Too bad I can't say the same. Cuz "refreshing" this page over and over doesn't seem to make your posts any more logical.criddic3 wrote:Your logic is so refreshing... :p
George Bush is a Fuckwad Incompetent - Countdown to his final days...
-
OscarGuy
- Site Admin
- Posts: 13668
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 12:22 am
- Location: Springfield, MO
- Contact:
This guy is perfectly exemplary of this title. Let's torture!
White House to veto Senate ban on waterboarding by Kerry Sheridan
1 hour, 31 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush plans to veto legislation passed by the Senate to bar the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods including waterboarding, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The president will veto that bill," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
"The United States needs the ability to interrogate effectively, within the law, captured Al-Qaeda terrorists."
The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-45 on Wednesday in favor of a bill calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to adopt the US Army Field Manual, which forbids waterboarding and other types of coercive interrogation methods.
However, the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto. The House of Representatives passed similar legislation in December.
Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer said that if Bush "vetoes intelligence authorization, he will be voting in favor of waterboarding."
Asked by a reporter if Bush, who leaves office in 2009, would be labeled as the first US president who favored torture, Perino rejected the assertion and dismissed Schumer's argument as "simplistic."
"Across the board people will see, over time, that this was a president who put in place tools to protect the country against terrorists," Perino said.
"The president does not favor torture. The president favors making sure we do all these programs within the law," she said, adding that "all the interrogations that have taken place in this country have been done in a legal way." (OG: No, we don't use it in this country, but who's to say we don't use it in other countries?)
Perino said the United States does not currently use waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique denounced by rights groups as torture, even though the CIA has admitted using the technique in the past.
She reiterated the administration's assertion last week that it would not rule out the use of such techniques in the future.
"Currently under the law it is not (allowed)," she said. "As we said last week as well, we are not going to talk about what may or may not be lawful in the future."
The Senate bill would limit the CIA and other intelligence agencies to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the military's manual. Waterboarding is not among them.
Perino said the intelligence community's view is that the Army Field Manual sets an inappropriate standard for seasoned CIA interrogators who are working to extract information from sophisticated militant operatives.
"Today with this bill that they are sending to us they would basically repeal the terrorist interrogation program in favor of something that will definitely weaken our ability to protect the country," Perino said.
"This Army Field Manual is something that is public for all to see, and we know that Al-Qaeda trains to resist interrogation techniques such as those."
Rival Democratic White House hopefuls Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were on the road campaigning and did not take part in the vote Wednesday.
The likely Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, voted against the bill. The former prisoner of war however said that his vote was consistent with his anti-torture stance.
"We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures," he said. "I believe waterboarding is illegal and should be banned," McCain said.
White House to veto Senate ban on waterboarding by Kerry Sheridan
1 hour, 31 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush plans to veto legislation passed by the Senate to bar the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods including waterboarding, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The president will veto that bill," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
"The United States needs the ability to interrogate effectively, within the law, captured Al-Qaeda terrorists."
The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-45 on Wednesday in favor of a bill calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to adopt the US Army Field Manual, which forbids waterboarding and other types of coercive interrogation methods.
However, the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto. The House of Representatives passed similar legislation in December.
Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer said that if Bush "vetoes intelligence authorization, he will be voting in favor of waterboarding."
Asked by a reporter if Bush, who leaves office in 2009, would be labeled as the first US president who favored torture, Perino rejected the assertion and dismissed Schumer's argument as "simplistic."
"Across the board people will see, over time, that this was a president who put in place tools to protect the country against terrorists," Perino said.
"The president does not favor torture. The president favors making sure we do all these programs within the law," she said, adding that "all the interrogations that have taken place in this country have been done in a legal way." (OG: No, we don't use it in this country, but who's to say we don't use it in other countries?)
Perino said the United States does not currently use waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique denounced by rights groups as torture, even though the CIA has admitted using the technique in the past.
She reiterated the administration's assertion last week that it would not rule out the use of such techniques in the future.
"Currently under the law it is not (allowed)," she said. "As we said last week as well, we are not going to talk about what may or may not be lawful in the future."
The Senate bill would limit the CIA and other intelligence agencies to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the military's manual. Waterboarding is not among them.
Perino said the intelligence community's view is that the Army Field Manual sets an inappropriate standard for seasoned CIA interrogators who are working to extract information from sophisticated militant operatives.
"Today with this bill that they are sending to us they would basically repeal the terrorist interrogation program in favor of something that will definitely weaken our ability to protect the country," Perino said.
"This Army Field Manual is something that is public for all to see, and we know that Al-Qaeda trains to resist interrogation techniques such as those."
Rival Democratic White House hopefuls Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were on the road campaigning and did not take part in the vote Wednesday.
The likely Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, voted against the bill. The former prisoner of war however said that his vote was consistent with his anti-torture stance.
"We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures," he said. "I believe waterboarding is illegal and should be banned," McCain said.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Akash wrote:Franz Ferdinand wrote:Not to mention being re-elected with a 3-million-vote margin in the face of deafening liberal calls to run him out of office.
He wasn't re-elected since he was "elected" the first time.
And even the second time was suspect.
Your logic is so refreshing... :p
You do know that if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton need Super-delegates to win their nomination, it will be a similar situation that many Democrats will have to defend.
Beyond that, the system is designed to allow for such things to take place, because it is built around the Electoral College, not Direct Vote. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the historical(ly inaccurate) account, Akash.
