Let's not talk politics... Bush is a CROOK!

[Octafish]

Let's ignore all the evidence the little turd from Crawford is nothing more than a psychotic NAZI despot out to loot the world's treasure, kill all who oppose him and enslave the survivors in a Brave New World Feudalism. Instead, I'd now like to list George W Bush's criminal connections.

To see evidence of arch-criminality, let's just look what Smirk has done in business:



From "George W Bush, the Dark Side"

EXCERPT...

Bush Jr. has made a lot of money off of three business deals. In each one, his contribution is hard to perceive, yet he walked off with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in deals arranged by his father's political cronies. The deals were
1. the sale of Junior's struggling oil company,
2. Junior's sale of oil stock just before the Gulf War, and
3. getting a cheap slice of the Texas Rangers baseball team, which he sold in 1999 for a huge profit (he paid $600,000, and sold for $14 million).

The general pattern here is just as important as the details. Bush did no work in his business career that can clearly be called "excellent" or even "solid." The money he made is tangential to his efforts at best -- the oil companies lost a great deal of money during his tenure, and the Rangers cut a lot of corners -- which makes the cronyism that much more suspicious.

It's not just that one or two of Bush's deals look funky; every major business deal he has been involved with included wealthy supporters of his father, and many of those investors later received favorable treatment from either the federal government under Bush, Sr. or the current Texas administration of Junior.

CONTINUED...

http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#insider


Let's look at his brothers:

Jeb, Marvin & Neil - 3 Profiteering Bush Brothers

Its time to take a closer look at First Brothers, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin Bush, and see how much they stand to benefit from W's presidency and his perpetual war on the world.

First, there's brother Marvin. He's the quietest member of the Bush clan. Marvin is co-founder and partner in Winston Partners, a private investment firm. In turn, Winston Partners is part of a larger firm called the Chatterjee Group.

Here's where it gets complicated. Marvin is obviously the family member with a sound criminal mind. He has managed to bury almost all the evidence of his profiteering profits inside a host of corporations and entities, with many being located offshore. Its not easy to track the money through such a tangled web. But it can be done.

SEC filings show that the Chatterjee Group consists of Winston Partners, LP; Chatterjee Fund Management, LP; Winston Partners II LDC, a Cayman Islands-based company; Winston Partners II LLC; Chatterjee Advisors LLC; Chatterjee Management Company; Mr. Chatterjee himself; and Furxedown Trading Limited, a company organized under the laws of the Isle of Man. The address for Winston Partners II LDC is in the Netherlands Antilles. The other subsidiaries were organized in Delaware

CONTINUED ....

THIS GOES THROUGH THE PRESENT DAY AND PAST THE PAST. MIND YOU THESE ARE JUST THE BROTHERS...

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10336&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported


Let's look at Poppy (one small bit of criminality, for him; treason, to the United States):

The Family that Preys Together

EXCERPT...

The Harken deal with Bahrain raises another troubling question: Did the Bahrainis and the BCCI-linked Saudi oil sheikhs use the production sharing agreement with Harken to curry favor with the Bush administration and influence U.S. policy in the Middle East? Talat Othman's sudden rise to prominence in Bush administration foreign policy circles is a case in point. Othman, who sits on the Harken board as Sheikh Bakhsh's representative, didn't have access to President Bush before Harken's Bahrain agreement. "But since August 1990, the Palestinian-born Chicago investor has attended three White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy," the Wall Street Journal pointed out. "His name was added by the White House to a select list of 15 Arab-Americans chosen to meet with President Bush, Sununu and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in the White House two days after Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait."

CONTINUED...

http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html

He's a liar, too. But that's another thread...

[Cleita]

1. Great post.

I have been leaning more to emphasizing his common, ordinary, everyday criminal dealings rather than the political ones. These are the ones that may give some of our Dems the cojones to start indicting him with existing laws and dragging him through the lower courts first.

By the way, don't forget the possible drug dealing by both George and Jeb in Miami before either of them were in politics that seems to have been covered up by Poppy to make it look like they were doing a drug sting operation with some Fed agency. I have the link somewhere. I will try to find it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Well, things are happening fast, so keep your eyes open.

In one day I hear that the investigation of the CIA downing of the plane that killed the missionary in Chile was scrapped, and now I'm hearing that a judge dismissed a 19 year old case that Filippinos launched against Marcos. What next?

[Octafish]

9. Terrorist Orlando Bosch...

... is also a crook. Jebthro and Poppy Bush helped free him. Then, again, if there were a Who's Who of Terror Inc, we'd find half the madministration. Unfortunately, for some it's a case of "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter."

Bosch & links

On February 16, 1988 convicted terrorist (Florida 1968 attack on freighter), Orlando Bosch, illegally entered the United States, after having spent 11 years in prison in Venezuela for the terrorist attack on a Cubana plane that resulted in the loss of 73 lives. The accounts of how Bosch came to the United States conflict, with one side blaming the Venezuelan government and the other side blaming the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Otto Reich.

Not disputed is that in 1990 and 1992 President Bush, at the urging of his son Jeb, paroled and then pardoned Bosch. The pardon won Jeb Bush support of anti-Castro voters of Florida in his election as governor and George W. Bush in his election of 2000. Since his pardon Bosch has been connected by some to bombings of hotels in Cuba. Cuba wants to try Bosch for terrorist attacks. The organization created by Bosch has claimed responsibility for bombings in  Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Spain and, of all places, New York. Are victims of bombings in New York that are the work of Bosch less entitled to justice than those victims of bin Laden's attacks? Why hunt one terrorist in Afghanistan at great cost, while allowing  another to live in Florida?

