Rules for BigTime's Downtime

The following I got off SmokingGun. It basically details what Dick Cheney needs for his period of Downtime. I love how he requires ALL televisions to be turned to FOX.

Boy, what a surprise.


Hey, I notice he's got a phone number listed on the sheet. Go ahead, give him a call. I'm sure he's lonely.

LARRY, CURLY & BUSH

The way Bush is floundering around, I can't help but think of Moe slapping Larry and Curly and saying, "Alright, you guys, spread out and find some Democrats to hang all these screw ups on."

Nyuk, nyuk . . .

NUKE!

Nyet.

BEWARE of the BUSHTAPO

In the following, Robert Parry discusses the growing calls by the Administration and its supporters to criminalize dissent and truth. Reporters are being threatened with jailtime, government agents fired from their posts in the CIA and elsewhere and then subsequently tossed in jail. As the regime sinks ever deeper in the polls and our mad President and his rabid aides-de-camp seek to prop him up, ever more desperate measures are sought to ensure power. In the end, Bush and his Bushtapo apparatchiks are not going to go quietly into the night. In the end, we may well be forced to arrest them and clap them in irons and, in the case of Mr. Bush, enpanel a jury to try him for treasonous crimes against the People.

It's happened to kings before:

In December 1648, furious that the English Parliament continued to countenance Charles I as a ruler, the army marched on Parliament and conducted "Pride's Purge" (named after the commanding officer of the operation). Hundreds of law-makers were arrested and a Rump Parliament was ordered to set up a high court of justice in order to try Charles I for treason in the name of the people of England.

59 commissioners found the English king Charles I guilty of high treason, being a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy." He was beheaded on a scaffold in front of the banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall on January 30, 1649.


Bush Brandishes Jail Time at Critics
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Sunday 23 April 2006

Over the past five-plus years, the American people have gotten a taste of what a triumphant George W. Bush is like, as he basked in high approval ratings and asserted virtually unlimited powers as Commander in Chief. Now, the question is: How will Bush and his inner circle behave when cornered?

So far, the answer should send chills through today's weakened American Republic. Bush and his team - faced with plunging poll numbers and cascading disclosures of wrongdoing - appear determined to punish and criminalize resistance to their regime.

That is the significance of recent threats from the administration and its supporters who bandy about terms like sedition, espionage and treason when referring to investigative journalists, government whistle-blowers and even retired military generals - critics who have exposed Executive Branch illegalities, incompetence and deceptions.

CIA Director Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman long regarded as a political partisan, has escalated pressure on intelligence officials suspected of leaking secrets about Bush's warrantless wiretapping of Americans and the torture of detainees held in clandestine prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe.

On April 20, Goss fired a career intelligence officer (identified as Mary O. McCarthy) for allegedly discussing with reporters the CIA's network of secret prisons where terrorism suspects were interrogated and allegedly tortured in defiance of international law and often the laws of the countries involved.

Goss had said the disclosure of these clandestine prisons had caused "very severe" damage to "our capabilities to carry out our mission," referring to complaints from foreign officials who had let the CIA use their territory for the so-called "black sites" and faced legal trouble from the torture revelations.

"This was a very aggressive internal investigation" to find who leaked the information about the secret prisons, one former CIA officer told the New York Times. [NYT, April 22, 2006]

WMD Fight

Goss was recruited to the task of putting the CIA back in its place by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004. During the run-up to the Iraq War, Cheney had banged heads with intelligence analysts who doubted White House claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Though many senior CIA bureaucrats bent to Cheney's pressure on the WMD intelligence, some analysts resisted. After the Iraq invasion failed to find WMD, some of the CIA's suppressed doubts began surfacing in the press and causing Bush political embarrassment during the presidential election campaign.

After the November 2004 election, Bush and his allies sought retribution against these out-of-step CIA officials. The powerful conservative news media joined the drumbeat against analysts who were seen as a threat to Bush's goals in Iraq and elsewhere.

