Obama v. Bush: Comparing Communication

National Public Radio host Roy Blunt, Jr. gave an entertaining and interesting interview to MotherJones recently about how he does NOT miss the embarrassment of Bushisms:

An excerpt:

MJ: Do you miss the linguistic oddities of Bush's speech?

RB: No! I don't. I didn't like them when I first heard them and I don't want to hear any more of them. I like linguistic eccentricity that has a point to it and that explores the possibilities of speech, but Bushisms were ways of not saying anything, or ways of saying something that he didn't really mean to say, and it was embarrassing to listen to. Obama is certainly a lot more interesting to listen to. I mean, Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. Even though he's gotten a lot more solemn since he's gotten elected, and I can't blame him. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians. We had him on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me one time, back before he had declared for the presidency when he was a little more willing to be loose, and he mentioned that his first day in the Senate he found that every senator had a little desk, and that all the senators over the centuries had carved their names into their desks. And I said, "Are you supposed to do that?" And he said, "Well, as the only African American member of the Senate I thought I might spraypaint my name." Tag it, as it were. So, I think he's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.

Read More Here.

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Stand Out Story of the Week

President Obama Overseas:
America's Resurrection to
World Stage Eminence

Our president this past week dominated the news of the world by his natural preeminent presence leadership among his peers. From the London G20, to Strasbourg's NATO, the contrast from Bush is strike and startling.

McClatchey News had this to say about the success of the G20 confab:

The leaders of the world's major industrialized nations accomplished something at their G-20 summit here Thursday that rarely happens at such gatherings of heads of state.

They produced large achievements.

They pledged the first-ever global regulation of hedge funds and private-equity firms, big players in global finance that have enjoyed operating under the regulatory radar. They agreed to a require banks to set aside more capital in good times to help them function in bad times. They vowed to crack down on tax haven nations that allow the wealthy to escape taxation. And they pledged $1.1 trillion to the International Monetary Fund and related institutions to help revive the global economy.

In short, the summit marks the end of an era of unbridled global capitalism and a turn toward stronger government oversight of economics, coordinated globally. Leaders of the Group of 20 effectively closed the door on an era of history and opened the door to a new one.

And, herewith some excerpts from Pam's House Blend coverage of this story Sunday addressing the essence of the presence.

Obama overseas: what a relief after Bush

by: Pam Spaulding

With North Korea's Kim Jong-Il acting up again (he seems to erupt like Old Faithful), puffing himself up to impress/scare the rest of the world and test whoever happens to be president. Barack Obama discussed his plan to help move the globe toward nuclear disarmament and said this about the North Korea missile firing in an address to a huge crowd in Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic.

Just this morning, we were reminded again of why we need a new and more rigorous approach to address this threat. North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action -- not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.

Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response -- (applause) -- now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that's why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.

...So, finally, we must ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon. This is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security. One terrorist with one nuclear weapon could unleash massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb and that it would have no problem with using it. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe. To protect our people, we must act with a sense of purpose without delay.

So today I am announcing a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. We will set new standards, expand our cooperation with Russia, pursue new partnerships to lock down these sensitive materials.

I haven't been following all of the stops of the first big trip abroad by the President and First Lady, but there's one thing I do know -- I sleep better at night knowing our country is no longer represented by a president who makes an ass out of himself in front of world leaders in times of crisis or utters insane, ignorant, amoral BS like:

Left: letting his lips flap over an open mic -- he said that quote to Tony Blair while chewing on a buttered roll, adding that special touch of American class.

"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." - as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002

"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right." - Rome, Italy, July 22, 2001

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." - speaking underneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

"Can we win? I don't think you can win it." - after being asked whether the war on terror was winnable, "Today" show interview, Aug. 30, 2004

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." - Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

"My answer is bring them on." - on Iraqi insurgents attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003

It's refreshing not to hear cheap, inflammatory phrases like "Dead Or Alive," "Mission Accomplished," or "I'm the Decider." We all know Barack Obama has an actual functioning brain. Watching Bush was like a form of PTSD - you'd watch him on one of those trips and replay all the horrible embarrassing incidents, afraid he was going to top himself.