In examining the big picture we note the G. W. Bush ties to Enron and his willingness to use his father's presidency to pressure the government of Argentina to give a lucrative contract to Enron, against the wishes of the government and the people of Argentina. Further the record of law breaking and deceit of many persons connected with Reich and others in the Iran arms for hostages and Contra drug dealing of the Reagan years suggests that what they say ought to be examined carefully. Further it ought to be of some concern that Bush, who charged his opponent, Gore, with being untrustworthy, would be so interested in appointing to high government posts a number of persons who have escaped prosecution for lying under oath and violating law only because they were recipients of presidential pardons.

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://www.hailmaryshelley.com/bosch-links.html

PS: Thanks for the kind words and your excellent approach, Cleita. The average American has no idea about the history and depths of the Bush Organized Crime Family. Rather than getting them to open their eyes to PNAC and 9-11 and all the rest, it makes good educational sense to show them what the Bushes are really like one crime at a time.

I look forward to learning about Poppy twisting some DEA arms on behalf of his two boys. If they weren't his kids, they'd probably be doing the only work for which they are qualified, crime.

[Cleita]

12. "The Bush Drug Sting"

The Bush Drug Sting, The Sins of the Father, The Sins of the Son and -- The Smoking Airplane

Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal's Airplane?

by
Daniel Hopsicker and Michael C. Ruppert
<snip>
It has all the makings of a major box office thriller: Texas Governor and Republican Presidential contender George W. Bush and his brother Jeb, allegedly caught on videotape in 1985 picking up kilos of cocaine at a Florida airport in a DEA sting set up by Barry SealÉ

An ensuing murderous cover-up featuring Seal's public assassination less than a year later by a hit teamÉthe members of which, when caught, reveal to their attorneys during trial that their actions were being directed by then, National Security Council (NSC) staffer - Lt. Colonel Oliver NorthÉ

And a private turboprop King Air 200 supposedly caught on tape in the sting with FAA ownership records leading directly to the CIA and some of the perpetrators of the most notorious (and never punished) major financial frauds of the '80s. ÉGreek shippers paying bribes to obtain loans from American companies that would never be repaid.ÉAn American executive snatching the charred remains of a $10,000 payoff check from an ashtray in an Athens restaurantÉSwiss police finding bank accounts used for kickbacks and bribesÉ<snip>

more.....

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/W_plane.html

So apparently the owner of the plane shows up dead after awhile. It seems suspicious to me that the Bush boys would be using the airplane of a known drug dealer to conduct a DEA drug sting. Very suspicious indeed.

[Octafish]

23. Understand Seal bought the farm after dropping Poppy's name.

Thanks for the reminder, Cleita! I'd forgotten that whiff of Bush history.

Seal said he had a "Get out of Jail Free" card when it came to his ops. Seal had bragged he had the Bushes on film. Next thing we know, Seal's murdered and the rest of the story never comes out. BFEE SOP: DMTNT (Dead Men Tell No Tales). Women, too, when it comes to these gangsters.

From "The Mafia, CIA and George Bush" by Pete Brewton:

BARRY SEAL, murdered drug smuggler, gun runner, DEA informant and CIA asset; used by CIA on drug sting of Sandinistas; had owned C-123K used to resupply the Contras; caught in 1972 guns-for-drugs operation with Cuban exiles in Mexico that included a Texas rancher, a Gambino family associate and Herman K. Beebe.

[flordehinojos]

2. what would happen if one of those secret service men let THAT LIMOUSINE

DOOR drop on the bush boy's head as he was getting out of the limousine?...

[Octafish]

13. Man needs a brain to get a concussion.

With all those tax-giveaways to the rich, it's easy to see why people with money salute the crazy monkey. Those in the know understand he's just a figurehead. Bush's real brain is Karl Rove and, even then, all Turd Blossom does is politics. The real brains to the "Outfit" is Dick Cheney. And he's really just Smirko's handler. Sneer works for others. Who or what they are, we can only guess. Odds are they have money and lots of it.

Crime in the Suites

by William Greider

The collapse of Enron has swiftly morphed into a go-to-jail financial scandal, laden with the heavy breathing of political fixers, but Enron makes visible a more profound scandal--the failure of market orthodoxy itself. Enron, accompanied by a supporting cast from banking, accounting and Washington politics, is a virtual piñata of corrupt practices and betrayed obligations to investors, taxpayers and voters. But these matters ought not to surprise anyone, because they have been familiar, recurring outrages during the recent reign of high-flying Wall Street. This time, the distinctive scale may make it harder to brush them aside. "There are many more Enrons out there," a well-placed Washington lawyer confided. He knows because he has represented a couple of them.

The rot in America's financial system is structural and systemic. It consists of lying, cheating and stealing on a grand scale, but most offenses seem depersonalized because the transactions are so complex and remote from ordinary human criminality. The various cops-and-robbers investigations now under way will provide the story line for coming months, but the heart of the matter lies deeper than individual venality. In this era of deregulation and laissez-faire ideology, the essential premise has been that market forces discipline and punish the errant players more effectively than government does. To produce greater efficiency and innovation, government was told to back off, and it largely has. "Transparency" became the exalted buzzword. The market discipline would be exercised by investors acting on honest information supplied by the banks and brokerages holding their money, "independent" corporate directors and outside auditors, and regular disclosure reports required by the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies. The Enron story makes a sick joke of all these safeguards.

