It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.” The only ones pleased with these wars are the American neoconservatives, the Israeli right-wing, the U.S. corporate military-security complex, and Osama bin Laden...

Reelecting Republicans means the end of the United States as a land of liberty. [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. . . read more

You'd be excused if you didn't know this happened. There was almost no reporting on the event that day or the next... A week later, it has still not been reported in the New York Times, the nation’s self-described “newspaper of record,” even though the Times had just days before Rep. Kucinich’s action, editorialized about the enormity of the president’s lies in tricking the country into invading Iraq — one of the crimes leading Kucinich’s long list....

The unwillingness of the nation’s news media to seriously consider the need for Congress to respond to and challenge the president’s clear abuses of power—even as they themselves condemn of those abuses of power—is a blot on the journalistic profession perhaps worse, and of more lasting consequence, than their failure to act as watchdogs and critics during the run-up to the Iraq War, when they acted more as patriotic cheerleaders than as news organizations. [More] . . read more

By week's end, the evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials had deliberately created a system of torture which they knew was illegal – indeed, a capital crime – under U.S. law was so plain, so overwhelming, and so handily concentrated that it broke through the levees of institutional cover-up and media complicity that had held this clear truth at bay for so long. The grim facts had finally worked their way into "conventional wisdom." It was now permissible for good "centrist" folk to speak of such things, even condemn them, without being automatically relegated to ranks of "the haters," the "unserious," the "shrill partisans," etc.

And yet, even as this new consensus was forming, you could see the sandbags piling up in the background to make sure that the water didn't reach too far. A line of defense was being laid that would allow the purveyors of conventional wisdom to vent a bit of righteous outrage at official wrongdoing without actually having to do anything about it or admitting of any flaws in their fundamentalist doctrine of American exceptionalism. No one need take any risks, make any effort, or discomfort themselves in any way to rectify the injustice; indeed, even the perpetrators should be left undisturbed. Instead, our uniquely good and smooth-running political system will magically make everything all better, and somehow prevent the bad things from happening again. [More] . . read more

The figures will be astounding if we presume every country in the whole world growing on a “business as usual” basis with a bit of tapering off to stop growing by 2025. Though W has not given any details the New York Times believes he wants to see emissions growing until they naturally stop growing about 2025 and his plan is to derail a Republican move in the U.S. Senate that would try to actually reduce the 2005 level. Of course now that China is the largest carbon emitter Bush will be “helping” China’s economy more than America’s but that bit of stupidity doesn’t surprise me.

The wonderful thing is that in moving from the “growth forever” paradigm, Bush has admitted there is a physical limit and now it’s up to scientists to do the calculations and tell us how many parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere this new official American policy will mean and what that will do to the environment. IT'S OFFICIAL, THE FIGURE CAN BE CALCULATED. CAN SOMEONE SEND BACK SOME FIGURES. . . read more

Both are now in poor political shape, with contradictory strategies for rehabbing their fortunes. The president is saddled with an approval rating bumping along in the 20s. Each day he is served another platter of contemptuous stories about “the worst presidency of modern times”, the lack of any enduring “legacy”, the approaching Democratic landslide that will put the Republicans in the wilderness for at least two terms...

The White House made no serious attempt to upend Obama’s trip to Iraq or excessively ridicule the harmonies from the Democratic candidate and Iraqi prime minister Maliki on schedules for U.S. withdrawal. Indeed noises that could be construed as acceptance of an accelerated schedule emanated from the White House... As final testimony to the huge disaster for the McCain campaign of Obama’s trip to Iraq, the floundering Republican candidate managed to shoehorn himself into talk about a rate of withdrawal from Iraq a good deal brisker than the 100 years of occupation he was talking about, or even the 2013 deadline he subsequently settled on. [More] . . read more

In November of 2000, Mr. Bush proclaimed that he had ‘won’ the presidential election of the most prominent so-called democracy in the world. One tires of pointing out to Mr. Bush that winning an election means garnering more votes than your opponent. Mr. Bush did not win the 2000 presidential election; former Vice President Al Gore did. That Mr. Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court means he became president, not that he won the election. But by saying it often enough, people do tend to believe it...

Many of Mr. Bush’s vocabulary adjustments concern some aspect of his wars; this is not surprising since he calls himself the ‘War President.’ One would think that any man or woman occupying the White House would be ashamed to be referred to in such a way, yet Mr. Bush embraces it. So while he is being the ‘War President,’ what began as quiet rumblings exploded into international scandal as it was learned that the U.S., that beacon of freedom and human rights (gag), was actually torturing prisoners... When asked about it, Mr. Bush stated categorically that “the U.S. does not torture.” It does, however, use ‘harsh interrogation methods.’ So now we have another new definition. Torture is no longer torture: it is ‘harsh interrogation methods.’ [More] . . read more

Mr. O and Ms. C, please eliminate Homeland Security. It’s Bush’s only policy – except for cutting taxes for the least needy. Yes, we have enemies, fanatics, who blow themselves and others to smithereens. But Bush hasn’t pursued the terror organizers, some of whom live in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; not guys in caves, but those bankers and intellectuals who control them. Instead of going after the brains and money, Bush created chaos, more enemies, more bureaucracy (Homeland Security) and, his “War on Terror” helped Al-Qaeda expand their numbers...

When you become Presidents please undo the damage Bush has caused. Engage other nations on catching terrorists through police cooperation, infiltration of their cells and by networking with judicial systems. They shouldn’t go to Guantanamo or other dark holes, but tried by courts anywhere in the world. Terrorism is a crime under international law. All courts have jurisdiction. Would you try to involve the UN in this effort and help restore its status? The U.S. and other military forces have proven counterproductive. Count the massive number of declared anti-American terrorists today compared to before Bush hit Afghanistan and Iraq! [More] . . read more

It defines the utter failure of the Bush/Cheney administration's year-long "surge" scam, which was supposed to "give the Iraqi government time" to get on its feet, pass a law on sharing the country's oil wealth among the various regions and tribes, and resolve the issues of power sharing between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.

A year, a thousand American deaths, uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, $150 billion in U.S. taxpayer money and countless repetitions of the phrase "the surge is working" by administration hacks and by Republican presidential candidate John McCain later, it's clear that the extra 30,000 troops the US shipped over or held over in Iraq accomplished nothing. The country is still a basket case. [More] . . read more

For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies kept deliberately under-informed by the ubiquitous corporate media can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc, etc) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line. . . read more

Welcome to the emergence of deliberative democracy. I am my own party and the only voter. And I will engage with all the other ‘I’s’ to create the new wisdom of crowds.

Cork the caucus and fiction the faction. The New Deal is in hand.  . . read more