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Who are the Real Culprits?

H/T to Têtard: for link to

CommonDreams.org

The Real Criminals are neither Lynndie England nor AIG traders

by Thom Hartmann

Whenever a politician or commentator bloviates about the brokers at AIG who are getting bonuses, we should all be remembering Lynndie England and Charles Granger. AIG brokers are to the financial meltdown what England was to the Iraq war.

Certainly she did things that were deplorable. But she thought they were legal (England, operating under orders to "soften up terrorists," even thought she was helping defend our nation). And to the extent that John Yoo's memos were law, arguably her actions were legal (although the Bushies never wanted it tested, so threw them to the wolves).

But the important point is that the real criminals of the Iraq War were not those like Lynndie England: they were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld (and their neocon buddies).

. . .But the real criminals of the AIG mess - and the entire financial meltdown that was set up between 1999 and 2006 and crashed starting in 2007 - were Grover Norquist, Phil and Wendy Graham, Tom Delay, and, sadly, Bill Clinton.

The philosophy that it's possible to bomb people into democracy and torture them into being on our side drove the Bushies. It was wrong, flawed, and frankly insane, and we're paying a huge price for it.

Similarly, the philosophy that playing the game of business and investment without rules (the technical term is Laissez-faire Capitalism) has driven our government since the election of Ronald Reagan, and went on steroids during the last two years of the Clinton administration and throughout the Bush administration. It's equally wrong, flawed, and insane, and we're paying a multi-trillion dollar price for it not unlike we are for the war.

The intellectual forefathers and mothers of the insane conservative economic policies that have brought us to where we are include Ludwig Von Mises, Freidrich Von Hayeck, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Tom Freidman, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Ayn Rand. Phil and Wendy Gramm pushed through the Gramm/Leach/Bliley Act (which allowed banks to get into the gambling business) and the Commodity Futures Moderinization Act (also known as "the Enron Loophole"), and Bill Clinton merrily signed them into law.

But just as it's inconvenient to hold the defense contractors and the senior politicians responsible for the Iraq debacle, and instead blame it on Lynndie England, our sound-bite corporate media prefer to focus on a few IAG traders, instead of the people who made what they did both possible and legal.

. . . Instead of passing a 90 percent tax that is limited to the traders, let's be realistic. Ever since Ronald Reagan rolled back the top marginal income tax rate on millionaires and billionaires from 74 percent to 29 percent, our government has been disastrously in debt, sliding deeper each and every year (the so-called "Clinton surplus" was a mirage created with phony numbers, although it was still a hell of a lot better than what we have now).

. . . Grover Norquist suggested it would force government to become so small it could be "drowned in a bathtub," leaving the corporations in charge. George W. Bush actually, finally, made it happen.

Thus here we are, ten-plus trillion dollars in debt, and trying to blame our problems on Lynndie England and a few traders at AIG.

Let's call out and name the real criminals, and get about the simple and straightforward solutions of putting our country back together.

Roll back the Reagan tax cuts that have done so much damage over the past 28 years. Pull out of insane trade agreements. Re-regulate banks so they're functionally public utilities again. Give oversight to the SEC on all forms of speculative investment and bring back the .25 percent STET tax on each unit of investment vehicle traded.

None of this is rocket science. From 1937 until Ronald Reagan began his wrecking-ball efforts at the stability and solidity of our nation's economy, we didn't have a single bank panic. Reagan dropped income tax rates and the almost immediate result was a bubble and crash in the stock market followed by the S&L crisis, which has been repeated over and over again with startling regularity ever since (just as they were during the 150 years preceding Roosevelt putting into place the regulatory structures and high marginal income tax rates of the New Deal that stabilized us).

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower embraced a 91 percent top marginal tax rate on millionaires and billionaires and strong regulation of banks, including the STET tax, and the nation prospered.