But the rot consists of more than greed and ignorance. The evolving new forms of finance and banking, joined with the permissive culture in Washington, produced an exotic structural nightmare in which some firms are regulated and supervised while others are not. They converge, however, with kereitzu-style back-scratching in the business of lending and investing other people's money. The results are profoundly conflicted loyalties in banks and financial firms--who have fiduciary obligations to the citizens who give them money to invest. Banks and brokerages often cannot tell the truth to retail customers, depositors or investors without potentially injuring the corporate clients that provide huge commissions and profits from investment deals. Sometimes bankers cannot even tell the truth to themselves because they have put their own capital (or government-insured deposits) at risk in the deals. These and other deformities will not be cleaned up overnight (if at all, given the bipartisan political subservience to Wall Street interests). But Enron ought to be seen as the casebook for fundamental reform.

The people bilked in Enron's sudden implosion were not only the 12,000 employees whose 401(k) savings disappeared while Enron insiders were smartly cashing out more than $1 billion of their own shares. The other losers are working people across America. Enron was effectively owned by them. On June 30, before the CEO abruptly resigned and the stock price began its terminal decline, 64 percent of Enron's 744 million shares were owned by institutional investors, mainly pension funds but also mutual funds in which families have individual accounts. At midyear, the company was valued at $36.5 billion, having fallen from $70 billion in less than six months. The share price is now close to zero. Either way you figure it, ordinary Americans--the beneficial owners of pension funds--lost $25-$50 billion because they were told lies by the people and firms they trusted to protect their interests.

This is a shocking but not a new development. Global Crossing went from $60 a share to pennies (as with Enron, the market had said it was worth more than General Motors). CEO Gary Winnick cashed out early for $600 million, but the insiders did not share the bad news with other shareholders. Workers at telephone companies bought by Global Crossing had been compelled to accept its stock in their retirement plans. (Winnick bought a $60 million home in Bel Air, said to be the highest-priced single-family dwelling in America.) Lucent's stock price tanked with similar consequences for employees and shareholders, while executives sold $12 million in shares back to the failing company. (After running Lucent into the ground, CEO Richard McGinn left with an $11.3 million severance package.) There are many Enrons, as the lawyer said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020204&s=greider

[ultraist]

3. Look how thick that car door is! I noticed that during the inaug too

That photo of Bush looking Mafioso in his black trench coat and cowboy hat, & envelope of cash in hand would go nicely with your OP! LOL!

"Families that PREY together" LMAO!!!

And NOW he is STEALING FROM OUR CHILDREN!

[Octafish]

14. Only a crook needs to hide from the people.

Watching C-SPIN during the coronation, I saw Smirko and Pickles walk a bit where the people were few and then board their armor-plated lounge and roll on toward the White House. It was so odd. The machine sped up and the Secret Service folk were forced to run, not jog, beside the first shirkers. The camera showed the limo head down Pennsylvania Avenue and the two-dozen or so SS types wore suits and long black trenchcoats. It was weird, seeing what looked like a black-caped phalanx fly down the street arrayed around the pretzeldunce's car. They reminded me of Caligula's Praetorian guard.

Here's the protection JFK enjoyed in Dallas, courtesy, I'm certain, of the same government:



The car with all the people is the Secret Service car. The unprotected, open vehicle in front carries President Kennedy.

[oasis]

5. Four more years to expose these crooks. America will finally wake up

to late to act. But at least they'll know.

[Karenina]

6. Amis be jes' a little s-l-o-w...

Here's an oldie but goodie from 1992:

http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html

[Octafish]

41. And somethingspeedylikethis: Smirko got kicked off Carlyle Board.

The CROOK was too stupid then, too.


HOW BUSH GOT BOUNCED

FROM CARLYLE BOARD

By Suzan Mazur


In the speech Rubenstein also touched on company ethics - under intense scrutiny since 9/11 - including widely reported stories about Carlyle operating as a shadow government. He assured investors that "making money is nice" but Carlyle is "first and foremost" concerned with ethics.

DAVID RUBENSTEIN - We have an enormous amount of our own personal capital - about 90% of our net worth is tied up in these funds. My partners and I and all the other professionals have committed $700 million to our various funds throughout the world so we've got a lot of money committed to this and it's important to get it back. But it's more important that we not do anything that impairs the reputation of ourselves or our investors. So making money is nice but we're more worried about our reputation and concerned with ethics and that's first and foremost.

He had this to say about George W. Bush

Let me talk about a bad deal. At the beginning of Carlyle - early - we didn't have any funds. We didn't have any dedicated funds. And we had a deal that seemed like it would be the greatest deal since sliced bread. It was handed to us. Marriott said to us, look, we're going to sell our airline catering business .It's number one in the world. Management team has been there for 10 years. We dominate all the markets and we're not going to do an auction. We're going to sell it to you guys 'cause some of our people (Carlyle co-founders Steve Norris and Dan D'Aniello and Bush crony Fred Malek) used to work at Marriott. You know, what could be better?

SNIP...

We put him on the board and spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.

CONTINUED...

http://prorev.com/bushcarlyle.htm

The crazy monkey didn't have too.

It's not what you know.

It's WHO you know.

[Karenina]

51. Such a LONGSTANDING pattern of

CRIMINAL INFLUENCE PEDDLING.

When this piece was written, Marvin wasn't even on the radar screen.

