that releasing the info would violate the conventions.  What a bunch of hypocrites!   (more)

A coalition of eight international human rights groups issued a scathing statment against the regime's rendition of prisoners for torture.   It is well documented that the regime sent a Canadian engineer to Syria where he was tortured and sent an Australian to Egypt where he was brutally beaten.  63 other "terror suspects" have been documented as being rendered to Egypt although the actual number could be as high as 200.   (more)

Meanwhile,  Bush continues to lie by saying his regime does not render prisoners to other countries for torture.

In late May, a Texas judge ruled that a political action committee formed by DeLay was guilty of violating state law by failing to report some $600,000 in corporate contributions that were used to sway Texas elections in 2002.  That's on top of the ripublican dominated House ethics committee finding him guilty of ethics breaches three times.

His misdeeds have gotten so bad even the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial saying "he smells just like the Beltway."

Arianna Huffington writes: "the Majority Leader's ethical rap sheet is longer than the list of prepubescent boys who have shared Michael Jackson's bed."... "But of all DeLay's transgressions, the one I find most repulsive is the way he has shamefully--and
shamelessly--used charitable organizations to fill his political coffers and boost his political clout. DeLay's preferred mechanism for gathering donations is the DeLay Foundation for Kids--a charity that assists children, especially in foster care, but which also conveniently allows lobbyists and corporations to buy access to DeLay and his GOP cronies without having to deal with those pesky campaign-finance laws.

Here's some of DeLay's other offenses:

• Accepted trips from corporations and later helped kill legislation they opposed
• Accepted trips from the lobbyist for a foreign government in violation of House rules
• Paid family members more than $500,000 out of campaign contributions
• Helped sweatshops in the Mariana Islands at the behest of a lobbyist
• Promised a role in drafting legislation to a corporate donor
• Tried to coerce a Congressman for a vote on Medicare
• Used Homeland Security resources in a dispute with Democrats in Texas
• Diverted funds from a children's charity for lavish celebrations at the Republican convention
• Threatened retaliation against interest groups that don't support Republicans
• Stacked the House Ethics Committee with representatives who have contributed to his legal defense fund
• Crippled the effectiveness of the House Ethics Committee by purging members who had rebuked him
• Pushed for a rules change for the House Ethics process that paralyzed the panel
• Sought a rule change that would have no longer "required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted"

As part of his fear campaign to sell his plan, Bush said that the US Treasury bonds which back Social Security  were nothing but "worthless IOU'S."    Luckily, the foreign and domestic investors holding these "worthless" bonds knew he was lying yet again- if they'd dumped their bonds, the economy would have tanked.

"See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."  Bush in Greece, N.Y. on 5/24/05 explaining his line of BS on gutting Social Security.    (more)

Only 31% of those polled approved of Bush's handling of social security.  (more)

He's even against a bill in corgress that woudl expand the lines available for research.  In '01 the idiot-in-chief signed a  law limiting researchers to a few lines of stem cells- lines which have been found to be tainted and hence useless for most research.  Despite this and polls showing 60% want expanded stem cell research,  the idiot still refuses to allow more lines to be used for research.  (more)

He's sure not as concerned about the lives of over 1,600 US citizens he's killed in Iraq.  Bush is big on the "culture of life" when it comes to using unwanted embryos for stem cell research but not live human beings in Iraq.  (more)

Regime Wants More Crap (litterly!) in Our Rivers
The regime's EPA is finalizing a policy that would allow dumping of inadequately treated sewage into waterways. This would allow more viruses, parasites, toxics and other pollutants into our waters.

Regime Wants to Pay Parent to Poison Their Kids
The regime's EPA "Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study", or CHEERS, would pay the parents of a baby up to $970 if they expose their child to household pesticides and other toxins over a two-year period.   The study is sponsored by the chemical corporations' American Chemistry Council.   The regime's nominee for EPA Administrator, Stephen Johnson’s, has refused to condemn the study.