It's time to return to sanity and quit swatting at the little guys, while the real criminals and thieves walk away with our nation and our wealth.

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12 Failures and Schemes that Lead to Current Multi Trillion $$ Bush Depression

Hat tip to: AlterNet

While somewhat lengthy for this pithy-striving blog, this IS WELL WORTH THE READ.


Thanks, Tadpole for calling my attention to this analysis!


$5 billion in lobbying to Congress got the finance industry lucrative legislative favors that paved the way for Wall Street's devastating collapse.


What can $5Billion buy in Washington?


Quite a lot.


Over the 1998-2008 period, the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.
This extraordinary investment paid off fabulously. Congress and executive agencies rolled back long-standing regulatory restraints, refused to impose new regulations on rapidly evolving and mushrooming areas of finance, and shunned calls to enforce rules still in place.

"Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report released by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation (and which I co-authored), details a dozen crucial deregulatory moves over the last decade -- each a direct response to heavy lobbying from Wall Street and the broader financial sector, as the report details. (The report is available at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm.) Combined, these deregulatory moves helped pave the way for the current financial meltdown.

Here are 12 deregulatory steps to financial meltdown:

1. The repeal of Glass-Steagall

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 formally repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and related rules, which prohibited banks from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services. In 1998, Citibank and Travelers Group merged on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Then they set out, successfully, to make it so. The subsequent result was the infusion of the investment bank speculative culture into the world of commercial banking. The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall helped create the conditions in which banks invested monies from checking and savings accounts into creative financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, investment gambles that led many of the banks to ruin and rocked the financial markets in 2008.

2. Off-the-books accounting for banks

Holding assets off the balance sheet generally allows companies to avoid disclosing “toxic” or money-losing assets to investors in order to make the company appear more valuable than it is. Accounting rules -- lobbied for by big banks -- permitted the accounting fictions that continue to obscure banks' actual condition.

3. CFTC blocked from regulating derivatives

Financial derivatives are unregulated. By all accounts this has been a disaster, as Warren Buffett's warning that they represent "weapons of mass financial destruction" has proven prescient -- they have amplified the financial crisis far beyond the unavoidable troubles connected to the popping of the housing bubble. During the Clinton administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sought to exert regulatory control over financial derivatives, but the agency was quashed by opposition from Robert Rubin and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.

4. Formal financial derivative deregulation: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

The deregulation -- or non-regulation -- of financial derivatives was sealed in 2000, with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Its passage orchestrated by the industry-friendly Senator Phil Gramm, the Act prohibits the CFTC from regulating financial derivatives. 5. SEC removes capital limits on investment banks and the voluntary regulation regime

In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promulgated a rule requiring investment banks to maintain a debt to-net capital ratio of less than 15 to 1. In simpler terms, this limited the amount of borrowed money the investment banks could use. In 2004, however, the SEC succumbed to a push from the big investment banks -- led by Goldman Sachs, and its then-chair, Henry Paulson -- and authorized investment banks to develop net capital requirements based on their own risk assessment models. With this new freedom, investment banks pushed ratios to as high as 40 to 1. This super-leverage not only made the investment banks more vulnerable when the housing bubble popped, it enabled the banks to create a more tangled mess of derivative investments -- so that their individual failures, or the potential of failure, became systemic crises.

6. Basel II weakening of capital reserve requirements for banks

Rules adopted by global bank regulators -- known as Basel II, and heavily influenced by the banks themselves -- would let commercial banks rely on their own internal risk-assessment models (exactly the same approach as the SEC took for investment banks). Luckily, technical challenges and intra-industry disputes about Basel II have delayed implementation -- hopefully permanently -- of the regulatory scheme.

7. No predatory lending enforcement

Even in a deregulated environment, the banking regulators retained authority to crack down on predatory lending abuses. Such enforcement activity would have protected homeowners, and lessened though not prevented the current financial crisis. But the regulators sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

8. Federal preemption of state enforcement against predatory lending

When the states sought to fill the vacuum created by federal non-enforcement of consumer protection laws against predatory lenders, the Feds -- responding to commercial bank petitions -- jumped to attention to stop them. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision each prohibited states from enforcing consumer protection rules against nationally chartered banks.

