not just NO -- but HELL NO.

In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO -- but HELL NO.

Bush's reputation as the Great Protector who will do anything -- anything! -- to keep us safe, even if it means torturing, spying, and trashing the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, is his one remaining political asset. And putting six of our major ports under the control of the United Arab Emirates threatens to undermine this rep in an irreparable way.

This deal is a nonstarter and a no-brainer. A Harriet Miers debacle to the hundredth- power. Next thing you know, the president will be assuring us that he knows what's in the heart of Dubai Ports World, Inc.

But instead of pulling back from the deal and hurriedly looking for the port operations equivalent of Sam Alito, the president stomped his feet, held his breath, and stuck out his veto.

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Dubai Harbored Hijackers? Big Deal, Bush Says

I wonder what the president feels like these days as 9/11, the default card used to start wars and squelch dissent, is being played against him?

Plunder Medicare for the drug industry? Done. Give away oil royalties to the energy industry? Done. Let the oil industry write the energy bill in secret? Done. Enrich insurance companies with Health Savings Accounts? Check. Appoint a lawyer to oversee disaster relief and homeland security when there are experts in the field who've devoted their professional lives to the subject? Oh, why not?

Bush says global trade and the feelings of an ally trump all else, and that's that. He's promising to veto any bill that would reverse the decision, which would be the first such veto by a president who has let the Treasury be overrun by sinfully profligate spending.

Bush adviser Karl Rove said a while back that Republicans have a post 9/11 view of the world and that Democrats have a pre- 911 view that is profoundly and consistently wrong. He might have to extend and revise those remarks. Dividing us that way isn't going to work anymore.

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How Many Bloggers Does It Take To Change A LightBulb?

174 Bloggers

O YES, I Am Paying Attention.

The Bush Budget's Hidden Gold: Dynamic Scoring Comes to the Treasury
By William W. Beach

All of the press commentary on President George W. Bush's 2007 budget proposal has paid virtually no attention to one of its most significant initiatives. And it is no wonder: how could a move to improve the way the government analyzes tax policy compete with cutting outdated programs, making the United States more competitive, and winning the global war on terrorism?

This little-noted initiative, however, may be historically important. Buried deep in the President's proposals for the Department of the Treasury is a plan to create a Dynamic Analysis Division within the Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis. This division would advise the President and other key policymakers on how proposed changes to U.S. tax policy would affect economic activity. Inside the Beltway, this type of analysis is called "dynamic scoring." Outside the Beltway, this is called "economics."
Read The Full Story…

O yes, I am paying attention.

This article is so much bullshit, I don’t believe it. This is some more of that think tank crap. You want to cut programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student Loans, Education, Transportation, Agriculture, etc. What about the corruption in Washington? If the corruption in Washington was cleaned up we could save trillions. So don’t try and tell me that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student Loans, Education, Transportation, Agriculture are the problems. You are the problem, you lying neo-con gangster corrupt politicians. We need to deal with you first! You want to analyze something Mr. Beach, analyze the corruption in Washington then we will talk about Dynamic Scoring!

Who will feel budget's impact?

Bush Wednesday signs bill with $39 billion in cuts. His 2007 budget would point to more cuts ahead.

With President Bush's signature Wednesday, Medicaid recipients can expect higher copayments and deductibles. College students may face higher interest rates on student loans, as lenders are squeezed. Work requirements for women on welfare are likely to be tightened. Federal aid to states for child-support enforcement will be curtailed.
All told, the US government will save $39 billion over the next five years under the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005. The legislation is the first in a decade to rein in the growth of entitlement programs. And, along with a plan for $70 billion in tax cuts moving through Congress, it provides the backdrop to a fierce debate over government priorities with the unveiling this week of Mr. Bush's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007.
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So Much For Ethics Reform

Ethics reform, seemingly on a fast-track in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, has slowed to a crawl in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The rush to revise ethics laws in the wake of the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal has turned into more of a saunter.