Bush Family Value$

The Bush clan's family business

by Stephen Pizzo
September/October 1992

http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html

In 1991, President Bush bristled at a flurry of news accounts that questioned the business ethics of three of his sons. "The media ought to be ashamed of itself for what they're doing," Bush complained. "They have a right to make a living...


Since George Bush has raised "family values" as a campaign issue repeatedly, though, it seems only fair to take a look at his own family. A computer search showed that over the past five years stories have periodically surfaced chronicling the individual business antics of the president's sons -- each riding comfortably through life in the slipstream of his father's growing power and influence.

Although a handful of good reporters for the New York Times, LA Times, Village Voice, and Wall Street Journal have diligently been digging through business records for months, something has been missing: an overview that "connects the dots" in the myriad deals that have been examined, making it clear that cashing in on influence has become a pattern of behavior extending through the first family...

George W. Bush, Jr.

None of George Bush's offspring is more his father's son than George W. Bush. George Jr., or "Shrub" as Molly Ivins refers to him, began his own Texas oil career in the mid-1970s when he formed Bush Exploration. Like the business dealings of his brothers, George's company was not a success, and it was rescued in 1983 by another oil company, Spectrum 7, run by several staunch and well-heeled Reagan-Bush supporters. But by mid-1986, a soft oil market found Spectrum also near bankruptcy.

Many oil companies went belly-up during that time. But Spectrum had one asset the others lacked -- the son of the vice-president. Rescue came in 1986 in the form of Harken Energy, just in the nick of time. Harken absorbed Spectrum, and, in the process, Junior got $600,000 worth of Harken stock in return for his Spectrum shares. He also won a lucrative consulting contract and stock options. In all, the deal would put well over $1 million in his pocket over the next few years -- even though Harken itself lost millions...


John Ellis ("Jeb") Bush

After graduating from Texas University, Jeb Bush served a short apprenticeship at the Venezuelan branch of Texas Commerce Bank in Caracas before settling in Miami, in 1980, to work on his father's unsuccessful primary bid against Ronald Reagan. Campaigning for Dad was hardly a paying job. But Jeb was about to learn that being one of George Bush's sons means never having to circulate a résumé.

In the next few years, financial support flowed to Jeb through Miami's right-wing Cuban community. Republican party politics and a series of business scandals -- including Medicaid fraud and shady S&L deals -- were inextricably intertwined. A former federal prosecutor told MJ that, when he looked into Jeb's lucrative business dealings with a now-fugitive Cuban, he considered two possibilities -- Jeb was either crooked or stupid. At the time, he concluded Jeb was merely stupid...


Neil Bush

In the March/April issue of Mother Jones, I detailed Neil Bush's activities and therefore only sketch his involvement here. Neil served as a director of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan in Denver, Colorado, from 1985 until 1988. During that time, the now-dead thrift made over $200 million in loans to Neil's two partners in JNB Exploration, Neil's abysmally unsuccessful oil company. Silverado's failure was due at least in part to the fact that Neil's two partners welshed on $132 million in loans.

Federal regulators determined that, while Silverado was pumping loans to Neil's two associates, Neil was completely dependent on the two men for his income. The failure of Silverado -- its closure delayed until after the 1988 election -- cost taxpayers about $1 billion. After almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability," and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at Silverado. Neil's estimated $250,000 in legal bills generated by the scandal are reportedly being paid for him by a banking-industry lobbyist who is fighting to get banks deregulated...


When President Bush speaks of the lack of family values he, of course, is referring to broken marriages, single mothers, and inner-city kids who join gangs and sell dope. But are these the only villains -- or the most important ones -- responsible for the shredded social fabric? What about well-to-do white boys who trade on family connections, welsh on loans, run with con men, and leave financial ruin in their wake as they line their own pockets? What about grown men, with access to the most powerful public office in the land, who participate in scandal but show no remorse for any of it -- and who take no responsibility for the consequences of their own actions?

[Octafish]

53. Prescott Bush claimed to be a Hero in World War I.

I LOVE that article in MoJo. If you like Stephen Pizzo, you might like Dan Moldea (except for his stuff on Sirhan Sirhan...). Loads o' Links:

http://www.moldea.com/bushology3.html

Speaking of the BFEE, here's where the current gene pool got its start:


Here's one letter from a soldier Bush remembers

EXCERPT...

He wrote the letter in the third person, as if somebody else were writing about him. He wrote that the three Allied leaders, Gen. Ferdinand Foch, Sir Douglas Haig and Gen. John J. Pershing were inspecting American positions when the young captain from Columbus noticed a shell coming directly for them. The captain shouted a warning, drew his bolo knife, and using it as a ball bat, knocked the shell off-course. Consequently, the captain was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross.

He sent that letter to his hometown paper, the State Journal. Again, the music in his head: "We're poor little lambs who have lost our way. Baa, baa, baa. We're little black sheep who have gone astray. Baa, baa, baa."

You might think that the editors of the State Journal would have greeted this letter with some skepticism. "He deflected an artillery shell with a bolo knife?" But again, a historical accident. The newspaper published the story. And why not? It was huge news. A local boy was the biggest hero of the Great War.

Shortly thereafter, the captain's mother wrote a letter that was published on the front page. She said she had received a cable from her son, in which he said he had neither saved the lives of the Allied leaders nor received any decorations. "He feels dreadfully troubled that a letter, written in a spirit of fun, should have been misinterpreted. He says he is no hero and asks me to make explanations."