9. Blocking the courthouse doors: Assignee Liability Escape

Under the doctrine of “assignee liability,” anyone profiting from predatory lending practices should be held financially accountable, including Wall Street investors who bought bundles of mortgages (even if the investors had no role in abuses committed by mortgage originators). With some limited exceptions, however, assignee liability does not apply to mortgage loans, however. Representative Bob Ney -- a great friend of financial interests, and who subsequently went to prison in connection with the Abramoff scandal -- worked hard, and successfully, to ensure this effective immunity was maintained.

10. Fannie and Freddie enter subprime

. . .Fannie and Freddie are not responsible for the financial crisis. They are responsible for their own demise, and the resultant massive taxpayer liability. . . . In fact, the motivation was the for-profit nature of the institutions and their particular executive incentive schemes. . . . .Massive lobbying -- including especially but not only of Democratic friends of the institutions -- enabled them to divert from their traditional exclusive focus on prime loans.

11. Merger mania

The effective abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles over the last two decades has enabled a remarkable concentration in the banking sector, even in advance of recent moves to combine firms as a means to preserve the functioning of the financial system. The megabanks achieved too-big-to-fail status. While this should have meant they be treated as public utilities requiring heightened regulation and risk control, other deregulatory maneuvers (including repeal of Glass-Steagall) enabled them to combine size, explicit and implicit federal guarantees, and reckless high-risk investments.

12. Credit rating agency failure

With Wall Street packaging mortgage loans into pools of securitized assets and then slicing them into tranches, the resultant financial instruments were attractive to many buyers because they promised high returns. But pension funds and other investors could only enter the game if the securities were highly rated.

The credit rating agencies enabled these investors to enter the game, by attaching high ratings to securities that actually were high risk -- as subsequent events have revealed. The credit rating agencies have a bias to offering favorable ratings to new instruments because of their complex relationships with issuers, and their desire to maintain and obtain other business dealings with issuers.

This institutional failure and conflict of interest might and should have been forestalled by the SEC, but the Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act of 2006 gave the SEC insufficient oversight authority. In fact, the SEC must give an approval rating to credit ratings agencies if they are adhering to their own standards -- even if the SEC knows those standards to be flawed.


From a financial regulatory standpoint, what should be done going forward? The first step is certainly to undo what Wall Street has wrought. More in future columns on an affirmative agenda to restrain the financial sector. None of this will be easy, however. Wall Street may be disgraced, but it is not prostrate. Financial sector lobbyists continue to roam the halls of Congress, former Wall Street executives have high positions in the Obama administration, and financial sector propagandists continue to warn of the dangers of interfering with "financial innovation."

Today in Gay History

On February 24, 2004
George W. Bush



Announced that he supported a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, reigniting the issue of marriage equality as part of the gay agenda. He did not specifically endorse the wording proposed by Representative Marilyn Musgrave which had the likelihood of also prohibiting states the ability to recognize same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. Bush did say that the wording of Musgrave's amendment "meets his principles" in protecting the "sanctity of marriage" between men and women.
The Amendment has never come to a vote, but will likely be resurrected from time to time, as politically expedient.

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Bailout Blues--Where'd the $$ Go?

$800 Billion BAILOUT

or is it really $2 Trillion??

Meet freshman Congressman Alan Grayson D Fla





and visit his campaign site for more vids here

Many are calling him "Bulldog."
Crapaud says: Welcome back Harry Truman!

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Qua est Justicia? The Janus Effect?

Nonny Mouse, @ Crooks and Liars

has posted an excellent short piece asserting we must insist on seeking true justice beyond a simple "truth commission." As he eloquently demonstrates, simply doing the right things henceforward while ignoring obvious past transgressions, does nothing for all the wrong reasons. Herewith, some excerpts, but the full post is excellent! Even quotes one of Crapaud's favorites, Hannah Arendt.