If the first count was frustrating for Democrats, which is plausible, the second time was indisputable. Three million votes is a huge gap in these contentious political times. Let's see how close it is in November. Then tell me how "suspect" the election was.
Edited By criddic3 on 1202848529
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
-
Franz Ferdinand
- Adjunct
- Posts: 1457
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:22 pm
- Location: Calgary, Alberta
- Contact:
Not to mention being re-elected with a 3-million-vote margin in the face of deafening liberal calls to run him out of office.Johnny Guitar wrote:I, too, have a problem with the title of this thread. Bush is an ignorant, uneducated man--but he is not 'incompetent,' in that he has accomplished everything he & his posse ever set out to do. Blood, chaos --> profit. As a helpful byproduct his regime has cultivated people like criddic. "Mission accomplished," truly.
-
Johnny Guitar
- Assistant
- Posts: 509
- Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:14 pm
- Location: Chicago
I, too, have a problem with the title of this thread. Bush is an ignorant, uneducated man--but he is not 'incompetent,' in that he has accomplished everything he & his posse ever set out to do. Blood, chaos --> profit. As a helpful byproduct his regime has cultivated people like criddic. "Mission accomplished," truly.
Edited By Johnny Guitar on 1202744311
Edited By Johnny Guitar on 1202744311
THE INDEPENDENT/UK
Out of America
Whoever wins the presidency will most likely fail to take on the unholy trinity of arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, and Congress
by Rupert Cornwell
“Lockheed Martin,” intones the fruity male voice, drenched in patriotism. “We begin with the things that matter… [pregnant pause]… Freedom.” Such are the joys of listening to radio commercials as you drive to work in Washington DC. Lockheed, of course, is a giant defence contractor. Hearing this ad, and similar inspirational stuff from Boeing and the like, you might think you were on the front lines of a war that reached into your living room.That, of course, is precisely what George W Bush would like you to think of his “war on terror”, even though the closest the average citizen here ever gets to it is a security line at an airport. But those commercials are part of another struggle, less violent but no less relentless. It is being fought out by companies like Lockheed over the lucrative and effectively captive US government arms market.
Obscured by the great Obama-Hillary battle and the drama of Super Tuesday, the final budget of the Bush era was published last week. It covers the 2009 financial year, and contains one startling fact. If this President has his way, the US will next year be spending more on its military (adjusted for inflation) than at any time since the Second World War.
The raw figures are mind-boggling. The official Pentagon budget for 2009 runs to $515bn (£265bn), or around 4 per cent of America’s total economy (the equivalent figure for Britain is 2.5 per cent), and about the same size as the entire output of the Netherlands. Throw in an expected $150bn of supplementary outlays and you’ve got defence spending larger than Australia’s entire gross domestic product.
Even that may be an understatement. Add in various “black items”, such as military spending tucked away in other parts of government, and some claim that America’s total annual spending on the military now exceeds a trillion dollars - roughly half the entire British economy.
Students of these matters claim that the wind-down of the surge in Iraq, and the likelihood that the Democrats will recapture the White House in December, mean that the latest growth cycle in Pentagon spending, that began at the end of the Clinton era, has probably peaked. But don’t bet on it.
A faltering economy may be the biggest worry for voters this election year, but national security runs it close. On Thursday, Mitt Romney justified his decision to drop out of the Republican race for the White House by his party’s need to set aside divisive internal squabbling “at this time of war”. As for John McCain, the man now set to carry the Republican standard in November, maintaining the strength of the US military is his top priority. The economy, he freely admits, is not his strong suit. National security, however, is. If McCain wins, it will be because Americans deem him the candidate to keep them safe.
Appearing “soft” on national security can be fatal, as Democrats know only too well after their stinging defeats in the 2002 mid-terms and the presidential election of 2004. Hillary Clinton has been trying to establish herself as a hawk ever since, while Barack Obama knows full well he also has to convince in the role of commander-in-chief. In short, even a liberal Democratic President will hesitate before taking an axe to the Pentagon budget. But he should.
The US simply does not get value for its defence dollars. The Pentagon is still fighting the Cold War, not the terrorists who rely on infiltration and ambush rather than submarines and strategic bombers. Yet for all the money Bush has lavished on the military since 9/11, Iraq has stretched America’s armed forces to breaking point.
The US defence budget may reach a 60-year high next year, but the number of combat troops is smaller than ever. Politicians - Democrats as well as Republicans - all now agree the armed forces need more boots on the ground. That, however, means more, not less, Pentagon spending - unless, of course, some of those blue-chip weapons programmes are cut back.
But again, don’t bet on it. Vast spending on defence is locked into the contemporary American system as firmly as it was into the former Soviet one. Paradoxically, it took a general-turned-president to warn against such excesses. Indeed, Dwight Eisenhower had hardly taken office in 1953 when he spoke of the danger of amassing military strength at the expense of all else, a policy that amounted “to defending ourselves against one disaster by inviting another”.
Eisenhower famously referred to a “military-industrial complex”. A better term, however, is perhaps an “Iron Triangle” whose three corners are the Pentagon, arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and - most important - Congress. All three are locked together by a common vested interest. The Pentagon chiefs want the best weaponry possible. The companies want to keep the orders flowing ever more munificently. But the ultimate enablers are the elected representatives of the people.
