Libyan Protestors Beg Bush to Bomb Qadaffi

Libyan Protesters Beg for Bush: "Bring Bush!"

Has Katie Couric bit off her tongue yet? Not to worry, the jihadists she so enthusiastically defends and abets will do it soon enough.

Just as the world is undergoing a seismic shift in the arab regimes and dictatorships, the American media landscape is desperately in need of a revolution. The old media must be overthrown.

You'll notice that Reuters buried the lede.

"Bring Bush! Make a no fly zone, bomb the planes," shouted soldiers

Imagine that. Ayatollah Obama has achieved what would have been thought to be impossible: worldwide calls for the return of George Bush. They pleaded for Bush in Iran, too, when they were being slaughtered in the street while Obama ....... ate ice cream.

Gaddafi bombs oil areas, faces crimes probe Reuters

AL-UQAYLA, Libya (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi struck at rebel control of a key Libyan coastal road for a second day Thursday but received a warning he would be held to account at The Hague for suspected crimes by his security forces.

Venezuela said Gaddafi had agreed to its proposal for an international commission to negotiate an end to the turmoil in the world's 12th largest oil exporting nation.

But a leader of the uprising against Gaddafi's 41-year-old rule rejected any proposal for talks with the veteran leader.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France and Britain would support the idea of setting up a no-fly zone over Libya if Gaddafi's forces continued to attack civilians.

The uprising, the bloodiest yet against long-serving rulers in the Middle East and North Africa, has torn through the OPEC-member country and knocked out nearly 50 percent of its 1.6 million barrels per day output, the bedrock of Libya's economy.
[...]

But on the ground, events appeared to turn against Gaddafi, as rebels spearheading the unprecedented popular revolt pushed their frontline against government loyalists west of Brega, where they had repulsed an attack a day earlier.

The opposition fighters said troops loyal to Gaddafi had been driven back to Ras Lanuf, home to another major oil terminal and 600 km (375 miles) east of Tripoli.

They also said they had captured a group of mercenaries.

In an angry scene at al-Uqayla, east of Ras Lanuf, a rebel shouted inches from the face of a captured young African and alleged mercenary: "You were carrying guns, yes or no? You were with Gaddafi's brigades yes or no?"

The silent youth was shoved onto his knees into the dirt. A man held a pistol close to the boy's face before a reporter protested and told the man that the rebels were not judges.

In The Hague, International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Gaddafi and members of his inner circle, including some of his sons, could be investigated for alleged crimes committed since the uprising broke out in mid-February.

ARREST WARRANTS

He said a request for arrest warrants over Libya could be made in a few months time.

"We have identified some individuals in the de facto or former authority who have authority over the security forces who allegedly committed the crimes," Moreno-Ocampo said.

"They are Muammar Gaddafi, his inner circle including some of his sons, who had this de facto authority. There are also some people with formal authority who should pay attention to crimes committed by their people."

Libyan government spokesman Musa Ibrahim told BBC Radio the news from The Hague was "close to a joke."

"No fact-finding mission has been sent to Libya. No diplomats, no ministers, no NGOs or organizations of any type were sent to Libya to check the facts ... No one can be sent to prison based on media reports," he said.

As the struggle on the ground intensified, a spokesman for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a Gaddafi ally, said the Libyan government had accepted a plan by Venezuela to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict in the North African country,

Information Minister Andres Izarra also confirmed the Arab League had shown interest in the Chavez plan to send an international commission to talk with both sides in Libya

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said earlier that the plan was under consideration. Moussa said he himself had not agreed to it and did not know whether Gaddafi had done so.

Oil fell on news of the plan. Brent crude fell more than $3 to $113.09 per barrel as investors eyed a possible deal brokered by Chavez. It later edged up to $114.78.

Chavez's plan would involve a commission from Latin America, Europe and the Middle East trying to reach a negotiated outcome between the Libyan leader and rebel forces.

Al Jazeera said the chairman of the rebels' National Libyan Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, rejected any talks with Gaddafi.

The rebels, armed with rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and tanks, called Wednesday for U.N.-backed air strikes on foreign mercenaries it said were fighting for Gaddafi.

Opposition activists called for a no-fly zone, echoing a demand by Libya's deputy U.N. envoy, who now opposes Gaddafi.