"...is it enough for the current president to insist that, regardless of whatever crimes his predecessor or those in his administration have committed, the United States now obeys the law, and that he prefers to ‘get it right moving forward’[?] It is simply not enough. ...Those in our government who have committed war crimes must be aggressively prosecuted; not simply because we are legally obligated to under our own laws, and under laws and treaties our country was instrumental in establishing for the entire world. Not because this country’s reputation has been devastated by such acts of barbarity and inhumanity on the part of our leaders we would instantly condemn as those more apposite to tin-pot dictators and tyrannical madmen. ...It is vital for our survival as a nation, as a people, as a society, and even for the future of our entire world that we do so. Because in the words of Hannah Arendt, ‘it is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past’. She wrote that in 1963, and was speaking about the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, but what she wrote then, about a different time, a different nation, a different crime, hold true today. ‘It is essentially for this reason: that the unprecedented, once it has appeared, may become precedent for the future, that all trials touching upon “crimes against humanity” must be judged according to a standard that is today still an “ideal”’.

For if we do nothing, if we protect those accused of war crimes from investigation out of a misguided, even perverse ‘respect’ for the offices these individuals held, if we allow those who have abused the power of their office in order to commit war crimes to escape from being judged, claiming immunity for reasons of exigent circumstances, we establish a precedent. It isn’t enough to remember, it is necessary to also act, if we are to prevent history from repeating itself. The Dick Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds and George Bushes will return, again and again, with different names, and different faces, but the same lust for violence and disregard for the rule of law that should be enforced to protect us all from crimes against humanity, and it will be those of us who established the precedent of bestowing immunity on the perpetrators of today’s war crimes from their acts who will be responsible for tomorrow’s crimes against humanity.

It is not enough to simply remember. Those who will not face the past will face a future neither you nor I will want to live in. That is the Janus effect Obama will have to deal with, and soon, if our country has any real future to speak of."

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The People vs. Dick Cheney et als

Illustration by Roberto Parada







Will Obama bring the Bushies to account? Will Congress? Some local DA? A judge in Europe? Anyone...?


Largely Excerpted from articles by Karen Greenberg and Jonathan Schwarz
From Mother Jones, January/February 2009 Issue


"…Will there be redress for the crimes of the Bush administration—and if so, what form should it take? The list of potential legal breaches is, of course, enormous; by one count, the administration has broken 269 laws, both domestic and international. It begins with illegal wiretapping and surveillance (which in the view of many experts violated the Fourth Amendment, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, for starters), the politicization of the Justice Department and the firing of nine US attorneys, and numerous instances of obstruction of justice—from the destruction of cia interrogation tapes to the willful misleading of Congress and the public.

Perhaps the paramount charge that legal experts have zeroed in on is the state-approved torture that violated not just the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture but also the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the 1996 War Crimes Act, which prohibits humiliating and degrading treatment and other "outrages upon personal dignity."

"… Human rights organizations, notably the Center for Constitutional Rights, have teamed up with partners in Germany and France to pursue charges against Rumsfeld for violating the Convention Against Torture, though so far to little effect. The possibility of other cases has been raised, most recently in British barrister Philippe Sands' warning that Congress should investigate the torture question, for "if the United States doesn't address this, other countries will."

...More significantly, there have also been rumblings about prosecution here at home…

….As Walter Lippmann once wrote, congressional commissions can turn into a free-for-all as politicians, "starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish manhunt, and do not stop at cannibalism." Accordingly, some favor the idea of an independent commission, run by someone of the stature of Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or former New York US Attorney Mary Jo White, in the hope that this format would be less politically charged. The goal would be to prove Lippmann wrong and establish the facts in a reliable, nonpartisan fashion—to create an authoritative narrative that the nation could share.

