I think Bush is a crooked elitist f*ck. What do you think?

[elSicomoro]

Actually, the kids at Guantanamo are "unlawful combatants," and apparently not subject to the rules of the Geneva Convention...or at least that's what Rummy has said in the past. There was talk of treating fedayeen fighters in the same manner, but last I heard, all the Iraqi fighters are considered POW.

Scott, quit using the whole 2000 election debacle. You and the Dems are going to run that shit into the ground, and fall flat on your face. Bush won, fair and square...it's that simple. Were there issues in Florida? Absolutely...their election system needs some serious work. Did they contribute to Gore's loss? Most likely, no. The end.

[ScottSolomon]

The problem is, the news media in the U.S. ( with a couple of exceptions ) have treated George W. Bush with kid gloves on just about every issue. Months of reporting went into Whitewater, the travel office scandals, Gore's "inventing" the internet, etc. All stories that turned out to be fabrications and egregious examples of journalistic malfeasance. If you don't believe me, I suggest you peruse the archives of the Daily Howler - which is an exhaustively documented expose of the level of media manipulation of political discourse in recent years. If you think that Somersby is to objective for you ( or too liberal ) just do the Lexis Nexis searches yourself.

The corporate media has become the voice of the right wing of America, and as The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash admits:

We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually.

They clearly have no problem passing off spin as objective news. The corporate media, FAUX News, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Times, WSJ, USA Today, etc - have taken a very strong slide to the right -distributing the spin from the Weekly Standard as real, objective, journalism.

This is why Bush is made of Teflon, and Clinton was make of crazy glue. The media started skewering Clinton from the moment he started to run for office, and they continue to skewer the left to this day while they conveniently ignore and distort the actions of the president.

This is why you never heard about Bush's sweetheart deals.

Exactly what "sweetheart deals" are you talking about?

Read Brooks Jackson's article from CNN. Jackson describes Bush's Arbusto Oil - which turned out to be a tax shelter for Bush's family and friends. Then Bush's relatively small investment in the Texas Rangers - and his great connections - convinced Arlington to foot the bill ( and use imminent domain to force eviction of hundreds of families ) for the new Texas Rangers stadium - while Bush and Richard Rainwater collected the revenues. This is the glossed up version for CNN, and it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Dubya's financial relationship with Richard Rainwater during his tenure as Texas governor is a textbook example of Crony Capitalism. Rainwater is a billionaire speculator and money manager who ranks among the wealthiest 100 Americans. It's well known that Rainwater has been a major financial backer of Bush's political career, but it's a little-known fact that he's also largely responsible for Bush's personal wealth.

Rainwater and Bush sold the baseball team to another Texas high roller and Bush campaign contributor, billionaire Tom Hicks. But their relationship didn't stop there. When Bush became Gov in '95, he put all his Texas Rangers stock into a blind trust managed by--surprise--Rainwater.

The financial relationship was not a one way street. Bush is nothing if not loyal to Rainwater, who has done very nicely while his pal has been governor. Among the favors Rainwater has enjoyed:

• State buildings sold to Rainwater's real estate company at bargain basement rates;
• State college and public school funds invested in Rainwater's company;
• A Bush-sponsored tax cut that failed, but would have cut millions in annual taxes for Rainwater;
• A stadium-financing bill backed by Bush that gave a $10 million bonus payment to a Rainwater company. This arena also enhanced the worth of Thomas Hicks' hockey team. In the six months after that bill was signed, Bush's political fund received $37,000 from Hicks, $11,000 from Rainwater Owned Crescent Investment's President Haddock and $5,000 from Ross Perot, Jr. Both Ross Perot Jr. and Crescent are major investors in the Dallas Mavericks Basketball team.

But that is still just a tiny sliver. Once Bush became governor, he appointed Tom Hicks chairman of The University of Texas Investment Management Co (UTIMCO) which manages the 1.7 billion dollar University Permanent Fund. Hicks invested one third of the money in funds run by Hicks' business associates or friends along with five funds run by major Republican political donors. Hicks has been secretive about where any of the funds have gone - and state auditors have criticized the board for conflicts of interest, but pressure from above put a halt to the investigation.

When Bush first got into office, he also pressured the University of Texas Board of Regents to place millions of state dollars into the Carlyle Group - even though Bush had just quit his job as a corporate director of Carlyle-owned Caterair to pursue a gubernatorial candidacy.

During Bush's first term as governor of Texas he had an active and ongoing relationship with Hicks and Rainwater to the advantage of all three men. Bush has used his power for the benefit of other friends, too.

