MIDWINTER
NEWS AND COMMENTS
February 12, 2004
Read this piece by Gail Sheehy on suppressed 9/11 evidence and SCREAM! The Observer
Blood Brothers: Kerry and Bush
CSMonitor says Bush could lose most valuable asset, "a reputation for integrity
and candor". How on earth could anyone believe such a thing about Bush?
The Alabama National Guard commander who told the Boston Globe he never saw Bush now regrets his comments. Then he was only telling the truth, unaware of the context into which the comments would be place and their significance. Back then he said, Hell man, I'm from Texas! No way a guy could come from Texas without me noticing! Now he stammers, Well, maybe I wasn't there when he arrived. Funny how a guy like that is willing to sacrifice his own integrity to bolster someone like Bush, who has none. MSNBC
"Bush Finds Party Faithful In an Ugly Mood," says the Wall Street Journal. "A new level of tension is emerging between President Bush and the
congressional Republicans he expects to deliver his election-year agenda.
Among the sore points, Mr. Bush's initiative to give legal status to
immigrant workers who are here illegally, a bid to attract Latino voters,
instead has roiled the party's conservative faithful. Republicans have been
put on the defensive over the President's policies on Iraq. And record
deficits and spending suddenly have Republicans questioning his fiscal
stewardship."
The fuss over Bush's questionable military service isn't going away just yet.
Freep.com
The Washington Post on Bush's military service problem.
GWB's lost year -- Axis of Logic
And plenty of other links on the subject from Google
Democrats.com's Bob Fertik on Bush's military records in Newsday.
Here's the Smoking Microfiche itself.
Why are they picking on Janet and not on the guy who grabbed his crotch a little earlier in the show? Arizona Central
IDEOSPASMS
Friday the 13th, February, 2004
The Big Mo -- Downhill
Who Will Be the Last Standing Bush Supporter?
As the cosmic spectacle plays on, there is something fitting about President's Day weekend being ushered in on Friday the 13th this year. As if the gods are trying to tell us something via the messenger, Hermes, the trickster. It's not a good time for presidents, or for usurpers named Bush.
It's the threshold phenomena in physics, when a process continues for a long time with no apparent change, then suddenly undergoes a radical transformation. Freezing and boiling are examples. The temperature moves steadily in one direction with no apparent change, then suddenly reaches a threshold, and suddenly matter changes from one fundamental state to another.
For three years, starting Dec. 12, 2000, when a corrupt Supreme Court stopped an electoral process and installed a loser as president -- probably the most blatant abuse of power in American history -- it has been one outrage after another. The smarmy clique of embittered survivors from the Nixon administration and criminals resurfacing from the Reagan-Bush mob finally got their hands on power and began to exercise it without restraint. They have shown us a pure Machiavellian exercise through the world's most concentrated seat of power. Bush's crooked smirk and the sneers of Cheney and Rumsfeld reminded us daily that there wasn't a damn thing we could do. These people would do anything, and rub it in our faces, nearly all our faces. They behaved as if there would never be another election, and it's apparent that they will prevent one if it threatens their power like the last one and if they can get away with it.
But that phenomenon of democracy is more than just the mechanics of elections, which can be manipulated as we have seen. It is a power latent within a population, and when it awakens, there is nothing that can stop it. We saw it in Poland and Russia, countries that had no democratic tradition, but the spirit of freedom rose up and threw off an oppressive regime. In the United States that aspiration has been asleep. For too long people have taken their freedom for granted. But now Americans are waking up. The appearance of an election on the horizon has galvanized them. Now power is being exercised in a million theaters simultaneously to push the bums out. Now the walls are closing in on the Bush mob, and it's a sight to behold in wonder.
Just as the outrages under the Bush-faced corporate oligarchy have been too many to list every day for three years, now the threats to the regimes power are coming to fast and furiously to enumerate. But even if you can't keep up with it, it's fun to watch.