But what kind of commission makes all the difference. Truth and reconciliation commissions, which the United States has never had at the federal level, are for healing. Watergate-style commissions bear the prospect of condemnation, exposure, and punishment. Then there is the question of just what is to be found: Much of what happened in the run-up to the war, the torture scandal, or the National Security Agency wiretaps has already been documented in news articles, books, and congressional probes; what is missing, though, is the full story about who knew what and when. Perhaps a commission could get members of the Bush administration to reveal these details. Perhaps there are other skeletons to be unearthed. The best hope, Meintjes ruefully acknowledges, is for a "negotiated truth" along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. As attorney Scott Horton has pointed out in Harper's, "Investigative commissions can provide truth...but they cannot provide justice."

…who else could throw the book at the Bush/Cheney crew? A few possibilities:
A Rogue district attorney--- In his recent book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi lays out a creative argument that state or local prosecutors could indict Bush for murder if a soldier from their jurisdiction was killed in Iraq. It's a far-fetched premise, but with 2,700 DAs out there, Bugliosi—famous for putting Charles Manson away—says, "I just need one." (Last fall, the Vermont Progressive Party's candidate for attorney general said that if elected, she would appoint Bugliosi to implement his plan.) This unusual strategy is not unprecedented; witness New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination (as dramatized in JFK). Garrison successfully subpoenaed evidence like the Zapruder film, which had not been seen publicly before the trial. Potential upshot: major embarrassment for Bush. Likelihood: low.

Ticked-Off Lawyers---Most of what happened under Bush was "legal" in the sense that the Justice Department issued opinions—such as the so-called torture memos—that said as much. The new administration, if only to placate the military and intelligence agencies, will be loath to go after Bush officials who can claim legal cover, no matter how flawed the reasoning behind it. But the lawyers who actually drafted the legal justifications for torture—particularly Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee—may be vulnerable. They could be indicted in federal court if they knowingly issued faulty legal opinions that led to criminal acts. However, that would be an extremely difficult case to make unless one of the defendants turned against the others. More plausible is that, like Bill Clinton and Scooter Libby, they could face disbarment, limiting their employment prospects.

The United Nations--A range of observers, from former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to überhawk Richard Perle, has acknowledged that the invasion of Iraq violated the UN Charter. In theory, the Security Council could sanction the United States or even authorize the use of force to expel our troops. But that's a nonstarter, not least because the Security Council signed off on the occupation of Iraq. Likewise, the United States could be tried in the UN's International Court of Justice and forced to pay reparations to Iraq. That's also doubtful, since the Security Council enforces Court rulings; the US could use its veto power as it did in 1986, when the icj found we had violated international law by supporting the Nicaraguan Contras. If the UN wanted to go after American officials for torture, it could set up a special tribunal like those for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But such courts are the creation of—you guessed it—the Security Council.
The International Criminal Court--- The Third Geneva Conventions, which the United States signed in 1949, as well as the UN Convention Against Torture, which Congress ratified in 1988, forbid torture. The International Criminal Court (not to be confused with the icj) was convened in the Netherlands in 2002 as a permanent venue to try crimes including violations of Geneva. But the United States hasn't ratified the icc treaty and has pressured 100 countries to agree never to extradite American citizens to the court, so Dick Cheney's unlikely to wind up in the dock at The Hague.

The Garzón Factor---Not that George W. Bush & Co. shouldn't be worried about international laws that they once sneered at. There are hints that they already are: A 2002 State Department memo cautioned officials about the "risk of future criminal prosecution," and the Pentagon's 2005 National Defense Strategy warned of enemies who might "employ a strategy of the weak using international fora and judicial processes."
The biggest threat comes from European magistrates like Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish "superjudge" who nearly brought Augusto Pinochet to justice. In 1998, Garzón issued an arrest warrant for the former Chilean dictator for the deaths of Spanish citizens who'd been tortured by his regime. Days later, the unsuspecting 82-year-old was picked up while visiting England. Pinochet died while incarcerated awaiting trial.