When funeral home chain SCI (donated $35,000 to Bush campaign ) was cited by the Texas Funeral Services commission for using unlicensed embalmers, Bush's top aide, Joe Allbaugh met with Robert Waltrip ( SCI's CEO ) and shortly thereafter the funeral home regulator that made the charges against SCI was fired and blacklisted. Not long after the investigation began, Waltrip called the regulator's boss and demanded that he 'back off.' If not, funeral commission chairman Charles McNeil recalls Waltrip telling him, 'I'm going to take this to the governor.' Eliza May, the regulator, filed a lawsuit against Bush, Allbaugh, and Waltrip. The defendants ended up settling out of court for $210,000.

This is just a small sample of the stuff that has been reported in the corporate press. If this does not make Bush look like an insider politician making deals for his buddies, I don;t know what does.

But hell, they are doing the same thing for Halliburton, Bechtel, and Worldcom - right this very minute. I know it may be hard to ask for honesty from a politician, but it is wrong to use government power for the benefit of your friends and former employers. I can't understand why we are supposed to accept this blatant confluence of government power and corporate interests.

[ScottSolomon]

You act as if that was his fault. It wasn't.

When you work together to disenfranchise the voting public to get elected, it is your fault. There was no way Gore was going to get Florida, Katherine Harris saw to that. She sent the voter rolls to DBT On-Line, and she ordered them to purge the rolls of convicted felons, people with similar names to convicted felons, and people with felon's surnames. She even got the felon's list from Texas - she knew the governor there - and purged those names too.

The NAACP filed a suit against DBT On-Line - where it was disclosed that 54% of the voters purged were black, while 95% of the purged voters were purged illegally. Of the 94,000 voters removed from the list, only 3000 were likely convicted felons. The BBC estimates that this action cost Gore 22,000 votes.

On December 8, 2000, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of “undervotes,” i.e., ballots that failed to register a preference for president in the machine tabulation. The Republicans, who believed this would cost them the election, were desperate to stop the recount, which began Saturday, December 9.

Then, on December 9, like the proverbial cavalry to the rescue, the US Supreme Court issued an extraordinary order to stop the recount. It did so prior to even holding a hearing on the merits of the suit filed by the Bush camp.

In issuing the order to halt the recounts, Justice Scalia was fairly brazen, writing that the vote-counting had to be halted because it might do “irreparable harm” to Bush. In other words, Bush might lose.

Three days later, in a 5-4 decision, the right-wing majority headed by Scalia declared that counting all disputed votes was a violation of “equal protection of the law,” that in any event the US Constitution did not give the people the right to vote for president, and that there was not enough time to set new criteria for a fair count of contested ballots in Florida. On the basis of this thoroughly cynical and unscrupulous legal concoction, the Court majority handed the election to Bush.

However, a Miami Herald study of all of the votes found that Gore would have won in a manual recount - even though it's liberal media headline stated that Bush would have prevailed. That is a twisting of the facts. You have to read the whole story to get even part of the real picture, and they buried.

While Republicans were saying that discerning the "intent of the voters" was a Carnac the magician routine, vote-counters in G.O.P. counties not only discerned the intents of the voters, they RECREATED ABSENTEE BALLOTS based on their discernment of that intent. Ten thousand ballots were RECREATED this way. Absentee votes went to Bush by a ratio of 2:1. That's a net of 3,300 votes for Bush!

Republican officials in 16 counties failed to carry out automatic machine recounts on November 8, the day after the election. This was a clear violation of state election laws, which require such machine retabulations whenever the initial vote count produces a margin of victory of 0.5 percent or smaller.

Studies done by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Hamilton College in NY have both confirmed ( and rebutted John Lott's erroneous study ) that black votes were undercounted, spoiled, or excluded at a much higher rate than white or Hispanic votes.

On November 12, 2001 a consortium of major US news organizations, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and CNN, released the results of a 10-month investigation into disputed votes cast in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

The media report presented as its central finding the claim that Bush would have won the election in Florida—by 493 votes—even if the US Supreme Court had not intervened to stop the statewide recount ordered by the Florida high court. It further asserted that Bush would have won by 225 votes if recounts had been completed in the four Florida counties where Gore was seeking them.

The consortium’s report could not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the response of the media, including what passes for the liberal press, to the unprecedented events of last year. Previous surveys, including a Miami Herald / USA Today study released last April, produced similar results.

