BUSH GETS MORE TWEETY-LOVE

Oh my. So they're discussing Dubya's position on the Dubai Ports World deal just now on Hardball and speculating about the racist aspects of politicians and others being uncomfortable with a company owned by Arabs being in charge of six of the nation's most critical ports (as well as two ports that ship 40% of the Army's material abroad).

Chris Matthews: "But now the president is looking like a wise man. He's looking like Atticus Finch outside the sheriff's office standing up to the lynchmob."

Puh-LEEEZE. Dubya has spent the past four and a half years terrifying Americans about the threat posed to their lives by Islamofascists, and now he's a courageous statesman standing up to racists by saying it's okay to actually put a country with an off-again-on-again terrorist-friendly record in a position of power relative to our most sensitive ports?

Tags: Bush, Chris Matthews, UAE ports deal

Dr. Bruce Prescott has been running a series of posts chronicling the rise of the religious right.

This is one of the creepier stories.

Tags: rise of the religious right

THE UNITARY VICE PRESIDENT

I'm surprised, in a way, that the prideful Dubya would go so far as to DOCUMENT the fact that Dick Cheney is now essentially his equal.

On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.

Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
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When Dick Cheney was secretary of defense under the first President Bush, he reprimanded Vice President Dan Quayle for asserting power he did not possess by calling a meeting of the National Security Council when the elder Bush was abroad. Cheney well knew the vice president had no authority in the chain of command.

Since the coup d'état of Executive Order 13292, however, the vice presidency has been transformed. Perhaps, for a blinding moment, Cheney imagined he might classify his shooting party top secret.

Tags: Dick Cheney, George Bush, unitary executive

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Despite his glib remark, "The furor over Dubai is misplaced on so many levels," David Ignatius makes several important points in today's op-ed in WaPo:

Point #1: The Bush administration deserves it. The hubbub over terrorism isn't the biggest problem with the Dubai flap. In a sense, the Bush administration had it coming, after having beaten congressional opponents over the head with the terrorism club for four years. What goes around comes around, and while it may be comical to hear a legislator accuse President Bush of having a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set, the White House made itself a fat target.

Point #2: America's fiscal policies, if left unchanged, are going to hand foreign investors the possibility of owning most of our assets, "ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.

Point #3: You can't imagine how bad it could be. If they [foreign investors] pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.

He concludes:

Let's rashly assume that Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, the Republican Senate and House leaders, are serious in their expressions of concern about foreign ownership of American assets. What they should do right now is begin changing the fiscal policies that are transforming the United States into a ward of the world.

I'm dreaming, of course. Such policies would mean financial sacrifice on the part of Congress and the American people. They would require political leadership instead of quick-hit news conferences.

He sure does try to absolve Bush, doesn't he? No, it's "the Congress" who are responsible for our suicidal fiscal policies, not Bush-Cheney. Doh! Bush-Cheney proposes, Frist-Hastert disposes.

'06. '08. Never more critical to our survival. Get the message out, Democrats. Get the vote out. The Republicans, under the leadership of the incompetent and criminal Bush-Cheney administration, have sold America down the river.

Tags: Bush, foreign investment in U.S., David Ignatius, U.S. port security

POINTS OF CONTACT

Joe Conason on the ports deal debate. Joe details the connections between the Bushes and the UAE.

But Bush's passionate defense of the United Arab Emirates and the ports deal inevitably raises questions -- not only about the due diligence of his administration in this instance but about his and his family's long-standing ties to the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, and specifically to the UAE's rulers. His insinuation that skepticism is equivalent to bigotry cannot deflect such concerns, which first arose in the months after the 9/11 attacks.
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What seems worrisome even to some who might ultimately accept the Dubai ports deal is the "casual attitude" of the Bush administration in vetting the company, as Sen. Carl Levin put it. Considering the history of Bush entanglement with the oil despots of the Gulf, that lax indulgence was bad policy and worse politics.

Tags: Bush, United Arab Emirates, Dubai Ports World

WE DESERVE A BREAK TODAY -- AT LEAST THOSE OF US WHO VOTED FOR KERRY, DO

Forbes reports that "Average incomes after adjusting for inflation actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday." Healthcare spending is spiraling and projected to increase drastically within the next years, pushing more Americans into the ranks of the uninsured.

Yes, it's clear that middle-class Americans (not to mention the poor) need a break -- they need a break from George Dubya Bush, that is, and his skewed priorities. Here's some truth about the Bush budget.

When it comes to President George W. Bush's new budget plan, what you don't know will hurt you. Bush's spending and taxing proposals are a mass of missing information. The cost of keeping the military in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't included. Neither, as it turns out, are the usual projections of the long- term effects of proposals to cut $183 billion from domestic programs.

The administration's obfuscation is, however, being deciphered by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an independent watchdog organization. Specialists backtracked through tables of opaque data and deduced the following: Over five years, veterans' benefits would be cut 13 percent, or $10 billion. Despite all the political talk about energy research and alternate fuels, $4.4 billion would be cut from energy programs. Environmental spending, including for national parks, would be cut 22 percent, or $28 billion; housing, fuel, child care and nutrition programs for the poor and elderly would lose 13 percent, or $24 billion. Topping this surreal concoction is a 13 percent cut - $53 billion - in education and job programs by 2011.

Political realists have already declared the budget dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. That's not enough. The administration's assault on domestic programs should stand as a permanent reminder of the folly of the $285 billion in additional upper-bracket tax cuts the president and the Republican-controlled Congress are aiming for across the next five years. Despite the budget fictions, the damage from the tax-cut mania will haunt future generations.

When it comes to President George W. Bush's new budget plan, what you don't know will hurt you. Bush's spending and taxing proposals are a mass of missing information. The cost of keeping the military in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't included.