Lockheed operates in 45 of the 50 states, where its factories provide jobs, and the congressmen and senators from those states will do anything to keep them. Far from voting less money for the Pentagon, they often provide more than the President of the day is seeking, to finance extra projects - needed or not - if that will keep the money flowing into their district. And, fearful of appearing soft on defence, few will oppose them. Thus the spending merry-go-round continues. In the America of 2009, that is the real war economy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion....04.html
Out of America
Whoever wins the presidency will most likely fail to take on the unholy trinity of arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, and Congress
by Rupert Cornwell
“Lockheed Martin,” intones the fruity male voice, drenched in patriotism. “We begin with the things that matter… [pregnant pause]… Freedom.” Such are the joys of listening to radio commercials as you drive to work in Washington DC. Lockheed, of course, is a giant defence contractor. Hearing this ad, and similar inspirational stuff from Boeing and the like, you might think you were on the front lines of a war that reached into your living room.That, of course, is precisely what George W Bush would like you to think of his “war on terror”, even though the closest the average citizen here ever gets to it is a security line at an airport. But those commercials are part of another struggle, less violent but no less relentless. It is being fought out by companies like Lockheed over the lucrative and effectively captive US government arms market.
Obscured by the great Obama-Hillary battle and the drama of Super Tuesday, the final budget of the Bush era was published last week. It covers the 2009 financial year, and contains one startling fact. If this President has his way, the US will next year be spending more on its military (adjusted for inflation) than at any time since the Second World War.
The raw figures are mind-boggling. The official Pentagon budget for 2009 runs to $515bn (£265bn), or around 4 per cent of America’s total economy (the equivalent figure for Britain is 2.5 per cent), and about the same size as the entire output of the Netherlands. Throw in an expected $150bn of supplementary outlays and you’ve got defence spending larger than Australia’s entire gross domestic product.
Even that may be an understatement. Add in various “black items”, such as military spending tucked away in other parts of government, and some claim that America’s total annual spending on the military now exceeds a trillion dollars - roughly half the entire British economy.
Students of these matters claim that the wind-down of the surge in Iraq, and the likelihood that the Democrats will recapture the White House in December, mean that the latest growth cycle in Pentagon spending, that began at the end of the Clinton era, has probably peaked. But don’t bet on it.
A faltering economy may be the biggest worry for voters this election year, but national security runs it close. On Thursday, Mitt Romney justified his decision to drop out of the Republican race for the White House by his party’s need to set aside divisive internal squabbling “at this time of war”. As for John McCain, the man now set to carry the Republican standard in November, maintaining the strength of the US military is his top priority. The economy, he freely admits, is not his strong suit. National security, however, is. If McCain wins, it will be because Americans deem him the candidate to keep them safe.
Appearing “soft” on national security can be fatal, as Democrats know only too well after their stinging defeats in the 2002 mid-terms and the presidential election of 2004. Hillary Clinton has been trying to establish herself as a hawk ever since, while Barack Obama knows full well he also has to convince in the role of commander-in-chief. In short, even a liberal Democratic President will hesitate before taking an axe to the Pentagon budget. But he should.
The US simply does not get value for its defence dollars. The Pentagon is still fighting the Cold War, not the terrorists who rely on infiltration and ambush rather than submarines and strategic bombers. Yet for all the money Bush has lavished on the military since 9/11, Iraq has stretched America’s armed forces to breaking point.
The US defence budget may reach a 60-year high next year, but the number of combat troops is smaller than ever. Politicians - Democrats as well as Republicans - all now agree the armed forces need more boots on the ground. That, however, means more, not less, Pentagon spending - unless, of course, some of those blue-chip weapons programmes are cut back.
But again, don’t bet on it. Vast spending on defence is locked into the contemporary American system as firmly as it was into the former Soviet one. Paradoxically, it took a general-turned-president to warn against such excesses. Indeed, Dwight Eisenhower had hardly taken office in 1953 when he spoke of the danger of amassing military strength at the expense of all else, a policy that amounted “to defending ourselves against one disaster by inviting another”.
Eisenhower famously referred to a “military-industrial complex”. A better term, however, is perhaps an “Iron Triangle” whose three corners are the Pentagon, arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and - most important - Congress. All three are locked together by a common vested interest. The Pentagon chiefs want the best weaponry possible. The companies want to keep the orders flowing ever more munificently. But the ultimate enablers are the elected representatives of the people.
Lockheed operates in 45 of the 50 states, where its factories provide jobs, and the congressmen and senators from those states will do anything to keep them. Far from voting less money for the Pentagon, they often provide more than the President of the day is seeking, to finance extra projects - needed or not - if that will keep the money flowing into their district. And, fearful of appearing soft on defence, few will oppose them. Thus the spending merry-go-round continues. In the America of 2009, that is the real war economy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion....04.html
Now that I think about it, criddic, you might have a point on the title. I probably would've inverted the order so it would read 'Bush is An Incompetent Fuckwad' instead of the other way around.
Edited By flipp525 on 1202410483
Edited By flipp525 on 1202410483
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
More about the fuckwad incompetent whose eyes are so close together he could use a monocle.
The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
February 7th, 2008
Bush Budget Designed for Maximum Damage
by Margaret Krome
America is at a critical juncture in its political history — but it’s a blind intersection that presidential campaign buses and media caravans ignore. More than the war in Iraq, the mortgage crisis, terrorism, or any other major policy challenge, the single issue that will define the Bush legacy for decades to come is the Republicans’ budget strategy.
