RANT ARCHIVE 1(BUSH):

• > My Resume

• >Chickenhawk Bush the "un-American" Draft-dodger

• >Question his Authority and  learn about his stupidity

• President!....Mr.President!...I have a question...

• >And What about Dick Cheney?

• >How Stupid is Bush?...as stupid does

• >Bush's Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story

• >Conflicts of Interest: The Military-Industrial Complex, and Bush's Cabinet and Advisory ties to Corporate America

• >Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President

• >The Bush coup d'etat

• >Bush & Bin Laden - George W. Bush Had Ties to Billionaire bin Laden Brood

• >Bush Deserves a Dishonorable Discharge

• > www.bushwatch.com/bush.htm

• >Bush acknowledges 1976 DUI charge

• >Bush hit by drink-driving revelation

• >Bush was arrested for cocaine in 1972
  

http://billionairesforbush.com/index.php

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MR. President!....Mr.President!...I have a question...

Detailed Analysis of the October 7th Speech by Bush on Iraq www.accuracy.org/bush/

and

www.accuracy.org/2003/

also see and hear  www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030129.html

President Bush's February 26 Speech on the Future of Iraq: A Critique

By Stephen Zunes March 7, 2003 http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0303aeispeech.html

QUESTION HIS AUTHORITY and LEARN ABOUT HIS STUPIDITY

www.votetoimpeach.org/

Bushwatch  www.bushwatch.com

Citizens for Legitimate Government
 www.legitgov.org/
A pro-democracy activist group established to 

'expose the Bush coup d'etat'.

BUSHISM: www.bushisms.com/index1a.html#List

See the story (and screening dates) behind the thievery of the 2000 United States Presidential Election Coup: www.gregpalast.com/unprecedented.htm

 Chickenhawk Bush 

the "un-American" Draft-dodger

also  http://www.talion.com/suspension.html

and http://www.furnitureforthepeople.com/awol.htm

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George W. Bush Resume http://www.furnitureforthepeople.com/freepress.htm

It all started with an email exchange between a right-winger from my local newspaper, and of course the war with Iraq came up pretty quick. But he said something in defense of George Bush that really surprised me. In defense of the attack on Iraq he said 'between Hussein and Bush, Hussein is the bad guy'.

My first response was ... So your guy is better than a third world dictator, Wow! what an accomplishment! Does he put that on his resume?

And with that in mind, I started wondering ... what would a George W. Bush resume look like exactly?

Listed below is what I came up with,

Best!

Kelley Kramer http://www.furnitureforthepeople.com/freepress.htm

George W. Bush Resume

Past work experience:
Ran for congress and lost.

Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.

Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax payer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox.

As governor of Texas:
Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America. Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history.

Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:
Attacked and took over two countries.

Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.

Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.

Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.

First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.

First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.

After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history.

Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.

In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their job. Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.

Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period.

Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.

Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.

Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.

Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.

Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.

Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
(http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/marches/)

Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

My presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (the 'poorest' multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has an Chevron oil tanker named after her).

First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt.

Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.

First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.

Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.

Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in US history.

First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the
human rights commission.

First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.

Removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional
oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.

Withdrew from the World Court of Law.

Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).

All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
My biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

First president in US history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.

First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force One)

First US president to establish a secret shadow government.

Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

With a policy of 'dis-engagement' created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.

Fist US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts. Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.

Failed to fulfill my pledge to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive'. Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months I have no leads and zero suspects.

In the 18 months following the 911 attacks I have successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States. Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.

In a little over two years created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the civil war.

Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

Records and References:

At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

AWOL from National Guard and Deserted the military during a time of war.

Refused to take drug test or answer questions about drug use.

All records of tenure as governor of Texas have been removed to George Bush Sr.'s library, sealed in secrecy and are un-available for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.

All minutes of meetings for any public corporation on which George W. Bush served on the board are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings George W. Bush (or the vice-president) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public review.

Established the Carlyle Group to manage post-war revenues. Heading up the Carlyle Group is (surprise, surprise), George Bush Sr. and James Baker.

Editor's comment after reading: Thank you Kelly Kramer for this well researched expose. The arrogance, hypocrisy, and criminality of the administration is enough to leave you breathless, and outrageous enough to make one fear they will get away unscathed. Reports like these, and the power of the Internet, might just be able to prevent this.

