Smells like fascism....

[BoogyMan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUXx8nkgB7U

If the government can take this money by targeted attacks on individuals with contractual agreements to receive this money, there is NOTHING that you have as an American that they cannot take away.

[Yurt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUXx8nkgB7U

If the government can take this money by targeted attacks on individuals with contractual agreements to receive this money, there is NOTHING that you have as an American that they cannot take away.

exactly. the dems who wrote the bill should have thought of that before hand. the government cannot interfere with contracts. if you want to tell aig that no more money is forthcoming unless you rescind, fine. but has anyone asked why the congress gave bonuses, errr, pork and defend that, but complain when a corporation does it.

[glockmail]

The Democrats are rapidly going down the road to socialism, and when it comes time to collect these taxes and the taxpayers resist, the Democrats will quickly become fascists, jut like they were at Waco, and again over the Elio Gonzales mess.

It will soon come time to raise up arms and shoot these bastards.

[BoogyMan]

The Democrats are rapidly going down the road to socialism, and when it comes time to collect these taxes and the taxpayers resist, the Democrats will quickly become fascists, jut like they were at Waco, and again over the Elio Gonzales mess.

It will soon come time to raise up arms and shoot these bastards.

...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.... (http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm)

[glockmail]

...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.... (http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm)
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

[Mr. P]

Oh Gee we FUCKED UP, we should have listened to folks and let ya go bankrupt!

Now, Please give us our money back or we'll tax you.

At this time could we be represented by a bigger group of MORONS??? NO!!!!!

[April15]

The Democrats are rapidly going down the road to socialism, and when it comes time to collect these taxes and the taxpayers resist, the Democrats will quickly become fascists, jut like they were at Waco, and again over the Elio Gonzales mess.

It will soon come time to raise up arms and shoot these bastards.Runs both ways!

[Little-Acorn]

As described in many recent news reports, Democrats in Congress have been screaming in rage over the bonuses AIG is paying to its execs. They keep calling it "taxpayer money", forgetting that the bonuses were agreed upon more than a year ago and signed into legal contracts, before any taxpayer money was involved. The agreements were well known to Democrats who crafted the stimulus bill, though you wouldn't know it from their antics today.

Funniest part is, the biggest roadblock the Dems face in grabbing the bonus money, is an amendment put into the recently-signed stimulus bill by Democrat Chris Dodd, that specifically protected such long-ago-agreed bonuses from confiscation.

This is the same Chris Dodd who, back in the 1990s and 2000s, kept encouraging these companies to make the subprime loans that caused this whole mess, and kept insisting nothing was wrong even as more and more dire warnings were sounded. Now he's outraged and indignant at what these companies did... or so he says now.

Reminds one of the old Keystone Kops movies, where they kept tripping over each other, tumbling off speeding vehicles, etc. in vain and whacky efforts to get anything done.

---------------------------------------------

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/recover-aig-bonuses-lawmakers-scramble-undo-protections-approved/

To Recover AIG Bonuses, Lawmakers Scramble to Undo Protections They Approved

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/img/dodd_christopher.jpg
Though Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is among those leading the charge on retrieving AIG bonuses, an amendment he added to the $787 billion stimulus bill last month created a roadblock to getting that money back.

Congressional lawmakers are scrambling to think up creative ways to recover at least some of the $165 million in bonuses that bailed-out American International Group is paying executives -- but they could be their own worst enemy.

Though Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is among those leading the charge on retrieving the bonuses, an amendment he added to the $787 billion stimulus bill last month created a roadblock to getting that money back.

The amendment, meant to restrict executive pay for bailed-out banks, also included an exception for "contractually obligated bonuses agreed on or before Feb. 11, 2009."

This would seem to exempt the AIG bonuses that lawmakers and President Obama are looking to recover. Incidentally, Dodd is the largest single recipient of 2008 campaign donations from AIG, with $103,100, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Dodd amendment creates a "prohibition on what the president is now talking about," said Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the House minority whip. He also accused the administration of being in "disarray."

[glockmail]

Runs both ways! Examples of republicans screwing US Citizens?

[DannyR]

Might want to be combined with this thread: http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=21916

Are these guys serious, or are they just posturing for the camera to appear tough on AIG (and hide the fact they goofed bailing them out repeatedly)

[April15]

Examples of republicans screwing US Citizens?BUSH; need I say more?

[actsnoblemartin]

BUSH; need I say more?

:link:

[April15]

:link:

Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005


Congress doesn't see same intelligence as president, report finds

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush and top administration officials have access to a much broader ranger of intelligence reports than members of Congress do, a nonpartisan congressional research agency said in a report Thursday, raising questions about recent assertions by the president.

Bush has said that Democratic lawmakers who authorized the use of force against Iraq and now criticize the war saw the same pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he did.

The president made that claim in recent speeches about Iraq. Support for the war has decreased, and critics have said that the administration misled the country when it relied on erroneous intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs that supported its case for war and discarded information that undermined it.

"Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulating intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein," Bush said on Wednesday in his most recent speech. "These charges are pure politics."

The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: "The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods."

Unlike members of Congress, the president and his top officials also have the authority to ask U.S. intelligence agencies more extensively for follow-up information, the report said. "As a result, the president and his most senior advisers arguably are better positioned to assess the quality of the ... intelligence more accurately than is Congress."

The CRS report identified nine key U.S. intelligence "products" that aren't generally shared with Congress. These include the President's Daily Brief, a compilation of analyses that's given only to the president and a handful of top aides, and a daily digest on terrorism-related matters.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

The CRS produced the report in response to a query by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a critic of Bush's policy on Iraq. Feinstein asked about the kinds of intelligence information that are available to Congress and the White House.