President Bush sent his Fiscal Year 2009 budget to Congress on Monday. In it he furthered every bad idea he’s pushed since he came into office, ignoring evidence of the destruction his previous budgets have caused. One would think the damage was intentional … unless one was blind. Of course it’s intentional.
The massive deficits accumulated since 2001 are part of a deliberate Republican strategy to force changes in national priorities, a strategy written in large print in this deplorable budget.
The Bush budget would vastly enlarge his already-unconscionable deficit by $547 billion over the next five years. Contrary to what Bush would like us to believe, this is not due to excessive domestic spending and the congressional earmarks he loves to demonize. That’s just smoke in our eyes. Neither earmarks nor domestic spending is the issue. The deficit hole will be massively enlarged with exactly the same tools he used to dig the current deficit — tax cuts and gargantuan, unaccountable military spending.
Bush’s tax cuts would cost the nation — especially middle-income earners — $900 billion over five years, and another $1.5 trillion in the following five years, for a total of $2.4 trillion in the next 10 years. Who benefits? The very rich. Households with incomes exceeding $450,000 a year would average more than $60,000 apiece in tax cuts. Households with incomes over $1 million would receive more than $150,000 a year in tax cuts!
Who else benefits from Bush’s 2009 budget? Military contractors, of course. Bush’s $515.4 billion for defense doesn’t even include the additional billions per year he will need for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush likes to blame budget deficits on domestic programs to justify cutting domestic programs by $23 billion in next year’s budget and an unbelievable $474 billion over five years. This means cuts in Head Start, Medicare, education, environmental quality and every other part of domestic spending. These cuts are deep and would ripple throughout the nation, as grants and other funding on which state and local governments depend are cut.
Let’s be clear that the nation’s deficit is caused by tax cuts, not by domestic spending, which has been squeezed to skeleton figures under Bush. His budget advisers have clearly told him that if he repeats even the craziest assertion over and over, he can manipulate the press and persuade the American public that a pig is a horse, his disastrous domestic spending cuts are justified, and his budget is responsible.
Following this principle, Bush says his budget proposal would create a balanced budget by 2012. This is true only if one accepts his pretense that no funding will be needed for Iraq and Afghanistan wars by 2010! It also assumes what is politically impossible — that the alternative minimum tax will not again be corrected with relief measures.
But Bush’s spinmeisters may be right. Despite the years of damage ahead that Bush’s budget means for the nation, the story on Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget was hidden on page A20 of the New York Times Tuesday morning, the day after his budget was announced. The radio story I heard on it focused not on the trade-offs imposed by this irresponsible budget but on his favorite phony budgetary straw man: congressional earmarks.
The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are in Democratic hands and the presidential approval ratings as low as they can get. How appalling and ironic it will be if the nation ignores the real travesty of President Bush’s 2009 budget, accepts blindly his fantasy budget story, and enshrines for years tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest and destruction of programs needed by the rest of us!
Are we awake?
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/271297
FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS
Bush Budget Adds to Military, Cuts Prevention
Miriam Pemberton and Anita Dancs | February 6, 2008
Voters–Republicans and Democrats alike–are telling pollsters they want, not a modest course correction, not a turned page, but a whole new book. The security budget President Bush proposed today is anything but.
Every year since 2004, according to analysis by the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States, published by the Institute for Policy Studies, nearly 90% of security spending, excluding the supplemental appropriations for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has been devoted to achieving security by military force. Spending on prevention tools, including diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, contributions to international organizations and homeland security put together accounts for only 10% of the security budget. This year is no exception.
This year military spending even excluding expenditures on the wars we are actually fighting will be higher than at any time since World War II. It will exceed the military spending of all other nations combined. If President George W. Bush gets the budget he has requested, we will spend in the 2009 fiscal year 18 times the money engaging the rest of the world through the military as by any other means.
This analysis reworks the budget categories for defense, non-military international affairs, and homeland security to better differentiate military from non-military security spending. It shows that the budget request increases spending to engage the world through the military, while shrinking spending on non-military international engagement.
These security priorities are heading us in exactly in the wrong direction.
Most of the cuts in non-military international affairs are coming from programs to stop the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons materials.
Our Secretary of Defense himself is saying this has to change. In a speech on November 26, Secretary Robert Gates pointed out that “Funding for non-military foreign affairs programs … remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military…. Consider that this year’s budget for the Department of Defense–not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan–is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion…. [T]here is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security…”
Gates’ call for a dramatic increase in non-military security tools is laudable. Unfortunately, the budget does nothing of the kind. And the disproportion he mentions will not change unless he’s willing to cut wasteful spending in the Pentagon’s budget. He hasn’t made these cuts.
The budget does add money to fund more than 1,000 new diplomatic positions, which are much needed. But if Congress is listening to the voters’ call for change, it will need to do better than that. It will need to shift to bring military and non-military security tools into better proportion.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/06/6873/
Edited By Akash on 1202407976
The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
February 7th, 2008
Bush Budget Designed for Maximum Damage
by Margaret Krome
America is at a critical juncture in its political history — but it’s a blind intersection that presidential campaign buses and media caravans ignore. More than the war in Iraq, the mortgage crisis, terrorism, or any other major policy challenge, the single issue that will define the Bush legacy for decades to come is the Republicans’ budget strategy.
President Bush sent his Fiscal Year 2009 budget to Congress on Monday. In it he furthered every bad idea he’s pushed since he came into office, ignoring evidence of the destruction his previous budgets have caused. One would think the damage was intentional … unless one was blind. Of course it’s intentional.