Health care in the US is getting worse compared with other countries.  In 1960 we ranked 12th in the world in infant mortality, now we've sunk to 40th.  We rank 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio.  About 29% of kids lack coverage by health insurance. (more)

Billy Tauzin rammed the Medicare drug bill through when he was a member of Congress, now has a $2 million/year job as head of the drug industry's lobby group.  Merely coincidence I'm sure....  He's agrued against cheaper drugs from Canada saying Al Qaeda could spike them with anthrax.  Thomas Scully, the former Medicare administrator who threatened to fire Medicare's chief actuary if he gave Congress the real numbers on the cost of the regimes drug bill, was granted a special waiver from the ethics rules so he could negotiate for a health industry lobbying job at the very same time he was pushing the Medicare drug bill.   Medicare trustees report the bill creates a  $8.7 trillion deficit over the next 75 years.   (more)

In spite of the mandate in the regime's "No Child Left Behind" law that military recruiter be provided with info on high-schoolers and be able to recruit at public high schools, Seattle's Garfield High School PTA voted for a resolution that says "public schools are not a place for military recruiters."  Amen!    (more)

Still, fewer and fewer folks are signing up to be cannon fodder.  The Marines have recorded their first recruitment shortfalls in a decade.  The Army is running 6% below target, there's a 10% decline in the Reserves recruiting and an astounding 26%.decline at the Army National Guard.  After numerous flagrant recruiting abuses (e.g. recruiters illegally covering up recruits' criminal and medical records) the regime  is halting all recruiting on 20 May for a day of retraining.  Meanwhile over 5,133 troops are AWOL.  (more)

I know two who should sign up immediately as regime cannon fodder- the Bush twins.  They are out of college and still have no jobs.  Send them straight to Iraq or whatever country their dad's regime attacks next.

Even military folks refusing to serve.   The presiding judge at the court martial of a sailor who refused to go to the Gulf said, "I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."  The sailor receive no jail time.  (more)      There'll be more refusing to serve as cannon fodder in the regime's wars- a newly formed group, Courage-To-Resist, is organizing veterans, military families, and community activists in a campaign to support military objectors.

As for cannon fodder from the "coalition of the willing"- it is now the "coalition of the wilting".  Spain, Portugal, Hungary and New Zealand have already quit, and the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Italy have said they are getting out.  So much for what Rummy called the "mother of all coalitions"!

Meanwhile, as Bush claims he's against a draft, his Selective Service System has been gearing up.   It reported in March that it would be ready to implement a draft within 75 days.   Rumors are flying that the regime is merely waiting for a "dramatic event" with which to attempt to justify a draft - most likely a regime precipitated event.  (more)

The monthly military recruiting report for May has been delayed- the regime is likely cooking the books....

As #2 at the FBI under the notorious Hoover's death, Felt was for all practical purposes running the FBI - as Hoover wanted it run, with a few exceptions.  For example, when Hoover wanted to end surreptitious black bag jobs (breaking into homes and businesses without a warrant), Felt gleefully continued them.   He was indicted and convicted for the illegal searches but was pardoned by Reagan.  One victim, Weatherwoman Beradet Dorn's sister sued him for repeated break-ins at her home and won.  FBI documents also revealed they planned to kidnap her child.

Here's a brief rundown on four of the ten right-wingnut jerks the regime want to install on the federal bench by using the nuclear option to block filbusters:

Janice Rogers Brown follows a radical judicial philosophy, (often called "Constitution in Exile") that says courts have a duty to block Congress from interfering with a corporation's "right" to profitably pollute, or an employer's "right" to demand unlimited hours at any wage from their employees.   On the state Supreme Court she has attacked California's anti-discrimination statute, affordable housing laws, fees levied against major urban polluters, and laws that protects whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers and consumers from corporate fraud.

Pricilla Owen, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, has been repeatedly admonished by her own conservative colleagues for what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described as her "unconscionable judicial activism." She accepted substantial campaign contributions from giant corporations including Enron and Halliburton and then issued rulings in their favor.   In case after case where individual rights came into conflict with corporate profit, Owens has sided with the greedy corporations.

William Myers III has never been a judge and spent most of his career as a lobbyist for the cattle and mining industry.   He has written that all habitat conservation laws are unconstitutional because they interfere with potential profit.  As chief lawyer for the Department of the Interior he continued as a champion of corporate interests, setting his agenda in meetings with former employers he promised not to speak with, and even illegally gave away sacred Native American land to be strip mined.

 William Pryor Jr. called   Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history," and has consistently argued against the federal protections for the civil rights of minorities, lesbian and gay couples, women, and the disabled.  He took money from Phillip Morris when he was Attorney General of Alabama and, unlike every other Attorney General, fought against the anti-tobacco lawsuit until  it was almost over.  This cost Alabama billions in settlement money for their healthcare system.