A month ago, Republican leaders in Congress called legislation on the topic their first priority, and promised quick action on a measure that would alter the rules governing the interaction between lawmakers and lobbyists.

Comments:

Why is this news? Isn't this just another dog bites man story?

The depths of corruption in Washington knows not nor will know the bottom until "We The People" show'em where it is. Only then will we know where the bottom was.

How about we form another Commission...no wait..a "blue-ribboned" Commission... to ask them when they're gonna stop playing us for the fools we seem to be.


The ONLY needed reform in politics is, . . . "Don't lie, cheat and steal." What are so difficult and time consuming about the basic truth leading to good ethics?

Why are people constantly falling into entrapments of UNPURE NONSENSE? It is costing EVERYONE their life, money, time, and future.

We are beginning to think others who speak from far away lands are correct when they extend their farewells to America!

For America of the “FREE” no longer dwells. All that is visible remaining is UNPURE IDIOCY!

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A Portrait Of Who They Were.

Between March 20, 2003 and May 6, 2004, 759 US troops died in Iraq. This is the longest, fiercest, sustained combat Americans have seen in a generation.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of four soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died on April 24, in Taji, Iraq, when mortar rounds hit their camp. The four soldiers were assigned to the Army National Guard's 39th Support Battalion, 39th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Hazen, Ark. Killed were:

Capt. Arthur L. Felder, 36, of Louisville, Ark.

Chief Warrant Officer Patrick W. Kordsmeier, 49, of North Little Rock, Ark.

Staff Sgt. Billy J. Orton, 41, of Humnoke, Ark.

Staff Sgt. Stacey C. Brandon, 35, of Hazen, Ark.

At least 433 children have lost a parent and 284 spouses have lost a partner in Iraq.
The bottom gets cut out because of low educational levels, lower mental aptitude scores, poor health, or criminal records. The top pretty much excludes itself.

Of all 535 members of the US House and Senate today, only half a dozen have children in the military (and just one of those is in Iraq).

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Win Without War

Sleeping Giant.

Top NASA Scientist Says He's Being Silenced on Global Warming

Claims Backlash Is Part of Bush Administration Effort to Downplay Climate Change
A top government scientist is speaking out about what he says is an effort to keep him quiet about global warming.
NASA's chief climate scientist James Hansen says the space agency's backlash is part of a Bush administration effort aimed at those trying to sound the alarm on climate

change.
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Greenland ice swells ocean rise...

Sea levels likely to rise much faster than was predicted...

Guide to climate change...

Give Bush A Brain...

Can The GOP Clean Up Its Mess In Washington?

With corruption indictments flying and more expected, suddenly everyone's a good government crusader -- even GOP Congressional leaders who about five minutes ago -- it seems -- were practically celebrating their big money embrace of K Street and the Washington lobbyist cash machine. Congress and the GOP need a stem to stern clean-up.


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CREW
JackintheHouse

Ethics Challenge

Ethics of the New Testament

At Last The Conservatives Stand Up To Be Counted.

Conservatism, the arched eyebrow in a room full of ideas, questions power.

It's taken awhile, a little more than five years to be precise, but we may be witnessing the return of a respected and important political ideology in this town: conservatism. And its apparent ride back onto the political scene comes not a moment too soon.
Last week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Democrats asked a lot of combative questions, as one might expect. But the real news was that some of the senators on the right side of the dais wondered aloud about whether the Bush administration's warrant less wiretapping program went too far in the way of expanding executive power.

Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina called some of the legal justifications the Bush administration used for the program (like its assertion that it didn't need Congress's or the judiciary's OK) "dangerous." Over in the House, Heather Wilson, a Republican from New Mexico, is calling for an investigation.

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Republicans Criticize Rice Over Bush Mideast Policy

Republican senators criticized the Bush administration Wednesday over its policies in Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first testimony on Capitol Hill in months exposed her to a tough grilling from some members of her own party

"I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Rice also had a tense exchange with moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., over the pace of progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace and the implications of the Hamas victory in Palestinian legislative elections last month.