The massive deficits accumulated since 2001 are part of a deliberate Republican strategy to force changes in national priorities, a strategy written in large print in this deplorable budget.
The Bush budget would vastly enlarge his already-unconscionable deficit by $547 billion over the next five years. Contrary to what Bush would like us to believe, this is not due to excessive domestic spending and the congressional earmarks he loves to demonize. That’s just smoke in our eyes. Neither earmarks nor domestic spending is the issue. The deficit hole will be massively enlarged with exactly the same tools he used to dig the current deficit — tax cuts and gargantuan, unaccountable military spending.
Bush’s tax cuts would cost the nation — especially middle-income earners — $900 billion over five years, and another $1.5 trillion in the following five years, for a total of $2.4 trillion in the next 10 years. Who benefits? The very rich. Households with incomes exceeding $450,000 a year would average more than $60,000 apiece in tax cuts. Households with incomes over $1 million would receive more than $150,000 a year in tax cuts!
Who else benefits from Bush’s 2009 budget? Military contractors, of course. Bush’s $515.4 billion for defense doesn’t even include the additional billions per year he will need for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush likes to blame budget deficits on domestic programs to justify cutting domestic programs by $23 billion in next year’s budget and an unbelievable $474 billion over five years. This means cuts in Head Start, Medicare, education, environmental quality and every other part of domestic spending. These cuts are deep and would ripple throughout the nation, as grants and other funding on which state and local governments depend are cut.
Let’s be clear that the nation’s deficit is caused by tax cuts, not by domestic spending, which has been squeezed to skeleton figures under Bush. His budget advisers have clearly told him that if he repeats even the craziest assertion over and over, he can manipulate the press and persuade the American public that a pig is a horse, his disastrous domestic spending cuts are justified, and his budget is responsible.
Following this principle, Bush says his budget proposal would create a balanced budget by 2012. This is true only if one accepts his pretense that no funding will be needed for Iraq and Afghanistan wars by 2010! It also assumes what is politically impossible — that the alternative minimum tax will not again be corrected with relief measures.
But Bush’s spinmeisters may be right. Despite the years of damage ahead that Bush’s budget means for the nation, the story on Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget was hidden on page A20 of the New York Times Tuesday morning, the day after his budget was announced. The radio story I heard on it focused not on the trade-offs imposed by this irresponsible budget but on his favorite phony budgetary straw man: congressional earmarks.
The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are in Democratic hands and the presidential approval ratings as low as they can get. How appalling and ironic it will be if the nation ignores the real travesty of President Bush’s 2009 budget, accepts blindly his fantasy budget story, and enshrines for years tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest and destruction of programs needed by the rest of us!
Are we awake?
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/271297
FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS
Bush Budget Adds to Military, Cuts Prevention
Miriam Pemberton and Anita Dancs | February 6, 2008
Voters–Republicans and Democrats alike–are telling pollsters they want, not a modest course correction, not a turned page, but a whole new book. The security budget President Bush proposed today is anything but.
Every year since 2004, according to analysis by the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States, published by the Institute for Policy Studies, nearly 90% of security spending, excluding the supplemental appropriations for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has been devoted to achieving security by military force. Spending on prevention tools, including diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, contributions to international organizations and homeland security put together accounts for only 10% of the security budget. This year is no exception.
This year military spending even excluding expenditures on the wars we are actually fighting will be higher than at any time since World War II. It will exceed the military spending of all other nations combined. If President George W. Bush gets the budget he has requested, we will spend in the 2009 fiscal year 18 times the money engaging the rest of the world through the military as by any other means.
This analysis reworks the budget categories for defense, non-military international affairs, and homeland security to better differentiate military from non-military security spending. It shows that the budget request increases spending to engage the world through the military, while shrinking spending on non-military international engagement.
These security priorities are heading us in exactly in the wrong direction.
Most of the cuts in non-military international affairs are coming from programs to stop the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons materials.
Our Secretary of Defense himself is saying this has to change. In a speech on November 26, Secretary Robert Gates pointed out that “Funding for non-military foreign affairs programs … remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military…. Consider that this year’s budget for the Department of Defense–not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan–is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion…. [T]here is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security…”
Gates’ call for a dramatic increase in non-military security tools is laudable. Unfortunately, the budget does nothing of the kind. And the disproportion he mentions will not change unless he’s willing to cut wasteful spending in the Pentagon’s budget. He hasn’t made these cuts.
The budget does add money to fund more than 1,000 new diplomatic positions, which are much needed. But if Congress is listening to the voters’ call for change, it will need to do better than that. It will need to shift to bring military and non-military security tools into better proportion.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/06/6873/
Edited By Akash on 1202407976
I would like to offer my objection to the title of this thread. You may not like the President, but it is unnecessary to be so vile about it.
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
Stuff about the State of the Union address.
THE NATION
BLOG | Posted 01/28/2008 @ 10:40pm
The Sorry State of a Lame-Duck's Legacy
The Constitution requires that presidents "from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
Tradition has made the annual State of the Union address the primary public venue for such reporting.
As such, the State of the Union address is officially a big deal. And it is always accorded an appropriate measure of attention by the television networks, members of Congress (unless, like John McCain, they are bidding to replace the president) and the American people. But some State of the Union addresses are more equal than others. When George Bush addressed Congress in 2005, he did so as the most powerful man on the planet: the reelected commander of a warrior nation that was controlled down to the very roots of its executive, legislative and judicial branches by the president's partisan allies. Even if it was obvious to any serious observer that severe second-term rot had already begun to set in, Bush boldly renewed America's acquaintance with all the bad ideas – neo-conservative military adventuring and free trade abroad, deficit spending and related flights of fiscal fantasy at home – of his tenure.