From a Counterpuch post:   "Anytime you have someone like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), a cheerleader for the War on Iraq, a stalwart backer of the worst Zionist excesses of the Israeli state, and a man who even endorsed former Attorney General John Ashcroft's horrific Operation TIPS citizen spy scheme, lining up with Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a guy who headed up the House impeachment campaign against President Bill Clinton, a staunch conservative in moderate clothing (like his over-rated colleague John McCain) who opposes abortion rights and boasts a 5% rating from the League of Conservation Voters, progressives need to worry."

$8.1 billion in new tax breaks to the oil companies, which are already swimming in cash-  e.g. ExxonMobil's profits are up 44%, Royal Dutch/Shell's profits are up 42%.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Continues to subsidize the greedy idiots who buy Hummers but abolishes the tax rebates for those who buy hybrid cars.

It contains nothing on higher fuel efficiency standards or renewable energy sources.

Here's more of what he said to the ripublicans senators:

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction," said Galloway. "I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."  (more)

Meanwhile the 5/17/05 Guardian (UK) reports the Bush regime was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.   The regime failed to take any action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil (owned by David Chalmers), which facilitated payment of at least $37 million in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime.   The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians.  Of course, the regime's ignoring the sales and kickbacks will never be investigated by the committee.  What a bunch of utter hypocrites!

He's a big believer in "premillennial dispensationalism" which says the Rapture leads to the Great Tribulation, with floods and earthquakes, pestilence and epidemics, anarchy in the streets, and demonic battles against the one world government of the anti-Christ, whom he portrays in his novels as the Secretary General of the United Nations.  The forces of good finally defeat this Emperor of Evil in a famous victory at Armageddon, after which Jesus Christ returns to rule the earth.  It also says 2/3 of all Jews  will be killed in a second Holocaust and the remaining must  accept Jesus Christ or face eternal damnation.  But first the Jews must rule all of the biblical Land of Israel.   This is why zealous christians give millions of dollars to help build and defend new Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land and why they oppose any serious effort to make peace and its why they support the attack of Iraq.  (more by Steve Weissman)

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the leaked secret British memo about the regime fixing Intelligence and facts to sell it's plan to attack Iraq.

The Taking of the Tongass by Bill Shoaf, a former logger and US Forest Service administrator and now whistleblower.  His book documents the lying and deceit practiced by the USFS in their rape of our forests.  The book is available from Running Wolf Press, P.O. Box 3011, Sequim, WA 98382.

From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'  by Bob Herbert.    From a ex-soldier in Iraq: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."  He also saw  an Army sergeant lash a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal plant a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old.  There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.  He also saw soldiers shoot unarmed detainees behind barbed wire at Abu Ghraib- four were killed.   (more)

Untangling a Lobbyist's Stake in a Casino Fleet   The article details the gangland style execution of one of  Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff coinvestors in floating casinos in Florida.  Abramoff is now being investigated for his bank fraud in connection with the deal.

Making a Killing: The Big Business of War reports that Cheney's '04 tax return shows he received $194,852 in deferred payments from Halliburton.  Not coincidently, Haliburton is the biggest contractor in Iraq and has stolen billions.  The article summarizes some of the thefts.

Wrong and Right by Sidney Blumenthal on the regime's abuse of the Koran and the Newsweek fiasco.  A snippet

While the administration faults Newsweek for relying on a flawed source, it has refused to respond specifically to the reports of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass  destruction that in constructing its case for going to war in Iraq it was reliant on disinformation from bogus Iraqi émigré sources, especially the agent dubbed Curveball, who was exposed as a duplicitous alcoholic. While demanding a retraction and an apology from Newsweek, nobody in the administration has ever bothered to respond to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement that he was "deceived" in delivering his Feb. 5, 2003, speech before the United Nations Security Council about WMD in Iraq, which had 26 major errors.

Howard Zinn's new book, Voices of a People's History of the United States-  source material from his great million seller A People's History.

'They Came Here to Die'   A Post report on an ambush of Marines in Jarami, Iraq - :"Screaming "Allahu Akbar" to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at US Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade".

America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives? by Steve Weissman is a great take on the christian zealots who want to take over the US.  Snippets from his The Ayatollah of Holy Rollers on the Reconstructionists

Death by stoning for atheists, adulterers, and practicing male homosexuals. Stoning - or possibly burning at the stake - for atheists, heretics, religious apostates, followers of other religions who proselytize, unmarried females who are unchaste, incorrigible juvenile delinquents, and children who curse or strike their parents.  And, oh yes, death to witches, Satanists, and those who commit blasphemy.