Conservative columnists, including Robert Novak and David Brooks, argued the CIA's rightful role was to do the president's bidding.

"Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies," wrote Brooks in the New York Times on Nov. 13, 2004. "His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Brooks justified a purge at the CIA because the spy agency had made Bush look bad.

"At the height of the campaign, CIA officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the president's Iraq policy," Brooks wrote. "Somebody leaked a CIA report predicting a gloomy or apocalyptic future for the region. É A senior CIA official, Paul Pillar, reportedly made comments saying he had long felt the decision to go to war would heighten anti-American animosity in the Arab world."

In other words, conservative commentators saw what sounded like reasonable CIA analyses as threats to Bush's authority.

New Disclosures

In 2005, as conditions in Iraq indeed worsened and anti-U.S. sentiment in the Islamic world swelled, the Bush administration lashed out at other disclosures - about the network of secret prisons (by the Washington Post) and Bush's decision to ignore legal requirements for court warrants before spying on communications by American citizens (reported by the New York Times).

Bush, his aides and their media allies claimed the news articles inflicted severe damage on U.S. national security, but presented no precise evidence to support those claims. What was clear, however, was that Bush was facing a steep decline in public assessments about his judgment and honesty.

By March 2006, Bush's favorable poll numbers were sinking into the mid-30 percentiles with his negatives nearing 60 percent and his strong negatives in the high-40s.

SurveyUSA.com, which compiles state-by-state poll numbers, reported in March that Bush had net favorable ratings in only seven states (Nebraska, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, and Utah). By April, Bush's net favorable states had declined to four (Nebraska, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah).

In April, too, the Bush administration was stunned when a half dozen retired generals criticized the conduct of the Iraq War and called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign. Bush's defenders struck back, warning that letting retired generals criticize Rumsfeld - and by implication, Bush - threatened the principle of civilian control of the military.

The announcement of the Pulitzer prizes was more bad news for the White House, with awards going to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest for her articles on the secret prisons and to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for their disclosure of Bush's warrantless wiretaps.

Facing Bush's growing unpopularity and the increased resistance from influential power centers - including the military, the intelligence community and the mainstream press - administration supporters escalated their rhetoric with intimations of legal retaliation against the critics.

Sedition?

On April 18, Tony Blankley, editorial-page editor of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's staunchly pro-Bush Washington Times, raised the prospect of sedition charges against active-duty military officers who - in collusion with the retired generals - might be considering resignations in protest of Bush's war policies.

"Can a series of lawful resignations turn into a mutiny?" Blankley wrote. "And if they are agreed upon in advance, have the agreeing generals formed a felonious conspiracy to make a mutiny?"

Blankley wrote that this possible "revolt" by the generals "comes dangerously close to violating three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice," including "mutiny and sedition." Blankley thus raised the specter of courts martial against officers who resign rather than carry out orders from Bush.

Administration supporters also have suggested imprisonment for journalists who disobey Bush's edicts against writing critical stories about the War on Terror that contain classified information.

Former Education Secretary (and now right-wing pundit) Bill Bennett used his national radio program on April 18 to condemn the three Pulitzer-winning journalists - Priest, Risen and Lichtblau - as not "worthy of an award" but rather "worthy of jail."

According to a transcript of the remarks published by Editor & Publisher's Web site, Bennett said the reporters "took classified information, secret information, published it in their newspapers, against the wishes of the president, against the requests of the president and others, that they not release it. They not only released it, they publicized it - they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us.

"How do we know it damaged us? Well, it revealed the existence of the surveillance program, so people are going to stop making calls. Since they are now aware of this, they're going to adjust their behavior. É On the secret [prison] sites, the CIA sites, we embarrassed our allies. É So it hurt us there.

"As a result are they [the reporters] punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer prizes - they win Pulitzer prizes. I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did is worthy of jail, and I think this [Espionage Act] investigation needs to go forward."

