A hero's welcome awaits a famous Iraqi terrorist. Unlike the recent welcome home party that actually does make me sick, the latest welcome home party I'm in favor of. The party is for the famous Iraqi shoe thrower.

The Iraqi who tested George Bush's reflex skills(which were pretty sharp I must say) is due to be release to a huge welcome home party including women, sports cars, and a buffet of career possibilitie- TPM

The Fox network conspired with Bush's criminal regime to profit from the US plunder of Iraq. Fox was and will continue to be Bush's 'propaganda ministry' for as long as there is money to be made depicting dead Iraqis who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. 911 was an inside job.

Who is most motivated to lie about a crime? Simply, the guilty! The biggest lies about any crime are told by those who perpetrate the crime. Fox was clearly motivated and, predictably, told the biggest whoppers about both Iraq wars. The biggest gains and the biggest whoppers are found among Bush, his co-conspirators and the Fox Network. Murdoch should be subpoenaed and compelled to testify before a federal grand jury. He shares Bush's guilt and that of the GOP, the NEOCONS, and willing, eager participants throughout the MIC.

Millions now support the prosecution of Bush for war crimes and mass murder. But what of his enablers and co-conspirators? What charges should be brought against the murderous liar --Rupert Murdoch --the modern incarnation of Hearst. How many members of the Fox board, how many executives, how many on-camera shills conspired with Bush to spread the bald-faced lies that made mass murder 'photogenic' and, therefore, possible and palatable to an American society hooked on images of things and bodies blowing up?It boils down to a legal term: quid pro quo --the word given a 'transaction', an agreement that an item or a service is returned for something of value. Certainly, throughout Bush's war of aggression against Iraq, a war crime in which some 4000 US service personnel were sacrificed upon a bald faced lie, the relationship between Fox and Bush has been symbiotic and conspiratorial.

Fox is thus motivated to convince you that 'conspiracies' do not exist though hundreds, perhaps thousands of SCOTUS decisions have to do with conspiracies of one sort or another. There is probable cause that Bush and Fox achieved agreement upon a quid pro quo! Members of the Fox board of directors and key executives should be considered war criminals just as was Goebbesl during the Third Reich. There is probable cause to indict many FOX executives.
To be fair, FOX has not confined its venal reporting style to a decade that will be recalled as the era of Bush atrocities and war crimes! Fox was under investigation by the ITC (independent television commission) back in the 90s, specifically nine complaints by viewers of Sky Digital satellite, controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Fox's jingoistic support of Bush's war, however, begs to be investigated by a federal panel with the power of the subpoena, an investigation with teeth. It is of little consolation to millions of victims of Bush's war of aggression in Iraq that if Fox is found to have breeched ITC 'impartiality rules', it could be forced out! Simply --Fox does not give a shit. 'Forced out' is insufficient. The Mikado said: 'let the punishment fit the crime!' I want federal indictments!

[exerpt from The Existentialist Cowboy. Visit the site to read the full article and the accompanying videos]

TERRY D. McGEE writes that the fruits of George W Bush's incompetence, bad policies and bad intentions are collapsing onto John McCain, like a Mr Magoo cartoon.

"Ah, McCain, you've done it again" is the slogan of the McCain food company - unluckily for John they stole that quip from the blind Magoo who would walk safely through the disasters he created, or ignored, and say "ah, Magoo, you've done it again". There are websites and videos comparing the cartoon with McCain but really W Bush is the ultimate Magoo creating disaster and McCain is the apprentice who gets stuck with the results. W stares at the cameras, not comprehending that any of the catastrophe in his wake is his responsibility.

Magoo lets the giant corporations run as free as they like & then collapse and McCain is left to justify the philosophy that regulations are inherently bad. Magoo starts two wars, ignores the first and leaves both running for his apprentice who correctly predicts they could run for a hundred years. He allows millions of homes to slide down the glacier to foreclosure and his only worry is for the banks that have to foreclose. His apprentice is left to pay for it. Let's not even mention the environment (but we should because voices around the world are saying the credit crisis freezes out global warming issues - wrong).

Magoo suffers from extreme myopia - a short sightedness that allows him to walk through a warzone and think he's at Luna Park, see a run on the banks and think he's at an end of year bargain sale, see glaciers melt and think it's an ice-cream shop in summer. He sprouts his extremist take-care-of-yourself philosophy while destroying other people's lives - never seeing enough to recognize his own contradictions.

