So, enjoy Halloween and don't forget to purchase a pumpkin from your local family farm

Have fun ! Life demands it !

September 19, 2007

Penobscot, Maine

The most threatening reality the USA and global community has to face is simply abandoned by The Bush Executive Branch.

Cataba River, Lake Wylie Dam and the continued drought of the southern USA (click here).

This issue needs to be confronted with reason and possibility. This has taken an emotional tone and there is far less scientific involvement than there should be. Scientists need to 'literally' oversee the 'transport in' of water to reinfuse the lakes while ensuring the biotic nature of the lakes are preserved through water testing with the arrival of tankers of H2O. There is no sense in spending infrastructure monies on anything but desalination facilities. The emergency of water resources in the south can use the current lake resources 'artifically' infused with water trucked in from areas similar in biotic nature to insure balance. I don't see currently stable watersheds, such as the Great Lakes being tapped for the lack of preparedness of the south. It would throw the Great Lake system into chaos.

It's a two directive approach. This is gross negligence of the federal authorities of the USA in relation to Human Induced Global Warming and it's much predicted consequences.

Funding for the infrastructure changes as well as the trucked in water can be obtained through little and under utilized excise taxes, such as cigarettes tax (click here), liquor taxes (click here), and state sales taxes (click here).

The Conservative South has been at the center of denying the existance of Human Induced Global Warming and there is no reason the rest of the country, which has been prudent in taking steps at the state environmental level, should feel an obligation to rescue them. There were eleven states in this country that sued for controls to Greenhouse Gases while the remaining states provided 'industy cronies' to defeat such a measure. Now, when they are in need of effective policy the rest of the country's resources is supposed to bail them out of trouble?

NO WAY.

The Southern Conservative states need to realize their folly and develop policy, infrastructure and the means to pay for it BY THEMSELVES. Otherwise, we will continue to have Republican legislators in DC all to willing to continue to obstruct effective federal law to stop and reverse the deadly trends we are seeing today !

Drought in southeast US fuels battle over water resources (click here)
Docks and piers at T-Bones, a shoreline restaurant on Lake Wylie, sink into the mud, showing the effects of increasingly low water levels 20 October 2007 in Lake Wylie, South Carolina. An extreme drought in the southeastern United States has fueled a bitter tri-state battle over dwindling water resources.
Millions of people in the state of Georgia fear their taps could run dry, while environmentalists in Florida say freshwater mollusks protected under the US Endangered Species Act risk dying off.
Hoping to guarantee no one will go thirsty, Georgia authorities want to drastically reduce the outflow from a reservoir that supplies drinking water to three million people. But neighboring Alabama claims that would have devastating economic effects on its population, while Florida says a reduced flow would threaten fragile ecosystems. "You'd think people would come before mussels," said Bob Leamy, 55, walking on caked mud that was once under Lake Lanier's waters. The man-made lake is at the frontline of the battle of words. It supplies drinking water for more than three million people in the city of Atlanta, feeds the Chattahoochee river that runs along the border with Alabama and flows into Florida's Apalachicola river. Because of the drought, the 38,000 acre reservoir is almost five meters (15 feet) below average levels, and officials say the water will continue to dwindle. Georgia has filed a legal motion seeking to force the US Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the reservoir, to limit the release of water. Alabama and Florida both oppose the motion...



...while in the UK...

Benn announces 'stronger' climate change bill (click here)
Rosalind Ryan, Elizabeth Stewart and agenciesMonday October 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The government today announced a "stronger, more effective and more transparent" climate change bill, following a period of public consultation and scrutiny.
The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said in a speech at Kew Gardens that the amended bill was a "ground-breaking blueprint" to help lower Britain's carbon emissions and would strengthen the country's position in response to climate change.
Mr Benn said: "We need to step up the fight against climate change and we need to do it fast. The draft bill we set out earlier this year and have now refined is a ground-breaking blueprint for moving the UK towards ea low carbon economy."...


...in Australia...

Greens want clarification on climate change agreement (click here)
Posted 7 hours 10 minutes ago
The Greens are calling on Prime Minister John Howard to explain what kind of global climate agreement the Coalition would be willing to ratify.
Mr Howard said this morning that his Government would be willing to sign and ratify an international agreement, as long as it applied to major emitters like China and India in an appropriate way.
Greens climate and energy spokeswoman Senator Christine Milne says Mr Howard has to explain what that means.
"If he's talking about ratifying a treaty which is very weak or which doesn't bind Australia to significant targets then it's worthless," she said.
"Let's hear something real from the Prime Minister, instead of just hot air."

There is absolutely no reason why First World nations have to POSTPONE their own infrastruture changes 'anticipating' the entrance of Third World nations such as China and India into standards of climate change protocol. It's a strategy that is superfluous of purpose and seeks to undermine global protections instead of empowering them through infrastruture changes and economic incentives/sanctions leading to the cooperation of China and India. The policies of Howard and Bush are dismal and stupid while geared toward profiteers and exploitive cronies.

Making 'commitments' toward responsibility to change the course of Human Induced Global Warming is NOT meeting those commitments either. Commitments have to be met with rigor to satisfy in an aggressive manner that will actually 'deliver' environmental safety as well as the political 'mind speak.' It takes infrastructure monetary commitments that are real and measurable with NO corruption tolerated, but, every dollar devoted to it's purpose. These are the monies of the people that need their safety net intact and Earth lush and green insuring the safety of species once again.

PM's climate change credibility 'shredded' (click here)

By Adam Gartrell, Jane Bunce and Peter Veness
October 27, 2007 05:55pm
LABOR says the coalition's climate change credibility has been "shredded" by revelations Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently failed to convince cabinet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr Turnbull and Prime Minister John Howard today repeatedly refused to contradict a newspaper report the minister told cabinet just six weeks ago the Government would gain kudos and lose nothing by ratifying the international climate change agreement.
Cabinet reportedly decided not to take Mr Turnbull's advice because it believed such a backflip would not look credible with voters after 10 years opposing the agreement.
Mr Turnbull today refused to even say whether he personally believed, or had ever believed, Australia should sign Kyoto.
He said it would be only a symbolic or political move if Australia did sign the agreement at this stage.
"It would not change what we are doing because we are already committed to meet ... those targets," Mr Turnbull told Sky News....