Feinstein asserted that the report's findings underscored how critical it is for the Republican-controlled intelligence committee to complete a long-delayed inquiry into the intelligence used by the White House to make its case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"This report goes to show that members of Congress were not seeing the same picture as the administration," she said. "When the Senate voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002, it was based on a more limited scope of prewar intelligence than was available to the administration."

Several post-invasion inquiries have found that U.S. intelligence agencies produced for the White House and Congress seriously flawed assessments on Iraq. The assessments erroneously concluded that Saddam was trying to revive a nuclear weapons programs and was hiding chemical and biological warfare stockpiles in violation of a U.N. ban.

Knight Ridder also has reported that the Bush administration relied on information that wasn't shared with Congress, including bogus claims by Iraqi defectors supplied by a former Iraqi exile group.

Also withheld from Congress was a discredited report by a now-defunct Pentagon unit that alleged that Saddam was cooperating with the al-Qaida terrorist network. No evidence of such a link has been found.



http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13416512.htm

[April15]

:link:

Print ThisGo BackGo to CBSNews.com Home
Rewriting The Science
July 30, 2006(CBS) This story originally aired on March 19, 2006.

As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But as correspondent Scott Pelley first reported last spring, this imminent scientist says that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.


Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it."

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

"There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen has a theory that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Restrictions like an e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.

"I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better," says Cicerone.

And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

"Climate change is really happening," says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: "Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all — the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple."

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled "not sufficiently reliable." It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future," President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. "We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it."

Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: "I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster."

Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

"I object to the fact that I’m not able to freely communicate via the media," says Hansen. "National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn’t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don’t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science."

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he’s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

"Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that you should be a spokesman for the administration?" asks Hansen. "I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can."

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians."

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet."

Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.

Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality."

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney."

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.

Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes “may be undergoing change.” “Uncertainty” becomes “significant remaining uncertainty.” One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.

"He was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. "He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout."


In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line “… the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. …” References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase “earth may be” undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn’t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

"Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says Piltz. "That’s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they’re retired or unless they’re ready to resign."

Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

"Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river," Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.

The Bush administration doesn’t deny global warming or that man plays a role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says what’s urgent now is action.

"We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions," Hansen explains. "And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we’ve got to be on a declining curve.

"If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don’t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we’re going to, that there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can’t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can’t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control."

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: "straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here."

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.

"I think we know a lot more about the tipping points," says Hansen. "I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets."

"You just used that word again that you’re not supposed to use — danger," Pelley remarks.

"Yeah. It’s a danger," Hansen says.


60 Minutes wanted to speak with the president's science advisor, John Marberger, but after making requests to his office over several months, his director of communications Don Tighe told 60 Minutes Marberger would never be available.

Two weeks after our story first aired, NASA adopted a new communications policy. NASA says scientists can speak out as long as they label their opinions as their own.


Produced By Catherine Herrick/Bill Owens ©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Feedback Terms of Service Privacy Statement
FAIR USE NOTICE: This posting may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The use of the material is to advance understanding of various issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

[April15]

BUSH; need I say more?

40 percent of the people are strongly Republican and 40 percent are strongly Democrat. Only dishonor or some other major event will move them to the other side. That means that every election is determined by the 20 percent of the voting public who don’t have strong views. The battle over the middle ground is nasty. Republicans have found that lying works well.

In political campaigns, the two parties fight for time on the six o'clock news. Whoever gets their sound bites heard wins. You can't rebut a day later. That's too late to fix all the damage.

The point is to make the people believe what you say and disbelieve what your opponent says. Here are the many ways this is done:

1) The end justifies the means: Republicans have no moral qualms about this. Their philosophy is that the end (Republican rule) justifies the means (lying to the electorate). Democrats, on the other hand, make their bread and butter off of their honesty and character, which makes them particularly vulnerable to character assassination.

2) Unfacts: Some statements sound like facts when they're really just opinions or at best half-facts. I call them unfacts. An unfact is a statement that sounds like a fact but isn't a fact. Most people can't recognize an unfact when they hear it. A few examples would be: "There is a growing threat of terrorism", "SUVs are safer than lighter vehicles", "family values are on the decline". If challenged on these points, you can easily defend them, because they're not real facts. Simply back up the unfact with another unfact! This can go on ad infinitum. Republicans never use a fact when an unfact will do the job just as well.

3) "Everything he just said is either untrue or incorrect": In a debate, it's best to start off by claiming that nothing the opponent says is correct. If you condemn everything in blanket statements, then even if some things are successfully refuted, some of the mud still sticks. Also, question the motives of the opponent. If the crowd loses faith in the opponent, he can say anything and they won't believe him.

4) Disarm your debating opponent: Many people are not capable of determining the truth of even a simple remark such as "the capital of Texas is Houston". This makes it easier to lie, because only a few people catch you in it even if you're bold about it. In a debate, a well-placed lie or unfact can disarm the opponent or color the way the audience interprets the remainder of the debate. If a statement can't be refuted immediately or is allowed to pass without comment, everything said afterwards will be interpreted differently. Even if the statement is refuted at a later time or in a different place, you've won this debate today.

5) Misguided Science: The Republicans create their agenda first, and then find a scientist to support it. Even if a thousand scientists agree that a particular set of scientific evidence is valid, there is always one scientist who says that it might be false. Republicans have found that they can effectively combat valid scientific claims by finding the one scientist who is willing to refute the claims of the thousand. On the 6 o'clock news, his opinion is given as much weight as the one supported by the scientific community. This is false science, because it isn't derived from the scientific community as a whole or from scientific research. Nevertheless, Republicans have begun saying, "It's not sound science" or "science doesn't support that" or "we can do this scientifically and protect the environment", etc. They've found that they can use Science as a rationale for supporting the conservative agenda simply because they know no matter what viewpoint they have, they can find a scientist willing to back any claim they care to make. Thus they promulgate lies – total fabrications - with the apparent backing of ostensibly reputable people.