In many European countries, most notably Spain and Italy, judges can initiate prosecutions and—as in the case of Pinochet—may do so independently of the executive branch. Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says such a court might be the most plausible venue for a case against Bush. "The prime minister of Spain was completely against going after Pinochet," he points out, "but a judge lower down was able to do it." The approach might prove especially effective in pursuing torture cases. As signatories to the Convention Against Torture, most European nations are obligated, theoretically, to investigate violations by other signatories, such as the United States. Sure enough, human rights advocates have filed complaints in Germany, France, and Sweden against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing the torture of Iraqi and Saudi citizens in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The ccr claims a pending case convinced Rumsfeld to alter his travel plans to Germany.

"Believe me, people from the top of the administration will be consulting with lawyers for the rest of their lives," says Christopher Simpson, a professor at American University and an expert on international law. "They will have to coordinate very, very closely with the State Department's specialists whenever they leave America. This is something they cannot take lightly." Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, has warned that former Bush officials like Gonzales, Yoo, and Addington "should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel."

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Bush War Crimes? It ain't over 'til it's Over.

Crapaud borrows unashamedly
from Raw Story:

The specter many want to forget

"The UN's special torture rapporteur called on the US Tuesday to pursue former president George W. Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany's ZDF television Tuesday evening.

He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

"We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld," against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.

"But obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this," added Nowak, who authored a UN investigation report on the Guantanamo prison.

Bush stepped down from power Tuesday, with Barack Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States.

Asked about chances to bring legal action against Bush and Rumsfeld, Nowak said: "In principle yes. I think the evidence is on the table."

At issue, however, is whether "American law will recognise these forms of torture."

A bipartisan Senate report released last month found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody.

It said Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at the Guantanamo prison, although he ruled them out a month later.

The coercive measures were based on a document signed by Bush in February, 2002.

French, German and US rights groups have previously said they wanted to bring legal action against Rumsfeld.

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Jan. 21, 2009."

Bush' s Departure

He is gone, it is a good riddance. Il est parti en voilà heureusement défaits.

THE FINAL DAY OF BUSH TORTURE

AND GO §*&%œµ¢♂¿ (Saddleback)*YOURSELF, DUBYA

*Definition "Saddlebacking"----the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities. 'After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she's saving herself for marriage.'

Even the Talibangelicals and Christianists kick him in the arse on his way out the door. View another surprising screed HERE.

Here's your farewell song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phyrx3VuwcM


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Cheney: The Black Hole of Decency

Day # 1 in the Countdown to

the Exodus of Bush on 1.20.09

Visit THE BEAST buffalobeast.com.nyud.net /134/50mostloathsome2008-full.html

for the 50 Top most

Loathsome People in America

Here’s THE BEAST’s take on its Indictment of Cheney, DICK

↓ ↓

#7. Dick Cheney

Charges: Still alive. The amount of medical resources devoted to keeping this black hole of decency operational could have cured cancer by now, but if they had, Cheney would make sure to keep it a secret. Since Watergate, Cheney’s been fighting to rehab Nixon’s image, and he has succeeded in a way, by showing us all just how much worse a presidency can be.

Exhibit A: “It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.”

Sentence: Eaten alive by baboons.

The WHOLE family of CRAPAUDS says

GOOD RIDDANCE!

All those Stupid Hats!

#2 in the Countdown

to the Bush Departure

1.20.09

We surely won't miss


all that asshattery.

Bush's Legacy At Home: Divisiveness and Despair

Day #3 in Countdown to the Bush Termination Credit large swaths to www.thinkprogress.org

While campaigning for president, George W. Bush often repeated that he would seek to change the negative and partisan tone in Washington, D.C. "I'm a uniter, not a divider," Bush would say. "I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another." A recent CNN poll found that a whopping 82 percent of Americans believe that Bush did not unite the country. In fact, Bush himself just recently admitted that he had not lived up to his "uniter, not a divider" rhetoric, saying last month that he "didn't do a very good job of it" (though he later blamed others for "needless name-calling").

