151 Congressmen Derive Financial Profit From War

151 Congressmen Derive Financial Profit From War

Blood money stains the hands of more than 25% of members of the U.S. House and Senate

By Ralph Forbes

Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq.

According to the latest reports, 151 members of Congress invested close to a quarter-billion in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than $275.6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to FedSpending.org, a website of the watchdog group OMBWatch.

Congressmen gave themselves a loophole so they only have to report their assets in broad ranges. Thus, they can be off as much as 160 percent. (Try giving the IRS an estimate like that.) In 2004, the first full year after the present Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers—both hawks and doves—invested between $74.9 million and $161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. In 2006 Democrats had at least $3.7 million invested in the defense sector alone, compared to the Republicans’ “only” $577,500. As the war raged on, so did the billions of profits—and personal investments by Congress members in war contractors, which increased 5 percent from 2004 to 2006.

Investments in these contractors yielded Congress members between $15.8 million and $62 million in personal income from 2004 through 2006, through dividends, capital gains, royalties and interest. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who are two of Congress’s wealthiest members, were among the lawmakers who garnered the most income from war contractors between 2004 and 2006: Sensenbrenner got at least $3.2 million and Kerry reaped at least $2.6 million.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts.

War hawk Sen. Joe Lieberman (IConn.), chairman of the defense-related
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had at least $51,000 invested in these companies in 2006.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who voted for Bush’s war, had stock in defense companies, such as Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon, but sold the stock in May 2007.

Of the 151 members whose investments are tied to the “defense” (war)
industry, as far as we know, not one of them offered to donate their bloodstained profits to the national treasury to offset the terrible debt they have imposed. Has one of them even offered to donate one cent of their war profits to lessen the debt that increases more than $1 million a minute?

When our boys and girls are wounded the government bills them to return their reenlistment bonus. They have to return any pay they received while they were hospitalized. They have to pay for their helmets and uniforms that are destroyed in the hell of war. But they keep on fighting for these politicians’ right to keep their war profits.

• Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $3,001,006 to $5,015,001
• Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) $250,001 to $500,000
• Rep. Kenny Ewell Marchant (R-Tex.) $162,074 to $162,074
• Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) $100,870 to $100,870
• Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) $65,646 to $65,646
• Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) $50,008 to $227,000
• Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) $50,001 to $100,000
• Rep. Stephen Ira Cohen (D-Tenn.) $45,003 to $150,000

Ready for a chase scene ?

Typically, chase scenes feature someone running after a bad guy and trying to catch them.

Here's one where the tables get turned, and running away starts to look exceptionally good.

All I know, is I'm not chasing THIS guy if anyone asks me - I'm calling in sick that day.

Watch it, and you'll know why.


Crazy Escape Jumps - The funniest videos clips are here

The scandal you may never hear a word about in the USA

If you click on the above link, you can read a rather interesting story that's not making it to public attention in the America.

It was published in the American Conservative, and written by a ex-CIA agent, that should raise some eyebrows.

It concerns some allegations, serious ones, that the third highest ranking person at the State Department has some rather interesting connections.

Found in Translation

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.

by Philip Giraldi

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.

Her allegations are not insignificant. Edmonds claims that Marc Grossman—ambassador to Turkey from 1994-97 and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2001-05—was a person of interest to the FBI and had his phone tapped by the Bureau in 2001 and 2002. In the third-highest position at State, Grossman wielded considerable power personally and within the Washington bureaucracy. He had access to classified information of the highest sensitivity from the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon, in addition to his own State Department. On one occasion, Grossman was reportedly recorded making arrangements to pick up a cash bribe of $15,000 from an ATC contact. The FBI also intercepted related phone conversations between the Turkish Embassy and the Pakistani Embassy that revealed sensitive U.S. government information was being sold to the highest bidder. Grossman, who emphatically denies Edmonds’s charges, is currently vice chairman of the Cohen Group, founded by Clinton defense secretary William Cohen, where he reportedly earns a seven-figure salary, much of it coming from representing Turkey.

After 9/11, Grossman reportedly intervened with the FBI to halt the interrogation of four Turkish and Pakistani operatives. According to Edmonds, Grossman was called by a Turkish contact who told him that the men had to be released before they told what they knew. Grossman said that he would take care of it and, per Edmonds, the men were released and allowed to leave the country.

Edmonds states that FBI phone taps from late 2001 reveal that Grossman tipped off his Turkish contact regarding the CIA weapons proliferation cover unit Brewster Jennings, which was being used by Valerie Plame, and that the Turk then informed the Pakistani intelligence service representative in Washington. It is to be assumed that the information was then passed on to the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

Edmonds also claims that Grossman was instrumental in seeding Turkish and Israeli Ph.D. students into major American research labs by godfathering visas and enabling security clearances. She says that she reviewed transcripts in which the moles in the U.S. military and academic community involved in nuclear technology reportedly carried out several “transactions” involving the sale of nuclear material or information relating to nuclear programs every month, with Pakistan being a primary buyer. In the summer of 2000, the FBI recorded a meeting between a Turkish official and two Saudi businessmen in Detroit in which nuclear information stolen from an Air Force base in Alabama was offered: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000,” the wiretap allegedly recorded. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” Edmonds told the Times.

She further reports that beginning in 1999, the FBI was investigating senior Pentagon officials who were assisting agents of foreign governments, including Turkey and Israel. Edmonds has not publicly named names at the Pentagon, but a website linked to her appears to be a non-incriminating instrument for identifying suspects without doing so directly. Its “rogues gallery” includes photos of Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Perle was chief of the Pentagon’s prestigious Defense Policy Board when Edmonds was working at the FBI, and Feith was undersecretary of defense for policy. If either were being investigated, it would be a matter of record, as would any reasons for dropping the investigation. “If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” Edmonds told the Times.

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It’s true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.
_________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistrar

Now, let's look at Marc Grossman for a minute.

Plamegate

In Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on October 28, 2005, Grossman is the Under Secretary of State mentioned as giving information about Plame to Libby.

George W. Bush

Grossman was appointed by and served President Bush as Under Secretary for Political Affairs from 2001 to 2005. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 23, 2001 and sworn in as Under Secretary .

Douglas J. Feith

Grossman and Feith worked in cooperation as part of the Bush Administration, loyalist team.

General Mahmound Ahmad

General Mahmoud Ahmad was in the U.S. on September 11. He arrived on the 4th on a "routine visit." It was confirmed by news sources that Ahmad met with a number of U.S. officials including Grossman.

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=5012&name=Marc-Grossman

That's a pretty interesting trail.

Even more alarming is the reason Edmonds approached the Times with the story, "after reading about an al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey." That's a reference to this Nov. 2 story in the Times, which details the career of a top al-Qaeda kingpin, one Louai al-Sakka, who claims to have trained several of the 9/11 hijackers at a camp situated outside Istanbul in the resort area of the Yalova mountains.

Now that's curious: a Muslim fundamentalist training camp in a country run by a fanatically secular military that would normally not tolerate such activities. As the Times puts it: "Turkish intelligence were aware of unusual militant Islamic activity in the Yalova mountains, where Sakka had set up his camps. But they posed no threat to Turkey at the time."

Not a threat to Turkey, eh? All too true: the terrorists' target was the U.S. The al-Qaeda recruits trained by Sakka were specifically chosen by the top leadership of al-Qaeda – i.e., bin Laden – to carry out the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. That they were nurtured and steeled for their mission under the noses of our NATO allies in Ankara seems bizarre – until one begins to take Sibel Edmonds seriously. Then the whole horrifying picture starts to fall into place.

The darkest secrets of 9/11 are buried at the end of the trail laid out in Edmonds' testimony. As Luke Ryland, the world's foremost expert on the Edmonds case, writes:

"The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks – including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the U.S. because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.

"Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept. facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12166

Here's the full story, as posted on Times Online :

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

How do you say Chernobyl in Farsi ?

If the neocons do get their way, and attack Iran soon, we all have something to look forward to:

The neo-conservatives for their part are plugging a new "shock and awe" in a slightly watered down version - the destruction of no less than 1,200 Iranian military/nuclear targets in a mere three days (no attacks on civilian infrastructure are mentioned).

The to-be-destroyed list certainly includes the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant; the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz; a heavy-water and radioisotope plant in Arak; the nuclear fuel unit in Ardekan; the uranium conversion and nuclear technology center in Isfahan; the Tehran Nuclear Research Center; the Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production plant; and the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories. No one of course is talking about "collateral damage", or the fact that hundreds of Russian experts may be obliterated in Bushehr (how about that as a declaration of war?), or the fact that hundreds of thousands of civilian residents of fabled Isfahan may become victims of radiation provoked by US mini-nukes.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/middle_east/ii07ak05.html

Russia backs Iran nuclear rights

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has offered qualified support for Iran's nuclear programme on a visit to Tehran.