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Bush's Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story

Scandal? What Scandal?

By Terry J. Allen

Throughout the summer of 2001, the media were profligate with resources for the Chandra Levy story, excavating every corner of her and Rep. Gary Condit's past to unearth a prurient bounty of personal detail. That level of investigative vigor might have exposed far more vital information had it been applied to Bush's appointment of numerous Iran-Contra veterans to key posts.

But with a few admirable exceptions, news stories about Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites by the usual supporters and critics, rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years. And their guilt is based not on speculation or gossip, but on hard evidence that they aided torturers and death squads, circumvented Congress and the Constitution, and deceived the American people.

"President Bush," the Washington Post reported on March 25, "is quietly building the most conservative administration in modern times, surpassing even Ronald Reagan in the ideological commitment of his appointments, White House officials and prominent conservatives say."

It's not that Bush is whispering the names of nominees too softly for the press to hear. Rather, the reporting itself is, for the most part, quiet.

Three nominations that should have raised a noisy clatter from the nation's presses are:

• John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, covered up human rights abuses by the CIA-trained Battalion 316. He is Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and, as Extra! went to press, was expected to clear Senate confirmation hearings.

• Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan, pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding evidence from Congress (i.e., lying) over his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush I pardoned him; Bush II has appointed him to the National Security Council as director of its office for democracy, human rights and international operations. The post requires no Senate approval.

• Otto Reich's nomination as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the top post for Latin America, was predicted to draw the most congressional fire. Reich was head of the now-defunct Office for Public Diplomacy (OPD), which the House Committee on Foreign Affairs censured for "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" (Washington Post, 10/11/87).

Iran-Contra redux

Washington spent more than $4 billion on El Salvador in the ’80s, backing wildly brutal regimes and their death squads against a leftist insurgency. The 12-year civil war left 75,000 Salvadorans dead--overwhelmingly civilians killed by U.S.-supported forces. As Reagan's assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, and later for inter-American affairs, Elliott Abrams, in his own words, "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean" (Ethics and Public Policy Center). He helped cover up one of the worst atrocities of the war: a Salvadoran army massacre in El Mozote that left 800 to 1000 civilians dead.

In Nicaragua, after the leftist Sandinistas overthrew the U.S.-supported dictator in 1979, Washington created and funded the Contras, a guerrilla army that concentrated its fire on civilians. The Reagan administration escalated the civil war after the leftist Sandinista party won an election endorsed as free and fair by international monitoring agencies. In a campaign to tarnish the Sandinistas and gild the Contras, Otto Reich's Office of Public Diplomacy pressured U.S. media and planted ghostwritten articles and editorials. The comptroller-general of the U.S., a Republican appointee, found that the OPD had violated a ban on domestic propaganda.

Under Ambassador John Negroponte, neighboring Honduras grew so crammed with U.S. bases and weapons that it was dubbed the U.S.S. Honduras, as if it were simply an off-shore staging ground for the Contra war. While poverty raged, U.S. military aid jumped from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million by 1984. The Honduran army, especially the U.S.-trained Battalion 316, engaged in widespread human rights abuses, including kidnapping, torture and assassination. Negroponte worked closely with the perpetrators and covered up their crimes, according to Ambassador Jack Binns, his predecessor in the post (In These Times, 2/28/01).

Spurred on by media reports and popular protests against U.S. intervention in Central America, Congress passed the Boland amendment, which cut off most military aid to the Contras. Undaunted, the Reagan administration circumvented Congress and popular outrage by waging a covert war and raising money for the Contras from private and foreign sources. One of the "neat ideas" Oliver North and his cronies concocted was to funnel profits to the Contras from the secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran--which was under embargo after seizing Americans as hostages. The discovery of this and other illegal schemes led to the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Negroponte, Abrams and Reich played key roles.

Writing for history

With the 1990s, aside from the occasional hurricane or bus plunge, the media spotlight shifted away from Central America. Still, a few investigative reports took advantage of new evidence and time-loosened tongues. Mark Danner revisited the El Mozote massacre for The New Yorker (12/6/93), documenting as well Washington's success in trashing the original reporting on the slaughter by Raymond Bonner and Alma Guillermopietro.