6) Speaking to a crowd: If you want to be heard, first be understood; then be believed; always elicit an emotional reaction. Republicans know how to speak to crowds. They speak differently than Democrats. They speak to the less intelligent members of their audience, not the more intelligent listeners. They speak to the emotions of the audience, and thus have less need to prove facts. They speak fewer facts and more unfacts, thus have an easier time backing up what they say. They make their opinions sound like facts: e.g. "the police are overworked", "teachers are overpaid", or "Democrats rarely tell the truth".

7) Sleight of mouth: Republicans say they're doing one thing when they're really doing another thing. The classic example is the Clear Skies Initiative, which guts the Clean Air Act. The "Healthy Forests Initiative" hands stewardship of the forests over to the logging industry and allows renewed cutting of Old Growth. Saying he's helping the Environment, Bush destroys it. He said he wouldn't allow drilling in the National Parks and then allowed drilling in the Padre Island National Seashore.

Denigrate, exaggerate and ridicule: Exaggerate any crack in the Democratic defenses. A good example is Gore’s "invention" of the internet. Take what they say and exaggerate it to the point where it seems immoral or unpalatable. Make him deny it. The Republicans would love to have the air waves full of Democrats saying "I am not a crook".

9) Find the weak spot: Republicans are constantly perusing all public comments by democrats to find just one sentence that they can pull out of context and quote to make the democrat sound duplicitous.

10) Make him explain it: The American media crowd being what they are, they can be manipulated. With one well-placed sentence, a politician can cause his opponent to be hounded many times over by reporters asking him to explain it. Or worse, the opponent will feel it necessary to explain it over and over. It's not so much about "make him deny it", Richard Nixon’s favorite trick, but simply making the opponent spend all of his time explaining why the lies are not true instead of explaining his positions. The lies do double duty – first, they make the Democrats look bad, and second they make the Democrats waste all their time explaining how the Republican claims are false.

11) Make him deny it: Like a good game of chess, the aim of political debate is to quickly put the opponent on the defensive, and keep him there so that all of his energy is spent defending himself and refuting your statements, instead of making his points. When Republicans clearly state their policies, people vote for the Democrats instead. The Democrats must show the Republicans for what they are. A good example is "compassionate Conservatism" – an oxymoron. Republicans, when faced with a damning accusation or a withering piece of logic, will not debate it. Instead, they'll sling mud. Their goal, in any forum of debate, is not to let the listeners know the truth, but to destroy the opposition by any means possible. The truth takes a backseat to that because once the opposition is destroyed there's no need to explain the facts.

__________________

Default Re: Every American should know the 24 Ways Republicans Lie
Part 2
12) "Repeat after me!": Radio talk show hosts can say anything they want. In fact, that's their job. What they say can be a bald faced lie, it doesn't matter. The listeners believe and repeat everything they hear. When a radio talk show host makes statements of extreme opinion (unfacts), those unfacts are repeated as fact the next day in millions of conversations. Those unfacts are thrown up as facts millions of times thereafter during political discussions. In this way, the conservatives can spread all sorts of misinformation and yet disavow it if necessary. Since the unfacts are mean-spirited, misleading and one-sided, the radio talk show host wins merely by saying them once.

13) Create an Urban Legend, meme, catchphrase, or slogan: In much the same way as they repeat the radio talk show unfacts, the fans of the Conservative Right willingly promote new urban legends, memes, catchphrases and slogans. They're fans, so they accept without question the statements of the extremists whom they idolize.

14) Everyone knows ads lie: Advertising is the American way. You expect advertisers to lie. Often, when Republicans make their spiel, they're being like other advertisers trying to sell their products. People don’t mind this because they experience it hundreds of times a day in other advertising.

15) Say it again!: In its effect on the listener, repetition is almost like proof of a statement's validity. It helps if many people repeat the statement, but even if only one person (or a commercial) repeats something over and over, people believe it more each time they hear it. This is especially true if they don’t hear a rebuttal.

16) It's not just black and white: Imagine pouring water into two glasses: one you fill to the brim and the other you fill about a quarter full. Now imagine that those glasses of water are appropriations for protecting the environment or for destroying the environment. Republicans claim to be doing something for the environment because they fund environmental bills. In fact they're doing a lot less than the Democrats would on those things and a lot more on projects that are anti-environmental. This makes it difficult for the Democrats to say the Republicans don't care about the environment, etc. because the issue isn't a clear cut yes vs. no but rather is one of degrees. The Republicans support the environmental bill. They just don’t want to spend as much money as do the Democrats.

17) Sum of the Lies: Republicans promote many versions of disinformation on a topic, coming from many different sources. News network pundits, conservative celebrities and conservative radio talk show hosts add their versions of a story to the voices of legislators. By throwing out several versions of the story, they confuse the public about what is really the truth. The democrats give only one version – the true version. Of the many versions, only one is true. The law of averages says that the true version will be believed less often than the sum of the lies.

1 Dress up like a sheep: In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf dressed up like grandma to fool Little Red. Several times I've heard listeners call a radio talk show and say they were Democrats who voted for Gore, but in their opinion (insert a Republican viewpoint here). As a listener, you want to believe the person is who speaking truly, but you have no way of knowing based solely on the caller's comments. Often, if the talk show host follows up on the issue, the caller will reveal a deep conservative bias. But most often, the caller just makes his point and hangs up, leaving the audience thinking that liberals might possibly grant his warped viewpoint some credibility. This technique is especially insidious.