Mr Putin told journalists that "peaceful nuclear activities must be allowed" and cautioned against using force to resolve the dispute over Iran.

But he was evasive when asked whether the Bushehr nuclear plant Russia is building would be finished on time or if Moscow would supply nuclear fuel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7046258.stm


As for Russian shipments of fuel there ?

17 December 2007

Russia ships nuclear fuel to Iran

Russia has delivered its first shipment of nuclear fuel to a reactor it is helping to build at Bushehr in Iran.

The two sides reached agreement last week on a schedule to finish building the plant after years of delays.

The UN has demanded that Iran halt uranium enrichment but has approved the Russian nuclear fuel deliveries.

US President George W Bush supported the move, but said it proved "the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich" uranium for themselves.

'Threat to peace'

The Russian company building the Bushehr plant, Atomstroiexport, said the delivery of the enriched uranium fuel began on Sunday.

The head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, later confirmed that the first delivery had arrived, according to Iran's state-run Irna news agency.

There are two pressurised water reactors at the Bushehr site, one of which is reportedly near completion and likely to be the first major Iranian reactor to begin generating electricity, possibly by mid-2008.

Russian officials have previously said the plant could be operational within six months of fuel being delivered.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7147463.stm


Hitting an operational nuclear reactor ? How do you say Chernobyl in Farsi ? That risks contaminating a vast area with radioactivity, and that should drive gas prices to about double what they are right now as a result. Bushehr is right on the Persian Gulf, and guess where all that oil has to go through ?

Bushehr (Bushir), a major city and one of Iran's chief ports, is located 400 kilometers south of Tehran, in south-eastern Iran on the Persian Gulf.

Check out where it is on this map :

http://www.maplandia.com/iran/bushehr


That plant's going to be operational very soon. Those fuel rods being shipped is a key indicator that it's almost online and it's reactor is ready to be used. There would be no need to ship them there so soon, otherwise.

Once Bushehr IS operational - then hitting it is going to cause one HELL of a mess.

When American Conservatives are Liberals ...

Here's an interesting observation.

We've all heard about how liberals are getting in the way of winning the Iraq war by their opposition to it. They are denying the improving conditions there to suit their agenda.

Here's what's fascinating......

"The American Conservative" magazine, Pat Buchanan's baby, is against it too.

We will be different.

Many voices will appear in the pages of The American Conservative — often in disagreement with one another. We are of course in considerable part Buchananite—well disposed to the web of ideas that drew millions of voters during three Buchanan presidential bids. But our magazine’s mission is broader: to ignite the conversation that conservatives ought to have engaged in since the end of the Cold War, but didn’t.

We will question the benefits and point to the pitfalls of the global free trade economy; we will free the immigration debate from the prison to which it has been consigned. And we will discuss, frequently, America’s role in the world, turning a critical eye on those who want to cast aside every relevent American foreign policy tradition—from Robert Taft-style isolationism to prudent Dwight Eisenhower-style internationalism, in favor of go it alone militarism, where America threatens and bombs one nation after another, while the world looks on in increasing horror.

We believe conservatism to be the most natural political tendency, rooted in man’s taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God. We believe that true conservatism has a predisposition for the institutions and mores that exist. So much of what passes for contemporary conservatism is wedded to a kind of radicalism—fantasies of global hegemony, the hubristic notion of America as a universal nation for all the world’s peoples, a hyperglobal economy. In combination with an increasingly unveiled contempt for America’s long-standing allies, this is more a recipe for disaster.

Against it, we take our stand.

–The Editors

- Mission Statement
(from inaugural issue, October 7, 2002)

Tony Blankley, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A potentially important new political magazine - Pat Buchanan's the American Conservative - published its first edition this week. Vol.1, No.1 arrived in my mailbox yesterday. For those of us "movement conservatives" on the wrong side of 50 (as Mr. Buchanan's co-founding editor, Taki Theodoracopulos would say) both the timing and the mission statement of the new magazine strikes an ominous chord of memory. It was almost a half-century ago, at the high-point of American liberalism, that William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review for the purpose of standing astride a liberally-driven history and shouting "Halt." And, it is against the current high-tide of a history driven largely by the conservative forces Mr. Buckley precipitated that Pat Buchanan has formed...

And it's featured articles that have viciously attacked this war.....

May 5, 2008 Issue

Freedomland

Petraeus and Crocker pretend Iraq is a state. Everyone goes along.

by William S. Lind

In the second week in April, the world’s most elaborate kabuki theater, Washington, offered a stunning performance. America’s two consuls for Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan C. Crocker, gave Congress and the world their appreciation of the situation in that unhappy country. Senators and congressmen listened with rapt attention. The three presidential candidates, aka the three blind mice, postured and preened in the great men’s presence. The press hung on every word. Analysts and columnists parsed their meaning.

As with theater, none of it was real.

The defining reality in Iraq is that there is no state. Because there is no state in Iraq, there is also no government. Orders issued in Baghdad have no impact because there are no state institutions to carry them out. Government institutions such as parliament and positions such as cabinet minister have no substance. Power comes from having a relationship with a militia, not a government office. The “Iraqi Security Forces” are groups of Shi’ite militias, which exist to fight other militias. They take orders from militia leaders, not the government. Government revenues are slush funds for militia leaders to pay their militiamen. The whole edifice Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus described exists only as a figment of the Bush administration’s imagination.

Couldn’t a single member of Congress have found the courage to say, “Excuse me, consul, but you have no clothes”?

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_05_05/cover.html

March 10, 2008 Issue
Oil for War

After invading one of the most petroleum-rich countries on earth, the U.S. military is running on empty.

by Robert Bryce

Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach. That may have been true for his 19th-century force. But the modern American military runs on jet fuel—and lots of it.

Today the average American G.I. in Iraq uses about 20.5 gallons of fuel every day, more than double the daily volume consumed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2004. Thus, in order to secure the third-richest country on the planet, the U.S. military is burning enormous quantities of petroleum. And nearly every drop of that fuel is imported into Iraq. These massive fuel requirements—just over 3 million gallons per day for Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Energy Support Center—are a key reason for the soaring cost of the war effort.

Controlling Iraq’s oil has historically been a vital factor in America’s involvement in Iraq and was always a crucial element of the Bush administration’s plans for the post-Saddam era. Of course, that’s not how the war was sold to the American people. A few months before the invasion, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that the looming war had “nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” The war was necessary, its planners claimed, because Saddam Hussein supported terrorism and, left unchecked, he would unleash weapons of mass destruction on the West.

Another indication of the shift in power can be seen by looking at the new the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, which last June began trading the Oman Crude Oil Futures Contract. By getting into the energy futures business, Dubai is assuring that the crude oil coming out of the Persian Gulf has its own benchmark price—one that is not reliant on Western crude oil standards such as West Texas Intermediate and North Sea Brent. It also puts Dubai in competition with the traditional trading hubs in New York and London. In July 2006, Gary King, the CEO of the Dubai exchange, told me that the emergence of the exchange and the new futures contract indicates that the Persian Gulf is “the center of the world’s biggest hydrocarbon province. Most of the growth in oil consumption is in Asia-Pacific. So it’s a natural shift in gravity. Our timing is very opportune to be in that center of gravity.”

This change cannot be stopped or ignored. In today’s multi-polar world, economic interests, not military force, predominate. “It used to be that the side with the most guns would win,” says G.I. Wilson, a recently retired Marine Corps colonel, who has written extensively on terrorism and asymmetric warfare and spent 15 months fighting in Iraq. Today, says Wilson, the side “with the most guns goes bankrupt.”

Since World War II, America has held fast to the idea that controlling the oil flow out of the Persian Gulf must be assured at the point of a M-16 rifle. But the cost of that approach has been crippling. As the U.S. military pursues its occupation of Iraq—with the fuel costs approaching $1 billion per week—it’s obvious that the U.S. needs to rethink the assumption that secure energy sources depend on militarism. The emerging theme of the 21st-century energy business is the increasing power of markets. The U.S. can either adapt or continue hurtling down the road to bankruptcy.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_10/cover.html

April 21, 2008 Issue

Surging to Defeat

Petraeus’s strategy only postponed the inevitable.

by Andrew J. Bacevich

The United States today finds itself with too much war and too few warriors. We face a large and growing gap between our military commitments and our military capabilities. Something has to give.

Although violence in Iraq has decreased over the past year, attacks on coalition and Iraqi security forces continue to occur at an average rate of 500 per week. This is clearly unacceptable. The likelihood that further U.S. efforts will reduce violence to an acceptable level—however one might define that term—appears remote.