The American Educational System on all levels is in shambles.

Beside the moronic testing demands of the American Schools, Bush ADVOCATED for the inclusion of "I thunk it up" (click here) as a science. It's theology. There is absolutely no scientific proof available and even with funding there is no scientific proof available in this imagineering by the Neocon Republicans that simply WANT Americans dum as doornails to service one purpose and that is the aggressions of the military. Why have a scientific community 'inhouse' in the USA when everything can be outsourced and the political rhetoric that guarantees 'the opiate' of the American people as the most Godly Christian Righteous people stay intact.

There is a method to the madness that has beset the American people. Dumbing down Americans insures their grateful indulgence of an aggressive military.

CLICK ON ABOVE TITLE

...The across-the-board success standard demanded by the law is politically attractive. It seeks to ensure that no student is allowed to languish because of economic, ethnic or racial reasons, nor because of disabilities or language barriers. Indeed, for too long, schools in poor and minority communities did not receive the attention they deserved.
But the notion that all students will reach proficiency is simply folly -- what UC Berkeley Professor Bruce Fuller calls "well-intentioned pie-in-the-sky."
In almost any social science experiment, perfection is unattainable unless the bar is set too low. If every student succeeds, we haven't demanded enough of our students.
Moreover, the standard encourages states to game the system. Under No Child Left
Behind, the definition of proficiency and the design of the tests to measure it are left to the individual states.
Consequently, states are rewarded for keeping standards low because it allows them to claim greater success. One study this year found that Colorado, Wisconsin and Michigan generally set the lowest bar, while South Carolina, California, Maine and Massachusetts have the highest.
To the extent that No Child Left Behind has jump-started our K-12 schools, it's because of a shrinking measuring stick rather than academic gains....


Empowering Teacher Unions prevents tragedies such as "No Child Left Behind." The strongest and best educational advocate a child has is the teacher at the front of the classroom taking pride in how the student is achieving. We are a good country, full of work-a-day people that believe in the profession they practice. I don't care if one is a teacher, a preacher, a common laborer, when it comes to having pride in their professions all take notice of each other and the community of piers they seek to be a part.

If Teacher Unions were strong and intact across this nation they could have easily stood up 'in masse' to the legislation that would come to hurt the best outcomes of their students, causing a failure chain proven to be at the top of the chain in high school graduating classes falling in achievement on SATs.

The 'landscape' of the American Colleges and Universities will be institutions unable to find candidates qualified for their programs while turning to open more seats to foreign students willing to serve as teachers and medical workers in the USA to satisfy enrollment costs. The current and present 'task' for educational institutions Pre-K through PhD in the USA is to stop the escalating costs by demanding DC to return much needed dollars to the function of all schools and to hold the line on academic achievement realizing the damage done to the American student. Not to rollback achievement standards, but, to report regularly the standing of the students and perhaps needed remediation to return function to the American student.

Why Teacher Unions Are Good for Teachers and the Public (click here)
They Protect Teachers' Rights, Support Teacher Professionalism, and Check Administrative Power
By Diane Ravitch
We live in an era when leaders in business and the media demand that schools function like businesses in a free market economy, competing for students and staff. Many such voices say that such corporate-style school reform is stymied by the teacher unions, which stand in the way of leaders who want unchecked power to assign, reward, punish, or remove their employees. Some academics blame the unions when student achievement remains stagnant. If scores are low, the critics say it must be because of the teachers’ contract, not because the district has a weak curriculum or lacks resources or has mediocre leadership. If some teachers are incompetent, it must be because of the contract, not because the district has a flawed, bureaucratic hiring process or has failed to evaluate new teachers before awarding them tenure. These critics want to scrap the contract, throw away teachers’ legal protections, and bring teacher unions to their collective knees....

Teacher Union Members are people, too.

AFT Members Hit by Wildfires in Southern California (click here)
Contributions are urgently needed for the many AFT members across Southern California who have suffered devastating losses in the state's recent wildfires. More than a dozen fires have scorched communities from San Diego County to north of Los Angeles, leaving neighborhoods looking like "moonscapes" and "hell on earth," AFT eyewitnesses report....

The current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, wants to taylor make the American School System to 'fit' the needs of business. No more free lance anything. No more scientific investigation for the 'simple knowledge' of it all. No more literary writing for whimsy. No more 'thought experiments' unless it is to serve A PRACTICALLY to society. In other words, ONLY RIGHT BRAIN thinking allowed in the USA and ONLY within the religious context of The Religous Right !

U.S. Education Secretary Spellings Meets with Business Leaders, Touts Success of Dunbar Magnet School (click here)
No Child Left Behind is Working and Should be Reauthorized by Congress this Year

FOR RELEASE:February 22, 2007
Contact: Katherine McLane, Trey Ditto(202) 401-1576
More Resources
Photos
Tampa, FL — Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings discussed with business leaders, teachers, students and parents the importance of the No Child Left Behind Act and its reauthorization this year.
The No Child Left Behind Act shines a spotlight on the nation's achievement gap and works to ensure that every child in America, regardless of race, income or zip code, receives a quality education.
In a roundtable discussion with local business leaders, Secretary Spellings commended the business community for their important role in ensuring America's students are prepared for college and the workforce.
"For the business community, competitiveness is a critical issue; especially considering the private sector is the largest consumer of talent coming out of our nation's schools," Spellings said. "With 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs requiring post-secondary education or training, a college degree has never been more important."...

The USA Dollar - where is the value?

US household saving rate – source Federal Reserve bank of Saint-Louis

The fall off in American's saving began when The Baby Boomers attempted to rescue their retirements by assessing the stock market, quite frankly. The popularity of 401Ks replaced savings and the average American didn't feel alienated from Wall Street. However, the Bush Administration has brought a devalued dollar, corruption to lending, a bankrupt mortgage market and with that reality a gross depletion in whatever did exist in the way of savings by Americans.