19) Bulldogs: Rarely does a member of Congress make a bald accusation of a public official, for the simple reason that their daily business is scratching each other's back and making compromises. The fewer enemies one makes the more one can get accomplished. But the Republicans have learned the value of bulldogs – people like Rush Limbaugh and George Will who will make those bold statements.

20) Gerrymandering: After the 2000 census, Republican-controlled state legislatures gerrymandered districts so that they'd be more Republican. In states controlled by Democrats, Republican judges overturned fair redistricting and told the legislators to redo the work so that Republicans had more representation.

21) Reverse bribery (buying votes): Since the Republicans won control of the federal House in 1994, legislative districts that voted Republican have received on average $600,000,000 more apiece than those that voted for the opposition.

22) Character Assassination #1: If you can paint your opponent as a liar, then he will never be believed again. The Republicans jumped on Al Gore early in the campaign, impugning his integrity in several ways. They said he said he "invented the internet". Gore should have defended himself. As a senator, he was there at the inception of the Internet, and did his part as a senator (not as a scientist) to give it the early impetus that it needed to get started. In addition, he saw its promise long before others did, and called it the "Information Superhighway". He never said "I invented the Internet". Instead of explaining his comments, he let people continue to think he’d made exaggerated claims. Journalists joined in on this feeding frenzy, which made it even worse.

23) Character Assassination #2: The best way to negate your opponent is to make people believe that he is of bad moral character, is stupid and misinformed, or has questionable motives.

In politics, lying is legal. It's been established in court that you can lie about your opponent and he can't sue you for it. If you can get people to stop listening to your opponent, then it won’t matter what he says. That's why half of all statements by Republican candidates are slanderous statements against the opponent. Casting aspersions on the opponent's moral character is one way to make people ignore the opponent.

24) Character Assassination #3: Play tag team politics. Republicans always pick on a single key Democrat – right now it's Tom Daschle, the senate Majority Leader. Later it will be the front-runner in the 2004 race – maybe John Kerry. They'd have a field day with Al Gore, of course...

Reporters, news networks such as Fox, conservative think tanks, columnists, radio talk show hosts, administration officials, as well as politicians bombard the public with lies about the one chosen target, on many issues, in many ways, in a constant barrage. In this way, the combined weight of all their lies is to destroy the target's reputation. Roger Hoppe
Vancouver WA http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/08/26_GOP_Lies.html

[PostmodernProphet]

help me recall....did AIG spend more on employee bonuses or on Democratic candidates....can we make AIG employees and Democrats BOTH give back the money?.......

[sgtdmski]

I think that since it is Senator Dodd who received some $268K in contributions, and it is his party that is doing the most of the crying on the TV, and it was him who protected the bonuses, he should be required to pay back all the contributions he received as well as to pay for the bonuses himself.

dmk

[sgtdmski]

AIG is an international company, recently there was talk about taxing the bonuses. I find that it may be an impossible tax, especially if the person is not an American Citizen and does not live in the US and is given that bonus.

Furthermore, since the bonus is part of a contract, any attempt not to pay may be considered a breach of the contract. If the person sues, then it will be the federal government that will be paying any cost of the verdict, which might include additional monies.

This seems to be a very slippery slope. But that is what happens when you decide to interfere in the workings of private industry. By doing the bailout, the government has set itself up for all these problems.

dmk

[glockmail]

BUSH; need I say more? More Bush bashing by you. What a surprise.

[Yurt]

doesn't aig hold congress' pension? if aig goes under, does congress lose their pension...

[hjmick]

doesn't aig hold congress' pension? if aig goes under, does congress lose their pension...

According to Snopes, AIG does not have anything to do with Congressional pensions.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/aig.asp

[DannyR]

doesn't aig hold congress' pension? if aig goes under, does congress lose their pension...Even in they did, they likely only manage the funds. The stocks and other assets the fund is based upon would still hold value.

My retirement is managed by Vanguard, but that doesn't mean if Vanguard goes under I lose it all. The mutual funds Vanguard owns is made up of investments in other companies.

[Kathianne]

Ummm, http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090318/pl_politico/30833


Dodd facing fresh political firestorm

Scorecard
1 hr 49 mins ago
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.

Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision.

“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill,” Dodd told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.
“But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”

Dodd had previously said that he played no role in writing the controversial language, and was not a part of the conference committee that inserted the language in the bill. As late as today, Dodd’s spokeswoman denied the senator’s involvement...

[Silver]

Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005


Congress doesn't see same intelligence as president, report finds

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush and top administration officials have access to a much broader ranger of intelligence reports than members of Congress do, a nonpartisan congressional research agency said in a report Thursday, raising questions about recent assertions by the president.

Bush has said that Democratic lawmakers who authorized the use of force against Iraq and now criticize the war saw the same pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he did.

The president made that claim in recent speeches about Iraq. Support for the war has decreased, and critics have said that the administration misled the country when it relied on erroneous intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs that supported its case for war and discarded information that undermined it.

"Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulating intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein," Bush said on Wednesday in his most recent speech. "These charges are pure politics."

The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: "The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods."

Unlike members of Congress, the president and his top officials also have the authority to ask U.S. intelligence agencies more extensively for follow-up information, the report said. "As a result, the president and his most senior advisers arguably are better positioned to assess the quality of the ... intelligence more accurately than is Congress."

The CRS report identified nine key U.S. intelligence "products" that aren't generally shared with Congress. These include the President's Daily Brief, a compilation of analyses that's given only to the president and a handful of top aides, and a daily digest on terrorism-related matters.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

The CRS produced the report in response to a query by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a critic of Bush's policy on Iraq. Feinstein asked about the kinds of intelligence information that are available to Congress and the White House.