Meanwhile, our military capacity, especially our ability to keep substantial numbers of boots on the ground, is eroding. If the surge is working as some claim, then why not sustain it? Indeed, why not reinforce that success by sending another 30 or 60 or 90,000 reinforcements?

The answer to that question is self-evident: because the necessary troops don’t exist. The cupboard is bare.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_04_21/article1.html

March 24, 2008 Issue

The Right Choice?

The conservative case for Barack Obama

by Andrew J. Bacevich

Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination, come November principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives—and the state of the conservative movement—they could do worse.

Granted, when it comes to defining exactly what authentic conservatism entails, considerable disagreement exists even (or especially) among conservatives themselves. My own definition emphasizes the following:

a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;

a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;

veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;

a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;

respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;

a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.

Accept that definition and it quickly becomes apparent that the Republican Party does not represent conservative principles. The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives—especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire—have prospered. But conservatism as such has not.

Yet if Obama does become the nation’s 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama’s age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.

Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail.

But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation’s heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them.

For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article.html

February 11, 2008 Issue

The Madness of John McCain

A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.

by Justin Raimondo

Yet the longer we stay in Iraq, the more hostility is directed at American soldiers. The majority of Iraqis now believe attacks on our troops are justified, a far cry from McCain’s prewar prediction that it is “more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness.”

McCain isn’t bothered by the failure of his prediction, just as the absence of WMD in Iraq didn’t phase him in the least. He is an actor following a script that was written years ago and cannot be altered because of mere facts: he is McCain the Conqueror, the fearless war hero, the commander in chief who will lead us to victory and stay in Iraq, as he told Mother Jones magazine, for “a thousand years, a million years” because American grit will tame those obstreperous Iraqis, just as we tamed the Koreans, the Bosnians, the Japanese, and the rest.

With the extreme rhetoric appearing to work, an emboldened McCain recently told a crowd of supporters in Florida: “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars.”

If McCain finally makes it to the White House, the U.S. will surely start new wars, and not just in the Middle East. With the world as his stage, the persona McCain has created—given visible expression by what Camille Paglia trenchantly described as “the over-intense eyes of Howard Hughes and the clenched, humorless jaw line of Nurse Diesel (from Mel Brooks’ Hitchcock parody, High Anxiety)”—will have every opportunity to act out his fantasies of soldierly greatness.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/cover.html

January 14, 2008 Issue

No More Slam Dunks

A reality-based assessment of Iran’s nuclear capability

by Philip Giraldi

The bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program asserted with a “high degree of certainty” that Tehran had abandoned its nuclear weapons in 2003 due to international pressure and as part of a negotiated agreement with the Europeans. The report stated that even if Tehran were to restart its program, it would not have enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon until 2010 at the earliest.

The NIE is widely seen as a decisive blow to the neoconservatives and Bush administration hawks who have been advocating a preemptive attack on Iran, depriving them of their principal casus belli. They have counterattacked, claiming that the report is based on flawed information or even Iranian disinformation, that the CIA has a history of poor analysis of proliferation issues, and that a politicized intelligence community is out to get the White House and/or Israel.

Both the Iraq NIE and the 2005 NIE on Iran suffered from White House staffers, mostly neoconservatives from Vice President Cheney’s office, participating in the review process. To deal with the problem of such political pressure, Director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden and DNI Mike McConnell isolated analysts from policymakers and also took steps to deal with the groupthink problem. In the 2002 Iraq NIE, the consensus view that Saddam Hussein must have weapons of mass destruction influenced analysis, but proved to be untrue. The Iran NIE was instead constructed from the ground up with every assumption being challenged. The critics of the NIE curiously engage in their own groupthink when they claim that the CIA’s record of failures in the past mean that it has likely failed again. This time, however, the CIA has gotten it right.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_14/article2.html

Iraq is a failure, the war was for oil, Obama's got some strong pluses, McCain's someone to be very worried about, Iran's not the threat we are being warned about.....

So an interesting question arises.

Here's a conservative magazine, run by a leading figure of American conservative thought, that's churning out essentially the same message as the "liberal media" is over at those well known sites that rise right wing blood pressure every time they are mentioned.

I don't see anyone labeling THEM as defeatist, or as trying to break the nation apart with their flawed commie rhetoric .

So why is this again, exactly ?

And Justice For All

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Bill Clinton
42nd president of the United States




If any of you Obama supporters down there are disheartened, if anyone of you thinks you can't make a difference down there in America....

This one's for you.

The Passion Of The Crist ?

What about the Bush/Republican/McCain/ neocon connection to Charlie Crist of Florida , and the impact on the divisions of the Democratic primary race ?

2008 presidential election

Crist campaigned frequently with John McCain during the Florida primaries and gave the Arizona Senator his endorsement. Crist has been mentioned by the media as a possible running mate for McCain and McCain himself has praised Crist.A McCain-Crist ticket may help McCain to secure the 27 electoral votes from the state of Florida. Perhaps heightening the speculation, Crist, along with Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former contender for the GOP Presidential Nomination Mitt Romney, are scheduled to meet with McCain on Friday, May 23, 2008 at his home in Arizona, according to Republican familiars with the decision.

Crist has said that he is willing to support a do-over of Florida's Democratic primary in order to properly assign the delegates, so that they may be counted at the 2008 Democratic National Convention but opposes using Florida government funds to cover the expense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Crist

WMR has also learned that Crist's fraternity brother at Florida State was Brent Sembler, son of major Bush and Crist financial backer Mel Sembler. Sembler, who served as George W. Bush's ambassador to Italy and Daddy Bush's ambassador to Australia, was the brains behind the founding of SEED, Straight, Inc. and the Drug Free American Foundation (DFAF). Straight and SEED have been accused of abusing teens undergoing drug rehabilitation, including subjecting teens to brainwashing techniques. And what doctor served on the advisory board of SEED and approved of such techniques that subjected underage teens to brainwashing? None other than Dr. Charlie Crist, Sr., the father of the man who seeks to replace Jeb Bush and Governor of Florida. And why has Bernie McCabe, the State Attorney for Pinellas County, never brought charges against SEED, Straight, and DFAF for child abuse? It might have something to do with the fact that McCabe is a campaign contributor to Charlie Crist.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1315.shtml

After his Senate service, Governor Jeb Bush appointed him as Deputy Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. In 2000, Crist became Florida’s last elected Commissioner of Education and in 2002, he became Florida’s first elected Republican Attorney General.

http://www.local10.com/politics/9945437/detail.html

The change was pushed through by Republicans, who hold a majority in both houses of the Legislature and will suffer less serious penalties. Under Republican National Committee rules, Florida will lose half its delegates to the Republican convention.

But State Representative Dan Gelber, the minority leader, said Democrats’ opposition would not have made a difference. Besides, he said, many of the state’s 4.25 million registered Democrats wanted an earlier primary."

So a Florida legislature , controlled by a Republican majority, and lead by someone with close ties to McCain (so much so he's a possible VP pick) , and to Jeb Bush, magically decides to alter the Florida primary date.

A decision that barely impacts the Republican primaries, but throws a major problem into the Democratic one.

Crist: Florida "more and more relevant" to Hillary

The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, makes the case for his state's relevance to my colleague John Bresnahan Amie Parnes:

"It'’s almost ironic to me that-- in coming from a state like Florida on the Democratic side, where every vote must count, and was such a big deal in our state-- that you have this notion where just because you go a little bit earlier, that your delegates may not be seated at the convention whether it’s Denver or Minneapolis,he said, praising Senator Bill Nelson for pressing to have the state's delegation seated.

He added: "As you know, Sen. Clinton did very well in Florida and as things are moving forward, that becomes more and more relevant to her odds."

And guess who is fueling Hillary's divisive tactics with his support ?

Anyone else see anything wrong here ?

High Fuel Prices Got You Down ?

Well, if you are like a lot of people, those high gas prices are digging into your pocketbook in a very serious way.

Well, with a bit of creativity, it doesn't have to be that way anymore.



That's right, you can get the fuel you need to run a car - for free.

Any diesel car can run it.



And Americans are throwing it away right now, and are paying for the disposal.

More info here, at Greasecar : http://www.greasecar.com




Grease is the word ? Who knew Frankie Valli was right all along ?

McCain's Tax Cuts , cashing in on America's future

Well if you go over to McCain's website, you'll see a long list of tax cuts proudly pointed out.

It's right here, for you to see :


http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/

So that's on his own website, and that's what he is proposing as a plan for the American people in his presidency.

So let's start to look at this platform, and do some analysis, shall we ?

Someone's actually started to do just that, so let's see what we are looking at.