In 1995, the Baltimore Sun undertook a months-long investigation into the U.S. role in Honduras, implicating Negroponte. Under editor John Carroll, Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson reported (6/27/95) that members of the U.S.-trained Battalion 316 used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." Cohn and Thompson showed that despite insistent denials, Negroponte had to have known.

In his independent magazines The Consortium and iF, Bob Parry relentlessly investigated the period, while many reporters and scholars drew on the documentation accumulated by Tom Blanton and Peter Kornbluh at the National Security Archive. The importance of all this work is evidenced by how often it is cited--not always with credit--in reporting on the nominations of Abrams, Negroponte and Reich.

Condensed soup reporting

Investigations of the nominees, when they are served up at all, have been mostly condensed like canned soup into a bland palatable broth. A few op-eds, including one by Mary McGrory (Washington Post, 7/8/01), have been scathing, but added little new information.

Some exceptional reports on Negroponte were notable for actually including investigative journalism. Los Angeles Times reporters Maggie Farley, Norman Kempster and T. Christian Miller--under the lead of editor John Carroll, who had moved from the Baltimore Sun--wrote a devastating exposé on the ambassador's role (5/7/01). They were the first journalists to note a possible connection between Negroponte's nomination and the deportation from the U.S. and Canada of several Hondurans connected to human rights abuses. The most notorious was Gen. Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a founder of Battalion 316. The L.A. Times quoted unnamed officials who said that "the speed of his removal was unprecedented," and speculated that the desire to make Discua unavailable for testifying at Negroponte's confirmation hearings was a factor in his hasty deportation.

Built on historical record and contemporary interviews, Sarah Wildman's March 19 piece for the New Republic was a well-documented refutation of Negroponte's claims of innocence. She concluded by characterizing the diplomat as having "not exactly the moral sensibility you want in a U.N. ambassador."

The Baltimore Sun updated its 1995 investigation with a March 7 story bluntly describing Negroponte as "a retired career diplomat who helped conceal from Congress the murder, kidnapping and torture abuses of a CIA-equipped and -trained Honduran military unit."

Most of the media have not been as diligent. For months after Negroponte's name was floated for U.N. ambassador, virtually the only mention of his Honduras record in the New York Times was a paragraph inside Jane Perlez's May 27 piece on how Sen. James Jefford's defection would impact Bush's foreign policy. Perlez noted "obstacles" to Negroponte's confirmation, "largely over his role as ambassador in Nicaragua [sic] in the Reagan administration, when he carried out the covert strategy to crush the leftist Sandinista government." As Ronald Reagan said after a 1982 trip to Latin America, "You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries" down there. The Times ran a correction (6/5/01).

The Times eventually weighed in on June 14 with a front-page piece by Marc Lacey that reviewed Negroponte's career. Lacey often fell back on vague language and passive voice: "The Central Intelligence Agency several years ago found that serious rights violations in Honduras were not properly reported to Washington during Mr. Negroponte's tenure. Most of the report is blacked out, and the unclassified parts raise questions about Mr. Negroponte without providing answers."

On August 1, the New York Times finally got around to addressing the reappearance of so many Iran-Contra figures in the administration. A piece by Christopher Marquis led with an insider description of some of the Iran-Contra cold warriors clustered at a party, smirking over the controversy their nominations have raised and dismissing concerns over their suitability as "the other side…still fighting the old battles." Like the Lacey article, Marquis's reporting added no substantive background information on the nominees or the policies they carried out. To its credit, the article explored the effect of the nominations might have on Latin America. Oddly, however, Marquis quoted only the opinions of U.S. officials and experts.

As of the beginning of August, however, the Washington Post still hadn’t found it newsworthy that someone nominated for a U.N. ambassadorship has been accused of condoning and covering up human rights violations. With no apparent irony, both the Washington Post (5/13/01) and the New York Times (5/9/01) speculated that one reason the U.S. was knocked off the U.N. Human Rights Commission was that Negroponte's nomination had not been approved.

As Extra! went to press, neither the Post nor the Times has mentioned Negroponte's connection to Battalion 316. The international edition of Time (5/21/01), but not the U.S. version, simply cited the Baltimore Sun and L.A. Times to illustrate that the nomination "has revived unsettling questions." NPR's Tom Gjelten (6/11/01) offered the vague and decorous assessment that "Negroponte's critics say he was so anxious to protect the Contras and their military allies in Honduras that he covered up human rights abuses there."