Goldman Sachs' total assets versus Federal Reserve bank credit (source Financial Sense University)


US economy: Perfusion by Fed and Wall Street conceals recession - Decoded news (June 5, 2007) - (click here)

Paulson has done nothing to improve the fiscal accountability between the USA and China. The reason is primarily due to the aggressive nature of the Neocon Bush administration, it's willingness 'to go to guns' outside the propriety of the International Standards of engagement, it's aggression at the Russian borders; that also would eventually compromise China if Russia were to be invaded and fall to border issues of instability. And who needs over 1 billion people in a country with an unstable government?

While high hopes were first expected of Paulson, its' obvious he became involved as US Secretary of the Treasury to benefit Goldman-Sachs with insight from inside the anarchic Bush administration. Goldman-Sach's stock values have skyrocketed and placed them 'at advantage' over their competitors, a place they have never been before. THAT reality, in the face of bolstering a company through corruption, in a financial instutition all too willing to thwart it's competition is startlingly concerning and potentially catastrophic. It will cause a shift in the concerns of Goldman-Sachs from the greater community of financial institutions seeking to limit poor management practices impact on a greater market.

AFX News LimitedChina yuan central parity rate set at record 7.4718 to dollar vs 7.4810 (click here)
10.28.07, 9:38 PM ET
BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - The central bank has set the yuan central parity rate at record 7.4718 to the dollar, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading System.
The rate, published on the official Chinamoney website (www.chinamoney.com.cn), compares with the midpoint of 7.4810 set the previous trading day.
The People's Bank (nasdaq: PBCT - news - people ) of China (PBoC) started setting a daily central parity rate on Jan 4, 2006.
On July 21, 2005, China freed the yuan from its long-standing peg to the dollar in favor of a trade-weighted basket of currencies, and allowed the local unit to appreciate by 2.1 pct. The PBoC allows a trading band of 0.5 pct on either side of the central parity rate...



The recession is on track! With a US growth down to 0.6 percent in the first quarter (1) (even lower than the 0.8 percent anticipated by LEAP/E2020 in our estimation of the US GDP multicurrency evolution), it is a fact that the US economy is at a stop and about to contract (what it has in fact started doing for two quarters already when calculated in euros, British pounds or Yuans; see. GEAB N°15). The housing market keeps falling down (sales went down by -3.2 percent in April), household revenues are negative (-0.1 percent) and their saving rate continues to plunge down to historic levels (-1.3 percent in April) (2),... the list is long of all the indicators currently falling into negative territory. However the « dream merchants » (most of the economic and financial media and experts) prefer to focus on confidence indicators (i.e. subjective indicators, more reactive to the general “atmosphere”, one precisely created by those media and institutional operators) (3).

The "NO BID" contracts placed Halliburton stockholders at bay from suing Richard Cheney, former CEO. It was allowed to keep all it's overcharges to the USA people through the USA Treasury now manned by Hank Paulson even after jettsoning KBR. Now, in wonderful revelation Halliburton may be leaving North American soil forever. Oh, Happy Day ! The USA will no longer have the company that caused the Iraq invasion within it's rhelm of possible aggressor companies. When it leaves the USA it cannot wheeled political influence as it no longer can be a huge contributor to the Republican Party. Halliburton will no longer have the potential to influence wars again. THAT needs to be a lesson to the intelligence communities of the USA government. They need to track potentials in political fiscal realities that provide corruption elected officials with reasons to exploit the American conscience and Treasury.

Halliburton says North American pricing a concern, bullish on other regions (click here)
6 days ago
HOUSTON - Halliburton Co. is gearing up for increased oilfield services work in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America in the coming quarters, though pricing declines for some services in North America remain a concern, the company's chief executive said Monday.
A day after Halliburton reported a 19 per cent rise in third-quarter income, chairman and CEO Dave Lesar said the company was intent on maintaining its growth in the Eastern Hemisphere, where revenue jumped 29 per cent in the July-September period.
In particular, Halliburton opened a manufacturing facility in Malaysia in the most-recent quarter, and plans to open another plant for manufacturing and technology in Singapore by year's end - both to make sure the company has the tools to help customers in the region produce oil and natural gas.
To that end, Halliburton announced in March it would split its corporate headquarters between Houston and Dubai, where Lesar now works, placing him closer to important markets in the Middle East and Asia.
"Our outlook for the Eastern Hemisphere continues to remain very positive," Lesar said in a conference call Monday with investors and analysts.
Halliburton shares, which fell five per cent Friday, rose 22 cents to US$39.07 in afternoon trading Monday. They've traded in a range of $27.65 to $41.95 in the past year....

Conservation within this administration has been horrendous

The Department of the Interior has been highly exploitive of it's power in managing the nation's assets, including delisting species still delicate in their stability. The American Bald Eagle is the first to be delisted while developers scrambled for lands once protected. Noted in the radio interview at NPR openly states, in not so many words, there was no protection of the newly and returned nesting areas. That reality allows for exploitation of wealth seekers while the population of American Bald Eagles will surely drop and potently require a return of the Eagles to the protected lists and once again the engagement of lands where they can once again nest safely. There is simply gross mismangement by this adminisration and in all honesty it is pre-mediated. This much disarray of species protections comes because of 'desire to dismantle' rather than simply incompetency.



Bald Eagle Comes Off Endangered List (click here for link)

Radio link (click here)

Day to Day, June 28, 2007 · The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it is removing the American bald eagle from the nation's list of threatened and endangered species. Al Cecere, founder and president of the American Eagle Foundation, talks with Anthony Brooks.



Within the mismangement of these initiatives is also a developing issue with the public as to what delisting means. The public was never provided any overview to the delisting, just that American Bald Eagles were now fair game. :



Polk County
Officials: Man cited after shooting of bald eagle (click here)
October 23, 2007



Oregon teenager accused of killing bald eagle (click here)
Oct 23, 2007
By The Associated Press
SHERIDAN, Ore. — A Sheridan teenager has been charged with killing a bald eagle along the Willamette River.


Terry rancher to pay $15,000 in restitution for eagle deaths (click here)
Oct 26, 2007
The Associated Press
BILLINGS — A Terry rancher whose efforts to poison skunks and raccoons ended with the unintentional deaths of three eagles has been ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution.
Ronald E. Tibbetts, 61, was also given six months of unsupervised probation.