The McCain Tax Cut Cost-o-Meter»

Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

thermoside3.gifJohn McCain wants to double the Bush tax cuts. But how does this erstwhile fiscal conservative plan to pay for it? An excellent question – and one his campaign has so far failed to answer.

McCain’s tax plan would cost a whopping $300 billion (to put that in perspective, we spend about $200 billion a year on the war in Iraq). According to our accounting, McCain has so far managed to offset a grand total of $33 billion, or 11% of his tax cut.

As we have chronicled on this blog, the other savings McCain claims are bogus. So where will this former budget hawk come up with the more than $250 billion he needs to pay for his plan?

In an effort to hold McCain accountable, The Wonk Room is introducing the Tax Cut Cost-o-Meter, which documents the gap between McCain’s tax cuts and the offsets he proposes to pay for them.

We’ll be updating our new thermometer as the McCain campaign finds ways to pay for its tax cuts — or doesn’t, as the case may be.

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/04/23/mccain-thermometer/

So it looks like we are talking about 300 billion dollars to be given up by the government, if these figures are correct.

So let's see what one of McCain's own advisers says :

A Q&A With McCain Adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin

How does the state of the budget look to you?
If you look at the last full fiscal year, close the books on 2007, we raised 18.8 percent of GDP in [tax revenue] and spent a bit more than that, and we ran a modest deficit by postwar standards.... You roll the clock forward and you see the spending part of the budget explode, real pressures, and there is no way you can tax enough to meet those pressures—and if you tried, you would do such harm to the economy that it would ultimately fail. So the right approach is to take a comprehensive look at the spending commitments, undertake reforms in healthcare to slow the growth of Medicare, commit to solving the Social Security [solvency problem], which is a political problem more than anything else, deal with nondefense discretionary spending. That's the recipe.... Let's commit to getting the economy growing, and the revenue will be there. This is not a revenue problem; this is a spending problem.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/4/14/
a-qa-with-mccain-adviser-douglas-holtz-eakin.html

A modest deficit, by postwar standards.....when the USA wasn't fighting a war with a cost like the one in Iraq, btw.

How much WAS that deficit ?

The deficit narrowed to $162.8 billion in the fiscal year that ended September 30, the third straight annual decline and lowest since $158 billion in 2002, the Treasury Department said yesterday in Washington.

Spending totaled $2.731 trillion for the fiscal year, compared with revenue of $2.568 trillion. While both figures were records, they fell short of White House projections. In July, Mr. Bush's budget office forecast 2007 revenue of $2.574 billion and spending of $2.779 billion.

http://www2.nysun.com/national/american-budget-deficit-falls-to-lowest-level/

So we are at (based on last year's figures) $ 163 billion negative.

Since September, the economy has changed quite a bit. I think we can all agree on that one.

We've had the sub-prime mess , which has cost a fortune:

* There will, as stated above, be 2 million foreclosures as the riskiest of the subprime adjustable rate mortgages reset to higher interest rates.

* Approximately $71 billion in housing related wealth will be destroyed by those 2 million foreclosures and another $32 billion will be lost because of the spillover effect of foreclosures in neighborhoods and communities. The report quoted a study on housing values in Philadelphia which found that an abandoned property lowered the value of homes located within 150 feet by an average of 10 percent and those within 450 feet declined in value by an average of 5 percent.

* Collectively the states stand to lose close to $1 billion in revenues as property tax assessments drop in value.

* Foreclosures aside, there will be a 10 percent decline in housing prices which will lead to a $2.3 trillion economic loss.

http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/10262007_Subprime_Cost.asp

This type of loss in the market is going to be partially supported by the government, and it will also impact on revenue the government can collect from taxes.

Let's commit to getting the economy growing, and the revenue will be there.

And it won't be, as the effects of all the forces in the market depress it.

So let's continue with McCain's spokesman :

How will you balance spending and the tax cuts Sen ator McCain has proposed?

It's not that complicated.... He wants to repeal the [alternative minimum tax]. That's about $60 billion in additional revenue losses. Fine. We have $60 billion in discretionary spending that was sourced to earmarks. He believes that should go away....

Someone checked those figures.

Holtz-Eakin says that money could be used to fix the repeal the alternative minimum tax. The problem is that virtually no one can find even a third that much money in the annual spending bills in earmarks.

The most credible effort at earmark accounting in recent years was completed recently by the Taxpayers for Common Sense. They did an exhaustive review of the 2008 spending bills and reported $18.3 billion in earmarks. The White House Office of Management and Budget scrubbed the twelve 2008 appropriation bills and came up with only $16.9 billion. Where does McCain’s other $41.7 billion come from?

There is virtually no explanation. Did Congress spend money in other areas that McCain is counting but neither Taxpayers for Common Sense for the White House counts? That seems to be a hard argument to make. For 2008, the President’s request totals $932.8 billion (not counting the pending supplemental.) The Congressional Budget Office scores the action taken by the Congress on the 2008 appropriation bills at $932.8 billion—exactly the amount requested.

There were some areas that Congress spent more than the President requested and other areas where Congress spent less than the request. But McCain would find it difficult in most instances to object to the judgments made by Congress, for instance the $3.8 billion to improve the quality of health care for returning veterans which was included in the final Military Construction—Veterans bill but not contained in the President’s request.

It is even difficult to imagine that McCain would want to get rid of all of the earmarks. $1.2 billion of which was for better housing and facilities for servicemen and their families at military installations around the world.

The disturbing point here, however, is that even by the loose rules of budget discipline used in Washington in recent years this accounting is completely off the wall. Revenue cuts that are offset by phony spending reductions simply add to the deficit and the nation’s long term debt burden. Senator McCain needs to detail his figures in a manner similar to the materials provided by OMB and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/04/16/earmarks-mccain-proposal/

So you drop 60 billion from the AMT , and replace that with.....16.9 billion ?

That's 41.7 Billion in the hole....to start.

And then the corporate tax breaks ,

The one that is going to be getting attention is if we cut the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent—which is a competitiveness must—you, in some static sense, lose $100 billion a year ballpark. That's real. But you can broaden the base.

- Ibid

OK, 100 billion plus that 41.7 billion = 147. billion dollars negative (so far)

How's that base going to broaden ?

There are $30 billion a year in rifle shots that you should go after. You can count on some economic feedback, some 30 percent. So that gets you to $60 billion. So the net loss is $40 billion, and we think we can get 40 more in spending.

- Ibid

Now the economy is depressed, that we know.

We also have to add on the loss from that '09 tax rebate that the government's giving US citizens right now. That's income that the government WON'T be getting next year.

So how much is that ?

$110 billion dollars, approximately.

So we are now at 147.1 billion + 100 billion = 247.1 billion dollars.

And it's not over....

Just here, without going any farther, we exceed the level of the existing deficit.

If the economy equaled 2007, in every way (which it won't) , the deficit would be the same (assuming all costs are the same, which they won't be either) but let's start there.

163 billion deficit 08 ( highly optimistic)
247 billion in additional money given away as tax cuts

310 billion total dollars, and we've not even finished with all of McCain's proposals yet.

Any gains to the economy by the injection of that cash into are not going to overcome those types of numbers. And those numbers are based on some incredibly optimistic numbers for this year's deficit - and we all know it's pretty much a slam dunk that they won't.

So any McCain supporters out there willing to explain how he's going to accomplish all of this ?

Doesn't this show you the base problem with electing McCain as president is going to be a staggering increase in the public debt - almost without doubt ?

There's been some argument over how to treat John McCain's policy ideas. Some folks hold that they're terrible and should be opposed. Others think they're terrible, but more than that, they and make no sense, and McCain clearly doesn't mean them so they should be ignored. This, I think, is the take of most of the media, which assumes that, on domestic policy, McCain is pandering to his base and shouldn't be taken seriously. But, at the end of the day, these are his policies, and she should be forced to stand by them. It's not for the media to decide that he's a) lying and b) that's okay.

Take McCain's tax policy, for one. He wants to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax ($430 billion in lost revenue over 10 years), cut the corporate tax rate from 34 percent to 25 percent ($995 billion lost over 10 years), and end taxation of corporate investment in technology and equipment ($745 billion over 10 years). In addition, he's going to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. We're now talking a revenue loss of over $3 trillion. How's he going to fund his wars?

What's even more remarkable, though, is how regressive McCain's cuts are. They're more regressive, by far, than the Bush tax cuts. The Center for American Progress just released a report showing how much of each set of cuts goes to each income quintile, and I've put the results into a graph for you. McCain is in blue, Bush is in red.