Feinstein asserted that the report's findings underscored how critical it is for the Republican-controlled intelligence committee to complete a long-delayed inquiry into the intelligence used by the White House to make its case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"This report goes to show that members of Congress were not seeing the same picture as the administration," she said. "When the Senate voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002, it was based on a more limited scope of prewar intelligence than was available to the administration."

Several post-invasion inquiries have found that U.S. intelligence agencies produced for the White House and Congress seriously flawed assessments on Iraq. The assessments erroneously concluded that Saddam was trying to revive a nuclear weapons programs and was hiding chemical and biological warfare stockpiles in violation of a U.N. ban.

Knight Ridder also has reported that the Bush administration relied on information that wasn't shared with Congress, including bogus claims by Iraqi defectors supplied by a former Iraqi exile group.

Also withheld from Congress was a discredited report by a now-defunct Pentagon unit that alleged that Saddam was cooperating with the al-Qaida terrorist network. No evidence of such a link has been found.



http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13416512.htm

I wonder what intelligence they saw before Bush came along...

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCVZlLBchVE&feature=PlayList&p=8EC21C44DBC538FA&index=37
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhKLSaSOzA&feature=related
Video of Dem quotes on Saddam, WMD, and Iraq.....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyB_ldDMmFE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwDJRBOsj78&feature=PlayList&p=8EC21C44DBC538FA&index=38
Pelosi on Iraq WMD
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnjcofMFHsA&NR=1
Quotes on WMD....Democrats....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH93UlGHBfk&feature=related
John Kerry...found WMD in Iraq


Sorry...I didn't mean to hijack the thread...

[April15]

Prior to 1999 inspectors were given a hard time and shown nothing. After that when Bush was elected Saddam let the inspectors, like Hans Blick, see anything. Blick was confident there were no weapons left. Bush ignored those reports.

[Kathianne]

Prior to 1999 inspectors were given a hard time and shown nothing. After that when Bush was elected Saddam let the inspectors, like Hans Blick, see anything. Blick was confident there were no weapons left. Bush ignored those reports.

and you have the proof to back up that assertion, right? Waiting.

[Yurt]

Prior to 1999 inspectors were given a hard time and shown nothing. After that when Bush was elected Saddam let the inspectors, like Hans Blick, see anything. Blick was confident there were no weapons left. Bush ignored those reports.

blix, not blick

[Kathianne]

blix, not blick

and I'm still waiting...

[5stringJeff]

Both major parties are guilty of undermining liberty, in their own ways. The Democrats target people's wallets, which is much mroe visible. The GOP targets things like the right to a speedy trial, habeus corpus, etc. - the things that many of us don't pay much attention to.

[PostmodernProphet]

Prior to 1999 inspectors were given a hard time and shown nothing. After that when Bush was elected Saddam let the inspectors, like Hans Blick, see anything. Blick was confident there were no weapons left. Bush ignored those reports.

I'm sorry April, but that simply is not true......Saddam did not let Blick see everything, he blocked the UN inspectors every time they went out....Blick's reports up to and including the one he filed AFTER the war began clearly state that.....Blick didn't decide he was confident there were no weapons left until nearly six months after the war began.....

[April15]

and you have the proof to back up that assertion, right? Waiting.By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 18 March 2004
George Soros Webcast: "WMDs: Truth and Its Consequences" | 1 hr, 32 mins

BERKELEY – Speaking on the anniversary of the United States' invasion of Iraq, originally declared as a pre-emptive strike against a madman ready to deploy weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the man first charged with finding those weapons said that the U.S. government has "the same mind frame as the witch hunters of the past" — looking for evidence to support a foregone conclusion.

"There were about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find weapons of mass destruction," said Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat called out of retirement to serve as the United Nations' chief weapons inspector from 2000 to 2003; from 1981 to 1997 he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We went to sites [in Iraq] given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find something" - a stash of nuclear documents, some Vulcan boosters, and several empty warheads for chemical weapons. More inspections were required to determine whether these findings were the "tip of the iceberg" or simply fragments remaining from that deadly iceberg's past destruction, Blix said he told the United Nations Security Council. However, his work in Iraq was cut short when the United States and the United Kingdom took disarmament into their own hands in March of last year.

Blix accused U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair of acting not in bad faith, but with a severe lack of "critical thinking." The United States and Britain failed to examine the sources of their primary intelligence - Iraqi defectors with their own agendas for encouraging regime change - with a skeptical eye, he alleged. In the buildup to the war, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis were cooperating with U.N. inspections, and in February 2003 had provided Blix's team with the names of hundreds of scientists to interview, individuals Saddam claimed had been involved in the destruction of banned weapons. Had the inspections been allowed to continue, Blix said, there would likely be a very different situation in Iraq today. As it was, America's pre-emptive, unilateral actions "have bred more terrorism there and elsewhere."

Blix spoke with veteran CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall last night (March 17) in the most anticipated event of the Media At War conference currently under way on campus. The university's Graduate School of Journalism and the Human Rights Center organized the three-day conference to foster discussion of the challenges that U.S., European, and Middle Eastern reporters faced when covering the war for the past year, and to raise issues they should keep in mind as they report on the ongoing occupation, upcoming international war-crimes trials, and the country's anticipated regaining of sovereignty.

The Blix event was sold out several days in advance, and the crowd outside Zellerbach Hall included several people holding plaintive "Blix Tix?" signs more befitting a sold-out rock concert. As Journalism Dean Orville Schell said in his introduction for Blix, "Who would have thought a year ago that 2,000 people would come to hear a weapons inspector speak?"