Both during and after the 2000 election, the main preoccupation of the media has been to insist on Bush’s political legitimacy and dismiss the election crisis as little more than a partisan squabble. Just two months ago, New York Times Washington bureau chief Richard Berke wrote a column in which he said the events of September 11 had rendered the consortium’s recount “utterly irrelevant.”

But the study was little more than a great example of bad journalism.

[ScottSolomon]

In fact, the actual findings of the media consortium contain information that is highly damaging to Bush and the Supreme Court.

The study found that hundreds, if not thousands, of legal votes for Gore had not been counted. These fell into two categories. They included undervotes that, upon examination, were found to be valid under Florida law, i.e., the ballots showed a “clear indication of the intent of the voter.” The other category was so-called “overvotes”—ballots that were wrongly rejected because a voter punched or marked a ballot for Gore and also wrote in the Democratic candidate’s name, circled it, or made some other mark around or near the candidate’s name or party. According to state law these votes were also legal and should have been counted.

The study acknowledged that if all of the undervotes and overvotes in Florida had been examined fairly and objectively and the legal ballots in these categories had been added to the final tally, Gore would have won the election. The Wall Street Journal is forced to admit, for example, that the study “provides strong evidence” that a “clear plurality of voters went to the polls on Nov. 7, 2000, intending to vote for Mr.. Gore.” The New York Times states that the study found “Mr.. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots.”

If the media had a different political agenda, the news headlines last Monday might very well have read: “Recount Casts New Doubt on Supreme Court Role in 2000 Election,” or “Florida Voters Preferred Gore.”

To present the radically different picture desired by the news organizations, they were obliged to proceed in a highly selective and tendentious manner, choosing to emphasize certain facts and partial truths from the ballot data and weave them together to “prove” a conclusion that was not warranted by the totality of circumstances. In other words, the media report is a classic whitewash.

For example, to arrive at the scenario where Bush won by 493 votes, the consortium had first to limit itself to a review of the state’s 60,000 undervotes, rather than the total of more than 176,000 rejected ballots. It justified this on the grounds that the Florida Supreme Court had only ordered a hand count of undervotes. But to get the desired result, the news organizations had to go a step further. They chose to examine many thousands of undervote ballots on the basis of the highly restrictive criteria used by Republican county officials—criteria that were guaranteed to discount hundreds of ballots, most of them for Gore, that met the legal standard set by state law for a legitimate vote. Why didn’t the media apply a reasonable interpretation of Florida law to make a genuinely independent tally?

By the consortium’s own admission, Gore would have picked up at least 885 votes if overvotes had been examined, more than enough to overcome Bush’s final official lead of 537. In all of the scenarios where these votes are examined, the news organizations admit Gore would have won. In fact, Gore would have won—by a margin of between 42 and 171 votes—in six of the nine scenarios developed by the consortium.

A critical issue generally ignored by the consortium is the role of the Florida state apparatus, headed by Governor Jeb Bush, the brother of the Republican candidate, in suppressing pro-Gore votes. The report does, however, note, although only in passing, one damning fact—that Republican officials in 16 counties failed to carry out automatic machine recounts on November 8, the day after the election. This was a clear violation of state election laws, which require such machine retabulations whenever the initial vote count produces a margin of victory of 0.5 percent or smaller.

The media study reports—without drawing any political conclusions—that had these counties observed the law and carried out machine recounts on November 8 and the valid votes were included, Gore would have taken over the lead by 48 votes.

In Jeffrey Toobin’s recent book, Too Close to Call, the author, a legal analyst for ABC News, says a total of 18 counties—accounting for 1.58 million votes, or more than a quarter of all votes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount. This was done, Toobin writes, with the full knowledge of Secretary of State Katherine Harris, an appointee of Jeb Bush who also served as co-chair of Florida’s George W. Bush campaign committee.

This fact alone—buried in the media report—is sufficient to prove that the Bush campaign and the Republican Party used illegal means to steal the election.

By November 9, as a result of the machine recounts that were carried out, Bush’s official lead had fallen by 80 percent—from 1,784 votes to 327 votes. Can there be any doubt that Republican officials, fearing that Gore would take the lead, gave the word to forego the required machine recounts in a whole number of counties?

The consortium’s study suggests further evidence of election fraud, including the disappearance of hundreds of contested ballots in the possession of Republican county officials. On November 8, Florida officials announced there were more than 176,000 rejected ballots. However, the National Opinion Research Center was able to obtain only 175,010 uncounted ballots, 1,427 fewer overvoted ballots than counties reported on November 8, and nine fewer undervotes.