Junior is Temporary -- I am informed by my friend Auset that G.W. Bush's cult name in Skull & Bones was Temporary. That's a good name for the boy, this year, especially. Here's the note: "According to Robbins, the Bonesmen take on secret and occultish names such as Magog and Boaz. Robbins claims Magog was the name traditionally given to the member with the most sexual experience, such as (incredibly) Bush Sr. In a telling anecdote related for the Atlantic Monthly, Robbins wrote: 'George W. was not assigned a name but invited to choose one. According to one report, nothing came to mind, so he was given the name Temporary, which, it is said, he never bothered to replace.'"
See transcripts on Meet the Press in which Bush and Kerry admit they are members of Skull & Bones but maintain secrecy at Libertythink.com: "Russert asks Bush about Skull & Bones" and
"Russert grills Kerry about Skull & Bones"
The Order of the Skull and Bones
Everything you always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask By Kris Millegan.
Anthony Sutton on "How the Order Controls Education". I always knew there was something about it I didn't like.
A review of "Fleshing Out Skull & Bones" by Bev Conover of Online Journal.
Numbers Don't Lie. The insurance industry is built on them. See more on the possibilities that voting machines were tampered with in the New Hampshire primary: "Kerry had Diebold Bounce"
"Questions mount over New Hampshire's primary"
A rare breath of nonAmerican sanity about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast bearing by Binay Kumar in the Hindustantimes.com.
Bob Fertik on "Trolling for Truth" about Bush's botched military career at Democrats.com
More on the story of Bush's absence from the National Guard. awolbush.com
Then there were Bush's arrests, car crashes and speeding violations. Yahoo
And the alleged, covered-up cocaine bust of 1972, probably the reason Bush refused to take his physical and was grounded. See Amy Goodman's interview with J.H. Hatfield on Democracy Now.
Destroyed Documents -- According to the Dallas News, "Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain 'there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor.' Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms."
According to the Memphis Flyer, "Two members of the Air National Guard unit that Bush allegedly served with as a young Guard flyer in 1972 had been told to expect him and were on the lookout for him. He never showed, however; of that both Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop are certain." There were only 25 to 30 pilots assigned to the base. They kept a lookout for him, but never saw him.
A Soldier's View -- From WSWS, "I am a cavalry scout in the United States Army. I am stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. We returned home Tuesday and I would like to comment on this war from a specialized soldier’s eyes. I honestly think the president lied to all of us. After seeing first hand what was in most parts of Iraq, my whole company could not fathom a threat of any means. I love America, and will defend her when called upon, but in this case there was not a real threat."
The walls are closing in on Bush from all sides. The Times chimes in on Bush's military records.
Even Republicans are breaking ranks. Who will be the last standing supporter of Bush?
Republicans are trying hard to neutralize Kerry's advantage in having been a war hero. The results are funny as they reach desperately for weapons to throw at Kerry. There was an attempt to link Kerry with Jane Fonda and smear him with the image of the "traitor" that many gung ho supporters of the Vietnam War consider "Hanoi Jane" to have been. But the smears are not sticking. (See AOL News). One Republican talks about Kerry's being both war hero and anti war leader as showing "how two-faced he is." Another who served in Vietnam is quoted as saying anti war demonstrations by people like Kerry were "a slap in the face," and portrays the action as being "against the soldiers." But having been in the line of fire himself, Kerry has the authority to be against the war. Of course any citizen does, but when it's a war hero, it takes away some of the possible smears that can be used on citizens who have not fought in wars. Clearly the argument that opposing the war is somehow opposing the soldiers who are sent off to fight doesn't hold water. It's just another lie used to suppress dissent against unjustified wars.
The 9/11 commission will ask Bush and Clinton to testify. (AOL News) This could be very interesting. Clinton has already said he would be willing to testify. Bush said, "Perhaps," but all the administration's actions have been to suppress information about that day. So he will do almost anything to avoid testifying. That's the worse possible scenario for a guilty man who can't think on his feet. So we may then have Clinton testifying and Bush staying away.