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Why Budget Critics Are Out In Force.

President Bush's new federal budget has received a much tougher reception than his earlier ones did. Much of the press, and many fiscal conservatives, are hammering it hard.
"Federal spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton," notes Brian Riedl, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative advocacy group in Washington

When the White House released the budget last Monday, Mr. Riedl stayed up until 3 a.m. to get out a 12-page outline of the numbers. He noted that federal spending has increased by 33 percent since 2001, from $1,863 billion to $2,472 billion. And inflation-adjusted federal spending last year neared $22,000 per household, the highest level since World War II.

The press was taking more seriously what Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), told this reporter in 2002 about the 2003 budget: "This administration stretches and spins the truth further than either party in the past 30 years."

A New York Times editorial, for instance, calls the 2007 budget "fiction masquerading as fact." The Boston Globe, carried a column headlined, "The deficit deceit." Even The Wall Street Journal noted, "Bush's Deficit Math Sidesteps Some Big Outlays."

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Fiscal conservatism is not a political philosophy, and more a tradition of prudence in government spending and debt. Edmund Burke, in his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', articulated its principles:

It is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied...The public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.

In other words, a government doesn't have the right to run up large debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer; the taxpayers' right not to be taxed oppressively takes precedence even over paying back debts a government may have imprudently undertaken.

What’s going on?

American cities still lack the resources to prevent a catastrophic terrorist attack. And Washington sends $110 million in farm subsidies to an Arkansas co-op named Riceland Foods.

Many troops risking their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq lack the necessary equipment to protect themselves, such as body and vehicle armor. And several members of Congress vote themselves farm subsidies as much as 119 times larger than what the typical farmer receives.

Millions of overtaxed Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And Washington doles out these tax dollars to David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, basketball star Scottie Pippen and former Enron CEO Ken Lay.

This year, Washington will spend more on corporate welfare than on homeland security.

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Cheney May Have Broken The Law

Dean puts spotlight on Cheney

On Monday, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Vice President Dick Cheney should resign if he ordered Libby to give classified information to reporters to defend the case for war in Iraq.

"If Vice President Cheney has, in fact, ordered the leaking of political information -- of intelligence information -- that means he has to step aside," Dean told CNN. "We don't know if it's true, but he has been accused of it. If it's true, he has to step aside."

A day earlier, Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on Fox News Sunday that leaking intelligence information to make political arguments would be "inappropriate."

He added that Fitzgerald ought to "look closely" at the behavior of "whoever the superiors are" who allegedly authorized a leak.

Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican, said on the same program, "I don't think anybody should be releasing classified information, period."

The letter does not name who the superiors are. But Dean said Monday, "You only have one superior if you're the chief of staff, and that's the vice president."

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Cheney may have broken law

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that Vice President Cheney should resign if he ordered a top aide to leak classified information to the media to defend the invasion of Iraq.

On CNN's "American Morning" program, Dean repeated calls he first made Sunday, saying Cheney may have broken the law if he ordered his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to share secret information with reporters in 2003.

"If Vice President Cheney has, in fact, ordered the leaking of political information -- of intelligence information, that means he has to step aside," Dean said on CNN. "We don't know if it's true, but he has been accused of it. If it's true, he has to step aside."

On Sunday, Democratic and Republican senators said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should investigate Cheney and others in the CIA leak probe if they authorized Libby to give secret information to reporters.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, called the leak of intelligence information "inappropriate" if it is true, and said, "I think he Fitzgerald has to look closely at their behavior."

Sen. George Allen, R-Virginia, said a full investigation is necessary. "I don't think anybody should be releasing classified information, period, whether in the Congress, executive branch or some underling in some bureaucracy," said Allen, who appeared with Reed on "Fox News Sunday."

According to published reports last week, Libby told a federal grand jury that he disclosed in July 2003 the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq.

Fitzgerald said in the documents it was his understanding that "Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."

The White House has refused to comment on the case.

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You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down- up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order- or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
~ By Ronald Reagan