Blix has written a new book, "Disarming Iraq," about the events leading up to the war. During that period he was lambasted by both doves and hawks: by the former for failing to state unequivocally that Iraq had no WMDs, and by the latter for failing to find them. As he explained Wednesday night, part of the problem was that he himself had believed the weapons probably existed. "I'm not here to have gut feelings," he said. "But yes, in December 2002 I thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." Still, "the objective was to inspect effectively and to report objectively."

The important thing to remember, Blix said repeatedly, was that Saddam was cooperating with the inspections, despite the difficulties they create for a leader. "No one likes inspectors, not tax inspectors, not health inspectors, not any inspectors," Blix chuckled. Not only did Saddam have to endure the indignity of submitting to searches of his palaces, he explained, but the dictator also harbored the valid fear that the inspectors would pass on their findings of conventional weapons to foreign intelligence agencies, providing easy future targets.

Blix tried hard to reassure the Iraqis about this concern. "Inspectors shouldn't be intertwined with intelligence," he emphasized. "There should be only one-way traffic: the intelligence groups give the inspectors tips on where to look, but they understand that there is no quid pro quo."

Amanpour brought up how Blix's credibility as an inspector had been attacked by Vice President Dick Cheney, among others, for his failure as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect Iraq's advanced nuclear weapons program, discovered only after the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Blix accepted responsibility for that failure, and said that the system of inspections had been vastly improved since then.

"Cosmetic inspection is worse than no inspection at all, because it can lull people into a false sense of security," he allowed. IAEA practiced a weak form of inspection until 1991, he explained, one that had been designed in the 1970s to check countries like Germany for compliance with nonproliferation laws, not for totalitarian regimes trying to build weapons in secrecy. As a result of the 1991 failure in Iraq, the IAEA had launched a systematic change in its protocols that were formally adopted in 1997.
Hans Blix
'[The Iraqis] didn't mind the suspicion from the neighbors - it was like hanging a sign on the door saying "Beware of the dog" when you don't have a dog.'
-Hans Blix

The primary difficulty with looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said Blix, was the "problem of proving the negative. For example, how can you prove that there is not a tennis ball in this room? Or that there is no anthrax in all of Iraq?" The United States and the United Kingdom wanted black-and-white answers, and instead they got "lots of shades of gray in the reports."

What Blix's inspectors had needed was more time, he emphasized. The Bush administration should have halted its military buildup in the area at 50,000 troops, the point at which the Iraqis had become much more cooperative, providing the lists of scientists and bureaucrats to Blix's team. "Given time, we would have been able to interview the many people who destroyed weapons of mass destruction after 1991," he told Amanpour.

Amanpour asked why, if those weapons had been destroyed, would Saddam have continued to let the world believe he still possessed them at the risk of losing his country? Blix surmised that the bluffing was a cheap and effective deterrent. "[The Iraqis] didn't mind the suspicion from the neighbors - it was like hanging a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the dog' when you don't have a dog," he speculated.

But instead the Bush administration continued to pour troops into the area, an ominous presence portending war. "Once there got to 250,000 troops sitting in the hot desert sun, there was a momentum built up that couldn't be halted," said Blix.

Amanpour pressed him to identify the source of that momentum - in effect, why did the U.S. invasion of Iraq seem in retrospect such a foreordained action? Partly it was because, despite the lack of evidence for remaining WMDs, the Bush administration continued to believe in them, Blix said. Although he places some of the blame on a failure of U.S. intelligence processes - the Pentagon relied too much on its own "silo" of sources rather than more heavily vetted intelligence from the CIA and the State Department, as has been documented extensively by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker - the real problem was the lack of "critical thinking," he argued.

"In academia, when you write your thesis, you have an opponent on the faculty and you must defend it. And in a court, there is cross-examination from the prosecutor," said Blix. But in the intelligence arena, because of the confidentiality of the subject matter, it is difficult to find those who will play devil's advocate. The Bush Administration, he said, did not try. "They took away the question marks [in the reports] and put in exclamation points instead!"

Blix did not rule out that even if inspections had been allowed to continue, military intervention in Iraq might still have been necessary. "I am not a pacifist," he said. But he is a lawyer and a diplomat, and he believes that it was the responsibility of the Security Council to uphold its own resolutions regarding Iraq, not the responsibility of one or two council members acting alone. Had Iraq resisted further inspections, or had they turned up evidence of another nuclear weapons program - the area Blix said that sanctions and inspections had been most effective in squelching - Security Council members Russia and China would most likely have voted for military action, giving it international legitimacy.

Blix speculated that the Bush administration's real motivation for invading Iraq was in reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "The U.S. was attacked on its own soil. I was here; it was like an earthquake in this country," he said. "It was as if Afghanistan was not enough."

Amanpour asked Blix to respond to a statement by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi defector who along with affiliated sources provided much of the faulty WMD intelligence. "We were heroes in error. Saddam is gone, the Americans are in Baghdad, and that's all that matters," she quoted Chalabi as having said. Blix called it a "cynical" statement, yet admitted that he was troubled by the idea that had he been allowed to continue his inspections, Saddam would probably have remained in power.

How to deal with such tyrants and failed states is the biggest challenge facing the world, Blix stated, echoing many other prominent diplomats and thinkers invited to speak by the Journalism School in the months past. He claimed that a global shift had occurred in the world's tolerance for genocide such as had occurred in Kosovo or Rwanda. Thanks in part to media attention, which brought the world's citizens closer to one another, he said he thought such acts would no longer be considered protected by state sovereignty, and that humanitarian intervention would be more common.