POLITICIZING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: But over the last eight years, "pitting one group against another" is exactly the kind of politics Bush played. He and his allies exploited national issues, placed social hot-button issues in the forefront of all political discussions, viciously scapegoating gay people, immigrants and other groups. The Bushies ruthlessly attacked progressives for political gain, and politicized the federal government to serve the interests of the Republican party. Rove and the other Bushies schemed to establish a Third Reich style of Permanent Conservative Majority, deploying singularly unqualified graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University to scrub various agencies, most notably the Department of Justice, in Stalin-like purges of Democrats, Progressives, gay people, and often any career officers who were even “suspected” of harboring views that might be considered as standing in the way of the New Republican Majority.

The White House took a "permanent campaign approach" to governing, admitted
Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan recently. In 2003, Bush's political guru Karl Rove or his top aide, Ken Mehlman, "visited nearly every agency to outline White House campaign priorities, review polling data and, on occasion, call attention to tight House, Senate and gubernatorial races that could be affected by regulatory action." Rove also led an unprecedented campaign to politicize the federal government to serve the interests of the Republican Party.

POLITICS TRUMPED SCIENCE, REASON: The White House also routinely favored politics over science: regarding climate change by muzzling NASA's chief global warming scientist James Hansen's climate change findings, censoring scientific evidence on global warming in an EPA report, and editing all government scientists' testimony to fit its political aims. Stem cell research? Politicize it, Ban it! Sane and scientific approaches to preventing deadly sexually transmitted diseases? Abstinence only education, no funding to any science based notions of prophylaxis. The Office of Faith Based Initiatives, the General Services Administration, the Interior Department, the Defense Department, Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were also not spared of politics during the Bush years.

DIVIDING ON SOCIAL ISSUES: Shortly after taking office, Rove convinced Bush to issue an executive order that effectively ended federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Despite evidence showing the enormous scientific benefits to such research, Rove's move sought to appease the GOP base, rather than promote sound policy. In the run-up to the 2004 election, Rove orchestrated a campaign to significantly boost turnout of the GOP base by placing measures to ban gay marriage on the ballot in numerous battleground states. Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans -- the GOP's largest gay group -- said at the time that Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was part of a calculation by Rove that "4 million evangelicals stayed home in 2000. As a result, the 2004 campaign has focused on energizing the far right while ignoring mainstream Republicans."

EDUCATION REFORM: The completely duplicitous and misleadingly named “No Child Left Behind” predicated all federal public funding of education on meeting testing standards but without any adequate funding to the states to implement its many mandates. The design was clearly to PRIVATIZE education by mandating private “Charter” schools funded by portable “vouchers.” Our professional educators are worn out and resigning in ever larger numbers, completely stymied by the unfunded mandates that require them to throw traditional teaching methods out the window in favor of only “teaching to the test.”

DISMANTLING OUR CONSTITUTION: Bush used the tragedy of 9-11 to revamp the organization of security, law enforcement and intelligence communities, creating the Department of Homeland Security. The Transportation Security Administration was also born out of the wake of Sept. 11. The Patriot Act over road fundamental protections of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments of our Bill of Rights.

The War on Terror was used an excuse to curtail civil liberties. All dissent was swept aside as “unpatriotic” and the trampling of our basic core liberties became the game du jour. The result was domestic surveillance programs under the Patriot Act, the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, and FISA and warrantless wiretapping; military tribunals set up at Guantanamo; and “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding. In other legal matters, "Plamegate," the controversy over the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer, was tangentially related to pre-war intelligence and fueled speculation that the Bush administration doctored intelligence claims.

As Bush prepares to leave office, people the world over now look at the U.S. in a "negative way" as a country that "went ahead and sanctioned torture." (See this blog on January 15, 2009). Paralleling President Obama’s repair of our international image, the abuses of the Bush domestic agenda must be swiftly and surely repudiated. A welcome return to sanity begins 1.20.09—ALLAH BE PRAISED!