Neither, as it turns out, are the usual projections of the long- term effects of proposals to cut $183 billion from domestic programs.

The administration's obfuscation is, however, being deciphered by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an independent watchdog organization. Specialists backtracked through tables of opaque data and deduced the following: Over five years, veterans' benefits would be cut 13 percent, or $10 billion. Despite all the political talk about energy research and alternate fuels, $4.4 billion would be cut from energy programs. Environmental spending, including for national parks, would be cut 22 percent, or $28 billion; housing, fuel, child care and nutrition programs for the poor and elderly would lose 13 percent, or $24 billion. Topping this surreal concoction is a 13 percent cut - $53 billion - in education and job programs by 2011.

Political realists have already declared the budget dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. That's not enough. The administration's assault on domestic programs should stand as a permanent reminder of the folly of the $285 billion in additional upper-bracket tax cuts the president and the Republican-controlled Congress are aiming for across the next five years. Despite the budget fictions, the damage from the tax-cut mania will haunt future generations.

Tags: Bush, budget, American income

IN BED WITH THE FLU

Quick explanation for lack of posting this week: I have the full-fledged flu, the whole nightmare. This is the first time I've been able to raise my head since Monday night.

DEMOCRATS THINK, REPUBLICANS FEEL

Can anybody help me? Last evening I was falling into an exhausted sleep with the TV still on and I heard a piece of a news segment that I've been trying to track down. The report was about a scientist who tracked the brain patterns of people when they're receiving information that conflicts with their predetermined political beliefs. Typically, the scientist said, Republicans or conservatives (I can't remember which) are agitated by it, reject the information, refuse to process it, and then their pleasure centers are stimulated and they feel better. Democrats, on the other hand, deal with the information; we weigh it and integrate it into our total store of knowledge upon which we base our opinions.

I remember hearing the guy say just as I drifted off to sleep, "This is good news for Republicans and bad news for Democrats" or something to that effect; in other words, any evidence we bring to the fore isn't going to influence hard-core Republican voters. The opposition just has to get their propaganda and talking points disseminated before the s**t hits the fan -- their voters won't believe the latter if the former's taken root. Democrats, the scientist concluded, THINK, Republicans FEEL.

Who's surprised? But it'd be nice to have it scientifically proven. Sure wish I knew which channel or network put the story on so I could read the transcript and post a link.

Tags: Democrats, Republicans, brain activity

NUREMBERG FORGOTTEN

This must-read is the tale of how the General Counsel of the U.S. Navy tried to stop the abuse and torture of detainees but was thwarted by the Pentagon and Bush administration. There are good guys and bad guys in the story, but the lack of conscience on the part of so many strikes me as the most shocking element.

In Mora’s view, the Administration’s legal response to September 11th was flawed from the start, triggering a series of subsequent errors that were all but impossible to correct. “The determination that Geneva didn’t apply was a legal and policy mistake,” he told me. “But very few lawyers could argue to the contrary once the decision had been made.”

Mora went on, “It seemed odd to me that the actors weren’t more troubled by what they were doing.” Many Administration lawyers, he said, appeared to be unaware of history. “I wondered if they were even familiar with the Nuremberg trials—or with the laws of war, or with the Geneva conventions. They cut many of the experts on those areas out. The State Department wasn’t just on the back of the bus—it was left off the bus.” Mora understood that “people were afraid that more 9/11s would happen, so getting the information became the overriding objective. But there was a failure to look more broadly at the ramifications.

“These were enormously hardworking, patriotic individuals,” he said. “When you put together the pieces, it’s all so sad. To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values.”

Tags: torture, war on terror, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney

"Republican Sues Bush, Cheney, NSA, TSA for Illegal Surveillance, Wiretapping."

CONSERVATIVES OR BROWNSHIRTS?

Paul Craig Roberts:

Last week's annual Conservative Political Action Conference signaled the transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism. A former Justice Department official named Viet Dinh got a standing ovation when he told the CPAC audience that the rule of law mustn't get in the way of President Bush protecting Americans from Osama bin Laden.
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A woman in the audience told Barr that the Constitution placed Bush above the law and above non-elected federal judges.

These statements gallop beyond the merely partisan. They express the sentiments of brownshirtism. Our leader uber alles.
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There are only two reasons for Bush to refuse to obey the law. One is that he is guilty of illegitimate spying for which no warrant would be issued by the FISA court. The other is that he is using "national security" to create unconstitutional powers for the executive.

Civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate writing in the Boston Phoenix (Feb. 10-16) says that Bush's grab for "sweeping, unchecked power in direct violation of a statute would open a Pandora's box of imperial possibilities." In short, it makes the president a dictator.
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The siren call of "national security" is all the cover Bush needs to have the FISA law repealed, thus legally gaining the power to spy however he chooses, the protection of political opponents be damned. However, Bush and his Federalist Society Justice Department are not interested in having the law repealed. Their purpose has nothing to do with national security. The point on which the regime is insisting is that there are circumstances (undefined) in which the president does not have to obey laws. What those circumstances and laws are is for the regime to decide.

The Bush regime is asserting the Fuhrer Principle, and Americans are buying it, even as Bush declares that America is at war in order to bring democracy to the Middle East.

WATCH THIS NOW

This video actually turned a confirmed Republican friend into a Bush-antagonist.

MORE ON THE PORTS DEAL

I'm so relieved that Michael Chertoff is defending the deal to transfer strategic U.S. port operations to a United Arab Emirates company.

THE UNRAVELING

David Broder blows the lid off the cost of Bush's tax cuts.

Tags: Bush, tax cuts

WANKER OF THE DAY

Dana Milbank.

Who died and made him mind-reader of the Democratic Party?