February 14, 2004
Closing In
Pressure is mounting on Bush from all sides. It seems like practically every day he has to make a fairly significant concession. One day he refuses to consider a panel looking into the intelligence errors leading to the war in Iraq. Then suddenly he is giving in, but he handpicks the panel and gives them a limited mandate, from which he is safe from any scrutiny. Then he is backing off again and giving into pressure to widen the scope of the inquiry to include questions about how the intelligence was used. The 9/11 commission is biting at his heals. One moment it seems more or less under control, but never for long.
The election looms on the horizon. The population wakes up. Hope of some sort of change stirs people to action. Elected officials are feeling the heat around the country from their constituents and the motion is moving upward to the top levels.
The State is Criminal lewrockwell.com
Why This Marine Didn't Re-enlist. The Constitution is a dead letter, says Casey Khan
Bush's daughter Barbara is one wild babe. See the NY Daily News, although the online version lacks the photos.
"George Bush,
Skull & Bones
and the New World Order", a special report to assist the Japanese audience in more
fully understanding the present policies of the United States under the
administration of President George Bush. Quote: "According to a 1940 Skull & Bones document, the initiation ceremony
involves the following kinds of things: 'New man placed in coffln-carried
into central part of building. New man chanted over and reborn into society.
Removed from coffin and given robes with symbols on it. A bone with his name
on it is tossed into the bone heap at the start of every meeting.'... freedomdomain.com
Democrats convened their own panel to investigate Halliburton's robbery of U.S. taxpayers. CBS
A great web file on the discrepancies in the official story about 9/11. 911 Dossier
"If the twin towers were brought down by explosives, how could anyone get them in? Step in low profile Bush brother Marvin whose company installed the access security for the WTC"
Senate committee to expand its intelligence probe to look into "whether the
Bush administration accurately described the information it had on Saddam
Hussein's weapons." Miami Herald
Bob Kerrey states the obvious. The White House "summaries" of the
intelligence briefings are useless and are fashioned to leave out whatever
might embarass the White House. Of course. Why else wouldn't the White House
just hand over the actual documents?
Star Ledger
More documents, more confusion over Bush's military service. (The Globe misspells
Bob Fertik's name) Boston Globe
Like Hitler, Bush can't admit his errors, so he can't learn from them. He hangs on
to this insane idea that Iraq would have gotten the weapons out of the
country -- as if they would rather embarass Bush after than defend
themselves against an invasion.
Baltimore Sun
Bush says movement of jobs overseas may be painful now, but is good for economy in the
long run. But from his policies and attitudes in the past, it's clear that what he thinks is good is what enriches the richest 5%, his constituency.
LA Times
Bush the Fraud, interview w/ Paul Waldman.
Buzzflash
Bush the man, versus the myth, by Krugman.
NY Times
88% of New Yorkers prefer Kerry. 7% prefer Bush.
NY Daily News
"After subjecting myself to almost an hour of the Perle-Frum philosophy I
quickly came to the conclusion labeling the Zionist ideologues 'hawks' is an
insult to a noble bird. And there is nothing conservative about them either
- whether neo or otherwise. They're simply good old-fashioned warmongers
with friends in high places. Extremely high places! ...
Time could he running out for the 'endless war' brigade. Their loud-mouthed
paranoia has ill-served the Bush administration. When push comes to shove,
the American people may yet surprise us all... and pleasantly so."
Arab News
February 15, 2004
Obvious Lies
Is there anyone who really believes the Bush lies? It's one thing to support him because his agenda matches your own, but to really believe him -- that's another matter. If you were a cop questioning him, wouldn't Bush's shabby lies about not being able to remember anything about what he did when he served in the National Guard in Alabama be obvious? He's not that good a liar. He's quoted as saying he doesn't remember what duties he performed there, but he knows it wasn't flying because they used a different kind of plane. He can't remember what he did there, but he quickly searches his guilty mind for a way out of the corner and desperately attaches to a part of his concocted alibi he was prepared with: the answer to why he didn't fly after early 1972. "Because they didn't have the same kinds of planes in Alabama..." Almost irrelevant to the question. It's the scrambling, rambling story of a liar.