The 2000 elections were the worst assault on democracy that this country has experienced in my lifetime. The corporate press - from the very beginning - covered for Bush and presented an image to the public that was misleading and false. They gloss over the important questions, and they imply that anyone that worries about the past is simply a partisan hack - trying to beat a dead horse.

in short, they say, "Move along, there is nothing to see here".

You should recognize this. This is the way the media has reported about Bush's failed first tax cut, the unanswered questions about 9-11, the SOTU aids relief claim, the weapons of mass distraction in Iraq, the latest tax cut, etc,etc,etc. When will you decide to wake up and smell the coffee. Your country is being taken over by a dishonest, manipulative pack of jackals that have no problem ignoring reality to further their own interests.

Move along... there is nothing to see here.

[ScottSolomon]

I'm sure he had a good reason. At any rate, it's a little early to be calling the result, isn't it? Let's just wait and see.

Ah, I am sure Japan had a good reason to attack Pearl Harbor and I am sure that Osama Bin Laden had a good reason to attack the world trade center. A good reason is the most flexible type of rationale. If you simply allowed politicians to act with impunity - because they have a good reason to do things - we open the door to tyranny. Anybody can think of a good reason for anything. The fact that Bush did not make his real reason for attacking Iraq clear is what disturbs me. The fact that he and his staff demonstrably lied about Iraq to the world - disturbs me further.

Do you really think that it is okay for a politician, a public servant, to kill people without without making it clear why they are being killed? The president is not going to feel the blowback, we are. He is writing checks that we have to cash. You think it is okay for him to deceive us about a matter of grave national importance?

What if he had a good reason to imprison anyone with the moniker "Juju"? Should we simply accept that Bush has his reasons - and never ask him why you are rotting in jail? Is this the way a free country functions?

You have a responsibility as a citizen within a democracy to keep yourself informed about the actions of the people that run the government. If they are willing to lie about a war, what else are they willing to lie about? If they use bad logic and poor reasoning when they talk about nation building, are they going to be left holding the bag in 5 years? DO you think that THEY would be held responsible for the fallout?

I guess you would prefer to live in a nation like Iran, where the leaders are always right and the paeons have no right to question them. Jefferson would be rolling in his grave.

BTW -

US: 'Saddam Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction'

White House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq
President Meets With Blair on Strategy Ahead of Speech

The Miscalculations of Yes-Men

Bush Officials Change Tune on Iraqi Weapons

USA lied about Iraq's weapons

1. Powell relies on FORGED documents to link Saddam to terror.

MSNBC: "They have been the closest of allies. But under the intense pressure of a diplomatic crisis at the United Nations and an imminent war in Iraq, the friendship between the United States and Britain is beginning to fray. The most recent strain emerged when U.N. nuclear inspectors concluded last week that U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear program were based on forged documents. The fake letters supposedly laid out how Iraqi agents had tried to purchase uranium from officials in Niger, central Africa."

MORE: http://www.msnbc.com/news/883164.asp?cp1=1

CNN: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.

MORE: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/spr...nts/index.html

Sydney Morning Herald, Australia: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has demonstrated that UK and US intelligence authorities relied on forged documents to support assertions that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

MORE: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...583740556.html

LA Times: WASHINGTON -- Phony weapons documents cited by the United States and Britain as evidence against Saddam Hussein were initially obtained by Italian intelligence authorities, who may have been duped into paying for the forgeries, U.S. officials said Friday. The documents, which purport to show Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger, were exposed as fraudulent by U.N. weapons inspectors last week. The matter has embarrassed U.S. and British officials.

MORE: http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-docs15m...,5016930.story

And even more:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=...rged+documents

* * *

2. Bush/Powell's UN "evidence" relies on even MORE supposedly "up to date" FORGED documents to link Saddam to terror.

CNN: Large chunks of the 19-page report -- highlighted by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the U.N. as a " fine paper ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities" -- contains large chunks lifted from other sources, according to several academics. " The British government's dossier is 19 pages long and most of pages 6 to 16 are copied directly from that document word for word, even the grammatical errors and typographical mistakes," Rangwala said. Al-Marashi's article, published last September, was based on information obtained at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Rangwala said. " The information he was using is 12 years old and he acknowledges this in his article. The British government, when it transplants that information into its own dossier, does not make that acknowledgement. " So it is presented as current information about Iraq, when really the information it is using is 12 years old."

MORE: http://asia.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast...rq.uk.dossier/

UK Guardian: Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old. Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.