"Bring Bush! Make a no fly zone, bomb the planes," shouted soldier-turned-rebel Nasr Ali, referring to a no-fly zone imposed on Iraq in 1991 by then U.S. President George Bush.

Bush Administration waited till 9/18/08 to Alert Congress

In little-noticed statements to reporters over the last few weeks, Pelosi has alleged that the Bush administration knew well in advance of its intervention that the financial crisis would hit, and that Congress would need to authorize a historic and unpopular bailout - but that top officials, including then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, told her that they had been barred from briefing Congress about true extent of the crisis.

If accurate, the allegation could constitute a major indictment of the Bush administration, which may have worsened the crisis and resulting economic fallout by delaying the call for congressional action. Pelosi says the admissions from Bush administration officials that they had kept Congress in the dark came in private conversations between her and those officials in person and by phone. None of the other parties to those conversations would comment for this story. Nor is it clear if the Administration's alleged decision not to brief Congress earlier was a calculated strategy to avoid spooking the already shaky financial markets thus hastening the crisis or, as Pelosi suggests, a political calculation in advance of the 2008 presidential elections, or a combination of the two.

During her weekly press conference on April 15, a reporter asked Pelosi a seemingly innocuous question about taxes. Pelosi prefaced her response with a fairly standard litany: explaining the dire state of the U.S. economy inherited by President Obama and setting the blame at the foot of the Bush administration. But she also added this: "When [then-Senator Obama] accepted the nomination in Colorado, the [Bush] Administration had kept from the public the idea that, in a matter of weeks, the financial community would be in crisis, and we would need to pass the TARP legislation."

Brian Beutler, TPM EXCLUSIVE

Albert Anastasia and George Bush

America prefers a rich murderer to a rich adulterer. The Congress should have impeached GWB three years ago. The president got away with torture and murder after Clinton went down on oral sex in the oval office. This affair cost Al Gore votes and possibly the election.

The Republican hate machine will try to link Barack Obama to his fellow Democrat John Edwards. As heterosexuals, they incur the special wrath of unforgiving doodads.

In future Democratic literature should link political figures with their crimes i.e. cluster bomber Rice, mad bomber McCain and Torture Cheney.

Bush,

How Obama Became Acting President

How Obama Became Acting President
Frank Rich, NYTimes

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

Cruel Leaders I Have Known

Having foolishly raised expectations to justify their invasion of Iraq, Bush and McCain have their reputations at stake. Which is why they cannot define success there as Barack Obama has defined it and why they have neither a strategy for success nor strategy for leaving Iraq. All they have is the surge (a mere tactic) and hope for a miracle. - Walter Uhler

Talking about a death wish, Bush and McCain are two prime examples. After several unfruitful adventures in Asia, they attacked a nation of 27 millions who had done them no wrong. This is the classic case of paranoia. Convinced that Iraq was plotting to destroy them, Bush and McCain manufactured a string of lies aimed at justifying a preemptive war.

Many murderers construct an elaborate fantasy to convince themselves they are under the threat of the intended victim.

Bush, McCain and many others executed the killing plan. Many of these people face eventual disgrace, imprisonment and execution events few paranoids anticipate.

If we Israelis were as paranoid as Bush and McCain, we would have annihilated every Arab between the Tigris River and Morocco years ago. We retain this capability, but refuse to use it until necessary.

The difference between cultures: Most Israelis respect human life while few Americans do.

I Dare McCain to Ape His President

On the same day, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke gave two very different assessments of where the US economy is going. Bush was Mr. Positive while Chairman Bernanke's testimony forewarned of the pain to come. Read excerpts from the two takes below.

Bush:

President Bush said Tuesday the nation's troubled financial system is "basically sound" and urged lawmakers to quickly enact legislation to prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also called on the Democratic-run Congress to follow his example and lift a ban on offshore drilling to help increase domestic oil production.

Amid soaring gas prices, the toughest real estate market in decades, falling home prices and financing that's harder to come by, Bush said: "It's been a difficult time for many American families." But he also said that the nation's economy continues to grow, if slowly.