Nothing was going to change, the president told America. Nothing would get better.
And nothing did. The occupation of Iraq grew deadlier and more expensive, the occupation of Afghanistan grew more unstable, trade deficits grew, structural deficits bloated, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and America's economy slowly swirled down the drain.
Then came the election of 2006, with its defeat of Bush's Republican Party and the restoration of Democratic control of the Congress. Even if the Democrats did not provide Bush with the full-bodied opposition that the voted had hoped for, their presence broke the illusion of Bush's omnipotence.
So it was that the president delivered his final State of the Union address last night as a broken man whose partisan allies would not even wear the "I'm a Bush Republican" pins that had been delivered to their offices by a puckish critic of the president and his party.
Even in the face of the humiliation that is a 31 percent approval rating, the president could not muster the humility that might have engendered sympathy.
Instead, he steadfastly stuck by a failed agenda. Yes, there were minor bows to reality, highlighted by his recent recognition that some redistribution of the wealth will be required to slow the arrival of a scorching recession until after this year's elections.
But even as he promoted the economic stimulus package that his aides and congressional leaders had cobbled together, Bush refused to make the most basic connections with regard to the crisis he has created.
Noting that Bush aides were promising on Monday that the president would offer "no new ideas" in his speech, Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Democratic freshman, observed, "That's unfortunate. Mr. President: Our country is in grave economic trouble. We have a housing finance meltdown going on while energy costs spiral up and down. Affordable and accessible healthcare is out of reach to almost 50 million Americans with 6 million alone added during this President's tenure. Our educational system has left far too many children behind, while our bridges are literally falling down in America. Mr. President: our country needs an economic stimulus package that will result in something more than pocket change for most working families. Mr. President: The best American economic stimulus package you could offer the American public is to end this war in Iraq."
Unfortunately, of not surprisingly, Bush declined to take Ellison's advice.
As predicted, the president's last State of the Union speech echoed the empty rhetoric of the speeches that came before it. There was an extended call on Congress to make permanent the tax cuts for the rich that have so skewed the nation's economic balance since Bush secured them. There were attacks on spending by a president who has presided over the dramatic bloating of deficits that are the spawn of unsustainable spending. There were more defenses of free-trade pacts that have harmed workers, the environment and communities in the United States and abroad. And there were more fantastical claims about the successes of the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president would have made news last night if he had said, "I'm sorry. I broke it."
But George Bush never was very good at taking responsibility for his mistakes. So he offered America another order of "the usual."
Unfortunately for him, American has lost its taste for what this president is peddling – and for the man himself.
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, summed the evening up best when she said, "Tonight's speech is the 'swan song' of a presidency that is ending and will not be missed. President Bush may choose to believe that the state of our union is strong; but under his direction, our economy is flailing, our infrastructure is crumbling, the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans is rising, America's moral and strategic leadership in the world is plummeting, our Constitution is being trampled, and our servicemen and women and their families are sacrificing enormously in an unnecessary war."
With the delivery of this final State of the Union address, Bush fulfilled one of his constitutional duties.
Would that Congress might do the same and begin impeachment hearings.
In the absence of that appropriate response to a failed presidency, we are left with the sad circumstance of State of the Union address delivered by an executive whose tenure is over in every sense save the one that matters most.
As such, the circumstance, while sad for Bush, is sadder still for America.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=276707
NEW YORK TIMES
January 29, 2008
Editorial
The State of the Union
Six years ago, President Bush began his State of the Union address with two powerful sentences: “As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.”
Monday night, after six years of promises unkept or insincerely made and blunders of historic proportions, the United States is now fighting two wars, the economy is veering toward recession and the civilized world still faces horrifying dangers — and it has far less sympathy and respect for the United States.
The nation is splintered over the war in Iraq, cleaved by ruthless partisan politics, bubbling with economic fear and mired in debate over virtually all of the issues Mr. Bush faced in 2002. And the best Mr. Bush could offer was a call to individual empowerment — a noble idea, but in Mr. Bush’s hands just another excuse to abdicate government responsibility.
Monday night’s address made us think what a different speech it might have been if Mr. Bush had capitalized on the unity that followed the 9/11 attacks to draw the nation together, rather than to arrogate ever more power and launch his misadventure in Iraq. How different it might have been if Mr. Bush meant what he said about compassionate conservatism or even followed the fiscal discipline of old-fashioned conservatism. How different if he had made a real effort to reach for the bipartisanship he promised in 2002 and so many times since.
Then he could have used last night’s speech to celebrate a balanced budget, one in which taxes produce enough money to pay for the nation’s genuine needs, including health care for poor children and a rebuilt New Orleans. Instead, Mr. Bush called — again — for his tax cuts to be permanent and threatened to veto bills that contained excessive pork-barrel spending, an idea absent from his agenda when Republicans held Congress.
Had Mr. Bush been doing his job right just in the last few weeks, he could have used this speech to celebrate a genuinely bipartisan agreement on a sound economic stimulus plan. In addition to the tax rebates agreed on already between the White House and the House, Mr. Bush could have announced sensible proposals for extending unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps for the most vulnerable citizens.