MORE: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comme...892069,00.html

http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...890962,00.html

http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/207939.htm



And what have we found? 2 trailers that Judith Miller has been told are biological weapons labs. Oddly enough - NOT ONE TRACE OF ANY BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS HAVE BEEN FOUND!

[ScottSolomon]

I don't think he's ever said that he used drugs, has he?

What political figure would say he used cocaine?

Before president Bush became the Chosen son of God for the right-wing, he was a corrupt governor of Texas. The Dallas Morning News heard stories for years about the rich society man's rough life. They asked him whether or not he had ever used cocaine. Now, a person that has not used cocaine would say, "Hell, no". Bush had a more lawyerly way of answering the question:

"Gov. George W. Bush, dogged by criticism for refusing to say whether he has used illegal drugs, answered part of the question Wednesday and said he had not done so in the last seven years. Mr. Bush's statement came in response to a question from The Dallas Morning News about whether, as president, he would insist that his appointees answer drug-use questions contained in the standard FBI background check. 'As I understand it, the current form asks the question, 'Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?' and I will be glad to answer that question, and the answer is 'No,' Mr. Bush told The News....The Questionnaire for National Security Decisions, part of the background check, asks about illegal drug use going back seven years. Applicants also are asked if they have ever used illegal drugs while employed as a law officer, prosecutor or court official....FBI applicants can have used so-called hard drugs, such as cocaine and heroin five times in their lives, but not during the 10 years immediately before their applications, (according to FBI Agent Rene Salinas). Applicants take lie-detector tests to verify their answers to drug-use questions....'You are required to answer the questions fully and truthfully, the questionnaire says.... Mr. Bush, the GOP presidential front-runner, would not elaborate about drug use beyond seven years ago." Dallas Morning News, 8/19/99

Now, given the way that Bush lies - that he lies in a lawyerly fashion so that he can be interpreted as being truthful regardless of what facts emerge - does this look like an honest answer?

This is one of those issues that one cannot prove, but you really have to wonder. The guy was a rich party guy in the 60s and 70s - he was an alcoholic. Is it really a stretch to think that he was probably tooting a little blow, too?

More info

[ScottSolomon]

Sorry about writing so much - I know it is a lot to read.

I just get a little worked up about all of this.

Here is Bush's scorecard of evil

I don;t agree with everything in the site above. It is just a good starting point to see things from a different perspective.

Sorry again for such long posts.

[juju]

I can't believe you. You just copy and pasted everything from this web page. Did you write the article on the World Socialist Web Site yourself? If not, then I really, really don't know what to say. I'm speechless. But I'm sure I'll think of something.

It will take me some time to digest the rest of your posts. What percentage did you actually write yourself?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I really, really don't know what to say

Ventriloquist's DUMMY?:p

[juju]

You even took the time to mix up the paragraphs and intersperse them with paragraphs that aren't in the article.

[Undertoad]

How does this behavior compare to the behavior mentioned in the thread on cult thinking?

[elSicomoro]

Scott's starting to sound like the Radar of the left. That's scary.

[wolf]

We needed the balance, though. We would tip over otherwise.

[juju]

Originally posted by Undertoad
How does this behavior compare to the behavior mentioned in the thread on cult thinking?

I dunno. It's hard to tell anything about someone who doesn't even use their own words.

[Tobiasly]

I'm not going to respond tit-for-tat to Scott's posts (I'm sorta catching up here), but regarding the whole election 2000 thing...

We seem to have several people here (myself included) who have worked in politics. Anyone who tries to claim that their party follows the rules is full of shit. You can't follow the rules if you want to win.

Once it became obvious that the Florida situation was going to become a knock-down, drag-down fight, both sides did everything in their power to try to make it come out in their favor. Scott makes it sound like Gore and his team just sat by and waited for democracy to happen, while Bush, the Supreme Court, Katherine Harris, and the press spun their wheels in a vast conspiracy to disenfranchise the voters at all costs.

Bullshit. Both sides formed their strategy on how to win, and followed through on that strategy. Bush's strategy won. Gore was silly to try that selective recount business. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight, it was a foolish strategy.

Anyone who has done any work in science knows that any instrument used to measure a quantity has an inherent margin of error. When the difference between two values falls within the margin of error inherent to the method of measurement, you must call the values equal.

That's exactly what happened in Florida. Their punchcard system of measuring the voters' intent was so poor, and the values so close, that it is <I>scientifically impossible</I> to determine who won the vote. So because that system failed, the decision had to be made somewhere else. Bush's strategy on how to ensure that decision was in his favor was the better of the two.