Hope for war criminals

News reporting on Elliott Abrams has been so sparse and pallid as to give hope to war criminals everywhere. Like Negroponte, Abrams maintains ignorance when not boasting that his policy was a "fabulous achievement" (Washington Post, 3/21/93).

A few outlets have written strong editorials, particularly the Philadelphia Inquirer's scorched-earth description (7/11/01) of Abrams as a "deceitful, scheming coddler of Latin American tyrants," and "uncontrite peddler of lies."

Most news stories, however, have simply noted the appointment and mentioned Abrams convictions for withholding evidence from Congress--as if he were a minor player haunted by sins of omission. They’ve ignored his cover-ups of the Salvadoran army's massacre at El Mozote and assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Except for reporting in The Nation (7/2/01) and a piece by this reporter in In These Times (8/6/01), few publications have reprised Abrams' role in Iran-Contra.

On February 8, 1982, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas."

It's not as if hard evidence and gruesome details of Abrams' knowledge and culpability are difficult to find. The man was convicted in open hearings and remains brazenly unrepentant. He called his prosecutors "filthy bastards," the proceedings against him "Kafkaesque" and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee "pious clowns," according to an article in Legal Times (5/30/94). Raymond Bonner broke the story of the El Mozote massacre in the New York Times (1/27/82). The story also ran in the Washington Post (3/5/82). Post reporters Guy Gugliotta and Douglas Farah (3/21/93) further documented Abrams’ role in El Salvador in a 1993 story.

That was then. This time around, Post’s news columns have barely mentioned the nomination or El Mozote. Aside from the August 1 overview article, the New York Times' coverage was confined to a 150-word piece (7/6/01) announcing the appointment, noting Abrams' run-in with Congress and describing him blandly as "a prominent figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s."

Perhaps the Times is still gun shy. After pressure from the State Department and attacks from other media, executive editor A.M. Rosenthal lost faith in Bonner’s original El Mozote reporting and ordered him back to the Metro desk. That kind of pressure on the media later became the specialty of Otto Reich, George W. Bush’s choice to be the top State Department official for Latin America.

Mightier than the pen

As head of the Reagan administration's Orwellian Office of Public Diplomacy, Reich ran "Operation 'White Propaganda.'" He and other OPD officials regularly showed up in newsrooms and editorial meetings to excoriate reporters and editors for unfavorable coverage and to slander insufficiently sympathetic reporters. The OPD planted stories and op-eds in the U.S. media that were ghostwritten by Reich's operatives or assigned to "independent" experts. Tainted articles ran in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, among other outlets. His office also engaged in such dirty tricks as charging that reporters in Nicaragua were paid for their anti-U.S. coverage with the services of Sandinista-supplied prostitutes. Jason Vest's 7,000-word piece on the American Prospect website (5/25/01) offers the most extensive account of Reich's attempts to influence the U.S. media.

Reich himself visited executives and reporters at CBS where, according to a 1984 memo from Secretary of State George Shultz to Ronald Reagan (In These Times, 4/16/01), he "privately and confidentially" influenced coverage of the Salvador war. "Everyone at CBS has been cordial and cooperative," the memo noted, adding that this example of OPD activities "has been repeated dozens of times over the past few months."

Reich had help from his friends. According to a staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee (9/7/88), "senior CIA officials with backgrounds in covert operations, as well as military intelligence and psychological operations specialists from the Department of Defense, were deeply involved in establishing and participating in a domestic political and propaganda operation run through an obscure bureau in the Department of State which reported directly to the National Security Council rather than through the normal State Department channels."

According to Eric Alterman in The Nation (5/7/01), old habits die hard. After the New York Times assigned Bonner to cover Reich's nomination, Reich tried to have the reporter taken off the story. The Times ran the March 8 article by Bonner and Christopher Marquis on page 6. Like Karen DeYoung's piece a month later (4/15/01) for the Washington Post, it devoted a few workmanlike paragraphs Reich's questionable activities as head of OPD. Both articles discussed the policy implications of appointing an anti-Castro ideologue and detailed potential conflicts of interest raised by Reich's lobbying for corporations including Bacardi-Martini and Lockheed Martin.