On foreign policy, it's become common to say that McCain is like Bush, only more so. What's impressive is that he's proving that true on domestic policy, too. And yet despite the $3 trillion+ hole he's blowing in the deficit, the media regularly reports that McCain is a deficit hawk. Why? Because he doesn't like earmarks ($18 billion per year). Quite an age we live in, where fiscal responsibility is paying for about 1/20th of your spending. This guy is the Republican nominee for president. It's time the media began asking him how he's going to pay for all his spending. If he's going to cut Medicare and Social Security -- the only expenditures large enough to support this plan -- let him say so. That, supposedly, is the virtue of McCain, that he says stuff like that. But it's a bit dumb for the media to be all excited about a guy who answers your questions and then not actually ask him the hard questions.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2008&
base_name=chart_of_the_day_john_mccain_w

McCain has consistently voted against mortgage protections and other steps to help consumers fight unfair credit terms. A look at his record:

– McCain voted against discouraging predatory lending practices. In 2005, McCain voted against an amendment prohibiting law-breaking high-cost predatory mortgage lenders from collecting funds from homeowners who are forced into bankruptcy court. [S. 256, 3/03/05]

– McCain failed to vote on bill to overhaul mortgage lending practices of FHA. In 2007, McCain failed to vote on passage of a bill that would overhaul the mortgage lending practices of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The bill would reduce the required minimum down payment for an FHA-insured loan and simplify its calculation, requiring a flat 1.5 percent of the appraised value of the home. [S. 2338, 12/14/07]

–- McCain failed to sign on to the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act. In 2003, McCain failed to add his name to this legislation, which was intended to “protect consumers against predatory practices.” The bill, which was endorsed by a host of civil rights and housing advocates, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, ACORN, and the Consumer Federation of America. [S. 1928, 11/21/03]

– McCain failed to sign on to Truth in Lending Act. Less than four months ago, McCain failed to sign on to this bipartisan initiative providing protection to consumers taking out home mortgage loans. Among other measures, it was designed to “establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair.” McCain also refused to co-sponsor this legislation in the 107th Congress as well. [S. 2452, 12/12/2007]

McCain’s primary solution to dealing with the flailing economy? Waiting it out. Also on ABC’s This Week on Feb. 17, when asked whether he was “open to helping homeowners,” McCain replied, “I am open to helping homeowners. I would rely to a large degree on the situation of time.”

http://www.realmccainblog.com/search/label/economy%20and%20taxes

His health care plan ?

McCain's Health Plan: Tax Benefits, Increase Costs. His plan would make employer-provided health benefits part of taxable income, essentially creating a new tax for working families. It undermines existing employer-based health care and pushes workers into the private market to fight big insurance companies on their own. It would reduce benefits, increase costs and leave many with no health care at all. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/5/06; Health08.org Forum, 10/31/07; Los Angeles Times, 11/20/07; The Commonwealth Fund, 6/20/05)

Anti-union ?

McCain on Rights: Oppose Freedom to Form Unions and Bargain. McCain voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field for workers trying to form unions and bargain with their employers for better pay and conditions. But he voted for a national "right to work" for less law that would cripple workers' unions. (H.R. 800, Vote #227, 6/26/07; S. 1788, Vote #188, 7/10/96)

Privatizing Social Security ?

McCain on Retirement Security: Privatize Social Security, Cut Medicare. McCain supports privatizing Social Security, putting our retirement at risk, and raising the Medicare eligibility age. (SCR 83, Vote #68, 3/16/06; SCR 18, Vote #49, 3/15/05; S. Amdt. 144 to SCR 18, Vote #47, 3/15/05; SCR 86, Vote #56, 4/1/98; SCR 86, Vote #77, 4/1/98; S. 947, Vote #112, 6/24/97; S. Amdt. 445, Vote #115, 6/25/97)

In 2000 he said:

“There’s one big difference between me and the others–I won’t take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy.” [McCain campaign commercial, January 2000]

In 2003 he said:

“But when you look at the percentage of the tax cuts that–as the previous tax cuts–that go to the wealthiest Americans, you will find that the bulk of it, again, goes to wealthiest Americans.” [NBC’s “Today,” Jan. 7, 2003]

Now?

"Oh, yes, sure, the wealthy, the wealthy. Always be interested in when people talk about who the, quote, “wealthy” are in America. I find it interesting."

His voting record seems to back that up :

Then, as he contemplated another run for the presidency, McCain had another change of heart. The key provision of the 2003 tax cut bill that he had opposed was the tax cut for capital gains and dividends. But In 2005 he voted for the budget reconciliation bill that extended that very gift to the wealthy for an additional two years.

McCain had earlier complained that "repeal of the estate tax would provide massive benefits solely to the wealthiest and highest-income taxpayers in the country," but in 2006 he decided that repealing most of the estate tax was just fine by him. He voted that year for the bill to gut the estate tax, which won a majority of votes in the Senate but failed to obtain the 60 votes needed for passage.

But it's also astounding because even Bush's Treasury Department has admitted (in a report released in 2006) that tax cuts cannot possibly pay for themselves. Sure, lower taxes might create some incentive to work and invest, resulting in some more income and thus more tax revenue, but that will never make up for more than a small fraction of the cost of a tax cut.

Does McCain believe, contrary to almost every mainstream economist, the ludicrous proposition that we can raise revenue by cutting taxes? Or has he been altering his view to win over an extreme fringe within his party to win its nomination?

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/2008/02/john-mccain-straight-talk-on-t.html

Holtz-Eakin also told FactCheck.org that the families to which McCain refers would save an average of $2,000 a year. That means some would save more and some would save less. Those in higher income groups pay much more of AMT taxes than do those with lower earnings, and they would reap more of the benefits of repealing the tax as well. About 90 percent of the tax benefits of doing away with the AMT in 2007, for instance, would have gone to households in the $100k and above group; 55 percent would have gone to households earning more than $200k.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/136986

The rich get richer....

This blog reveals McCain's BLACK relative

That's right, and I'M not afraid to name names, either.

Her name is Lucy. We also have her picture :




That's right....

McCain has an ancestor from AFRICA,and this Arizona based anthropologist (and discoverer of Lucy) scientifically proves that, and McCain cannot deny it.

Johanson, the founder and chairman of the Institute of Human Origins in Arizona, told a standing-room-only crowd in the Ballroom of the William Pitt Union Wednesday night that he realizes Lucy is more popular than the man who discovered her 28 years ago.

But he said that stardom is not as important to him as finding more connections between man and ape. The one thing he is confident of is that the connection will be found somewhere in Africa.

Johanson said that while people all have their own beliefs as to how humans came into existence, "one inescapable conclusion is that we can trace all roots back to Africa."

http://media.www.pittnews.com/media/storage/paper879/news/2001/04/13/
News/Discoverer.Of.lucy.Says.Humans.
Originated.In.Africa-1793100.shtml

Or "Australopithecus afarensis" , who can directly be connected to McCain, 3.2-million-years ago. She can be traced to all of the rest of us, too.

Even Obama.

So the race now becomes one between two men with black blood in their veins and DNA.

I know, I'm as shocked as the rest of you are.

The only race we have is the human race.

McCain goes to Senate floor and demands that America withdraw its troops now

One of the reasons why people are convinced, why many of these experts are convinced, that this situation is one which is increasingly difficult to solve, is because of the fact that we were there once before. The right course of action is to make preparations as quickly as possible to bring our people home. It does not mean as soon as order is restored to Haiti, it doesn't mean as soon as Democracy is flourishing in Haiti, it doesn't mean as soon as we've established a viable nation in John Haiti, as soon as possible means as soon as we can get out of Haiti without losing any American lives. Now there may be different interpretations of this Resolution on the other side but it is my view and I want to make it clear and I think the majority of the American people's view that as soon as possible means as soon as possible. Exactly what those words state. The Haitians were to police themselves but the cooperation that was to prevent mission creep has not materialized and U.S. troops have assumed a greater and greater responsibility for policing Haiti. We all see on CNN what they are doing. Day by day their mission expands. American military personnel have been tasked with preventing looting, stopping Haitian on Haitian violence, protecting private property and arresting attaches.