Magoo's myopia was charming for audiences of the 1950-60's caught up in the modern progress myth that despite how much things go wrong we have to follow the path of ‘Progress'. Pretty pathetic and a bit troublesome - with my surname I got called Magoo enough times to stop counting. So at an early age I became sensitive to what was wrong with Magoo and his way of seeing the world. John McCain is more intelligent than George W but like W and John Howard he has Magoo's myopic view of a false reality and a false morality that fails to explain the complexity that surrounds us. We are all children of our cultural experiences - especially John H, W & John McCain.

Because of President W Magoo's myopia the polls have been collapsing on McCain - Virginia 12% & Florida 5% are both leaning to Obama, Ohio 3% to Obama and West Virginia & Nevada 7% and Colorado & North Carolina are even. With all that Obama only needs to win one of those states whereas McCain needs all of them. Read that again, McCain needs every last one of those states to win.

Let's not think though that an Obama victory will solve everything - to start with it'll be over 4 months before Magoo leaves - what more will he destroy before he leaves. On top of that, Obama has had to defend large parts of  the present system (so as not to scare the straights) - like another young leader down under. There's a fine angle between not scaring people and changing enough to change the system - not reinforcing the current direction.

Sometimes Australia's Kevin Rudd reminds me of a young Mr Magoo - the way he can deny seeing the big problems until he has a policy, an answer, a committee or a sound bite for the TV cameras (e.g. he can't see CCS will fail). In Rudd's world there is no Hamlet saying "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Or perhaps he is just certain that the voting public doesn't want to hear about problems without pre-digested mainstream media answers. But that also limits the agenda of what he can see.

This is where Obama wins - it seems he can reveal frightening risks, that Magoo misses, while also explaining the strong change of direction that's needed. Gordon Brown and Kevin Rudd need that skill. Hopefully Obama has an inner guide that will keep him on an intelligent path inside the White House

The 9/11 attacks prompted the United States to return to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taleban regime and destroy Al-Qaeda. Overthrowing the Taleban regime was the easy task. But the stabilization and reconstruction effort has suffered a calamitous failure. The Taleban and Al-Qaeda are regrouped and reinforced. Their top leaders continue to elude capture. Afghans at first welcomed their liberation from the Taleban. They are now very resentful of the Americans and their use of overwhelming force, resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties.

Afghanistan has been at the center of great power games for centuries. But outsiders have always failed to tame the spirit of resistance of its people. At the peak of their dominance, the British and Russian empires played the Great Game. In the Cold War, it was between America and the Soviet Union. Today, as the United States, the only hyperpower in the world, tries to reshape the Afghan state, it finds the new game as difficult as ever.

As the turbulent presidency of George W. Bush comes to a close, it leaves a legacy of two wars, with colossal economic and human costs. And America needs a president who knows how to extinguish the fires of war abroad and how to lead his own country into a period of renaissance once again. [More]

What we are witnessing right now is the end of an era: the death of turbo capitalism, writes RENATE OGILVIE.

Two Australians bump into each other in New York – old political foes who’ve had a few battles. They smile and one compares the other to a snake. “Well, it’s funny who you come across when you don’t have a stick”. It’s an old bush greeting that came to my mind when I saw the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd bump into Rupert Murdoch on 42nd Street (by chance in front of TV cameras). Sadly they only said “How are ya” and “Good to see ya” before they went somewhere.

Before Kevin arrived Rupert had just been telling the camera “…some people may not like the bailout but it had to happen”. The “bailout” is the $700 billion W Bush proposal to…to… well the details are still being worked out but we can trust the W Bush regime to do something good. “It had to happen” because the financial ‘powers that be’ in the Empire State (NY’s logo) have decided they can’t trust either Obama or McCain and they want to control the next president’s agenda. Nothing happens for only one reason. They also want any money they can get and to make sure that any solution to the credit crisis (they’ve created) takes care of the upper class, executives and shareholders, before anyone else.

Murdoch’s good at presenting his desires as fait accomplits that are a single inevitable package but the devil is in the details. Obama has defined 4 key points that need to be in any rescue package – one point being support for the small homeowners with mortgages who are caught up in this crisis. McCain doesn’t list that as one of his criteria nor, surprisingly, do the bankers. Rupert, the head of the News-Fox empire, is pretty smart so if he was asked on camera he’d include the little people “if we can”.