Ink on his hands

While Negroponte, Abrams and Reich were all deeply implicated by an Iran-Contra policy that resulted in serious human right violations, coverage of Reich has been the somewhat more extensive.

There are several possible explanations. Unlike Abrams, whose appointment needs no congressional approval, Reich’s State Department post requires Senate confirmation, an opportunity for opposition that gives the story legs. (Negroponte’s post also requires a Senate vote, but as the Senate has already approved him for several ambassadorships since his Honduras post, reporters may have sensed less potential for conflict.)

Another key factor in the quality of coverage is the easily accessible postings on Reich by the National Security Archive. In 15 minutes, even the busiest or laziest journalist can download enough damning documentation to satisfy any editor.

And not to be discounted in the differential reporting is the propensity of journalists to take more personally activities, like those of the OPD, that tarnish the myth of an independent media. Negroponte and Abrams have blood on their hands. Reich's are mostly smeared with ink. Negroponte and Abrams coddled torturers, protected death squads and helped kill peasants in Central America. Reich messed with the U.S. media.

Today Reich’s kind of plotting hardly seems worth the effort--with media resources squandered on titillating gossip, while real muck goes mostly unraked.

Terry J. Allen reported from Central America during the 1980s. Her articles have been published in the Boston Globe, In These Times, Salon.com, Harper's and TheNation.com, as well as various international outlets. She can be contacted at tallen@igc.org.

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• Hour 1: The prince of darkness resigns: A look at the controversial businesses dealings of Pentagon adviser and war hawk Richard Perle.

www.votetoimpeach.org/

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Conflicts of Interest: The Military-Industrial Complex, and Bush's Cabinet and Advisory ties to Corporate America

“This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”

                                                        President Rutherford B. Hayes 1884

With Hayes in mind it is appropriate to examine the words of another president that warned of something he called "the military-industrial complex." Below are: 

EXCERPTS from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s exit speech, also known as the Military-Industrial Complex Speech, 1961 (Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040).

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen…

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well…

But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative [yet today it seems the arms race and military expansion are more alive than ever before (see rant archives  on U.S. military spending versus the world)]. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight…

…As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

Bush could learn a few things from this ex-General who saw the horrors of war first hand. He wasn't in some rich-boy wanna-be-a-real-soldier warmongering club in Texas like Bush Jr.. Bush Jr. passed his flight test with in the Texas Air Guard with a 25/100, one point shy of "too-dumb to fly." Was it all the coke he did or is he just dumb? 

Corporate think tanks, PAC's, lobbyists, and mergers continue to corrupt and marginalize the masses and take over America (and the world) with agendas that often become policy thanks to “economic rationalism’s” private sector takeover of all things public.

There will never be campaign finance reform and maybe it doesn’t matter. The lobbyists don’t need to wiggle their corporate desires through to the prostitutes on the Hill anymore because now the government is a corporation. What about our representatives? A great number are brave enough to speak out and stand up, but not enough to outnumber the spineless brown-nosers and ass-kissers that are too scared of Bush and his team of war hawks.

Its not that corporations are necessarily bad or evil, though some are, the point being made, which we will expand on later, is that corporations need to get out of Washington (and stay out) and The People need to "take the power back." We The People, need to voice our feelings, run the government and be heard, but are not heard because 'we the common people' do not have the money necessary. In addition, a great number of people are so disgusted with our government that they have lost trust in its accountability, and lost hope in its ability to do anything worthy of their support. The same type that sits back and complains, but does nothing (except pay their taxes). 

Politically active corporations and the rich, on the other hand, are heard and their interests are pandered to. They speak up because they want more money and protection for the money they do have. This involves tax shelters, loopholes of all sorts, and of great concern, lax environmental regulations 

(for example see Bush's environmental backpedaling: www.opensecrets.org/bush/100days/environment.asp ). 