In a press conference held at Eshlemann Hall shortly before his interview with Amanpour, Blix had elaborated on this topic, citing the need to use the "carrot as well as the stick." Ironically, the man whose name is synonymous with the world's fears of nuclear, biological, or chemical annihilation says he has other concerns on his mind.

"Part of the hype is that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the 'greatest existential threat' - as I think Tony Blair put it," he said. "But to my mind, the north-south divide [between developed and emerging countries], the fact that hundreds of millions of people go hungry, the effects on the global environment, are just as big a threat," said Blix. "I personally am more worried about global warming than I am about WMDs."

[Silver]

I see you put all your faith for truth in George Soros and Hans Blix...
and that understandable....I won't insist you change your mind but I'd like to think you might use some intelligence of your own to THINK.

So lets examine some facts...

National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are United States federal government documents that are the authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on intelligence related to a particular national security issue. NIEs are produced by the National Intelligence Council and express the coordinated judgments of the United States Intelligence Community, the group of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. NIEs are classified documents prepared for policymakers.

16 U.S. intelligence agencies.....Do you understand that ????

These 16 agencies are what every President, Democrat or Republican, uses to base policy on....to access the threats to the country on....to access the danger to the world on.....

These NIEs by our own intell. agreed with the assessments of all the major intelligence agencys of France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, etc....the entire world believed Iraq was a danger and possessed WMD...the Dems had been saying that same thing for years, why?, because of our own NIE's and shared intell from other countries ALL AGREED that was the fact....

In the face of what happened to the WTC and other terrorists acts worldwide, what is the most prudent course of action?

Believe that Iraq wasn't a threat because Blix failed to find WMD?
or
Believe our 16 Intelligence Agencys, along with the rest of the worlds intelligence conclusions that Iraq had WMD ?
========================

NOW CONSIDER THE ACTUAL NIE, 4 months before........

[From October 2002 NIE]

Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and
restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as
well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if
left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during
this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these
Key Judgments.)

Iraq has maintained its
chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and
invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of
most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program.

Baghdad has exceeded UN range limits of 150 km with its
ballistic missiles and is working with unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), which allow for a more lethal means to
deliver biological and, less likely, chemical warfare agents.

If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad
it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a
year.
All agencies agree that about 25,000 centrifuges based on
tubes of the size Iraq is trying to acquire would be capable
of producing approximately two weapons' worth of highly
enriched uranium per year.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h072103.html

[PostmodernProphet]

By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 18 March 2004
George Soros Webcast: "WMDs: Truth and Its Consequences" | 1 hr, 32 mins

BERKELEY – Speaking on the anniversary of the United States' invasion of Iraq

it's true Blix changed his tune a year later.....but the week AFTER the war began he filed an official report with the UN which did NOT say he believed there were no WMD, but instead outlined Saddam's obstruction of the process of inspection......so tell me, was Blix lying in 2003 or in 2004?......

your proof is a fraud.....

here is what he said in Feb, 2003.....


By contrast, the task of "disarmament" foreseen in resolution 687 (1991) and the progress on "key remaining disarmament tasks" foreseen in resolution 1284 (1999) as well as the "disarmament obligations", which Iraq was given a "final opportunity to comply with" under resolution 1441 (2002), were always required to be fulfilled in a shorter time span. Regrettably, the high degree of cooperation required of Iraq for disarmament through inspection was not forthcoming in 1991. Despite the elimination, under UNSCOM and IAEA supervision, of large amounts of weapons, weapons-related items and installations over the years, the task remained incomplete, when inspectors were withdrawn almost 8 years later at the end of 1998.

If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament - under resolution 687 (1991) - could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided. Today, three months after the adoption of resolution 1441 (2002), the period of disarmament through inspection could still be short, if "immediate, active and unconditional cooperation" with UNMOVIC and the IAEA were to be forthcoming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/14/iraq.unitednations1

[Classact]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUXx8nkgB7U

If the government can take this money by targeted attacks on individuals with contractual agreements to receive this money, there is NOTHING that you have as an American that they cannot take away.I watched the hearings yesterday with an open mind and found nothing but closed minds in congress.

Here is what the CEO stated clearly: The section management of AIG that caused the downfall of AIG has been fired. No bonuses have been paid for any AIG department. Within the AIG Branch that was responsible for AIG's and the world's credit failure that dealed with the toxic asset insurance are three distinct sections... the section that was awarded "retention bonuses" in question were assigned a mission of disposing of toxic assets (the problem) and these employees were doing an ass kicking job of reducing the AIG exposure sheding over a trillion dollars of the junk paper. The CEO didn't explain "retention bonuses" well but here is what I took away... AIG realized their problem of having too much exposure in insuring toxic paper so they beefed up a sales department to sell, or otherwise remove the toxic paper off the books of AIG... in doing so they offered the "section management" incentives ... that is to say they were hired at minimum wage and offered a carrot of great bounuses if they were successful in ridding AIG of the toxic paper... the use of "retention" bonuses in this method of income was not to retain them after the job was done but rather to incentivize them to do the job with gusto, in fact these employees were working to end their employment... when the pile of rocks was moved their reason for employment ended... the company, AIG wanted the pile of rocks moved at a very fast pace and offered bounuses to work fast and work hard to that end.

The Obama administration cannot put the above into words ... the Republicans don't want to because they are happy to see the Obama administration looking ignorant in public and the press wont even try because the entire American population already has their minds made up that these people are robbing tax dollars. The people who moved the rocks fast are in fact an asset to AIG and the American economy because until the rocks are gone AIG will continue to need financial help or fail. Many of the managers of the rock moving section quit as any of you would do if you were in the same situation and this caused the president to run off to CA to pretend he is running for office as congress acted like an angry mob with torches and pitchforks looking for the over paid rock movers... it's total insanity!