The Bush administration pre-meditatedly acts to undermine the authority of legislation long standing in this country as some of the most moral of it's initiatives. The Bush/Cheney draft to undermine The Endangered Species Act is being exploited by the timber industry before it received public hearings and appropriate passage into legislation. With the filing of this lawsuit, the timber industry nationally is ravaging forests. Yesterday in passing some forested areas along I-40 in North Carolina, I noted 'fragmented' forests near the road and clearing of trees where ever possible, while at times leaving simply a highway 'lined' with perhaps a forest only 30 feet in width but giving the perception of an entire forest in daylight hours.

The Bush administration is again commiting treason and empowering zealotry in an industry intent on exploiting profits at every turn before their damages are realized and stopped by the people of states and the nation. This is all pre-mediated and longly lusted assaults against the moral content of the legislation of the American public, now with decades of investment and soon to be 'reinvestment' when this administration finally is ousted or leaves DC. As noted in the article below the lawsuit filed by the timber industry was all inside information from the Bush Administration with a date one month previous to public knowledge.



Timber Industry Uses Draft Bush Endangered Species Act Regulations (click here)
Lawsuit seeks removal of marbled murrelet from threatened species list, elimination of old-growth forest protections
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2007
For more information, please contact:
Kristen Boyles, Earthjustice, 206-343-7340, X33
Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, 503-484-7495
Scott Greacen, EPIC, 707-476-8340
...The timber lawsuit was filed on March 7, 2007, nearly one month before the draft regulations surfaced. Industry lawyers are trying to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the marbled murrelet from the federal threatened list under a provision of the draft regulations. Current regulations contain no such requirement.
"The murrelet is just the tip of the iceberg," said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity. "These draft regulations are really a rewrite of the Endangered Species Act itself, a litigation magnet designed to help industry strip protection from hundreds of endangered species."...

Whoever would consider the NRA a Conservation proponent WILLING to stand upto the Bush Administration. The NRA has reaped enormous enthusiasm under this administration while war promotes gun interest and the lack of regulation, allowing The Assault Weapons Ban to lapse; the NRA also took issue with the grossly exploitive Bush Interior Department.


NRA Pressured To Resist Bush Energy Policies (click here)
Hunters Wary of Limited Land Access
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 7, 2007; Page A03
SEATTLE -- After years of close association with the Republican Party and hard-nosed opposition to federal land-use regulation, the National Rifle Association is being pressured by its membership to distance itself from President Bush's energy policies that have opened more public land for oil and gas drilling and limited access to hunters and anglers.
"The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters," said Ronald L. Schmeits, second vice president of the NRA, a member of its board of directors and a bank president in Raton, N.M....


I believe this is a wonderful idea, but, when this type of program is met with poor examples set by the USA and it's willingly exploitive industries; there raises the question as to what exactly will come out of the program in the way of sustainability and quite frankly $4 million is a token to the monies actually needed for these countries. Species protections are important but sustainability is of utmost importance while working with the United Nations Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (click here) in a warming world dominated in contribution of CO2 by the USA.


The United States Announces 33 Grants to Support $4 million in Conservation Projects for Elephants, Tigers, Great Apes and Rhinoceroses in 17 Countries (click here)
U.S. Department of the Interior
Office of the Secretary
June 13, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The United States of America today announced 33 Grants totaling more than $1.7 million to support conservation of Asian elephants, great apes, rhinoceroses, and tigers in 17 countries.
International conservation organizations and other partners will contribute more than $2 million in matching funds for a total of more than $4 million to support conservation projects for the species.
“The American people have a great love and appreciation for wildlife and want to support the efforts of other nations to protect and conserve these species,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Todd Willens. “Combining these grants with the matching funds put up by partners, we will monitor and study elephants, tigers and rhinos, ensure they are protected from poaching and other illegal activities and enable their habitat to be conserved.”
“Through this partnership approach, we are leveraging our conservation dollars to provide the greatest benefit to these species,” Willens said.
Willens made the announcement as the head of the U.S. delegation to the on-going 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The United States is awarding the grants to support voluntary conservation efforts in cooperation with local communities and landowners in Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, Cameroon, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Liberia....

...the Bush attacks on Social Security....

Implications of the Bush budget for people over 55 (click here)


It was the Baby Boomer's fault they were born evidently. The entire myth surrounding SSI stating it needs to be revamped, takes 'opportunity' of a dispreportionate number of people coming into the 'system' with this aging generation. It gives no credit to the resourcefulness of the Baby Boomer generation, their desire to stay involved and vital as well as connected to fiscal independance. It never discusses the social trend of this generation to rely on their own resources, the income INTO the USA Treasury of those additional earnings hence counter balancing the deficit they create. It's a good estimate, the Baby Boomer Generation will carry it's own deficit in SSI to provide a continuation of a government supplement to the next generations of Americans that remains intact in it's heritage from FDR. Those aspects of reality are never discussed or incorporated into facts, figures and charts.


Social Security: Bush's Lies vs. Reality (click here)




Bush's Social Security Plan Is Said to Require Vast Borrowing (click on)
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: November 28, 2004

...The budget deficit in the year ended Sept. 30 was $413 billion. The total national debt is about $7.5 trillion, including $3 trillion owed by the government to itself, much of it in the form of the Social Security trust fund. Rising debt forces the government to pay out more of its revenue in interest payments, and can put upward pressure on the interest rates paid by businesses and consumers....

...Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, both Republicans, have sponsored legislation that would allow workers to contribute more to their personal accounts than most other plans proposed by members of Congress and outside groups and would not require tax increases or benefit cuts. But by some estimates it would require nearly $2 trillion in borrowing - and, in the view of its critics, much more - and even then would rely on the idea that the new system would create so much more economic growth that it would partly pay for itself by generating additional tax revenues for the government.

Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, said the government could probably keep new borrowing to $800 billion over 10 years, but only if Congress and the administration are willing to back tax increases and benefit cuts as part of a broad overhaul of the retirement system....

Where do I start with this one?