It's not that lobbyists, corporations, and the rich are solely at fault. The capitalist system as whole is. A sad fact of capitalism and the free market is the fact that the average person does not advance in income much farther than their parents. We are all caught in the “middle” of the place we came from. There are exceptions to being caught where you are, and there are those that make it up the rat race ladder (or fall off), but this is an exception to the capitalist rule. There are leaders and followers. To paraphrase Michael Parenti, this is not an outcome of a rational system, but a rational outcome of a system that protects the maintenance of itself and the accumulation of wealth for a privileged class. The political and economic system together, impose the necessity of the cheap labor of many going into the pockets of a few in order to maintain the beast and the system itself. The cut throats rule. 

As long as the government is a corporate whore, and especially where individual bureaucracies fight for funding to keep growing, things will remain rotten in the states of the "united." It seems the government has been corrupted by the corporate mentality that bigger is better, growing Bigger and Bigger where needed to fuel and protect the maintenance of capitalism: limit controls, manipulate opinions, and suppress dissent. Thus we come closer to Big Brother. If it continues, may it rot and fester until it explodes into oblivion so We The People can "Take The Power Back!"

Checks and Balances or Writing Checks and Tipping the Scales?  

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THE CONFLICT: conflicts of interest and investment interest

                     The Plutocracy:

The charts above are from The Center for Responsive Politics: http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp

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AND WHAT ABOUT Vice President Dick Cheney--Halliburton?

http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/cheney/halliburton.htm

A subsidiary of Halliburton Oil is Brown and Root—a nuclear power plant builder. His wife, Lynn, was a former board member of the largest defense contractor in the world: Lockheed Martin. Commerce Secretary Don Evan's Tom Brown Oil is also a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Halliburton is on the list of American oil companies, in-line and waiting, to carve up Iraq's oil reserves, the second largest in the world behind Saudi Arabia. Bush has promised Russia a piece of the carvings if Russia joins the U.S. (or rather Bush) in the war campaign (an audio on this topic will be added soon).

Way to go Bush: Cheney and corporate fraud: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2119981.stm

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Bush’s investments:

            Arbusto Oil, Texas—Saudi/Arab owned

            Carlyle—a holding and investment bank

                        America’s top defense contractor

                        http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/alertv6_52.asp

                        Home of United Tech and other arms makers

                        In 1999 Bush represented them in Saudi Arabia

                        Past bank holders- the Bin Laden’s

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The info below is from Harper's Magazine and the HARPER'S INDEX: http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index/listing.php3

• Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount : $15,400
• Maximum amount each of Enron's 4,500 laid-off employees would receive as part of a proposed settlement : $13,500
• Average amount the company paid each of its 140 top executives last year : $5,300,000
• Months that Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to release documents related to current U.S. energy policy : 16
• Percentage of Americans who blame Bill Clinton's "moral failings" for the current business scandals : 51
• Percentage who blame President Bush's "close ties to big corporations" : 46
• Percentage of CEOs who blame CEOs for the scandals : 69

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As Middle East envoy under President Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 19-20, 1983; this photo shows him shaking hands with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The US government supported the Hussein regime during the Iran-Iraq war. Fair use of photo by Getty Images.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld

For another photo see Rant Archive 3

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         AND HOW STUPID IS BUSH? As stupid does...

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
Reuters, May 5, 2000

"I think we agree, the past is over."
On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."
Meet the Press, April 15, 2000

The fact that he relies on facts -- says things that are not factual --are going to undermine his campaign."
New YorkTimes, March 4, 2000

"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature."
Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000

"I understand small business growth. I was one."
New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000

"The senator has got to understand if he's going to have he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road."
To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."

created by Winston Smith for Greg Palast

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."
At a South Carolina oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan. 14, 2000

"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."
At a South Carolina oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan.14, 2000

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

"There needs to be debates, like we're going through. There needs to be town hall meetings. There needs to be travel. This is a huge country."
Larry King Live, Dec. 16, 1999

"The important question is, How many hands have shaked?"
Answering a question about why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire, In the New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999

"Keep good relations with the Grecians."
Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999

Want More?: http://www.bushisms.com/index1a.html#List

See the story (and screening dates) behind the thievery of the 2000 United States Presidential Election Coup: www.gregpalast.com/unprecedented.htm

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Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President

by Neil Mackay; Sunday Herald - 15 September 2002; September 17, 2002

A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
 
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
 
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
 
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
 
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
 
The PNAC report also:
 
* refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
*  describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations'; *
reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
* says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
* spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
* calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool'
* and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
 
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said:
 
'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
 
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'    

© 2001 www.WorldNetDaily.com/

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected promising a 25 percent reduction in the federal budget, an end to deficits and the restoration of a sound dollar.