Does this sound like a radical Islamist nightmare, a replay of Afghanistan under the Taliban?

Welcome to the United States of America as Christian Reconstructionists hope to run it. Not as a democracy, which they see as secular heresy. But as a reconstructed Christian nation, complete with biblically sanctioned flogging and slavery.

The Bible rules, OK? And, in its name, a small elect of true believers are now seeking capital-D Dominion over
every aspects of our government, laws, education, and personal lives.

• Deficit-Financed Tax Cuts: The GOP tax cuts in a nutshell. Creating debt to give tax cuts to the richest 5% of Americans.
• The Great Divider: W. Bush. A man who has managed to create a country more profoundly divided than at any time since the Civil War, and to divide it from the world like never before. He did this based on a strategy to encourage division in order to get "elected." This shows what he actually values.
• Bush Republican / Bush Conservative: A right-wing extremist who is beholden to the Christian right and Neo-Cons. Someone who is neither really a conservative nor compassionate. Someone who supports a failed economic policy and an unnecessary war.

Four Bloody Lies of War, from Havana 1898 to Baghdad 2003 by Harvey Wasserman.  "The Bush Administration's lies about its rationales for attacking Iraq fit a pattern of deceit that has dragged America into at least three other unjust and catastrophic wars"  The article documents the lies about  the Maine, the Lusitania and the Tonkin Gulf "attacks" which were used to sell wars.

Pushing PBS to the Right by Eric Boehlert is a good article on the regime attempt to turn PBS into another Fox.

Is There Another Hugo Chavez in Latin America?  - a Amy Goodman interview with Greg Palast on the regime, its corporate sponsors, World Bank and IMF rape of  Ecuador.  All of the groups want 90% of their money from oil to go corporate greedheads and want Ecuador's public utilities to be sold to them for a song.  This is the typical regime blueprint for the rape of South Americans.

Military Creating 'Rods from God"   by Sean Gonsalves on the regime's "full spectrum dominance'' plan which further militarizes space.  Some nuggets:  The US has spent about $130 billion on missle defense systems to date.  One plan is to hurl hypervelocity rod bundles- a.k.a ''Rods from God,'' at underground targets from space.

DeLay’s Dirty (Baker’s) Dozen - 13 evil and unethical deeds by this fine christian.

Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror a collection of Mark Danner's pieces on torture and Iraq.

Administration's Offenses Impeachable by Robert Shetterly in the 6/2/05 Bangor Daily News.  Snippets:

So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the "news" shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.

It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.

Arianna Huffington's articles are always a very good read.

Merchants of Crap site - A media giant chart -  Find out who owns what.

agitprops.org  posters for printing and posting.  A sample:

The Gallery of Bush=Hitler.   Some plums:

I see no difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Poland in 1939." - Scott Ritter

Anyone who closely examines Patriot II will realize that the document represents the same sort of power grab by Hitler after the Reichstag Fire of 1933. Using the pretext that the Reichstag was burned down by Communists (when, in fact, it was engineered by Nazis), Hitler pushed through the "Decree by the Reich President for the Defense of People and State." The Reichstag Fire Decree, intended only as a "temporary" measure, permitted Hitler and his regime to jail political opponents at will, bypass the judicial system, and eventually force millions of people into concentration camps.  Like the Reichstag Fire Decree, there is nothing really temporary with either Patriot I or II. ...  - Wayne Madsen

It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933. Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush Administration's fear mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by HItler and Goebbels on the German people and their Weimar Republic are not at all out of line. - Dave Lindorff

Just as Hitler was installed (but not elected by the German people) as the Feuhrer by the Nazi party, so George W. Bush was installed as President of the United States by a conservative Supreme Court. In both cases, governments used "national security" as an excuse to launch an assault on democratic freedoms. While "lebensraum" was a rallying cry for Hitler, Bush's "evil axis," referring to North Korea, Iran and Iraq, was supposed to generate patriotic "no-think" here in the USA.  Just as Hitler detached himself from the League of Nations, George W. has been assuming a more insular position internationally. ... Just as the burning of the Reichstag provided the Nazi party with the opportunity for shredding the Weimar Constitution, so did the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 provide the Republican administration  Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld) with the rationale for abolishing the freedoms granted to all citizens in the American Constitution. - Iver Bogen