Bob Schieffer, far from being some member of the “liberal media”, tonight accused Trump’s assertion of bordering on racism:
Donald Trump has moved on from the "birther" conspiracy to allege President Barack Obama didn't get good enough grades to warrant entry to Harvard Law School, an assertion that CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer called absurd on the "CBS Evening News" on Wednesday.
McCain campaigned hard against Russia following the Georgia conflict this summer, so its no shock this information comes out after the election:
Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.
Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.
The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.
A lot of experts said that the conflict was actually reversed from the Washington meme; it was Russia defending a sovereign nation that Georgia had attacked. If this is truly the case then the U.S. and a lot of the world has egg on their face, and its no wonder why Russia has been acting so much more defensive. When facing false allegations from a nation who has a track record of invading countries on lies (the U.S.), wouldn't you also get defensive?
Looks like more trouble happening in our government:
F.B.I. agents on Tuesday raided and temporarily shut down the offices of a small federal watchdog agency that is charged with protecting the rights of government whistle-blowers but has been accused of retaliating against whistle-blowers in its own ranks.
The raid on the downtown Washington headquarters of the agency, the Office of Special Counsel, and another at the home of its director, Scott J. Bloch, followed accusations that Mr. Bloch had destroyed evidence on government computers that might demonstrate wrongdoing.
Mr. Bloch, who has held the post of special counsel since January 2004, has denied intentionally destroying evidence from his agency’s computers, though he has acknowledged paying $1,000 of public money to a technology company, Geeks on Call, to scrub his own government computer in 2006. He has said he was trying to rid the computer of software viruses, an assertion challenged by members of Congress and by lawyers representing current and former employees of the office.
Another Bush appointee in a criminal scandal. What's the odds of that?
Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror
That according to our President.
Bush made these remarks at a speech in the Middle East. The funny part is that every time this administration tries to tie Iran to terrorist activities, it backfires. The big navy ship incident this week turned out to be as bogus as his assertion that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Also what about Pakistan? Al Qaeda operates in Pakistan and Musharraf won't let us go in and get them. That sounds like he is sponsoring terrorism to me. Oh but Bush doesn't worry about al Qaeda anymore.
So now the question is; how long before rest of the world considers Bush to be the world's number one terrorist? He keeps trying to spark more wars on baseless claims, just like Iraq. That sure sounds like terrorism to me. We already know the world is ready for him to leave office, so it sounds like they might be leaning towards this analysis also. Of course congress can make the world happy by expediting that departure.
The war of words between United States and Tehran continued Wednesday, with President Bush repeating his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace."
Yeah so don't go doing anything stupid like invading a country that didn't attack your or pose any threat to you. Got it?
Today's New York Times has an article explaining how torture became a method of interrogation for this administration:
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent†in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
I had a feeling the news of Cheney's saying he is not part of the executive branch would start a fire storm. I just had no idea it would be this big.
Rahm Emanuel is showing a pair and ready to really go after Cheney in a way that sounds perfectly legal:
Following Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the US government, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) plans to introduce an amendment to the the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to cut funding for Cheney's office.
The amendment to the bill that sets the funding for the executive branch will be considered next week in the House of Representatives.
Emanuel also suggested that Cheney needs to return his salary to the U.S. taxpayers and move out of the house paid for by us. Since that house is paid for by us and for the Vice President of the United States, who is part of the executive branch, I say Cheney be evicted immediately. Hell - I say he gets charged with trespassing!
The Washington Post has also started a four part series today about Cheney, entitled "Angler". Think Progress has already torn into part one and discovered this:
Shortly after Bush was elected, “Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access to ‘every table and every meeting,’ making his voice heard in ‘whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in.’â€
We dare not call what is happening in Iraq a civil war, even though this news does support that claim:
July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new Iraqi government has failed.
An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3,438, is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January.
The rising numbers indicate that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control and seem to bolster an assertion that many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have been making in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one, and that the American-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias.
Yeah - that isn't a civil war. Just ask the wingnuts and they will tell you it is the normal death/murder rate for a country. Or even better, "well it was worse under Saddam".
Arlen Specter is once again holding oversight hearings into the administration:
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the White House of a ''very blatant encroachment" on congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight hearing into President Bush's assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years.
''There is some need for some oversight by Congress to assert its authority here," Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''What's the point of having a statute if . . . the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"
Specter said he plans to hold the hearing in June. He said he intends to call administration officials to explain and defend the president's claims of authority, as well to invite constitutional scholars to testify on whether Bush has overstepped the boundaries of his power.
The senator emphasized that his goal is ''to bring some light on the subject." Legal scholars say that, when confronted by a president encroaching on their power, Congress's options are limited. Lawmakers can call for hearings or cut the funds of a targeted program to apply political pressure, or take the more politically charged steps of censure or impeachment.
Specter's announcement followed a report in the Sunday Globe that Bush has quietly asserted the authority to ignore provisions in 750 bills he has signed -- about 1 in 10.