Within eight years, the federal budget tripled, federal debt increased 155 percent and the gold standard was repudiated – making the U.S. dollar a fiat currency.

Roosevelt's New Deal transformed America from a unique country in which everyone could live his life as he saw fit into a welfare state in which most business was supervised from Washington.

No longer was America run by the people – or even by Congress. Instead, it was now directed by bureaucrats operating in regulatory agencies like the AAA, FCA, CCC, FCI, SMA, FSA, NLRB, PWA, WPA, FDIC, FSLIC, SEC, SSA, REA, EHFA – directing when we shall sow and when we shall reap.

Effecting a revolution

Why would Americans give up their freedom for a system that had never worked well in the Old World?

They did it because Roosevelt never attacked the American Way head-on. Instead,

1.      He praised the Constitution, but said it must be updated from "horse and buggy" days.

2. He never discussed the liberties he was stealing – talking instead about government's power to do good.
3. Any objectors were challenged to prove that some other program could cure the Depression perfectly overnight.
4. Those who protested the loss of freedom were dismissed as alarmists and "economic royalists" who wanted to continue exploiting their neighbors.

The magic words were "recovery" and "emergency." They justified everything – even though the New Deal produced no recovery, and there were far better ways to deal with the emergency.

The mess of pottage

The writer Garet Garrett called the New Deal "The People's Pottage." Esau had traded his birthright for a mess of pottage. And now the American people had traded their birthright – the freest nation the world had ever known – for a mess of pottage.

And what did that pottage consist of?

In 1940, the unemployment rate was still 15 percent, the Depression was still severe and Roosevelt was maneuvering America into war to distract attention from the New Deal's failures.

The Bush revolution

In 2000, George Bush won the presidency promising "limited government," reading the Constitution literally, and rejecting the concept of "nation-building" – the practice of imposing pro-American governments on foreign nations.

But, once in office, he produced a federal budget limited by nothing. And now he's making the Constitution an instrument of his own power – even as he imposes a new government on Afghanistan.

The last of the Bill of Rights

The Roosevelt coup d'etat destroyed the Ninth and 10th amendments – the ones limiting the government's functions.

The First and Second Amendments remained in form – although the Supreme Court now decides when they can be overruled by the government's "compelling interest."

Amendments 3 through 8 have survived, although considerably battered. But now, the Bush coup d'etat is aimed at erasing these last restrictions on government power.

Bush wants to decide when people can have a jury trial, be safe from cruel and unusual punishment, be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures and able to confront their accusers.

When the Bush New Deal is completed, the Bill of Rights will survive in name only. And you will live and breathe only by the sufferance of the all-mighty government. Your fate will be in the hands of people like George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Teddy Kennedy and Strom Thurmond.

Of course, George Bush is doing this to save America.

But what is America if there's no individual liberty?

Effecting revolution II

Like Roosevelt, George Bush isn't attacking the Constitution and the American way head-on. Instead,

1.      He claims to want to preserve the Constitution, but says we must put security first.

2. He diverts attention from our lost liberties by talking about ridding the world of evil-doers.
3. Objectors are challenged to provide another program that can destroy terrorism perfectly.
4. Those protesting the lost liberties are dismissed as unpatriotic, paranoid or "America-haters" – who are aiding the terrorists by "scaring peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty."

The magic words are "security" and "emergency." They justify everything – even though Bush is increasing the world domination that made us vulnerable to terrorism in the first place.

If George Bush were a Democrat, many conservatives would be fighting him to the death. But too many conservatives have abandoned their principles and begun deciding right and wrong on the basis of party labels.

More pottage

We, too, are trading the last remnants of America for a mess of pottage.

The War on Terrorism has no more chance to succeed than the New Deal, the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, or the War on Illiteracy.

The first revolution for big government was effected by a man who railed against big government and said he wanted to save capitalism. The second revolution is being engineered by a man who claims to be for limited government and the preservation of freedom.

Even as he seeks to destroy the last vestiges of a free America.