Tag: Fox News

Bush Vetoes Children’s Health Insurance Bill Again

Jon Ponder

No fanfare. George Bush vetoed this one in private:

President Bush vetoed legislation Wednesday that would have expanded government-provided health insurance for children, his second slap-down of a bipartisan effort in Congress to dramatically increase funding for the popular program.

It was Bush’s seventh veto in seven years – all but one coming since Democrats took control of Congress in January. Wednesday was the deadline for Bush to act or let the bill become law. The president also vetoed an earlier, similar bill expanding the health insurance program.

The Associated Press says that of the 43 million uninsured people nationwide, over 6 million are under the age of 18, which is almost 10 percent of all U.S. children.

Democrats plan to extend the current State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) program, as is, into next year and then force Bush to veto it again during the election campaign.

Source: Federal Prosecutor Says Some CIA Torture Videos Were Not Destroyed

Jon Ponder

Why Hasn’t Mukasey Called for Preservation of Evidence in Torture Video Scandal?

Within hours, if not minutes, after the CIA announced it destroyed two videos made in 2002 of its agents torturing al Qaida suspects, Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey should have ordered the CIA and all federal agencies to preserve any evidence related to the filming of torture sessions involving terror suspects.

The silence and inaction on the preservation of evidence in this unfolding scandal by Bush’s new attorney general suggests what many suspected — that Michael Mukasey, like his predecessor Alberto Gonzales, is more concerned with the political preservation of his boss than he is the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States.

Over the weekend, the urgent need for this order was underscored by the development that other videos of other torture sessions may exist:

Prosecutor in trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui informs judges that he viewed two videos of al-Qaida suspects’ interrogations two months ago that government told court in 2003 it didn’t have — and CIA chief said were destroyed

A letter by a Virginia-based U.S. attorney to a federal appeals court appears to contradict CIA Director Michael Hayden’s public statements on the destruction of hundreds of hours of video footage of “extreme” interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives by strongly indicating that at least two of the videos still exist.

Charles Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that his office viewed two videotapes of CIA interrogations of al-Qaida suspects as recently as September 19 and October 18 of this year — contrary to Hayden’s statement that the tapes were destroyed in 2005.

The CIA’s announcement that the videos had been destroyed, brought to mind the revelation by the White House last spring that as many as 5 million inter-office emails had been “lost.” It is likely that emails contained evidence that top Bush officials, including especially Karl Rove, engaged in a conspiracy to leak, and then cover up the leak, of the secret identity of Valerie Wilson, a CIA specialist in the black market for terror weapons.

Anyone who is familiar with the fundamentals of data storage can attest that it takes a concerted effort to “lose” data stored on hard drives. This is especially so for emails, which are stored on hard drives of both the sender and the receiver as well as on outgoing and incoming email servers.

The videos, like the emails, were presumably in digital format rather than old-fashioned videotape. If so, it is more than likely that multiple backup copies were created, which increases the chance that additional copies could still exist on a disk somewhere.

Of course, the CIA has had plenty of time to track down and obliterate backup copies of the torture videos, just as White House officials have had more than sufficient time now — eight months at least — to scour and wipe clean the hard drives on which the 5 million emails were stored.

This returns us to the main question: Where is Mukasey? His silence and inaction on the preservation of evidence in this unfolding scandal suggests what many suspected — that Michael Mukasey, like his predecessor Alberto Gonzales, is more concerned with the political preservation of his boss than he is the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States.

Thanks to Bush & GOP, U.S. Debt Is Growing at $1 Mil Per Minute

Jon Ponder

This ought to drive a stake through the heart of the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative.

According to the Associated Press, after seven years of mismanagement by George Bush and 12 years of Republican dominance of the Senate and control of the House, the national debt of the United States is now expanding by $1.4 billion per day and $1 million per minute:

What’s that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States…

[The] government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

By the time Bush is scheduled to leave office in January 2009, the debt will be $10 trillion, which is $10,000,000,000,000.00.

It’s Not O.K. to Say “Merry Christmas” To Us

Trish

As part of Pensito Review’s War on Christmas during this, the holiest of all shopping seasons*, we want everyone to know it’s not O.K. to say “Merry Christmas” to us. Save it. Zip it. Nip it.

The “It’s O.K. to Say Merry Christmas to Me” merchandising campaign has pushed us, when commanded on how to observe this holiday, from simply wincing on behalf of non-Christians, to groaning and rolling our eyes on behalf of reasonable people, to all-out open hostilities, as they say in the military, which incidentally, fights real wars.