Shortly after Bush was re-elected in 2004 he started a rant about SSI and demanded $2 trillion for it's 'reorganization' to begin privatization. He startled the nation and with over half the USA already traumatized by the overt illegality and immorality of the Iraq invasion, there was a shift in Republicans as well when Bush openly assaulted SSI. The country had just witnessed as well a return to the inequity of Medicare and subscribed to a perscription drug program KNOWN to be wrongly lead and allowed corrupt structure, but, it rationalized anyway as a good program because it provided a much needed benefit to seniors and the disabled.

Basically, the Medicare Perscription Drug Program is known to be corrupt, but, it is tolerated because a Republican Majority at the time demanded same. They were more interested in causing fiscal damage to the country than prudent and just policy because if the people of the USA would not stand behind the demise of SSI, Bush would attempt to assault the social programs by loading domestic budgets while separating the military budget. When SSI becomes the major component to the federal budget then it can be opened to legislation to trim it change it. That is why the tax cuts as well. Bush is attempting to privatize SSI in which ever way he can. Not that it is an agenda of the MAJORITY of Americans, but, only an agenda of the MAJORITY of wealthy Republicans.

SSI and Medicare/Medicaid need protectors and better advocates with moral character enough to secure the needs of Americans away from fiscal immoralists such as Republican Conservatives whom see the country as a black hole for their 2% Upper Class monies.

The Medicare Perscription Drug Program can do better, but, it's going to take Democrats to fix it. The only answer the Republicans have is to allow exploitation of it to increase the costs so Americans in this generation or next will see the benefit in dismantling it all together.

A Serious Drug Problem (click here)

...Another answer is to point to the haste with which key players in the drug bill's passage cashed in - making the claims that they wrote a pharma-friendly Medicare bill out of genuine concern for the public's welfare look ludicrous.

Let's look at just two examples.

Billy Tauzin, who shepherded the drug bill through when he was a member of Congress, now heads the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the all-powerful industry lobby group, for an estimated $2 million a year. In his new job, he's making novel arguments against allowing Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada: Al Qaeda, he suggests, might use fake Viagra tablets to get anthrax into this country.

Meanwhile, Thomas Scully, the former Medicare administrator - who threatened to fire Medicare's chief actuary if he gave Congress the real numbers on the drug bill's cost - was granted a special waiver from the ethics rules. This allowed him to negotiate for a future health industry lobbying job at the very same time he was pushing the drug bill.

If all this sounds like a story of a corrupt deal created by a corrupt system, it is. And it was a very expensive deal indeed. According to the Medicare trustees, the fiscal gap over the next 75 years created by the 2003 law - not the financing gap for Medicare as a whole, just the additional gap created by legislation passed 18 months ago - will be $8.7 trillion....

The Image Makers. Assigned to propagate politics and expand monopolies.

This is the historical stock prices of CCU (a Texas based company) - the history of Clear Channel Communcations reached an all time high in stock prices in the year 2000. But the most interesting aspect of the influence of Bush's FCC is the return of dividends to stockholders after this company became the Bush/Cheney/Powell darling.



The fines by the FCC of CBS was simple vicious by Powell to leverage over CBS and any other media service when he realized 'granting favors' didn't necessarily mean having control.

...The flash of flesh had been so fleeting that many viewers weren't sure of what they had seen until it was confirmed by newspaper, radio and Internet accounts the next day. Others wanted to get a second look. This half-time show instantly became the most-replayed television segment ever on the millions of TiVo digital video recorders.
At the Federal Communications Commission, then-Chairman Michael Powell was outraged. (click here) The following morning he got on the phone with Mel Karmazin, then the chief operating officer at CBS. Powell expected better of what was once dubbed the nation's "Tiffany Network."
Ten days earlier, after the expenditure of considerable effort and energy on the part of Powell, Viacom (CBS's corporate parent at the time) had been freed from having to divest ownership of several local broadcast stations thanks to legislation allowing networks to own stations constituting up to 39 percent of the country's television viewership. The provision had been attached to a budget bill signed by President Bush.
"CBS deeply regrets the incident that occurred during the Super Bowl halftime show," Karmazin said in a statement. "We attended all rehearsals throughout the week, and there was no indication that any such thing would happen." Yet happen it did, and spokespeople for CBS, for MTV, for Jackson and for Timberlake spent the next several days blaming each other for what did happen.
A presidential election has come and gone, and there is a new chairman at the FCC and new top officials at CBS. Thanks to the Timberlake-Jackson incident, indecency fines were raised 10-fold in a law Bush signed in June 2006. Also, CBS has been split off from MTV, which remains part of Viacom Inc., now a separate company from the broadcaster....


"Clear Channel (click here) will do anything they can, threaten me, go to my clients directly, anything to get control of the markets. . . . They're a clear example of what can happen with deregulation. They've ruined radio, as far as I'm concerned. And now they're licking their chops to be able to control more of what the public sees and hears." – An anonymous ad agency owner, Salon.com, Feb. 19, 2003 (click here)






...There is a chain of human sympathy against suffering in the world which goes something like this: If a steamroller were headed straight for a Labrador retriever, a human baby, a member of the Swedish bikini team, Karl Rove, and an iguana, and you could save all but one of these people/creatures, which would you sentence to a future as an organic pancake? It’s a tough call, of course, but all an iguana eats is leafy vegetables, whereas Karl Rove will steal your soul and send your children to die in Iraq. (Besides, he wasn’t very interested in saving much of anything when Katrina steamrolled the Gulf Coast.)...(click here)

The image making of Karl Rove is infamous. It entailed daily dispatches from the President's assistant to media, the infrastructure of the Bush Administration and personal visits to nearly anyplace within the government structure to control the Bush image, expand the influence of media in promoting Republican candidates thoughout the country and simply be a burden to any 'entity' that wasn't a political party asset. Karl Rove was a power broker. He was given free rein to do as he pleased with the infrastructure of the USA government and his 'image agenda' was facilitated by more power brokering by Michael Powell at the FCC.

Rove's goal was/is to great a Republican haven from sea to shining sea and Powell's was to facilitate that reality no matter what it took.

That is abuse of government. Abuse of power. However one wants to put it. Bush and Cheney allowed 'tinkering' within the infrastructure of the USA government to promote the Republican Party without consideration of laws or understood proprieties by the American people. This administration threw ethics out the door and sought to override any decency of moral conduct not legislated. In other words, where laws didn't exist because it was unconscionable to venture into improprietized power brokering, this administration did it freely, with complete conscious and with the permission of their Christian Right extremists to make the USA their privatized nation and holy glory wagon.