John McCain - 1994

Mr. President, there is no reason for the United States of America to remain in Somalia. The American people want them home, I believe that the majority of Congress wants them home, and to set an artificial date of March 31 or even February 1st, in my view, is not acceptable. The criteria should be to bring them home as rapidly and safely as possible. An evolution, which I think could be completed in a matter of weeks. Mr. President, our continued military presence in Somalia allows another situation to arise which could then lead to the wounding, killing, or capture of the of American fighting men and women. We should do all in our power to avoid that. Date certain, Mr. President, are not the criteria here. What's the criteria and what should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal from Somalia. And if we don't do that, and other Americans die, other Americans are wounded, other Americans are captured, because we stayed too long, longer than necessary, then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did not excercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and mandate that they be brought home as quickly and safely as possible. But the mission which the American people supported and this Congress supported, in an overwhelming resolution, has been accomplished. The American people did not support the goals of nation-building, peacemaking, law and order and certainly not warlord funding. For us to get into nation-building, law and order, etc, I think is a tragic and terrible mistake. But the argument that somehow the United States would suffer a loss to our prestige and our viability, as far as the No. 1 superpower in the world, I think, is baloney. The fact is, what can hurt our prestige, Mr. President, I'll tell you what can hurt our viability, as the world's superpower, and that is, if we inmesh ourselves in a drawn-out situation, which entails the loss of American lives, more debaucles like the one we saw with the failed mission to capture Aidid's lieutenants, using American forces, and that then will be what hurts our prestige. Look at the tragedy in Beirut, Mr. President, 240 young Marines lost their lives, but we got out. Now is the time for us to get out of Somalia, as rapidly and as promptly and as safely as possible.


McCain 1993

American combat deaths in Haiti ?

None.

American combat deaths in Somalia ?

29


American combat deaths in Iraq ?

4,081 ......and counting.





BRING THEM HOME (IF YOU LOVE YOUR UNCLE SAM)©
Studio version

If you love this land of the free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

It will make the politicians sad, I know
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
They wanna tangle with their foe
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

They wanna test their grand theories
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
With the blood of you and me
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Now we'll give no more brave young lives
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
For the gleam in someone's eyes
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

(Hooo-hooo hooo-hooo)
(Hooo-hooo hooo-hooo)

The men will cheer and the boys will shout
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Yeah and we will all turn out
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

The church bells will ring with joy
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
To welcome our darlin' girls and boys
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

We willl lift their voice and sound
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Yeah, when Johnny comes marching home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

If you love this land of the free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

The Eden Project - a vision for a compassionate plan that benefits the world

I thought I'd post an idea, to suggest some things that we might consider, that would logically achieve goals both beneficial to ourselves - and those in need around the world. If we are smart, that mentality can reduce human misery, and also help us with some of the problems Western society has.

It can be win/win, with some foresight.

In North America, we throw away hundreds of millions of automobile and truck tires per year. Those wind up in our landfills, and in tire dumps all across North America. They lay there, doing nothing, and polluting our landscapes.

Now, what if we were to consider using them to create Earthship housing for those most in need of it ? How many homes could we provide for people, while solving one of our own problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

Those same tires, and the containers they would be shipped in, could provide the basic essentials for building strong structures that were efficient and cheap. Using the labor of those who would live in them ( like the Habitat model) , with our supplied materials and expertise, would benefit all involved.

One could even use students, in the same way the Peace Corps proposed, to learn and then teach others to pass along this knowledge.

Those houses could be powered using other things we throw away - like electronic parts we now throw away in our junked cars. Various elements used in them could provide a goldmine of parts for 12 volt power systems.

We could provide hand cranked items, like radios or lights, quite easily.

We could even use elements of the computers we throw away to provide a workable, and free, means of communication between those houses. Even a simple Pentium 2, worthless here, could be turned into such a system, using Linux - for free, or almost free.

That could provide a method of educating people, as well.

We could provide these same structures with facilities that could use the human waste generated by them to assist in the production of methane gas to be used in heating and cooking.

That waste could additionally, after such use, be used to turn infertile land into croplands with composting.

We could also add solar facilities that could produce drinkable water without much cost, using the sun's rays to purify it, or even desalinate it. We could even use that waste water from the communities as part of that process - as we do in spacecraft.

We could build pipelines to take the ocean's water, direct it to arid areas, and then use the sun to desalinate it. I think that may be indeed possible, and cost almost nothing to do in comparison with other alternatives.

Desalinate the water, and then simply water the ground though a buried structure of hoses, that would trickle water into the ground slowly, while using solid human waste to add to it's nutrient base.

Things that could be done for limited cost, that would involve the creative use of things that we already have, and throw away ?

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Robert Kennedy

I even would suggest the following name for it - " The Eden Project"

It works in Arab countries, as well as "Jannat'Adn .

When God created the Garden of Eden, He created in it that which the eye had never seen before, that which the ear had never heard of before, and that which had never been desired before by man's heart.

- Abu Mohammed Mu'afa al-Shaibani

What I like about it is that it teaches a man to fish, by giving him our old fishing poles and tackle that we no longer need, nor use - and one that is cluttering up our closet anyway.

All we ask is for his help to build a better future together for the both of us.

The things the Third World have in abundance are time, and labor. All they need is some knowledge and basic resources to complete the process. We certainly have the latter.

It fits a model we know works, of building from the base up. It places the effort in the hands of the people benefiting, and that will empower them, and isn't a charity that robs them of their dignity. Once built, those houses and things becomes symbols of their work, and they reap the benefits.

Our ideological enemies cannot compete with us here, and cannot bring this type of improvement to the lives of those who need it most. Only we can do that, and if we do we will win the battle for those hearts and minds without any question.

If I'm right, it can be done for a remarkably low cost. Most of it, the important parts, are things we now throw away. All we are looking at is the cost of collection and transportation to accomplish it - and that's minimal, compared to any other type of aide I can imagine.

It's also something that is remarkably altruistic and selfish at the same time. It's a Yin Yang solution to problems on both sides of the ledger accomplishing the goals of both.

It's something that accomplishes a moral good, and yet is completely subversive at the same time. Instead of hooking people on continuing charity, or using them as a means towards profit, it frees them totally from those chains and truly liberates them.

At the end of it they have a free house, and the basic needs to live through the fruits of their own efforts. That effort forms a sense of community, and that community's creation stands out like a bright light against the poverty and despair that surrounds it.

It also accomplishes a reduction in pollution, something we all gain in. That human waste that is now the source of pollution and disease is transformed into fuel (methane) , clean water, and then finally safely returned back into the soil to provide nutrients for the future crops the people grow.


Anyone wants it as an idea, it's yours for free.

A rather interesting 1960 live rockabilly performance.....

I just stumbled across a YouTube clip I had to share.

Ever see "Back To The Future" , and do you remember that funny scene where Micheal J. Fox plays guitar at the high school dance ?

This makes that look tame.

Before you watch the clip, let me set it up for you.

It's the Netherlands, 23rd January 1960. The Sixties just born, the country in the middle of a Dutch winter. There's one Dutch TV channel, and you are sitting in your living room watching a variety show.

There's this thing called rock and roll, and it's going on over on the other side of the Atlantic, with leather jacketed, T-Shirt wearing kids trying to channel James Dean.

And then suddenly..... THIS act comes on the old Phillips black and white.

The Tielman Brothers - Rollin' Rock



Can you imagine the reaction ?

"Honey.....call a PRIEST !"

Welcome to Dutch Indo-rockabilly.

Dutch-Indonesian rock ?

That's got to be one of the most dynamic stage show performances I've ever seen pulled off live, by the most unlikely of sources. It makes Little Richard look almost tame by comparison....

The interesting part ? The Tielman Brothers also go on to play in the same clubs in Hamburg that the Beatles were playing in. Can you imagine either group walking in on the others sets ? Might have been some interesting times...

In checking out their other music, it seems to be pretty average.

But it terms of a live rock and roll act ?

Pretty amazing, when placed against it's time period.

McCain / Phill Gramm and the silence of the lambs

I figured we could start looking at McCain's economic expert, Phil Gramm, and ask the question as to why McCain would chose such a man as his economic guru.

McCain was caught up in the Keating Five scandal, and was lucky to escape without major political damage. Now , for those who don't remember the details of that scandal, let's get you up to speed.

It all started in March 1987. Charles H Keating Jr., the flamboyant developer and anti-porn crusader, needed help. The government was poised to seize Lincoln Savings and Loan, a freewheeling subsidiary of Keating's American Continental Corp.

As federal auditors crawled all over Lincoln, Keating was not content to wait and hope for the best. He'd spread a lot of money around Washington, and it was time to call in his chits.Now Keating had a job for DeConcini. He wanted him to organize a meeting with the regulators. The message: Get off Lincoln's back. Eventually, DeConcini would set up a meeting between five senators and the regulators. One of them was John McCain.

McCain knew Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain was the speaker.

By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

McCain had also carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts like Lincoln.

Despite the dust-up, McCain attended not one but two meetings with the regulators. McCain later explained that he thought it was the right thing to do, because Keating was a constituent.

McCain would live to regret it.

''Did you lean on regulators for Charlie Keating?''

''Did you get campaign contributions in exchange for your cooperation?''

''Why did you protect Keating?''

Together, the five senators had accepted more than $300,000 in contributions from Keating, and their critics added a new term to the American lexicon:

Keating Five.