We find the latest gambit from the Focus on the Fambly folks, whose revenues during 2005 were nearly $140 million, especially repellent. Through its Alliance Defense Fund (2004 revenues: $18 million), it claims an astounding 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. That would be a huge jump from Oct., 2005, when a Harper’s article identified considerably fewer Christians in this country.

Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian…a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week.

But, Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Other, we evidently loves us some Christmas!

We’re not buying it — literally. We personally know both Christians and Non who do not celebrate the birth of Christ, or more accurately, Cool, Now What Else Did You Get Me Day.

What those who use the holiday to ostracize people who choose to do something else on Dec. 25 is really all about is apparent from the ADF “It’s O.K.” web site. “Products” is listed first in the home page navigation, followed by “Donate,” “E-Card,” “Your Rights,” “Attacks on Christmas” and “Legal Request.”

My favorite is the rip-off (can you rip off a rip-off?) site “itsoktosay.com.” It offers design-free t-shirts with the hostile phrase, along with the complaint, “IT’S HIS BRITHDAY AND YOU CANT EVEN SAY HIS NAME!” Maybe they should ask Santa for a spell checker this Xmas.

* Thanks, Earline Gilley

Report: GOP Initiative To ‘Steal’ White House Is Lagging But Still Viable

Jon Ponder

Organizers Appear to Have Time to Make Up Shortfalls in Donations and Signatures

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Republican-backed effort to give about 20 of California’s 55 Electoral College votes next year is lagging both in fundraising and in the number of signatures required to place the measure on the ballot next June:

As deadlines came and went, backers of [the initiative] continued struggling Friday to gather enough signatures to place the measure before voters.

Organizers had set this week as a deadline for wrapping up their petition drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29.

Campaign manager Dave Gilliard said that agents would work through the weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June’s ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek.

The report says Gilliard is “less than certain” that paid signature collectors hired by the campaign would meet their goal 700,000 names this week. The 300,000 “extra” names are needed to replace invalid signatures that will be tossed out during the next step: vetting of the names and addresses by election officials in local districts.

Gilliard also told the Times that fundraising goals have not been met:

Tapping some Republican stalwarts, proponents have raised more than $1 million; the actual figure won’t become public for several days. But Gilliard said $200,000 to $250,000 more was needed to pay circulators for the signatures they have gathered.

“Until it is the bank, I don’t want to make any pronouncements,” he said.

According to the California Secretary of State’s website, the deadline for the initiative is Feb. 8, 2008, so despite the current difficulties, it appears there is technically enough time for organizers to meet both their signature-gathering and fundraising goals.

If the initiative passes and goes into effect next November, the 20 or so Electoral votes ceded to the Republican nominee — roughly the equivalent to those of the state of Ohio — would more than enough to “win” the presidency.

The life cycle of this initiative has been plagued with scandal. In October, a previous version was withdrawn after the lead organizer discovered that the campaign’s only anonymous donor was a major back of Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

[…]

As Mayor, Giuliani Used Police as Limo Service for Mistress

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, we learned that when he was mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani played a shell game to hide from taxpayers — and his scornful wife — the cost of dragging his security details along when he traveled out to Long Island to visit his then-girlfriend, Judith Nathan. Now comes news that he assigned a car and driver from the NYPD to Nathan during their affair:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

“She used the PD as her personal taxi service,” said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

The former city officials said Giuliani expanded the budget for his security detail at the time. Politico.com reported yesterday that many of the security expenses were initially billed to obscure city agencies, effectively hiding them from oversight.

Last December, Alan G. Hevesi, the New York State Comptroller, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government and resigned his position after it was revealed that he had detailed a state employee to attend his wife, who was an invalid:

Mr. Hevesi, the state’s top fiscal watchdog, told the court in a hoarse voice that one of the state workers he had assigned as a driver for his wife, Carol, had done much more than provide security for her. Prosecutors filed court papers revealing that the worker had also watered her plants, driven her to Bloomingdale’s and dropped off her dry cleaning.

In addtion to pleading guilty to a felony, Hevesi paid a fine of $5,000 and reimbursed the state for $206,000.

No word as of yet whether New York’s Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, will look into allegations that Giuliani used public employees to carry out personal services for him and his girlfriend.

War On Xmas Breaks Out In Arizona

Buck Banks

xmas20062.jpg

Janet Napolitano, governor of Arizona, this week lighted a large piece of green vegetation festooned with shiny things in a ceremony in the lobby of the Capitol Tower in Phoenix. She called it a “holiday tree.” But unlike most people who think such things should be called by another name, Napolitano is accepting of differing points of view:

“I think we’re celebrating a number of holidays,” the governor responded Wednesday, while acknowledging that only one religion — Christianity — has a holiday associated with a tree.