Any level of government relies on the moral character of elected officials to carry out business of government. It is impossible to legislate ever aspect of behavior of any official. Due to that fact administrations that are moralless, as the Bush administration is, can be harnessed for 'free will' authority to dismantle the USA Constitution. The checks and balance built into the Constitution is supposed to stop it's own demise at the hand of corruption.

No laws again? The Bush/Cheney White House is a fain for offending the decency of the USA where weak or absent statutes lie.

Patrick Fitzgerald

It started with : “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”

Ms. Valerie Plame and Ambassador Joseph Wilson are still waiting for the country to exert legislative power to change the reality of this 'imbalance' of power.

What I Didn't Find in Africa (click here)

By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4TH
Published: July 6, 2003
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat....

This editorial was another item swept under the Bush/Cheney White House by outing a CIA agent in political retribution. There isn't anything else to say. The Cheney office was intent on invading Iraq. They outed Plame. This was a purely political act and Richard Cheney blatantly stood in ridicule of the USA Constitution to insure his poitical standing. There was no law to stop a highly manipulative Vice President and his staff to mount a dogmatic attack on a very valuable CIA agent. Nothing was to stop the Iraq War and the Cheney Executive Office would insure it. This act coming of the Veep's office is conclusive evidence of the intent of Cheney to engage in an oil war, to protect himself from the anger of Halliburton stockholders. His priorities are directly involved here. To simple to see.

And the pardon alone indicates Bush gave permission to all that resulted.

Opinion The Growing Politicization of America's Intelligence Services (click here)

Valerie Plame Wilson Thu Oct 25, 9:47 PM ET
Now on the fourth day of my book tour for Fair Game and I am delighted because I have been given abundant opportunity to discuss something I feel passionately about: the politicization of our intelligence services. There has been an increasing trend to allow politics to spill over into the world of intelligence and I believe that it degrades the intelligence mission, its product, and is detrimental to our national security. Americans of all political stripes want to know that whatever intelligence lands on the president's desk is devoid of ideological taint and political pressure. As we now know, Vice President Cheney and his then Chief of Staff Scooter Libby made an unprecedented number of visits to CIA Headquarters in the run-up to the Iraq war to meet with analysts. Apparently, the vice president kept asking the same questions until he began to hear the answers he wanted. Although there might not have been overt pressure to slant intelligence toward the administration's stance on Iraq and its perceived WMD threat, the very fact that the vice president had taken time out of his day, come into Headquarters and asked a certain line of questions invisibly and insidiously has the effect of conveying a high level of dissatisfaction with what the CIA has already produced. CIA analysts are not dumb....

Bush uniquely selective with pardons (click here)
By: Andrew Glass

Oct 9, 2007 08:23 PM EST

Over the years, the courts have checked the executive power of nearly every president, including George W. Bush. But in devising an interlocking web of checks and balances, the Framers also gave presidents a powerful tool to check the courts: the power to pardon offenders. Bush has used this power in both a stingy and a haughty way.
The Constitution gives presidents the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” A reprieve — like the one Bush issued in July to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former vice presidential honcho — reduces the severity of a punishment without removing the guilt. A full pardon erases both. (Technically, what Bush did is known as a “remission,” since he eliminated Libby’s prison sentence in its entirety.)...

Time to impeach, then convict Bush (click here)

George W. Bush has done what no power on Earth could do -- brought our country to its knees. The American spirit is low. People are shaking their heads and asking what has happened to such a great nation. One federal initiative after another has gone wrong.
Bush's unnecessary attack on Iraq was a colossal mistake unrivaled in American history.
Never before have we attacked a sovereign nation for such unsubstantiated reasons. His poor judgment has caused death, injury and untold misery for millions upon millions of people. For what?
Our meddling has only made us more enemies. World opinion of our country has plummeted to an all-time low.
The whole initiative was based upon slanted information at best and, at worst, lies....

Just because there 'seem's to be a gap in USA law when atrocities occur, doesn't mean people can't be held for the occurrence.

The Bush/Cheney Executive Branch dismissed The Geneva Conventions. They then sought to be pandered to by the United Nations as the anarchic Iraq was abandoned for containment of the USA. It is arguable the atrocities of Bush and Cheney at the cost of the people within Iraq, even today, are facilitated by other nations to encapsule the USA in an unwinnable war until the people to the USA come to their senses. But, either way, many nation's globally have made huge strides in nuclear capacity as well as national wealth while allowing the USA to flounder in Iraq and come to it's own demise under an Executive Branch more intent on the politics of the day rather than the reality of their complete and absolute blunders.

If Bush and Cheney were removed from office either through impeachment or resignation, it would have reopened the possibility of international reassessment of the best outcome of the Iraqi people. But, with Neocons at the helm of the military might of the USA, there was no choice by any other nation than to allow containment in an endless war.

CBS wins Peabody for Abu Ghraib report (click here)
Producer was later fired; 'Daily Show' also wins
NEW YORK - CBS News won a Peabody Award on Thursday for its report on abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a story anchored by Dan Rather and produced by Mary Mapes, who was later fired by CBS for her role in the story about President Bush’s military service.....

There were deaths at Abu Ghraib. Deaths. Yet, the Bush Executive Branch walked way clean as whistle.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came under fire on August 24, 2004 from a high-level inquiry into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal but a U.S. military judge ruled he did not have to testify at a trial arising from the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. A four-member panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger(L) issued a report accusing the chain of command from Rumsfeld down of leadership failures that created conditions for the abuse late last year that sparked anti-American outrage across the world. Panel members Schlesinger Air Force General Charles Horner(C) and Former U.S. Representative Tillie Fowler are seen at the Pentagon Tuesday. [AP Photo]

Along a prison walkway, a hooded detainee seems to havecollapsed with his wrists handcuffed to the railings.

Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed (click here)
60 Minutes II Has Exclusive Report On Alleged Mistreatment
April 28, 2004

(CBS) Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners. But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now. It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report. Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time. Correspondent Dan Rather talks to one of those soldiers. And, for the first time, 60 Minutes II will show some of the pictures that led to the Army investigation....