The White House keeps coming up with conflicting stories. One moment he was serving in Alabama through November of 1972. Then they find these dental records in January of 1973, so suddenly the earlier story is revised and this dental appointment is given as evidence that he attended drills. In any kind of real interrogation, the story would fall to pieces in seconds.
There was a great article in the New York Times last Friday that went through a search of trying to find someone in the Alabama National Guard who remembers anything about Bush. It's hilarious. Bush is quoted as saying, "
Bush the "cuntsman" -- When Bush went to Alabama to work on Reb Blount's senatorial campaign, Blount's son Tom "remembers thinking to himself 'This guy thinks he is such a cuntsman, God's gift to women. He was all duded up in his cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas.'" (See Village Voice and Progressive Southerner.) Bush "used to prop his feet up on a desk, and blab on about how much he'd drunk the night before ... They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven, Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name, when they stopped him 'all the time' for driving drunk as a student at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in the campaign 'what seemed like a hundred times,' says Red Blount's nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had 'vivid memories' of that time ... 'He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a number of years out of college, talking about this to people he doesn't know,' [Blount's nephew] Archibald said. "He just struck me as a guy who really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege, that he wasn't operating by the same rules." Bush was, and is, proud of being a son of privilege that can get away with things others can't.
Bush opposition ... violent death: While Republicans resort to their standard political tactic of using sex smears to bring down an opponent, it might be a good moment to review the case of a woman who filed a sexual harassment suit against Bush and then died of a bullet wound to the head. See Jackson Thoreau.
In Newsday, the ever spot-on Jimmy Breslin discusses Bush's military career from war dodger to war president. Breslin uses the Bush National Guard records to take us back to that moment with a microscope. Bush was on duty for 26 days from January 1 through April 16 of 1972, the very day when Nixon ordered major escalation of the war with massive air strikes on North Vietnam in an effort to force the North Vietnamese into submission. That's when Bush said, "I'm outa here." According to Breslin: "After that April 16, Bush went to Alabama and that pretty much ended his fighting career although he did battle cavities in a dentist's chair at Maxwell Field, Ala." As Breslin points out, whether he went to Vietnam or into the service is his business. "What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero, who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever, sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth. The picture of him playing soldier suit on an aircraft carrier, the helmet under his arm like he just got back from a run over Baghdad, marks him as exceedingly dangerous. He believes he is a warrior president. He is not. He is a war dodger. Therefore, it is preposterous for George Bush to be a commander of anything. He doesn't have the right to send people to war and yet he orders them off, and almost cheerfully."
Coming from the Bush crime family culture it's not surprising that Bush's daughter Barbara goes for the lawless type. The guy she was out dirty dancing with in New York the other night has three warrants out on him in California. The Daily News says, "The social climber has been busted for speeding, driving under the influence and trespassing. He even jumped bail in one case, court records show." A lot like Dad.
The Bush administration finally found one guy willing to say he saw Bush show up for National Guard duty in Alabama. Atlanta Journal Constitution
The White HOuse release a disheveled pile of documents about Bush's history with the Guard, many of them duplicates to make the pile higher. And many were the same ones released before. According to the NY Times, "The documents contain no new proof that Mr. Bush reported for duty in Alabama in 1972 and 1973 — a period when his critics have called him AWOL — beyond an already released record of a dental examination of Mr. Bush conducted in January 1973 at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Montgomery. But White House officials say that the combination of the dental exam, payroll records and the undisputed fact that Mr. Bush lived in Alabama during the period in question prove that he turned up for duty."
Iraq "reconstruction" = robbery.