Right-wing bloggers also began dubbing the awards to the three journalists "the Pulitzer Prize for Treason."

Damage Doubtful

However, neither right-wing commentators nor Bush administration officials have ever explained exactly how national security interests were hurt by the disclosures. As even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has acknowledged, al-Qaeda operatives already were aware of the U.S. capability to intercept their electronic communications.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Feb. 6, 2006, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, asked Gonzales, "How has this revelation damaged the program" since the administration's attack on the disclosure "seems to presuppose that these very sophisticated al-Qaeda folks didn't think we were intercepting their phone calls?"

Gonzales responded, "I think, based on my experience, it is true - you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance. But if they're not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget" - a response that drew laughter from the citizens in the hearing room.

As for the secret prisons, the fallout appears to be largely political, causing embarrassment for countries that collaborated in what appears to be a clear violation of international law by granting space for "black sites" where torture allegedly was practiced.

The most likely consequence is that the Bush administration will find it harder in the future to set up secret prisons outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross, the United Nations and human rights organizations.

But that may help U.S. national security - rather than hurt it - by discouraging the Bush administration from engaging in torture that has damaged America's reputation around the world and fueled Muslim rage at the United States.

Instead, what appears most keenly at stake in the escalating political rhetoric is the Bush administration's determination to stop its political fall by branding its critics - even U.S. generals and CIA officers - as unpatriotic and then silencing them with threats of imprisonment.

Bush is trying to mark the boundaries of permissible political debate. He also wants total control of classified information so he can leak the information that helps him - as he did in summer 2003 to shore up his claims about Iraq's WMD - while keeping a lid on secrets that might make him look bad.

The firing of CIA officer Mary McCarthy and the threats of criminal charges against various dissenters are just the latest skirmishes in the political war over who will decide what Americans get to see and hear.

The other signal to Bush's critics, however, is this: If they ever thought he and his administration would accept accountability for their alleged abuses of power without a nasty fight, those critics are very mistaken.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! DER FUHRER-DECIDER DECIDES!

By C. William Boyer

As we know, all great military leaders start their careers by going AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Or as little corporals in the Austrian army.

Here's what that military genius, George W. Bush, said when questioned about the half-dozen generals clamoring for Secretary of Defense (and Iraq Disaster architect) Donald Rumsfeld's resignation:



Some pesky White House reporter asked a follow up question that Der Fuhrer deigned to answer.

Reporter: What do you say to the critics who believe that you are ignoring the advice of retired generals and military commanders who say there needs to be a change?

Bush: I say I listen to all voices but mine's the final decision and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He's not only transforming the military, he's fighting a war on terror - He's helping us fight a war on terror. I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation but I'm the decider and I decide what is best and what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of defense.

Ah. Der Fuhrer has spoken. Doesn't matter what people and the polls say, or Congress or even the generals trained in war: Der Fuhrer-Decider Decides.

Of course, the last time a Fuhrer-Decider of such limited military talents stubbornly ignored his generals' advice as they opposed a flawed military plan, the generals struck back. Alas, the plot failed and war raged on.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

Okay, yes, I'm a Democrat, but right now I'm going to advocate a VERY STRONGLY reactionary action:

When someone from ANY country tries to enter this country ILLEGALLY, we should have the right to shoot them dead. It's our country, we have legal methods in which to emigrate here. Use those methods (in other words, wait in line like a responsible, polite adult) and you'll be fine. Cut in line like a rude asshole by scoffing at those methods, flouting them and ignoring them like someone stepping onto a farmer's land to steal his cow, well then we reserve the right to shoot you dead.

Here's how I'd do it (I will be ripped a new one for this):

Warnings are broadcast for six months leading up to the new policy. Along the border, at ports, at trainstations and at airports, the new policy is posted in 20 languages. No one can claim "they didn't know."