Bush said that despite the woes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the recent government takeover of California bank IndyMac, U.S. depositors should not worry because their deposits are insured by the government up to $100,000

HuffPost

We Don't Deserve to Celebrate the Fourth of July

Our preemptive war in Vietnam violated our Constitution and the UN Charter. The UN nations should have declared war on the US. At the first opportunity, our Congress should have impeached, tried and executed everyone in the Lyndon Johnson Administration.
We had this duty to honor our Constitution. When we failed to execute Johnson, we stamped our flag into the dirt.
GWB was our collective punishment from God. Bush persisted in preemptive wars and did Johnson one better. He has enslaved us.
We don't deserve the Fourth of July. We are not Independent.
We dance on the graves of our ancestors who have fallen in the battle to be free.

Bush in Iraq

Bush in Iraq

The Bush regime has had little success in Iraq, because they understood nothing about that country. The Bush supporters replaced reality with US wishful thinking. Remember, the Iraqis were supposed to greet our troops as liberators. They realized we had no plan to manage the post-war period. They soured on us after they saw the Bush regime ruin the place as they had ruined America. [Crumbling infrastructure, misuse of water resources, criminals running the government torturing many of those who disagree with them] Maliki has forbidden our human rights inspectors from reviewing his actions. He and his pals in government remain ‘loyal’ to us only through bribery.

The Muqtaba al Sadr faction is the only one that provides a modicum of social services and thus commands the respect of the people. They know the only reason the Americans stayed so long was to seize oil resources.

A few people accuse me of being left wing. I support peaceful negotiations, as a step to prevent war. I oppose torture, racism and murder.

I see little difference on these issues between Republicans and Democrats beyond the usual rhetoric. Both parties back torture, war and murder. Members of both parties have done little to promote our traditional values and have crippled our economy.

A few years ago the FBI gave Mr Bush 432,000 pages of evidence which would put most of our so-called leaders into prison. Mr Bush has blackmailed most of the leadership to follow his dictates. Since his nomination, Mr McCain also has this evidence.

Sitting with Ahmadinejad

Hamid Tehrani, Voices Without Votes

Speaking in Israel, President George W Bush cited the remarks of a U.S. Senator who proposed in 1939 that he could have negotiated with Hitler to avert the Nazi invasion of Poland. The American President continued: “We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history” - prompting presidential hopeful Barack Obama to condemn Bush for launching a ‘false political attack.' Several Iranian bloggers reacted to Bush's remarks and the Democrats' reaction to it.

Voacapitol says [Fa] that Senator Josef Liberman, who supported President Bush's remarks, asked how Obama could sit at the same table with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President who sends weapons to Hamas, Hizbollah or other terrorist groups?

The blogger adds although White House speaker Dana Periono says Bush did not mean Obama, many politicians believe he was the target. Republican candidate John McCain also said he did not think Bush was talking about Obama but that Bush must explain what he wanted to say to Ahmadinejad, whom he called a ‘corrupted corpse.'

Vahshateh Marg, which translates to Fear of Death, believes [Fa] that Bush's comments were targeted towards both Ahmadinejad and Obama. He adds:

The Democrats already reacted to Bush's Speech. Now we should wait for Ahmadinejad's reaction to that.

The blogger reminds us how several months ago, Mohmmad Javad Larijani, an Iranian politician (his brother was former chief Iranian negotiator on Iranian nuclear program), told a reporter about negotiating with the US: “If we find ourselves in the heart of hell, we will negotiate even with Satan.”

Khomenei's Generation says [Fa] that Jewish communities in the United States are afraid of Obama because they consider him a disciple of Noam Chomsky! He adds:

I remember 10 or 11 years ago, Iranian Leader [ Ali Khamenei] predicted that everything will start the moment that the American people will come to the streets and take the power out of the hands of the Zionists in the USA!

The Bush Knesset Speech

Seth Coulter Welles, HuffPost

According to 29-year CIA veteran and former NSC official Bruce Riedel, Wednesday's announcement of joint peace negotiations between Israel and Syria revealed President Bush's diminished standing in Middle East affairs.

"Think of the irony," Riedel said. "George Bush goes to Jerusalem last week. He gives an impassioned speech about never dealing with nasty regimes [that sponsor terror]. He basically says 'don't make agreements that appease [them].' And less than a week later, the Israeli government announces it is engaged in peace negotiations with the Assad dictatorship in Syria. We're talking about a rather distasteful regime that likely had a hand in the murder of [former Lebanese Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri. I guess [Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert didn't think the speech was meant for him."