The captain returned to Columbus after the war, but the specter of the letter hung over him. Some folks did not understand that the letter had been intended as a joke. These people believed that the captain had actually tried to claim he was a war hero. Figuring that this would haunt him forever in Columbus, the captain decided to move. He contacted an old friend from the Skull and Bones Society, and this friend offered him a job in St. Louis.

CONTINUED...

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/Columnists.nsf/0/1D9FEBF75D506C0786256E8B00384957?OpenDocument&Headline=Here's+one+letter+from+a+soldier+Bush+remembers&tetl=1

Such, um, class.

[Karenina]

54. Culture...

*inbreds are SO DEVOID of our collective culture. Theirs is a *corporate-family structure. DYSFUNCTIONAL to the MAX:

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

[Octafish]

15. The Criminal Element

From

"The American Assembler"

The number of ethical violations, scandals and serious crimes by Republicans and/or Bush administration officials are adding up to a breathtaking portrait of the most corrupt U.S. government since Nixon. In fact, Nixon had a clean slate compared to this bunch.

Let's look at the stunning compilation by The Carpetbagger Report.

* Cheney's secretive Energy Task Force was investigated by the GAO and the case is currently pending at the Supreme Court.

* The Plame Game is under investigation by the Justice Department.

* Bush's Medicare scam and the circumstances that led the administration to lie to Congress about the cost of the legislation is under investigation by the HHS inspector general's office.

* The massive intelligence failure that led Bush to lie to the world about the Iraqi threat is under investigation by a congressionally-authorized independent commission (which Bush fought the creation of).

* Bribes offered on the House floor to Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) in exchange for his vote on Bush's Medicare plan are under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department.

* Attorney General John Ashcroft was under investigation by the Federal Election Commission for violating campaign finance laws in 2000, and the FEC concluded that Ashcroft accepted $110,000 in illegal contributions.

* An investigation into House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's criminal fundraising schemes in Texas -- which allegedly used corporate funds to help state GOP lawmakers -- is already before a Texas grand jury.

* Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee were investigated for stealing thousands of confidential memos from Dem computers, a matter that has now been referred to the Justice Department for a possible criminal probe.

* Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland is under a criminal investigation (and an impeachment investigation) after he lied about prominent state contractors and several government aides paying for refurbishments to his lake-front cottage.

* Former Rep. Bill Janklow (R-S.D.) was under investigation for vehicular manslaughter, a crime for which he was later convicted.

* The Pentagon launched a formal investigation into well-armed evangelist and three-star General William "Jerry" Boykin, Bush's pick for deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and his record of extreme religious rhetoric.

* The circumstances that led to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 are under investigation by a congressionally-authorized independent commission (which, again, Bush fought the creation of and then later resisted cooperating with).

* And honorable mentions should go, of course, to investigations into Halliburton (Dick Cheney's former company) and Enron (George Bush's biggest corporate supporter).

No Surprise

Of course this should come as no surprise. Republicans love convicted criminals. They knowingly elected two to the White House with George Bush ( 2 convictions at least) and Dick Cheney (2 convictions).

And of course there's the great spokemen of the Right-Wing, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and Rush Limbaugh. Of course, unlike the first two, Rush Limbaugh's conviction is pending.

CONTINUED w/LINKS Galore...

http://americanassembler.com/issues/neocrimes/

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/001421.html

[ck4829]

7. The people who say Bush is a good Christian are idiots

I myself am not a Christian, but I know what a good Christian is, and Bush is not one of them.

How much proof do people need to tell them that:

Bush IS NOT Moral

Bush IS NOT a good Christian

Bush IS NOT Compassionate

Bush IS NOT good for America

The people who believe that Bush is a good guy are crazy. ignorant, or stupid.

[Octafish]

18. One doesn't have to be a theist to be an ethical, moral and good person.

Most people I know who have expressed to me they have no faith are law-abiding, kind-hearted people. OTOH, many who profess to be Christian are anything but. In some cases, they are bigoted hypocrites, liars and thieves.

So, it doesn't seem so weird to see and hear the fundies call everyone who disagrees with their particular interpretation of the Bible or The Word all manner of names. They must've skipped over some important parts.

Here's a real Christian explaining...

Jimmy Carter explains how the Christian right isn't Christian at all.

By Ayelish McGarvey
Web Exclusive: 04.05.04

Former President Jimmy Carter, America's first evangelical Christian president, still teaches Sunday school at his Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, and he and his wife, Rosalynn, continue their human-rights work in developing nations through the Carter Center at Emory University. In recent months, the Carters toured Togo, Ghana, and Mali to raise awareness of the public-health needs of those nations. In February, Carter spoke about the role of evangelical Christianity in democratic politics with Prospect writing fellow Ayelish McGarvey.

Republicans have been extremely successful at connecting religion and values to issues like the fight against terrorism, abortion, and gay rights. Democrats have been far less adept at infusing our issues -- compassion, help for the poor, social justice -- with any sense of religious commitment or moral imperative. Why do you think that is?

When I was younger, almost all Baptists were strongly committed on a theological basis to the separation of church and state. It was only 25 years ago when there began to be a melding of the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christianity, particularly with the Southern Baptist Convention. This is a fairly new development, and I think it was brought about by the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity.

First of all, we worship the prince of peace, not war. And those of us who have advocated for the resolution of international conflict in a peaceful fashion are looked upon as being unpatriotic, branded that way by right-wing religious groups, the Bush administration, and other Republicans.

Secondly, Christ was committed to compassion for the most destitute, poor, needy, and forgotten people in our society. Today there is a stark difference because most of the people most strongly committed to the Republican philosophy have adopted the proposition that help for the rich is the best way to help even poor people (by letting some of the financial benefits drip down to those most deeply in need). I would say there has been a schism drawn -- on theology and practical politics and economics between the two groups.