The policy:

When an Illegal Immigrant, be they Mexican, Mauritanian or Martian, is caught illegally entering the country, an invisible, ultra-violet bar code is scanned onto them, visible only with a black-light or some such.

If, subsequent to a second arrest, the bar-code is detected, immediate action will be taken up to and including execution.

Oh, here it comes: How DARE you espouse this, you sound like a Nazi, blah blah blah. Well, here's my rejoinder:

Boo hoo.

I didn't force you to break my country's law. I didn't dupe you into crossing my border. I didn't, presto chango, move my country, under cover of darkness, right into your path so you stepped on it like a hidden land-mine. I even gave you a gimme, a one-time get-out-of-death card which you gambled and used up.

YOU convicted YOURSELF.

I merely followed up upon what I told you would happen in 20 LANGUAGES if you trespassed twice:

TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

It is time to protect our borders and the intergrity of this country. Or drop the Border sham entirely and welcome everybody in. Sure, there are MORE than enough jobs to go around for every person in the world, and those jobs are all RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA, and none of them is being exported to Mexico or China or India or . . .

Okay, have at me.

Of Battle Tanks and Bath Towels

I really debated renaming this posting with something shorter and catchier, namely:

WTF?

By way of the blogsite No More Mister Nice Guy, I came across a posting at DefenseLink.mil, a military website blabbering about a karaoke fundraiser hosted at the American Legion Post 364:

WOODBRIDGE, Va., April 9, 2006 -- The Landstuhl Hospital Care Project added $4,400 to its coffers April 7 to buy items needed by wounded, injured and sick servicemembers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Karen Grimord, the project's coordinator.The money was raised during the "Hook & C's Karaoke" 2nd annual benefit, held here this year at American Legion Post 364....This marked the fourth benefit held by the Landstuhl Hospital Care Project since Grimord and her husband Brian founded it in November 2004. "We try to provide mostly clothing items, but we've also extended to hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan that need supplies, including bed sheets," Grimord said. "The project started supporting three hospitals In Iraq in 2005 and one in Afghanistan this year."... the hospital in Afghanistan asked for bed sheets and pillows to use on litters....

But wait, there's more:

We have a distributor that DONATED 250 towels to military hospitals in Iraq a few months back. They are giving us a break on the towels we need this time. If I have the Euro figured out right and shipping they should cost us about $5.25 a towel. If you are interested in purchasing any part of the 20-25 towels needed for [the CSH [combat support hospital] in Iraq please send the check to Riverchase Church of Christ in Birmingham, Alabama] and let me know by private email.

Holy crap, call me cynical, but since when was the US military so ground down that we need donations from Bed, Bath & Beyond to support the war machine?
Oh. That's right. We're fighting wars in two countries (soon to be three).

Okay, I'll pick up some bed-sheets and pillows for the troops. But I couldn't find any in Desert Camouflage. At least the design I did find is so bright and sunny.

Have a Battle-lish Day! Buh-bye!

GEORGE W. BUSH and the END OF CIVILIZATION

The day after George Bush was made president by the Supreme Court, I told a friend, "We just came to a fork in the road and took a branch. I have no idea where it leads, only that we can never get back to that other branch."

I voted for Bush in 2000 and so I am spiritually responsible for summoning the Angel of Destruction.

George W. Bush is, in my solemn and honest opinion, insane. Insanity in this case is nothing more than the inability to correctly judge reality. When a person thinks they're a bird and can fly, only to leap out of 15 story building and fall to their death, you can say that person incorrectly judged the reality of lacking wings. Or you can say they're insane. By the same token, if one invades a sovereign country thinking it will be a cakewalk and it turns into a killing ground, that person has incorrectly judged reality. Insane?

George W. Bush is a megalomaniac coupled with narcissistic personality disorder, an alcoholic and a former cocaine abuser. He thinks he's the Chosen One, picked from the maelstrom of history at a unique point in time to lead his country in times of trouble. Because he's an evangelical Christian, he's taken it one step further. George W. Bush believes we are at Revelations as prophesied in the Bible and the Apocalypse is nigh. He reminds me of Kane, the creepy preacher from Poltergeist, who took his followers down into the caverns to await His return.