As the S&L failure deepened, the sheer magnitude of the losses hit the press. Billions of dollars had been squandered. The Keating Five became shorthand for the kind of political influence that money can buy. The five senators were linked as the gang who went to bat for an S&L bandit.

S&L ''trading cards'' came out. The Keating Five card showed Charles Keating holding up his hand, with a senator's head adorning each finger. McCain was on Keating's pinkie.

As the Keating investigation dragged through 1988, McCain dodged the body blows. Most landed on DeConcini, who had arranged the meetings and had other close ties to Keating, including $50 million in loans from Keating to DeConcini's aides.

But McCain made a critical error.

In spinning his side of the Keating story, McCain adopted the blanket defense that Keating was a constituent and that he had every right to ask his senators for help. In attending the meetings, McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.

Keating was far more than a constituent to McCain, however.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.

McCain also did not pay Keating for the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.

On that score, McCain admitted he had fouled up. He said he should have reimbursed Keating immediately, not waited several years. His staff said it was an oversight, but it looked bad, McCain jetting around with Keating, then going to bat for him with the federal regulators.

Meanwhile, Lincoln continued to founder.

In April 1989, two years after the Keating Five meetings, the government seized Lincoln, which declared bankruptcy. In September 1990, Keating was booked into Los Angeles County Jail, charged with 42 counts of fraud. His bond was set at $5 million.

During Keating's eventual trial, the prosecution produced a parade of elderly investors who had lost their life's savings by investing in American Continental junk bonds.
'THE ULTIMATE SURVIVOR'
In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee convened to decide what punishment, if any, should be doled out to the Keating Five.

Robert Bennett, who would later represent President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, was the special counsel for the committee. In his opening remarks, he slammed DeConcini but went lightly on McCain, the lone Republican ensnared with four Democrats.

''In the case of Senator McCain, there is very substantial evidence that he thought he had an understanding with Senator DeConcini's office that certain matters would not be gone into at the meeting with (bank board) Chairman (Ed) Gray,'' Bennett said.

''Moreover, there is substantial evidence that, as a result of Senator McCain's refusal to do certain things, he had a fallout with Mr. Keating.''

McCain, the ultimate survivor, had dodged another missile.

Among the Keating Five, McCain received the most direct contributions from Keating. But the investigation found that he was the least culpable, along with Glenn. McCain attended the meetings but did nothing afterward to stop Lincoln's death spiral.

Lincoln's losses eventually were set at $3.4 billion, the most expensive failure in the national S&L scandal.

In the end, McCain received only a mild rebuke from the Ethics Committee for exercising ''poor judgment'' for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating. Still, he felt tarred by the affair.

''The appearance of it was wrong,'' McCain said recently. ''It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.''

McCain noted that Bennett, the independent counsel, recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation.

''For the first time in history, the Ethics Committee overruled the recommendation of the independent counsel,'' McCain said. ''I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I was the only Republican of the five and the Democrats were in the majority (in the Senate).''

But McCain owns up to his mistake:

''I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment.''

http://www.wmsa.net/People/john_mccain/ariz-republic_chap_V_1999.htm

So McCain misses the hand of justice, by a hair.

Now, when the American economy is in dire straights, and McCain freely admits he's no real expert on the topic, who does he turn to ?

After Keating, you would think he learned a very important lesson - as did the American public.

And yet he turns to exactly the type of person that nearly cost him his political career.

I've posted before that Gramm and his wife had direct ties to Enron - and made a ton of money from that association, and helped set the stage for the abuses.

She was a member of the Enron's board's Audit Committee.

Gramm thinks the system works just fine. After all, she pocketed an estimated $2 million as an Enron director.

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/01/28/wendy_gramm/

He did the same thing with the sub-prime market, and tables legislation that was it's genesis.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act .

That act opened the doors for abuse on the market, with deregulation.

Gramm lobbies for UBS.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary.

Gramm then JOINS the Swiss Bank UBS :

Phil Gramm joins UBS Warburg
Texas Republican, who fought corporate reform act, to advise clients on corporate finance issues.
October 7, 2002

So it came as a relief Tuesday when UBS, the European bank hit hardest by the credit crunch, announced that it would sell $15 billion of subprime mortgage debt and cut 5,500 jobs as part of a massive cleanup.

Now UBS is digesting a net loss of $10.9 billion and write-downs on mortgage-backed securities of $19 billion in the first quarter, bringing the total to about $38 billion since the beginning of the crisis.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/06/business/ubs.php

38 Billion in losses ( ten times Keating's toll) , and the first loss in company history - and the biggest loss of all banks touched by this.

So this begs two questions:

1) After Keating, how bad is McCain's judgment to willingly choose a man who (together with his wife) have benefited from two of the largest financial rip offs in American history, after nearly losing his political career over his associations with Keating , and probably the third largest financial scandal in American history ?

“People like that appeal to me.”

–John McCain, on Charles Keating, in his memoir, “Worth Fighting For”


2) Why isn't this on every TV screen being talked about, and the headline in every major newspaper ?

Why McCain is too Bushed to ever be elected president

Let's turn our attention now to the Bush-McCain connection. We have some people that are constantly reminding us about how McCain is so different from Bush. Let's see how we can tie Bush and McCain together, in some very concrete ways - shall we ?

To start, we have that comment from Bush himself that I've posted before when McCain showed up for the White House to be endorsed by Bush.

All I can say is that on the fundamentals and the principles of our Republican Party and most of the specifics of our shared conservative philosophy, President Bush and I are in agreement.

- John McCain

The President behind the scenes has told people for months that he thought McCain would be the nominee. Even during some of those dark periods he still thought he could win. And also that McCain would be the best to carry forth his agenda.

Time Magazine' s Mark Halperin
FOX TV
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/08/bush-mccain-will-best-carry-out-my-agenda/

So let's take a look at some of the people associated with McCain's campaign, and see where they fit in to all this.

As some of you might be aware, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) group is a neo-con institution, and many of it's members were key Bush players. That letter to Clinton from the PNAC in 1998 is the genesis point of the war in Iraq.

So if we could find PNAC members associating with McCain, that might be a warning sign that McCain and Bush might share a lot more than one might think.

Oh, and yes.....we CAN find them :

Randy Scheunemann - McCain's foreign policy adviser, neo con, PNAC member, and ex- President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Robert Kagan - McCain's Middle East adviser, neo- con, co-founder PNAC, co-signer of that 1998 letter to Clinton.

James Woolsey - McCain's Middle East adviser, neo-con PNAC founding member and also a co-signer of that 1998 letter. Government consultant and adviser during the Bush administration.

Daniel McKivergan -John McCain for President: Campaign Staffer, neo-con , former deputy-director PNAC

Bill Kristal - Informal Foreign Policy Adviser -neo-con , Founder PNAC.

Gary Schmitt - Foreign Policy Adviser - neo-con, AEI Fellow and PNAC signatory. Co-author with Abram Shulsky (overseer of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans) of a book on the political though of Leo Strauss as applied to intelligence gathering.

John Vincent Weber - former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was an advisor to McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. PNAC member. George Bush campaign adviser. connected to Empower America.

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI)?

This is a strong right wing , neo-con think tank.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy. More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions.

So does McCain have any AEI members on his staff ?

The abovementioned Gary Schmitt, an AEI Fellow, is one.

So are Dr. Charles Calomiris (McCain Finance Economic Adviser), and Dr. Kevin Hasset (McCain economic policy coordinator).

( They shared offices next to each other at AEI)

Let's see who else we can find, shall we ?

Dr. Doug Holtz Eakin - Senior Policy Advisor for John McCain

He was the director of the Congressional Budget Office (2003–05). He also served for 18 months as chief economist in the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush (2001–02) and for two years as senior staff economist in President George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers (1989–90).

Thomas Loeffler - ( just quit over Saudi Arabia connection)

McCain's National finance co-chair , He was an advisor to presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. According to The Loeffler Group Web site, Loeffler served as Texas Co-Chairman, Bush for President (1988); National Advisor to the 1992 Bush-Quayle Campaign; Co-Chairman, President's Dinner (1992, 2001, 2004 and 2005); and Texas delegate to the Republican National Conventions (1984, 1988 and 1992). He was the Texas Finance Co-Chairman, George W. Bush for Governor (1994); National Finance Chairman,National Finance Co-Chairman, George W. Bush for President (1999-2000); and South Texas Co-Chairman, Bush-Cheney ‘04, Inc. (2004).

In February 2005, he was asked by the Board of Regents to serve as Co-Chairman of a special ad hoc advisory committee to spearhead work on a proposal for the Presidential Library of President George W. Bush.