CONTINUED...

http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=7572

[Octafish]

44. Fundamental KKKooks

Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence
by Frederick Clarkson

Part 1

Overview and Roots

The Christian Right has shown impressive resilience and has rebounded dramatically after a series of embarrassing televangelist scandals of the late 1980s, the collapse of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and the failed presidential bid of Pat Robertson. In the 1990s, Christian Right organizing went to the grassroots and exerted wide influence in American politics across the country.

There is no doubt that Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition gets much of the credit for this successful strategic shift to the local level. But another largely overlooked reason for the persistent success of the Christian Right is a theological shift since the 1960s. The catalyst for the shift is Christian Reconstructionism--arguably the driving ideology of the Christian Right in the 1990s.

The significance of the Reconstructionist movement is not its numbers, but the power of its ideas and their surprisingly rapid acceptance. Many on the Christian Right are unaware that they hold Reconstructionist ideas. Because as a theology it is controversial, even among evangelicals, many who are consciously influenced by it avoid the label. This furtiveness is not, however, as significant as the potency of the ideology itself. Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of "Biblical Law." Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.

Reconstructionism has expanded from the works of a small group of scholars to inform a wide swath of conservative Christian thought and action. While many Reconstructionist political positions are commonly held conservative views, what is significant is that Reconstructionists have created a comprehensive program, with Biblical justifications for far right political policies. Many post-World War II conservative, anticommunist activists were also, if secondarily, conservative Christians. However, the Reconstructionist movement calls on conservatives to be Christians first, and to build a church-based political movement from there.

For much of Reconstructionism's short history it has been an ideology in search of a constituency. But its influence has grown far beyond the founders' expectations. As Reconstructionist author Gary North observes, "We once were shepherds without sheep. No longer."

CONTINUED...

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html

[bling bling]

8. Someday, the people who voted for him will be ashamed.

Bush voters will experience the classic 20/20 in hindsight phenomenon when they realize they were duped. It's beyond me why only some of us seem to see clearly right now. Although I have to say I personally knew quite a few level-headed Republicans who didn't vote for him because they saw how dangerous he is.

You're right. Bush is a crook. And he's got free reign for four more years to wreak destruction.

It didn't have to be this way. Thanks to the stubborn, the weak, the hateful, the stupid, and the brainwashed, we will all suffer the consequences.

[Octafish]

19. Bushler is Willie Sutton incarnate...

There are more than a few good Republicans in Congress and in the Judiciary. These men and women would side with the law when confronted with evidence of Bush's criminality.

The thing is, we don't have an honest and free press needed to inform the Government and the American People. It's up to us to do their work.

And that is why we must throw all the stuff up and sling it on the warmongering moron until it sticks. And, perhaps one day soon, it will and we'll see chimpeachment.

In the spirit of the fellah who robbed banks because that's where the money is, here's a bit for the pile:


Bush's Plan to Loot Social Security

By Norman D. Livergood

George W. Bush is telling us that Social Security is in trouble NOW. And you can believe everything he tells you--right?

The Bush junta and Wall Streeters are peddling the Big Lie that Social Security is inevitably going bust.

It is not!

The Social Security System (SSS) runs at a surplus of $100-$120 billion annually and will continue to do so throughout the twenty-first century! THIS IS WHY THE BUSH JUNTA WANTS TO LOOT SOCIAL SECURITY--IT'S WHERE THE BIG MONEY IS!

This trust fund system is one of the few programs set up by the federal government that works. In 1999, SSS received $383 billion in checks, $436 billion in taxes, and an additional $49 billion in interest. Instead of red ink, Social Security made almost $102 billion in profit, to add to the more than $652 billion it had in surplus from previous years.

CONTINUED...

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/sss1.htm

[Octafish]

45. It'll be their Social Security

Pretzeldent Peanutbrain thinks the social safety net equals socialism. Some compassion. He's like a fireman who moves the net just as the family jumps from a burning building. Bush knows it, too. That makes him a sociopath.

Bush's Plan to Loot Social Security

By Norman D. Livergood

George W. Bush is telling us that Social Security is in trouble NOW. And you can believe everything he tells you--right?

The Bush junta and Wall Streeters are peddling the Big Lie that Social Security is inevitably going bust.

It is not!

The Social Security System (SSS) runs at a surplus of $100-$120 billion annually and will continue to do so throughout the twenty-first century! THIS IS WHY THE BUSH JUNTA WANTS TO LOOT SOCIAL SECURITY--IT'S WHERE THE BIG MONEY IS!

This trust fund system is one of the few programs set up by the federal government that works. In 1999, SSS received $383 billion in checks, $436 billion in taxes, and an additional $49 billion in interest. Instead of red ink, Social Security made almost $102 billion in profit, to add to the more than $652 billion it had in surplus from previous years.

CONTINUED...

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/sss1.htm

That makes him a crook.

[seemslikeadream]

10. Bush Sr. involved in "biggest gold heist since days of Butch Cassidy"

...why the General Mining Law of 1872 should be overhauled. Passed to encourage settlement of the sparsely populated Western frontier, the basic provisions of the law remain largely unchanged. It continues to allow companies to mine gold, silver, platinum and other precious minerals on public land without paying the government.
And the law also permits companies such as Stillwater to pay just $2.50 to $5 per acre to own the land -- a fee that hasn't changed in 129 years.