Those aren’t just Democratic ideas. The independent Congressional Budget Office ranks those stimulus policies as far more effective than rebates.
If Mr. Bush had let compassion and good sense trump ideology, he would have been able to use last night’s speech to celebrate the expansion of health insurance to tens of millions of children with working parents. Mr. Bush vetoed an expansion of the S-chip program, and he did not even agree to pay for all of the existing coverage because he thought a relative handful of parents might switch from private to public insurance if they were offered government assistance to buy it.
In 2003, the president proposed the Medicare prescription drug benefit, his signature achievement in health insurance reform. It barely squeaked past conservative Republicans in Congress, and Mr. Bush’s appetite for making health care accessible and affordable for all Americans vanished.
Mr. Bush has included a call for immigration reform in all of his previous State of the Union addresses. But he has never matched that rhetoric with strong ideas or political passion. A push last year for comprehensive reform was defeated by his party’s right wing, which continues to spread hatred on the campaign trail. His insight last night: “Illegal immigration is complicated.”
In 2002, Mr. Bush spoke about the international coalition that invaded Afghanistan, about the consensus among civilized nations of the need to combat terrorism, about the way the 9/11 attacks had rallied nations behind America’s leadership. Afghanistan’s good war was quickly overshadowed — and shortchanged — by Mr. Bush’s Iraq folly. Six years later, the United States and its allies are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan and the Taliban is back in force.
He was not even able to assure Americans that there is an end in sight to the Iraq war. Instead, he made the same empty promise he has made every year: When Iraq can defend itself, American troops will come home. Iraq’s defense minister told The Times recently that his forces would not be able to fully keep the peace and defend their country until 2018.
Mr. Bush’s troop escalation has succeeded in stabilizing parts of Baghdad and lowering casualties. But 2007 was still the most violent year in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and — more important — Mr. Bush has little to show in the way of political reconciliation, the only guarantor of a lasting peace. Mr. Bush has made no real effort to seek the help of Iraq’s neighbors to help stabilize the country.
In the end, when it comes to Iraq, Mr. Bush’s annual addresses will be remembered most for his false claims — the fictitious “axis of evil,” nonexistent aluminum tubes and African uranium, dangerous weapons that did not exist. No president can want that as his legacy.
Mr. Bush still has a year left — and many serious problems to address. It is time, finally, for him to put aside the partisanship, the bluster and the empty rhetoric. The state of the union is troubled. The nation yearns for leadership.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1201606710
THE NATION
BLOG | Posted 01/28/2008 @ 10:40pm
The Sorry State of a Lame-Duck's Legacy
The Constitution requires that presidents "from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
Tradition has made the annual State of the Union address the primary public venue for such reporting.
As such, the State of the Union address is officially a big deal. And it is always accorded an appropriate measure of attention by the television networks, members of Congress (unless, like John McCain, they are bidding to replace the president) and the American people. But some State of the Union addresses are more equal than others. When George Bush addressed Congress in 2005, he did so as the most powerful man on the planet: the reelected commander of a warrior nation that was controlled down to the very roots of its executive, legislative and judicial branches by the president's partisan allies. Even if it was obvious to any serious observer that severe second-term rot had already begun to set in, Bush boldly renewed America's acquaintance with all the bad ideas – neo-conservative military adventuring and free trade abroad, deficit spending and related flights of fiscal fantasy at home – of his tenure.
Nothing was going to change, the president told America. Nothing would get better.
And nothing did. The occupation of Iraq grew deadlier and more expensive, the occupation of Afghanistan grew more unstable, trade deficits grew, structural deficits bloated, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and America's economy slowly swirled down the drain.
Then came the election of 2006, with its defeat of Bush's Republican Party and the restoration of Democratic control of the Congress. Even if the Democrats did not provide Bush with the full-bodied opposition that the voted had hoped for, their presence broke the illusion of Bush's omnipotence.
So it was that the president delivered his final State of the Union address last night as a broken man whose partisan allies would not even wear the "I'm a Bush Republican" pins that had been delivered to their offices by a puckish critic of the president and his party.
Even in the face of the humiliation that is a 31 percent approval rating, the president could not muster the humility that might have engendered sympathy.
Instead, he steadfastly stuck by a failed agenda. Yes, there were minor bows to reality, highlighted by his recent recognition that some redistribution of the wealth will be required to slow the arrival of a scorching recession until after this year's elections.
But even as he promoted the economic stimulus package that his aides and congressional leaders had cobbled together, Bush refused to make the most basic connections with regard to the crisis he has created.
Noting that Bush aides were promising on Monday that the president would offer "no new ideas" in his speech, Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Democratic freshman, observed, "That's unfortunate. Mr. President: Our country is in grave economic trouble. We have a housing finance meltdown going on while energy costs spiral up and down. Affordable and accessible healthcare is out of reach to almost 50 million Americans with 6 million alone added during this President's tenure. Our educational system has left far too many children behind, while our bridges are literally falling down in America. Mr. President: our country needs an economic stimulus package that will result in something more than pocket change for most working families. Mr. President: The best American economic stimulus package you could offer the American public is to end this war in Iraq."
Unfortunately, of not surprisingly, Bush declined to take Ellison's advice.
As predicted, the president's last State of the Union speech echoed the empty rhetoric of the speeches that came before it. There was an extended call on Congress to make permanent the tax cuts for the rich that have so skewed the nation's economic balance since Bush secured them. There were attacks on spending by a president who has presided over the dramatic bloating of deficits that are the spawn of unsustainable spending. There were more defenses of free-trade pacts that have harmed workers, the environment and communities in the United States and abroad. And there were more fantastical claims about the successes of the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president would have made news last night if he had said, "I'm sorry. I broke it."