The Guardian
Hope! If corporate America aided and abetted by the Bush administration continues to defile the environment and make it uninhabitable, there is always the chance of moving to another planet. Scientists now say one of Saturn's moon could "look like Sweden".
">The Scotsman
President's Day,
February 16, 2004
I saw something today in the Washington Post about a poll that said a majority of the country does not think Bush's service record is a legitimate issue. This is quite fascinating. It's a testimony of the power of a particular propaganda system. If you were to judge by looking at the American media and what it tries to portray as the will of the people, this country considered lying about a sexual indiscretion an impeachable offense.
This lie was only achieved by spending millions of dollars to corner Clinton into testifying under oath about a matter that was never a public matter in any way. In the end the objective was achieved and he was impeached. And for his entire term in office his hands were tied by the expensive taxpayer-funded harassment campaign that was engineered by a far right group that paved the way for George W. Bush.
Now we have a president who has lied about a great many more important things, including his record of military service, which shows clearly that he used his rich kid's privilege to avoid fulfilling at all. Now he sends young men and women to war on a lie that has been shown to be a lie, one of many lies that made up a pattern of deception to deceive Americans and other countries to support a war on false pretenses.
He has clearly lied, and told conflicting stories about his military career, and his lies show that he has something to hide. He has said he doesn't remember what he did during the time he was in Alabama when there is no evidence to show he showed up for duty, and quite a bit of evidence suggesting he didn't.
If these are not legitimate issues, why on earth was a sex act between two people?
I am not one to hold Clinton up as the perfect example for what a U.S. president should be at this time, although he sure looks good in comparison with Bush, but it is astonishing to see Clinton's act as a major issue and to say Bush's lies about war are not legitimate issues.
It's hard to imagine that a majority of Americans really believe that, or would hold to those answers if the question was pushed. I would like to see how the questions were asked on the poll that was cited. I would also like to see the results of a poll asking these questions in three months.
Robin Toner in the New York Times writes that the question is "what did you do in the war?" That is a question, and it is certainly a relevant one in the current situation. But the situation is about something more than that, something that is more cut and dried. Because Bush's answer was not acceptable to the first question, "What did you do?" the Bush team has covered it up, as they are accustomed to doing with so many things it's second nature. Now it is a pattern of lies built upon the original question, and the intention on the part of the Bush machine to not let the answer to the question get out. The question becomes something else when it leads to lies.
As with the Clinton sexual act, the lie is more important than the act itself. Bush's behavior during those years is probably not felonious, but it is not good for Bush if the public knows too much of that side of his behavior.
The New York Times is at its very best with an article that appeared in Sunday's New York Times Magazine entitled "The Permanent Scars of Iraq". The hidden casualties of the Iraq war on the American side, all the young people who have been wounded or maimed in Iraq, whose lives have been shattered -- and when you think of what it is for, what it has proven to be for after all Bushes lies have been exposed one by one -- it is an unspeakable loss.
Salon has put together a helpful score card about the tug of war over Bush's service records
Salon
Also in Salon, "The retired officer who saw Bush National Guard files in a trash can talks back as the White House tries to discredit him, and urges the president to finally come clean." According to Burkett he "overheard, Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, asked James to assemble Bush's military files, so his aides, including Dan Bartlett, could go over them, and to make sure there was nothing there that would embarrass the governor. Burkett says days later he also saw pages from Bush's military file in a garbage can."
Cynthia Tucker says in the Atlantic Journal Constitution that "Bush wants you emotionally stuck in the horrible aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The weeks following the atrocities saw the president transformed into a forceful commander in chief and brought him sky-high approval ratings. With his ratings now down to about 50 percent, he'd love to flytrap American voters in a 9/11 mind-set until November -- which, he thinks, would ensure his re-election. But the strategy won't work."
The Latest Cover Up -- "The White House is declining to make public the financial histories of the commissioners President Bush appointed to investigate American intelligence failures," says the New York Times. Is there anything they don't want to keep a secret?
William Safire comes out against media consolidation.