Riedel, who served as a special assistant to the president until 2002 and is now with the Brookings Institution, said the lack of weight accorded to Bush's appeasement speech "shows more and more that the Middle East is not listening to him anymore, as does the deal announced in Doha for Lebanon today." In that Doha agreement, the Iranian-supported Hezbollah secured effective veto power within Lebanon's next cabinet -- an arrangement that is sure to frustrate any future efforts to disarm the political party that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Turkey's mediation of Israel-Syria talks has been "an open secret" in the region for the last month, according to Riedel. "A lot of very serious Israeli thinkers have felt for some time that the Syria agreement could be a strategic way to break out of the logjam that Israel is in," he said. "There's no holy Jerusalem to contend with, no refugees. It's a simple land for peace swap, and everyone knows what the price is: 100 percent return of the Golan Heights, in return for which they would get a full agreement with Syria. ... If this works, it would demonstrate that negotiating with Assad's Syria can produce serious and important results for a democracy like Israel."

But not all observers are that optimistic. Independent analyst and Israeli political adviser Dahlia Scheindlin cites a recent report by the War and Peace Index that suggests Israelis are more willing to consider a compromise over certain areas in Jerusalem than they are likely to approve of any deal with Syria that involves relinquishing the Golan.

According to that study, only 19 percent of Israelis support the idea of giving up the Golan, while 40 percent are willing to consider giving up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. "It's sort of counter-intuitive and surprising," Scheindlin said, "you wouldn't think it would be quite so emotional. But the Golan has been annexed for so long, it now feels like part of Israel. The people who live there are considered regular Israelis, not settlers. Also, they've been through this many times before. Talks start and end faster than you can say 'jackrabbit.' So there's a lot of cynicism. While this story is leading the news today, it could easily be gone tomorrow."

Bush Mars Israel's Birthday and Insults Her People

Bush Attempts to Frighten Israelis as He Does with Americans

Bush Suggests Obama is an Appeaser

Ed Henry, CNN

JERUSALEM (CNN) – President Bush launched a sharp but veiled attack Thursday on Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats, suggesting they favor "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way some Western leaders appeased Hitler in the run-up to World War II.

The president did not name Obama or any other Democrat, but White House aides privately acknowledged the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party. Former President Jimmy Carter has called for talks with Hamas.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The remarks seemed to be a not-so-subtle attempt to continue to raise doubts about Obama with Jewish Americans. Those doubts were earlier stoked by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2008 presidential election, when he recently charged that Obama is the favored candidate of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist group.

Obama last week called the Hamas allegation a "smear" and lashed out Thursday at Bush's speech in Israel.

Note: Anyone interested in Barack’s eloquent refutation of Mr Bush’s remarks has several links to them.

Mr Bush chose our 60^th birthday to launch his tired propaganda. Since his political party may cease to exist shortly, he desires justification and institutionalization of preemptive war as a replacement for diplomacy.

Others have tried this approach – including the Emperor of Japan, Mussolini and Hitler – only to fail miserably.

Targeting these villains by attacking anyone who would argue with them is the coward’s way out. Mr Bush is afraid to confront his supposed adversaries man to man so to speak. He hides behind two oceans, the US Navy and 27,000 nuclear weapons.

The POTUS operates in the style of Senator Joe McCarthy. His fear mongering reduces the US populace to so much putty unable to resist his control or question his guidance.

The POTUS has been assured by his Jewish American henchmen his scare tactics will work in Israel.

They are wrong, because the dangers Israelis face are real and omnipresent. We have lost 27,000 citizens in nine wars and endless terrorist attacks. Armed guards search everyone before he enters a public institution. The people do not congregate in shopping malls etc. We do not make easy targets; we carry firearms. Almost everyone has served in the military.

American fears are of the most harmful kind. They are imaginary. They are the product of press agents, media hacks and armchair Pentagon warriors.

There is no such thing as a war on terror.

McCain Digs Deeper Grave

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, McCain told O'Reilly, "I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004."

But on the way to that unequivocal refutation, his unconscious mind jumped up, started waving its hands and yelled: "Not so fast!"

O'REILLY: Did you vote for President Bush?

MCCAIN: Of course not. I campaigned all over this country for him.