But George Bush never was very good at taking responsibility for his mistakes. So he offered America another order of "the usual."
Unfortunately for him, American has lost its taste for what this president is peddling – and for the man himself.
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, summed the evening up best when she said, "Tonight's speech is the 'swan song' of a presidency that is ending and will not be missed. President Bush may choose to believe that the state of our union is strong; but under his direction, our economy is flailing, our infrastructure is crumbling, the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans is rising, America's moral and strategic leadership in the world is plummeting, our Constitution is being trampled, and our servicemen and women and their families are sacrificing enormously in an unnecessary war."
With the delivery of this final State of the Union address, Bush fulfilled one of his constitutional duties.
Would that Congress might do the same and begin impeachment hearings.
In the absence of that appropriate response to a failed presidency, we are left with the sad circumstance of State of the Union address delivered by an executive whose tenure is over in every sense save the one that matters most.
As such, the circumstance, while sad for Bush, is sadder still for America.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=276707
NEW YORK TIMES
January 29, 2008
Editorial
The State of the Union
Six years ago, President Bush began his State of the Union address with two powerful sentences: “As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.”
Monday night, after six years of promises unkept or insincerely made and blunders of historic proportions, the United States is now fighting two wars, the economy is veering toward recession and the civilized world still faces horrifying dangers — and it has far less sympathy and respect for the United States.
The nation is splintered over the war in Iraq, cleaved by ruthless partisan politics, bubbling with economic fear and mired in debate over virtually all of the issues Mr. Bush faced in 2002. And the best Mr. Bush could offer was a call to individual empowerment — a noble idea, but in Mr. Bush’s hands just another excuse to abdicate government responsibility.
Monday night’s address made us think what a different speech it might have been if Mr. Bush had capitalized on the unity that followed the 9/11 attacks to draw the nation together, rather than to arrogate ever more power and launch his misadventure in Iraq. How different it might have been if Mr. Bush meant what he said about compassionate conservatism or even followed the fiscal discipline of old-fashioned conservatism. How different if he had made a real effort to reach for the bipartisanship he promised in 2002 and so many times since.
Then he could have used last night’s speech to celebrate a balanced budget, one in which taxes produce enough money to pay for the nation’s genuine needs, including health care for poor children and a rebuilt New Orleans. Instead, Mr. Bush called — again — for his tax cuts to be permanent and threatened to veto bills that contained excessive pork-barrel spending, an idea absent from his agenda when Republicans held Congress.
Had Mr. Bush been doing his job right just in the last few weeks, he could have used this speech to celebrate a genuinely bipartisan agreement on a sound economic stimulus plan. In addition to the tax rebates agreed on already between the White House and the House, Mr. Bush could have announced sensible proposals for extending unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps for the most vulnerable citizens.
Those aren’t just Democratic ideas. The independent Congressional Budget Office ranks those stimulus policies as far more effective than rebates.
If Mr. Bush had let compassion and good sense trump ideology, he would have been able to use last night’s speech to celebrate the expansion of health insurance to tens of millions of children with working parents. Mr. Bush vetoed an expansion of the S-chip program, and he did not even agree to pay for all of the existing coverage because he thought a relative handful of parents might switch from private to public insurance if they were offered government assistance to buy it.
In 2003, the president proposed the Medicare prescription drug benefit, his signature achievement in health insurance reform. It barely squeaked past conservative Republicans in Congress, and Mr. Bush’s appetite for making health care accessible and affordable for all Americans vanished.
Mr. Bush has included a call for immigration reform in all of his previous State of the Union addresses. But he has never matched that rhetoric with strong ideas or political passion. A push last year for comprehensive reform was defeated by his party’s right wing, which continues to spread hatred on the campaign trail. His insight last night: “Illegal immigration is complicated.”
In 2002, Mr. Bush spoke about the international coalition that invaded Afghanistan, about the consensus among civilized nations of the need to combat terrorism, about the way the 9/11 attacks had rallied nations behind America’s leadership. Afghanistan’s good war was quickly overshadowed — and shortchanged — by Mr. Bush’s Iraq folly. Six years later, the United States and its allies are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan and the Taliban is back in force.
He was not even able to assure Americans that there is an end in sight to the Iraq war. Instead, he made the same empty promise he has made every year: When Iraq can defend itself, American troops will come home. Iraq’s defense minister told The Times recently that his forces would not be able to fully keep the peace and defend their country until 2018.
Mr. Bush’s troop escalation has succeeded in stabilizing parts of Baghdad and lowering casualties. But 2007 was still the most violent year in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and — more important — Mr. Bush has little to show in the way of political reconciliation, the only guarantor of a lasting peace. Mr. Bush has made no real effort to seek the help of Iraq’s neighbors to help stabilize the country.
In the end, when it comes to Iraq, Mr. Bush’s annual addresses will be remembered most for his false claims — the fictitious “axis of evil,” nonexistent aluminum tubes and African uranium, dangerous weapons that did not exist. No president can want that as his legacy.
Mr. Bush still has a year left — and many serious problems to address. It is time, finally, for him to put aside the partisanship, the bluster and the empty rhetoric. The state of the union is troubled. The nation yearns for leadership.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1201606710