CBS broke the story to the public after having allowed the Executive Branch time to digest it and while waiting for a response. None came. The nation again turned to 'cleaning up the mess of Bush's Executive Branch, circumventing the demands of the USA Constitution for impeachment due to high crimes and misdemeanors' and all Schlesinger could do was stipulate there were no policy issues or laws broken.

That is more than outrageous. People died in a prison overseen by the USA with it's own military after taking occupation of Iraq, illegally at that, and there was absolutely no way of holding those in the Executive Branch accountable?

There is no decency in this Executive Branch or with Republican legislators. None. The 'idea' Iraqis died for no reason, when they should have been treated humanly and taught justice without torture and intimidation has lead to more than hatred of the military occupation of the USA.

"There was sadism on the night shift at Abu Ghraib, sadism that was certainly not authorized," Schlesinger said. "It was kind of 'Animal House' on the night shift.

Schlesinger noted, however, that there was "no policy of abuse."

Bush's Spying Hits Americans Abroad

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (click here)
...Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications....

The New York Times broke the story regarding a direct assault on the American people by the Bush White House and it has remained a complete and absolute insult to the ability of the Intelligence Departments of this country.

The USA has retreated into 'picking up' after Bush and Cheney messes lead by the former majority judiciary Chair Senator Arlen Spector. It's treason. Bush and Cheney cry about having to face securing the USA without adequate laws. Yet, immediately after September 11, 2001 there were three laws passed to allow greater control of the circumstances of the USA. Through political intimidation, as a nation looked for a president that would stop al Qaeda, the Policy of Pre-Emption was passed, along with two other disasterous legislation. Yet, there was no insight by Bush and Cheney regarding FISA? Sure there wasn't.:

December 20, 2005 (click here)
"The fat's in the fire," Mr. Specter said. "This is going to be a big, big issue. There's a lot of indignation across the country, from what I see."

December 23, 2007 (click here)
...Congressional aides from both parties said Thursday that their leaders were weighing a number of options for further inquiries into the matter. In the Senate, Mr. Specter and Mr. Roberts were said to be talking with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, about a possible division of labor between their committees. But they said it was unlikely that any hearings would be held until Congress convenes again in late January....

December 31, 2007 (click here)
...Questions about the surveillance operation are likely to be central to a Congressional hearing planned by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter, like some other Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, has voiced deep concerns about the program and Mr. Bush's legal authority to bypass the courts to order domestic wiretaps without warrants....

January 12, 2007 (click here)
...Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has scheduled open hearings, and the Senate Intelligence Committee has said it plans closed hearings.
The president's legal justification for the N.S.A. program has gotten mixed reviews, ranging from enthusiastic to skeptical to scathing.
This week, Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, released a 14-page legal analysis she had requested from a former C.I.A. general counsel, Jeffrey H. Smith, now a Washington lawyer.
Although recognizing the president's assertion that his power as commander in chief justifies warrantless surveillance, Mr. Smith called that case "weak" in light of the language and documented purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires warrants.
Mr. Smith also wrote that the Congressional resolution authorizing military force against those who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "does not, in my view, justify warrantless electronic surveillance of United States persons in the United States."
"The president was correct in concluding that many of our laws were not adequate to deal with this new threat," Mr. Smith wrote. "He was wrong, however, to conclude that he is therefore free to follow the laws he agrees with and ignore those with which he disagrees."

March 8, 2006 (click here)
G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping
WASHINGTON, March 7 — Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days....
...It is not clear whether all the Republican critics will back the deal. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.
In a separate Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Specter said, "We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program."
He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.
Mr. Specter said in statement later that he hoped for a solution that would avoid resorting to such an extreme action.

April 1, 2005 (click here)
...Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee, insisted on a serious inquiry into the censure proposal. And Mr. Specter made no secret that he relished another chance to raise questions about the secret wiretapping program, run by the National Security Agency, noting that his committee had held four hearings on the subject.
"I thought they would attract more attention," he said.
Several Republicans argued that whatever the legal status of the spying program, it did not deserve punishment because, unlike Nixon, Mr. Bush had acted in good faith....

So, in a very short period of time, Bush and Cheney with the cooperation of Hayden, spy ILLEGALLY on the American people. There is FISA. It states clearly the conditions for wiretapping to prevent invasion of privacy. The Bush/Cheney administration deliberately breaks the law and then terrifies the USA into giving up it's own Constitution through a party so corrupt on it's intent to 'deal power and might' that there is no choice but for Americans to let their spine slip in accepting the criminality in the White House for the sake of their own security. This act, by Spector and the majority Republicans set the stage for a 'mind think' in the populous of the USA that is corrupt, biased and highly judgemental. Today the 'political mind speak' reverberates in words of justified corruption. When the Executive Branch should have been facing impeachment, they were met with a party willing to place the Constitution as a 'figure head' to what they now call democracy while taking away precious freedoms of the American people. It's outrageous and unconscionable. Arlen Spector's march into hell was amazing to witness.

March 6, 2006 (click here)
...Mr. Specter then loyally produced a bill that actually grants legal cover, retroactively, to the one spying program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. It also covers any other illegal wiretapping we don't know about — including, it appears, entire "programs" that could cover hundreds, thousands or millions of unknowing people.
Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act....

Spying on Americans (click here)
Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B06
IN THE WAKE of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the New York Times reported last week, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of hundreds of U.S. citizens and residents suspected of contact with al Qaeda figures -- without warrants and outside the strictures of the law that governs national security searches and wiretaps. The rules here are not ambiguous. Generally speaking, the NSA has not been permitted to operate domestically. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires that national security wiretaps be authorized by the secretive FISA court. "A person is guilty of an offense," the law reads, "if he intentionally . . . engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute" -- which appears, at least on its face, to be precisely what the president has authorized.
Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address yesterday, defended his action, chastised the media for revealing it, and suggested both that Congress had justified this step by authorizing force against al Qaeda and that such spying was consistent with the "constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief." But there is a reason the CIA and the NSA are not supposed to operate domestically: The tools of foreign intelligence are not consistent with a democratic society....

The Downing Street Memo...