“You can call it whatever you want,” she responded.

As you might well imagine, the 150 comments on the Arizona Star article were, for the most part, much less tolerant.

Rove’s Latest Outrageous Lie: Says Congress Rushed Bush into War

Jon Ponder

First some ancient history: In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration was preoccupied with ramming its Iraq war resolution through Congress. It wasn’t that they needed the resolution to go to war. Not hardly.

What the Bush team wanted was to get the Congress on the record about the war before the midterm elections that November — in particular the resolution was intended to cause a rift between bloodthirsty voters back home and antiwar Democrats in the House. They also hoped to use votes for the resolution by Democratic senators who might run against Bush in 2004, including Sens. Kerry, Clinton, Edwards and Lieberman, to name a few, as a wedge issue to separate them from their liberal base.

The war resolution was part of a “marketing campaign,” as Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, referred to it, that had been put together by the Iraq Study Group, an elite corps inside the West Wing that included, among others, Karl Rove.

Last Wednesday, a mere five years after helping ram the war resolution through Congress, Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and rewrote history as brazenly as it has ever been done:

[…]

Huckabee’s Record: Freed a Rapist Who Became a Killer, Destroyed Gov’t Hard Drives, Misappropriated Funds, Raised Taxes

Jon Ponder

Recent polls show that Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and Baptist preacher, is rising in popularity in Iowa, where he is cutting into Mitt Romney’s lead. (Romney has 28 percent, Huckabee has 24 percent in the ABC news survey; Romney is at 27 percent and Huckabee’s at 18 percent in the local KCCI-TV poll.) He’s also moving up in in Florida, where he’s running second to Rudolph Giuliani, 26 percent to 17 percent — leaving good ol’ boy actor Fred Thompson in fifth place with 9 percent.

With Thompson’s campaign fading, Huckabee becomes the last best hope for the GOP’s Christian nationalist base. Unlike Thompson, Huckabee is authentically one of them. He believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and says he does not believe in evolution. He wants to amend the Constitution to outlaw abortion, and he is the only candidate who has smeared a gay person in the debates, so far.

But Mike Huckabee comes with some serious baggage, and with his rise in the polls comes new scrutiny of his record as governor Arkansas, both in the media and by his opponents, who are quickly finding his record in Little Rock to be what opposition researchers might call a “target-rich environment.”

The scandals associated with the Huckabee administration in Arkansas include:

  • A rapist released at Huckabee’s behest who went on to murder his next victim
  • Accusations that Huckabee and his family misappropriated tax-payer funds for personal use
  • The charge that at the end of his term, Huckabee ordered the destruction of government computers worth over $300,000, apparently to obstruct possible future investigations
  • While he was governor, the state of Arkansas raised taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars

Details follow:

[…]

Fox Anchor: Traitor Who Betrayed US Anti-Terror Secrets Deserves a Medal

Jon Ponder

In 1999, former Pres. George Bush famously said, “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

John Gibson, the Fox News anchor, takes an opposite view. He says he wants to “give a medal” to the Bush officials who deliberately jeopardized a top-secret, well-established CIA program that tracked the sales of weapons of mass destruction in black markets worldwide.

Why would a rightwinger like Gibby want to pin a medal on these traitors? Because the traitors are Republicans — a cabal led by Dick Cheney and that included Karl Rove and Scooter Libby — while the covert agent in charge of the CIA’s top secret WMD tracking program, Valerie Plame Wilson, made a campaign donation to Al Gore in 1999.

In her 20 years as a spy for the United States, Agent Wilson worked for a front business, an oil industry consulting firm called Brewster Jennings and Associates. She frequently traveled overseas where she developed a network of secret “assets” — foreign nationals who provided her with inside knowledge on the movement of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons and materials in the worldwide terrorist black market.

The CIA will not say, of course, how many of these foreign assets were compromised, killed, wounded or kidnapped and tortured as a result of Cheney’s treasonous conspiracy to forfeit them by exposing Agent Wilson’s covert identity.

And only time will tell how many weapons of mass destruction were transported undetected because Agent Wilson’s network was compromised — and whether one or more of these weapons will be used to attack the United States.

But none of that matters to Republicans like John Gibson and his cohorts at Fox News and in the Bush White House, whose patriotism is a fake as the made-in-China American flags pinned to their lapels. Gibson’s remarkable statement advocating giving a medal to Rove, Cheney and Libby — the “most insidious of traitors” who betrayed vital national secrets — exposes him for what he is: an ideologue who puts his party ahead of his country even at the risk of national security.