They died in those caverns. To be certain that he's proven correct, though, George W. Bush is going to set off a chain of events that will re-order the world and quite possibly end it, or at least the civilization currently calling it home.


George W. Bush intends to use nuclear weapons against Iran to keep Iran from ever being able to use nuclear weapons. This oxymoronic piece of logic reminds me of the line in Dr. Strangelove: "Gentlemen, no fighting in the war room."

According to a report by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker (Hersh is the one who broke the Abu Graib prisoner abuse story) according to Hersh an air assault on Iran is being planned and, against the wishes of members of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, tactical nuclear weapons will be used to penetrate underground bunkers:

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran - without success, the former intelligence official said. "The White House said, 'Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.' "

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it "a juggernaut that has to be stopped." He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. "There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," the adviser told me. "This goes to high levels." The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. "The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks," the adviser said. "And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen."

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "They're telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation," he said.

If America, under its criminal president, uses nuclear weapons against Iran, here's what will happen:

- America will be ostracized from the world community. Many countries will pull their envoys and shut down embassies. This country will become a virtual pariah to the world, the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons and to have done so twice.

- America will be sanctioned by the United Nations, with possible economic punitives put in place.

- In absentia, George W. Bush will be convicted of war crimes in The Hague. Quite possibly sentenced to death, a warrant will be issued for his extradition. It will be ignored.

- Gas will go to over $10 a gallon as enraged Arab oil producing countries, along with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, seek revenge against the United States.

- The US economy, so fragile from it's staggering debt, both governmental and consumer, will collapse, as will the rest of the world's.

- In the world that follows the nuking and the collapse, desperation will set in, as it ALWAYS does in times of global economic hardship as countries, fearful of the madness of America, frantically arm themselves both conventionally and with nuclear weapons.

- Quite possibly World War III and all that entails, an order of magnitude more horrible and more global than WWII and all it entailed.

And all because a madman became president by the whim of 5 Supreme Court justices in the year 2000.

CUT A CHECK, MR. PRESIDENT

By C. William Boyer

Okay, let's for a moment pretend that the outing of Valerie Plame was not a crime. We can pretend any number of things to gain the intended outcome. We can claim Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA covert operative was known (though, if you believe here CIA colleagues, this was not the case); we can pretend there was no intention to reveal her identity, it just sort of happened (like pregnancy just happens); we can claim the President's inherent power as Commander-in-Chief under Article II of the Constitution to do whatever to whomever whenever he damn well pleases (it's good to be the King); under this political theory, the President was able to declassify Valerie Plame's covert identity and then leak it to the NY Times Judy Miller via Scooter Libby legally. Because he's the Prez, right? Hence, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has always and evermore been conducting a kabuki wild goose chase for a crime that doesn't exist.

So Mr. Bush, if all along you knew who the leaker was and that the leaking was not a crime, why in the fuck did you let the investigation continue? As of an Associated Press report dated October 15th of last year, the very frugal Mr. Fitzgerald had incurred a cost of 723 thousand dollars to indict Scooter Libby (Ken Starr's investigation of the Clinton's netted zero indictments and cost nearly 4 million). Why, Mr. Bush, if you knew what was what, why did you allow this charade to continue? It's costed close to a million dollars, a million dollars of taxpayer money that could have been spent rebuilding New Orleans or buying computers for poor kids in the ghetto or, shit, even for more bullets to kill more Iraqis with. So I have a modest suggestion, Mr. Bush:

Cut a check. From your account, with your money, write a check to the General Fund of the US Treasury and repay the taxpayers the money you pissed away. No, not ALL the money you pissed away in Iraq and giving the rich egregious tax breaks, just the money pissed away on a kabuki wild goose chase to find out what you already knew for a crime that never was.