A Hamas official told an interviewer last month that the group approved of Obama's candidacy. Friday, McCain said the group's opinion is relevant -- despite Obama's characterization of that opinion as a "smear."

"It's very obvious to everyone that Senator Obama shares nothing of the values or goals of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization," McCain said. "But it's also fact that a spokesperson from Hamas said that he approves of Obama's candidacy. I think that's of interest to the American people."

The Cult of the Presidency

Opednews.com

In a superb new book, entitled The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, Gene Healy documents the multiple ways our political system has been corrupted by an out-of-control, unchecked Executive that could not be any more antithetical to the "presidency of limited powers and modest goals the Framers gave us in 1787." As Healy demonstrates, allowing the President to transmute into some central, omnipotent figure of authority -- as Bush/Cheney have done and as McCain seems to embrace -- "is the source of much of our political woe and some of the gravest threats to our liberties," and -- more significantly still -- this model (as the Founders recognized) virtually guarantees a state of ever-expanding militarism and endless war:

Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or a warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to action fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.

Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms . . . . Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.

As the amazing commenter Pow Wow repeatedly documents here (see here for one typically excellent example), Congress has "increasingly deferred, dangerously and slavishly, to the presidency, which today very much resembles a monarchy," a state of affairs which -- for the reasons Healy describes -- makes endless war and imperial behavior almost inevitable. As Pow Wow puts it: "The choice for Americans today . . . is between Empire and Republic. We cannot have both."

The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters. His ludicrous speech yesterday -- actually complaining that it is the judiciary that wields too much power and is excessively limiting presidential powers -- simply leaves no doubt about that.

-- Glenn Greenwald

McCain is Bush

The Clintons say that McCain has many moderate qualities that separate him from the Bush fiasco. Have Hillary and Bill taken leave of their senses?

“On the foreign policy issues that are most consequential, McCain is George Bush. They pay lip service to the same pretty concepts of internationalism and democracy in order to justify endless militarism, occupation and war. They believe the "transcendent" obligation of America is to use its military force and other resources to re-make the world in our image. The Middle East is our personal playground and controlling it will consume most of our attention and energy. We should work cooperatively with other countries whenever they are willing to support our foreign adventures.

With regard to the most complex and dangerous conflicts, they even sound almost exactly alike in their simple-minded belligerence. Here was Bush's "solution" to the Israel/Hezbollah war, spat out between food bites to Tony Blair:

What they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over.

And here was McCain's equally insightful solution to the civil war in Iraq:

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, "Stop the bullshit."

The American Emperor issues moronic dictates to the world's primitive peoples, and they obey -- just as has happened for the last eight years -- and thousands-year old religious and ethnic conflicts vanish and freedom and Western democracy sprout magically in their place. As Matt Welch, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, said in a February speech at the Cato Institute:

[McCain's] whole career, his life, his training, his family background has been to be a member of . . . the Imperial Class; [he's] motivated by an inspiring trust of America's governance of the world; [and] he would be the most imperial-oriented President, most militaristic President, since Teddy Roosevelt, at least.”

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Note: What have the Republicans got on the Clintons?

Violence Promotes Freedom - Big Brother?

Overseas, the administration hones its skills of repression. They enlist the media in disinformation. After the coup d'etat, they can assure the public that domestic spying, torture and imprisonment are prerequisite for safety.

Martial Law will maintain the new order through violence. "It's going to take awhile, but it's a necessary part of the development of a free society," Bush said.

My Friend Charlie a Terrorist?

My Friend Charlie

Charlie is a cosmopolitan. Fluent in six languages, he collects pensions on three continents.

He holds the Passports of Israel, Britain and Canada and must re-visit these countries yearly to refresh his claims. Since his home base is Goa in India, he totals an impressive amount of frequent flyer miles. The USA has held his attention especially after Ronald Reagan gave him a Green Card. The word entitlements commands respect in Charlie’s world.

The US has never reciprocated this respect always suspicious of his actions and motivations. The multi-lingual with a jet set mentality becomes an immediate target. What really griped them; Charlie was a small time grafter a welfare cheat who bought food stamps for resale. Here they had a penniless loafer with the life style of an oil baron.

Shortly after George Bush became President, the Immigration and Naturalization Service hauled my friend directly to jail as a suspected terrorist.