Sixty former Bush rangers or pioneers raised money for McCain.

Lisa Graham Keegan - McCain education adviser. Was considered for position of Secretary of Education under George Bush.

From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Keegan consulted with President George Bush, his domestic policy staff and Secretary Rod Paige on matters of education policy, as well as with the education leadership of 38 states. Significant policies and programs she helped implement during this time include No Child Left Behind Act, Following the Leaders School Implementation Program, American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, Washington DC School Choice Program. In 2003 she was a member of Education Secretary Rod Page's Title IX Commission.

Keegan’s original three year contract was extended to September 2004, after which she became an independent consultant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Graham_Keegan

Rich Bond served as RNC Chairman from 1992-1993. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House. National political director in Bush’s successful 1988 presidential campaign, Deputy Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush.

Jeb Bush - McCain education adviser.

Terry Neilson - former McCain Sr. Adviser (quit) - political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.

In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to Senator John McCain; in December 2006 McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.

On July 10, 2007, Nelson resigned as national campaign manager for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. The sudden departure of both Nelson and longtime McCain adviser John Weaver came after months of increasing campaign problems. McCain, after first insisting that neither man had been fired, called their departure "a consensus decision."

Donald Bren - McCain's national finance co-chairman - Member George W. Bush for President Organization

2007 edition of "The 400 Richest Americans", ranked Bren as the wealthiest real estate owner in the US with an estimated net worth of $13 billion.

Eugene W. Hickok - McCain Education adviser

President George W. Bush nominated Hickok as his Under Secretary of Education on March 30, 2001 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 10, 2001. Hickok served as both the Under Secretary of Education and Acting Deputy Secretary between July 2003 and November 3, 2003 when the President nominated him to become Deputy Secretary. The deputy secretary is the chief policy advisor to the Secretary. In this position, Hickok oversaw and managed the development of policies, recommendations and initiatives that help define a broad, coherent vision for achieving the President's education priorities, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

William D. Hansen - McCain Education adviser

He was formally nominated as deputy secretary by President George W. Bush on April 23, 2001, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate a month later on May 22. The president announced his intention to nominate Hansen, 42, who served as the Education Department transition team director for the Bush-Cheney Transition, on March 8.

Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain who was once a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

William M. Evers - McCain education adviser

He was appointed to his federal post by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007. Evers specializes in research on education policy ­especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school. From July to December 2003, he served in Iraq as senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Evers was an education policy adviser and a leader of education-community supporters during President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and he served as a member of the education advisory committee for the transition. From 2001 to 2007, Evers served as an appointee of President Bush on the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, which selects the nation's top high school seniors based on their achievement in academics and the arts.

Phil Gramm - McCain 's economic adviser, and probable Secretary of the Treasury, if elected.

Family: Wife: Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Bush


Gramm was partly caught up in the Enron scandal when it emerged that his wife Wendy had in part written an exemption for Enron from federal oversight while she was serving on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She then accepted a directorship at Enron (for 1.85 million dollars). Phil Gramm was personally involved further when it came to light that he had helped to turn the exemption into law as well as push through the deregulation of energy markets that led in part to the Enron scandal. During this period Enron was a major contributor (actually the largest) to his campaigns.


Meanwhile Enron had become Phil Gramm's largest corporate contributor—and according to Public Citizen, the largest across-the board donor in its industry. Between 1989 and 2001, the company tossed Gramm just under $100,000.

In 1998, Wendy Gramm cashed in her Enron stock for $276,912. There's nothing unusual about a Washington regulator quitting the government and going to work for a private company she was regulating. And people often get rich in the process. Wendy Gramm, whose office didn't return Voice calls, has told reporters she sold the stock expressly to avoid any hint of a conflict of interest.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS's new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.


Paul Krugman, this week wrote " I'd argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible."

Tim Griffin

Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign's plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research -- the digging up of derogatory information about political opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down, Griffin would work at the Republican National Committee, as he did during Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/05/21/AR2008052102425.html

Steve Schmidt, Bush’s attack dog in the 2004 election

Ken Mehlman, who ran Bush’s 2004 campaign - now serving as an unpaid, outside adviser

Karl Rove is now informally advising the campaign. Rove refused to detail his conversation with McCain.

Dan Bartlett, former top aide in the Bush White House is onside with McCain.

Sara Taylor - Bush political adviser, ditto.

Karl Rove - Informal McCain adviser, and donor.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/20/why-wont-fox-reveal-analy_n_102591.html

Nicolle Wallace, formerly communications director for Mr. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.


Richard L. Armitage - adviser to presidential candidate John McCain

In 1998, Armitage signed "The Project for the New American Century" letter (PNAC Letter) to President Bill Clinton. The letter urged Clinton to target the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power in Iraq due to erosion of the Gulf War Coalition's containment policy and the resulting possibility that Iraq might develop weapons of mass destruction. The letter's intended purpose of removing Hussein was to protect Israel and other U.S. allies in the region, including oil-producing Arab countries.

During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans

The United States Senate confirmed him as Deputy Secretary of State on March 23, 2001; he was sworn three days later. A close associate of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Armitage was regarded, along with Powell, as a moderate within the presidential administration of George W. Bush.

There was some media speculation that President Bush would appoint him to a key security position such as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence or Defense Secretary. As of the start of July 2007, Armitage had not re-entered public service. On May 10, 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the ConocoPhillips oil company.

On August 30, 2006, CNN reported that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as leaking Ms. Wilson's CIA role in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage

(Further topping off Armitage's investment interests in the war: He sits on the board of directors of ConocoPhillips, which is aiming to become a major player in Iraq's energy industry through a joint venture with Russia's Lukoil.)

http://www.salon.com/news/excerpt/2008/05/29/spies_for_hire/index.html

Ties to Bush, and oil, and Iraq.


Wayne Berman National Finance Co-Chairman

- ex-Bush Administration Commerce Department assistant secretary

Name: Wayne L. Berman
Occupation: Lobbyist & Owner, Berman Enterprises, Inc.
Industry: Lawyers & Lobbyists
Home: Washington, DC

Berman has lobbied for two other firms that won major investment contracts from Silvester. These firms are PaineWebber and the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group was started by top officials in the Bush seniors administration.

http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/wayne_berman.html

Frank Donatelli McCain Pick as Deputy RNC Chair

He also assisted Baker in the 2000 Florida recount on behalf of the Bush-Cheney team. Frank was a senior advisor to Bob Dole in 1996 and previously worked in the presidential campaigns of George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

http://www.mwcllc.com/people/individuals/donatelli_f.asp

Nancy Pfotenhauer - Adviser

Bush appointed Pfotenhauer to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women

Pfotenhauer served in Bush I's administration in various capacities

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php
?id=654&name=Nancy-Pfotenhauer

Richard Hohlt - Fundraiser

Nomination of Richard F. Hohlt To Be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Student Loan Marketing Association

January 5th, 1990 - By President Bush Sr.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=18012

Peter Madigan - Fundraiser

Peter Madigan
From SourceWatch

Peter Madigan is a powerful lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party who has represented clients such as McDonnell Douglas Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Distilled Spirits Council.

Madison worked in the presidential administration of George Herbert Walker Bush.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peter_Madigan

Jack Oliver - Fundraiser

LIEUTENANT OF LUCRE: Bush's deputy finance chairman, Jack Oliver, at his Washington office

Bush has Oliver to thank for much of that success but rarely praises him in public. And that's how Oliver likes it. He's the financial wizard behind the curtain. It's a role Oliver played for Bush in 2000 and one he is reprising this year, having just moved from the Republican Party to be deputy finance chairman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030707-461834,00.html

McCain can be directly tied to the PNAC , through the NCP.

New Citizenship Project (also New Citizenship Project, Inc.) is a non-profit organization funded by large right-wing foundations. Founded in 1994, NCP initiated the Project for the New American Century, one of the key behind-the-scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. According to his senate biography, John McCain served as a president of NCP, "an organization created to promote greater civic participation in our national life."

McCain also served on the Council.

The John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. listed grants in 1997 show the subtitle for The New Citizenship Project as the "Project for the Next American Century." It clearly appears that the origninal 1994 PNAC concept has become the current Project for the New American Century.

"...the New Citizenship Project, an affiliate of the Project for the Republican Future, a conservative G.O.P. think tank founded by William Kristol."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_Citizenship_Project

More details on McCain's lobbyists :

The McCain-Lobbyist Connection
http://mediamattersaction.org/freeride/lobbyists/

More to follow , as research allows.


So the next time anyone tells you that a McCain presidency isn't really Bush III, you can ask them to explain why all these chickens are coming home to roost in support of Mccain.