"Corporate welfare," fumes Bruce Babbitt, who as secretary of the Interior in the Clinton administration was forced to approve the sale of more than 9,000 acres of public land to miners. Those sales, called patents, included more than 1,900 acres in Nevada containing gold he estimated to be worth more than $10 billion. A Canadian company, Barrick Gold, paid the government less than $10,000.

"It's the biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy," Babbitt said after a judge ordered him to sign the papers for Barrick. "But these folks stole it fair and square. The West has long been settled, but the giveaway continues unabated."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/mining/27123_minebiz13.shtml


And according to a Nov. 20, 1997 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation story:
Bush and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney serve on the Barrick international advisory board.
The photo below of the Barrick Betze-Post open pit gold mine in Elko, Nevada is from the University of Nevada.



More ominously, why was Nevada gold given to a Canadian company? Isn't that like throwing open the doors to Fort Knox? Isn't it treasonous for a former U.S. President to be involved in the giveaway of $10 billion of U.S. gold to a foreign company?

http://www.newsworld.cbc.ca/archive/html/1997/11/20/bush971120a.html



Poppy Strikes Gold
July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast
The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka!

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.<1> There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

I was curious: What does one do with a used president? Barrick vehemently denies that it appointed Bush "in order to procure him to make contact with other world leaders whom he knows, or who could be of considerable assistance" to the company. Yet, in September 1996, Bush wrote a letter to help convince Indonesian dictator Suharto to give Barrick a new, hot gold-mining concession.

more
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=4

[Octafish]

20. Drugs are a big Bush money-maker, too.

Besides Merck, the BFEE's into drugs. Here's what a top DEA agent reported and got ZERO action from the Reagan - Bush White House...


CONTRA-INTELLIGENCE

ON OLIVER L. NORTH

By Celerino "Cele" Castillo, 3rd

EXCERPT...

After October 1984, Vice President Bush designated North to coordinate the re-supply operations for the Contra network. At the same time, he was involved in various schemes to ransom U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon, by providing arms to Iran.

SNIP...

At the height of the Contra war, I was stationed in Central America for 5 years as the lead DEA agent in El Salvador. It was there that I came face to face with the contradictions of my assignments. I started to record intelligence on how known drug traffickers, with multiple DEA files, were utilizing hangars 4 and 5 at Illopango airbase in El Salvador, to transport monies and drugs. Those hangars were owned and operated by the CIA and NSC. The Contra supply operations utilized the most readily available capabilities: drug-smugglers, who had the planes and pilots to conduct clandestine flights from South and Central America to all parts of the United States. "Guns down, drugs back," was the formula.

During that period, I was warned several times by the DEA and the State Department to shut down my Contra investigations but not to close the files. The reason was that if I did not close the investigation, then the committees would not be able to have excess to the files under the Freedom of Information Act. However, I continued to file my reports on the Contras to DEA HQS. These reports on members of the Contra operators went on for several years.

During the 1980s, Felix Rodriguez was in charge of the Contras' supply network in El Salvador for Oliver North. In addition, Rodriguez hired a Cuban terrorist by the name of Luis Posada Carriles to help him run the operation. On October 1976, after an explosion sent a Cuban jetliner plummeting into the sea off Barbados, it was revealed that the mastermind behind the bombing was no other then Luis Posada. In late 2000, Posada was arrested in a plot to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro.

The July 9, 1984 entry in North's diary obligingly published by Senator John Kerry, states, in Ollie's own hand, "Wanted aircraft to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, want aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos."

CONTINUED...

[Octafish]

21. When you're a crook, wars go better with coke.

Same goes for terrorism. Here's more on the big BFEE cash cow:



How the Contras Invaded the USA

By Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight
(Special To The SHADOW)

Wanda Palacio watched the Hercules cargo plane roll to a stop on the tarmac of Baranquilla International Airport, located in the Andean foothills just off the azure Atlantic waters of Columbia's northern coast. According to Palacio, the aircraft bore the markings of Southern Air Transport, a private airline once associated with retired Vietnam-era Air Force general Richard Secord, who would later purchase a security fence for the home of Contra point man Lt. Col. Oliver North. Palacio was in Baranquilla that day to arrange a cocaine deal with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, at the time Columbia's most ambitious drug lord. As she watched two men in green uniforms remove two green military trunks out of the plane and on to a truck, her host explained his operation: "Ochoa told me that the plane was a CIA plane and that he was exchanging guns for drugs."

The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Some-times they brought guns, sometimes they took U.S. products such as washing ma-chines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia. Each time, Ochoa said, they took back drugs." In her 1987 sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Senate Subcom-mittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism, Palacio acknowledged that she could not confirm the operation was being conducted by the CIA. But, she added, "Obviously, what I saw raised many questions about the source of the U.S. weapons which I know Ochoa has obtained."

Wars Go Better With Coke
That was not the only time such an exchange was witnessed by the Puerto Rican born Palacio, a former airline employee who married an upper-class Colombian whose social circle included "people deeply involved in the drug trade." Concerned for the safety of her daughter, she eventually volunteered to work with the FBI because, she said, "I was angry about what drugs were doing to the people I knew and to the United States Government itself."