...resulted in a baseless invasion into Iraq of which was stated recently by David Grange, "...we did Iraq 'on the cheap'..." His statement was made following the annoucement by the World Court stipulating Blackwater would be investigated for human rights abuses in the unwarranted killing of innocent iraqis. Blackwater to date states it has all it's shootings recorded 'in the record.' Did anyone count their bullets and their guns? No. Then what are they offering as defense to the statement they can account for all their shootings?

WMD were never found by David Kay. They were never discovered by the UN Inspectors prior to the invasion. They were never there. Ever. No ability to reconstitute any nuclear capacity. Nothing. The munition bunkers of Saddam Hussein which could have easily caused another war, at the time of invasion were still locked and sealed by flimsy UN wire seals. It was the USA military that recklessly removed the seals for the press to view.

We never belonged in Iraq.

We don't still.

Still yet another 'Bush Imposed' policy that is supposed to be welcome by the Shi'ite authority in Baghdad. There is no way. There is no trust between Sunnis and Shi'ites and why? Because the streets of Baghdad belong to the Shi'ites. They have removed Sunnis from neighborhoods in a methodical fashion only to face the return of Sunnis? You gotten be joking here. The Shi'ites are more in fear of retribution for the removal of Sunnis from Baghdad neighborhoods today then when Saddam was in power. There ain't no way, peace between the ethnicities will culminate in a family picture in front of the USA Embassy. No way. The Partitioning of Iraq into provinces will ensure 'boundary lines of hate and mistrust.' It will end the violence between the ethnicities long enough from them to have two generations pass before they will cooperate as a country again. Two generations will have to pass (40 years) before the ethnic divide of Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds will begin to heal. Two. Two generations of peaceful divide, before a truce will ever manifest in that country.

Iraq Hampers U.S. Bid to Widen Sunni Police Role (click here)
...But now that the Americans are trying to institutionalize the arrangement by training the Sunnis to become police officers, the effort has been hampered by halfhearted support and occasionally outright resistance from a Shiite-dominated national government that is still inclined to see the Sunnis as a once and future threat....

Sorry, if there is overuse of The New York Times archives but it's quick and easy and their archives are extensive.

Funding for the Iraq War.

What funding?

The troops have to be redeployed out of Iraq to facilitate a reduction in fire power. The rebuilding of the holy lands of Islam will ensue when neighboring countries can help supply materials to the craftsmen left in Iraq. The religion of the people must be returned to them as soon as possible. It is my demand that if the USA is to assist Iraq from now forward, it will by proxy through the support of other nations. The USA has done such extensive damage to that country and pending determination regarding genocide of multi-faceted dimensions that any relationship between Iraq and the USA should be banned while support is provided through trust funds placed in Saudi Arabia, Kurdistan and through the UN while humanitarian aid is distributed through Iran.


On War Funding, Democrats Have a Day of Disagreement (click here)
Three prominent Congressional Democrats on Tuesday sought to step up criticism of the White House over the rising cost of the Iraq war. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said that he would block President Bush's request for nearly $200 billion in supplemental financing for war operations, and that the government should levy a war surtax to cover costs....

I have yet to understand how we allowed George Walker Bush the right to state, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”; while looking the other way at a memo that literally indicts the Bush/Cheney White House of treason to commit high crimes and misdemeanors while abusing the military powers of the USA to run wars for profit in closed contracts to cronies. People have died in large number in Iraq. They have been refugeed. They suffer more today at the hand of the USA's inability to rebuild and return fuction to medical facilities while the people of Iraq wallow in poverty. And we are all supposed to look the other way when Republican candidates and presidential hopefuls state the USA will continue it's presence in Iraq? You've got to be joking !




The Downing Street Memo, July 2002:
There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Life in the USA is not supposed to be a trick or treat. The USA is supposed to have clear paths and ultimate goals that lead to resolve of problems, not, demonstrations of power to intimidate into fear nations of people. This is a Halloween tribute to the Trickery of the George Walker Bush Administration.

It's Sunday Night

"Immaculate Deception" by Black Sabbath

In The Daylight, Comes Darkness, On The Verge Of
Night A Fear Is Born,

Sweeter Than The Dream, The Reality Of You,
Immaculate, Deception.

From The Spirit Runs Poison, And The Wheel Of
Fortune Is Ever Still,

Sweeter Than The Light, The Darkness Of Your Soul,
Immaculate, Deception.

Something Has Touched, The Spirit Inside,
Once There Was Love Now There's A Void.

Night Of Deception, Ghost In My Mind,
Am I Bewitched, Slave To Desire.

It's Knowing That Time Keeps Rolling On, Night After
Day, Day After Night,

It's Knowing That Feeling Of Coming Home, To Where
My Spirit Lies.

It's Knowing That Feeling Of Coming Home, To Where
My Spirit Lies.

I won't be back online until the early hours of Monday morning. Probably around 1 AM or so.

I value all those that come to visit this blog and especially those that do on a regular basis. I'll tell you how much I value all of the readers, I rarely miss an opportunity to communicate on a regular basis. It has a priority. Okay?

On several occassions I have referred to a sister of mine that has a brain tumor. She was diagnosed 23 years ago. That is just amazing to realize the 'perfected' care she has received all those years to realize she still lives on her own and communicates clearly with as good a cognition as anyone else.

She does have brain injury from the past surgeries and radiation and as a result she tends to see life differently. She never obsesses about her illness and tends to deny it. She doesn't like to be confronted with her tumor on a regular basis and our parents, although much older, chronically obsess over it. Do to that fact she distances herself from the family.

I call her, just to chat, regularly. She rarely returns calls because she feels any information shared with the family leads to more questions of which she could not care less she has answers to give us. But, in the past two weeks she has returned my calls. Her birthday is today and I think she feels a little lonesome for the only sister she values as a support to her view of life without a tumor presence.

So.

I am traveling about 4 hours to visit with her today, take her to dinner and a show, then to return to my purpose here which is to return the country I love back it's reputation and grandeur with safety to citizens, including environmental and conservation morality, and economic goals that are mostly motivated in local initatives including enhancing education.

I intend to pursue a short Halloween dialogue on the misdirection of our nation and the way ahead to 'take back our country.'

Until then...