[PostmodernProphet]

any idea where the rocks were moved to?.......did they just go to the next group of businesses we need to bail out?.......

[Mr. P]

any idea where the rocks were moved to?.......did they just go to the next group of businesses we need to bail out?.......

Fanny & Freddie?

[Classact]

any idea where the rocks were moved to?.......did they just go to the next group of businesses we need to bail out?.......No, the CEO wasn't given the light of day to explain anything. It seems to me that there are a lot of corporations holding the same stuff... GE for example sold off tremendously and now is pricing back up without any public knowledge of how much toxic paper they hold... it seems to me that the Treasury doesn't want to share with the public who owns the bad paper because it would scare the hell out of the market.

I guess these guys could be moving the rocks by offering them at a bargin to private people or other corporations... spreading the debt around with the sales pitch that when the economy recovers the price on realestate will rise allowing a potential profit on the now toxic insured paper. Guess the sales is based on the fact that only 10% is bad paper so if the housing/economy recover 90% will make you rich... I don't trust anything done in the dark and I'm guessing AIG is selling the stuff to Fanny and Freddy with a wink from Obama.

[sgtdmski]

Like it or not this all goes to the Stimulus Bill. You remember that don't you. The bill rushed through Congress in which no one had time to read the entire 1100 some page report.

The same bill that despite guarantees from the President that he would allow the American people five days to read before signing, which he never did.

Perhaps if someone took the time to read the bill this error would have been corrected. But alas, no one was given the time.

And now the very people that allowed these bonuses to be paid are railing against it. Hmmm, whose fault is this, very simply the blame can all be placed on the President of the United States and the United States Congress.

Here's a novel idea, since they are to blame and they want to tax 90% of the bonuses, why don't we the people demand that they also tax 99.99% of their pay until they have repaid the amount in bonuses given.

Perhaps that will teach them to read before they vote the next time.

And for the man that inserted the language into the bill, well I am sure that after impeaching a little jail time wouldn't be out of the question, bribery is a crime.

dmk

[Yurt]

Like it or not this all goes to the Stimulus Bill. You remember that don't you. The bill rushed through Congress in which no one had time to read the entire 1100 some page report.

The same bill that despite guarantees from the President that he would allow the American people five days to read before signing, which he never did.

Perhaps if someone took the time to read the bill this error would have been corrected. But alas, no one was given the time.

And now the very people that allowed these bonuses to be paid are railing against it. Hmmm, whose fault is this, very simply the blame can all be placed on the President of the United States and the United States Congress.

Here's a novel idea, since they are to blame and they want to tax 90% of the bonuses, why don't we the people demand that they also tax 99.99% of their pay until they have repaid the amount in bonuses given.

Perhaps that will teach them to read before they vote the next time.

And for the man that inserted the language into the bill, well I am sure that after impeaching a little jail time wouldn't be out of the question, bribery is a crime.

dmk

good point.

can anyone tell me where this comes from and when is the last time it was done:

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

[sgtdmski]

good point.

can anyone tell me where this comes from and when is the last time it was done:

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

It was a campaign promise from the Great One himself. He would sign no bill until 5 days were given for the American public to read the bill.

Personally I am still waiting for the 5 days to read any of the bills passed by this Congress. So far the 5 day period has not been allowed for a single one of them.

dmk

[Yurt]

It was a campaign promise from the Great One himself. He would sign no bill until 5 days were given for the American public to read the bill.

Personally I am still waiting for the 5 days to read any of the bills passed by this Congress. So far the 5 day period has not been allowed for a single one of them.

dmk

true, he did promise that, but the phrase i italicized is directly from the constitution....

[Classact]

any idea where the rocks were moved to?.......did they just go to the next group of businesses we need to bail out?.......Yesterday I heard that as we worry about the bonuses... AIG gave several billions of US tax dollars to German and French banks... from the same group of billions of US tax dollars that paid the bonuses... it seems the Germans and the French banks were given several billions in order that they could buy the toxic AIG paper at ten cents on the dollar as we are distracted by bonuses for those selling the toxic paper to the French and German banks for our free tax dollars.

[Kathianne]

Yesterday I heard that as we worry about the bonuses... AIG gave several billions of US tax dollars to German and French banks... from the same group of billions of US tax dollars that paid the bonuses... it seems the Germans and the French banks were given several billions in order that they could buy the toxic AIG paper at ten cents on the dollar as we are distracted by bonuses for those selling the toxic paper to the French and German banks for our free tax dollars.

It's money laundering and the Fed was in on it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123725551430050865.html


MARCH 17, 2009
The Real AIG Outrage
President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses. He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout.

Taxpayers have already put up $173 billion, or more than a thousand times the amount of those bonuses, to fund the government's AIG "rescue." This federal takeover, never approved by AIG shareholders, uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions. After months of government stonewalling, on Sunday night AIG officially acknowledged where most of the taxpayer funds have been going.

Since September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks, municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world. This includes at least $20 billion to European banks. The list also includes American charity cases like Goldman Sachs, which received at least $13 billion. This comes after months of claims by Goldman that all of its AIG bets were adequately hedged and that it needed no "bailout." Why take $13 billion then? This needless cover-up is one reason Americans are getting angrier as they wonder if Washington is lying to them about these bailouts.

* * *
Given that the government has never defined "systemic risk," we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And in some cases it's not even American. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company....

[Yurt]

where is the liberal outrage over dollars going overseas to other banks? either they are mindless drones who pay attention only to what their guide, MSM, tells them, or they approve.