Please Senator Specter, if you read this, make sure to swear in every single witness. It may seem trivial to you but to these corrupt cronies it is just that little opening they need to lie without repercussion. If you do not swear them in then this is nothing but another political stunt and the problems will continue and also grow.
Bush has admitted to the declassification of parts of the pre-war intelligence:
Bush acknowledges declassifying Iraq intelligence
President George W. Bush acknowledged on Monday he ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq to respond to critics.
But Bush said he could not comment on an assertion that he authorized Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to release the information to reporters. Libby is accused of obstruction of justice and perjury in an investigation designed to discover who leaked the name of a CIA operative.
"I will say this, that after we liberated Iraq, there was questions in peoples' minds about, you know, the basis upon which I made statements, in other words, going into Iraq," Bush said in his first words on the subject since it flared up last week.
Answering questions after a speech, Bush said he declassified an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate in July 2003 for a reason.
"I wanted people to see what some of those statements were based on. I wanted people to see the truth. I thought it made sense for people to see the truth. That's why I declassified the document," he said.
Now the important questions must be asked by Congress - mainly "why was this part declassified and not the part that proved the allegations against Iraq false". While this might make the leak look a little more legal it makes the war look a lot more illegal. That is the important thing to remember here. Bush continuously went through great lengths to sell a war that was based on bad intelligence.
How can we trust the President when he constantly lies to us? Last month he
told the people of this country that Congress had access to the same
intelligence about Iraq that he did. That was proven a lie a couple weeks ago
when a nonpartisan congressional investigation group released a report stating
the President has access to "far greater amounts" of intelligence than congress.
Now we find out about a lie he told in his press conference on Monday to
justify his illegal wiretapping program:
President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S.
government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone,
alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to
abandon the device.The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence
operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept.
11 commission and then repeated by the president.But it appears to be an urban myth.
The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had
already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was
another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the
source was bin Laden himself.Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded
bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the
United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps,
missing him by hours.
Bush tried to rewrite history yesterday by
saying:
Today in the
Washington Post, we find out he stretched the truth on that line.
President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of
the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw
the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that
independent commissions have determined that the administration did not
misrepresent the intelligence.Neither assertion is wholly accurate.
The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies
overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,
and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this
belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties
were emphatic and certain in their public statements.But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence
information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to
provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though
concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to
change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the
administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions
Yesterday on Meet The Press, Senator Tom Coburn made a very interesting
assertion. He said that with his medical training he could detect if someone was
lying by their "body language".
Having previous experience in the medical field and knowing quite a bit of
doctors, this skill must be something unique to the school he went too. Fact is,
if a doctor can detect lying by body language then how come so many Americans
are out there that go to the doctor and lie just to get the medication they
want. It is a common thing.
The truth is that I could tell Senator Coburn was lying and it did not
involve the reading of "body language". I detected this lie just by his
statement. It is another piece of evidence of how the GOP will lie about
anything to try and sell a point.
Visit Crooks
and Liars for the video of this bogus statement.
Since the Iraq war started one thing has really gotten under my skin. That is
the continuous assertion that we hate our troops because we oppose the war in
Iraq. The fact that we want them home protecting their nation and not off in
some far away land fighting an illegal war based on lies shows more support for
the troops than those who wish to freely put them in harms way without proper
protective equipment.
I feel it is time to turn the tables on the Republican smear machine and
attack them with their own game. I am going to start keeping track of Republican
congressman who oppose the removal of pork in the budget, which would be better
spent on the recovery of the Gulf Coast. These will be the people who we
consider "hate America".
The first to my list of those who hate America is Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).
He has over 1/2 a billion dollars of pork in the recently signed transportation
bill, which includes a $250 million bridge to no where. When asked about the
forfeiting of his pork barrel spending,
Don Young
replied "They can kiss my ear!"
Congratulations Don Young - my first of a sure to be long list of those who
hate America!
If you have any tips on further congressman who are opposing the cutting
of their own pork please let me know.
What ever happened to Dick Cheney's assertion that the insurgency is in it's
"last throes"? Well to add insult to injury, I just came across a report by the
Reuters
that says insurgent arracks on U.S. convoys has doubled in the past year.
Remember in January when we were told these attacks would decrease because of
the election? Well it doesn't seem that had an effect and now we are told it
will happen after the constitution is written, which is due in three days. You
can bet after that it will be moved to the ratification of the constitution on
October 15, then the next election in December.
"As a matter of fact, we have seen an increase in the use of IEDs on our
convoys. And our main threat is the IED for the logistics convoys coming from
Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey, and then going to the Baghdad area. So the increase
has been to about 30 a week," Fontaine said."Because we've up-armored our vehicles, the casualties have decreased
significantly, even though the IED attacks have increased significantly. So
now our soldiers are safe in their Humvees and their trucks, and they walk out
of the incidents when the incident occurs," Fontaine added.
Now while Gen. Fontaine is giving us that report, others in the military ranks
are once again disagreeing:
Fontaine said the attacks on convoys are centered in the so-called Sunni
Muslim Triangle north and west of the capital.