As an FBI operative, Palacio would later realize the extent of the damage done to the United States Government by the guns-for-drugs exchanges that permeated the hemisphere during the early-to-mid-1980s. "To my great regret," she testified, "the Bureau has told me that some of the people I identified as being involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency." And, according to Palacio's deposi-tion, it was not only the CIA that was involved with drug smugglers. Palacio told Senator Kerry that she spoke to the FBI about many individuals with the U.S. government that were involved in illegal drug operations. "We have extensively discussed drug-related corruption in the United States, including a regional director of U.S. customs, a federal judge, air traffic controllers in the FAA, a regional director of immigration, and other government officials." Wanda Palacio is only one of scores of people to come forward with first-hand evidence of officially sanctioned transfers of drugs for covert policy ob-jectives, and Baranquilla is but one of many transshipment points in the hemi-sphere whose operations would be mir-rored by the unloading of drugs from secret flights into private and military airfields for delivery into the streets and suburbs of America.

CONTINUED...

http://shadow.mediafilter.org/S40/S40.Contras.html

[Octafish]

22. Money to be made off of gambli-, er, gaming, for the connected...

The following reads like a blueprint for today's American mafia -- ENRON, Global Crossing and the rest of the turds affiliated with the BFEE:



Pinchuk and the International Crisis Group - Mafia Buying Respectability

by "Stefan Lemieszewski" <stefanl@ > Jan 17, 2005 at 04:22 PM

It's been pointed out that in Ukraine, the mafia oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk is a board member of the International Crisis Group.

It's not that unusual that gangsters, oligarchs, white-collar criminals, et. al. try to buy respectablility through philanthropies, charitable organizations, hospitals, medical research institutions, university boards, think tanks, etc. Usually it only takes some dollar contributions, either overtly or covertly, or the right connections.

Consider the well-known Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) . CSIS's Advisory Board had one member named Steve Wynn (his mafia-linked father changed the family name from Weinberg).

Wynn is known as the "casino king" of Las Vegas. He controlled casinos such as the Bellagio, Treasure Island, Dunes, Golden Nugget, Mirage, etc. He recently imploded the Dunes so that he could build his new Wynn Casino on the same property. Wynn is a frontman for the Genovese crime familia of New York according to a report by New Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Dept. For many years the Genovese boss was the cigar-chomping Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno (whose net worth was estimated at some $200 million when he was sentenced to 100 years in prison). Salerno was known for fixing theTeamsters Union elections which brought Jackie Presser and Roy Williams as presidents. In the 1960s, the Teamsters' Pension Fund was looted by the mafia through the mob front and lawyer Allen Glick into providing tens of millions of dollars for building the mob casinos in Vegas, such as Caesar's Palace. (Caesars sold two weeks ago for $9.3 billion which is almost equivalent to 25 percent of Ukraine's GNP). In the 1990s, Mogilevich and the Solntsevo crime familia were in cahoots with the Genovese crime familia in various rackets such "pump and dump" stock scams on Wall Street. The Cosa Nostra also rigged cement contracts for building projects such as the Trump Tower. Though Britain turned down Wynn's casino application because of his Genovese mob ties going back to the 1960s, Wynn doesn't seem to have a problem in the USA.

Before selling the Mirage, Wynn controlled the Shadow Creek Golf Course (cost $48 million to build) with such an exclusive membership that it only had one member -- Steve Wynn's. Thus, one could only play there at Wynn's invitation. Guests have included Kevin Kostner, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, etc. Players had to have a $100,000 line of credit at the Mirage before they could paly. Wynn had lockers numbered 1 & 2. The locker next to Wynn's belonged to a Japanese yakuza mafia mobster named Ken Mizuno, who lost only $75 million in only two years of gambling at the Mirage. Mizuno was convicted in Japan for money laundering and sentenced to 11 years in jail after ripping off Japanese investors in his own golf course for $600 million. (He sold 52,000 memberships in a Tokyo golf course at up to $54,000 each totaling $853 million while promising that no more than 2,800 memberships would be sold. Mizuno also tried opening a Japanese restaurant and health spa at the Tropicana Casino in Las Vegas but was denied a license because of his yakuza mafia ties. Wynn also held a breakfast fundraiser at Shadow Creek on behalf of the Republican National Committee (at which the Golden Nugget casino contributed $230,000). The golf course has also had players such as Hollywood producer (eg The Karate Kid) Jerry Weintraub, a quiet force in the Republican Party and a close friend of the former president George Bush. Bush has been spotted playing golf at Shadow Creek (but a Bush spokesman denies it). In addition to CSIS, Steve Wynn serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and sits on the Board of the George Bush Presidential Library. In 1995, Wynn played guest at Shadow Creek to presidential hopeful Bob Dole. (Wynn, Dole, Bush and Reagan all shared the same services of imagemaker
Sig Rogich). Wynn is registered as a Democrat, but that doesn't prevent him from making contributions to Republicans.

CONTINUED...

http://www.talkaboutculture.com/group/soc.culture.ukrainian/messages/122417.html

[Octafish]

28. Robbing S&Ls is as good as robbing banks...

... to the BFEE. Still, a trillion isn't what it used to be.



Savings and Loan Scandal

Here are some facts on the infamous S&L scandal of the eighties which we are still paying for.

* The Savings and Loan scandal is the largest theft in the history of the world.

* Deregulation eased restrictions so much that S&L owners could lend themselves money.

* The Garn Institute of Finance, named after Senator Jake Garn, co-authored the deregulation of the industry and received $2.2 million from industry executives.

* Neil Bush, George Bush's son, never servered time in jail for his part in running an S&L into the ground.

* Represenative Fernard St. Germain, who was head of the House of Representatives banking, co-authored the deregulation and was voted out of office after other questionable dealings and was sent back to D.C. as an S&L lobbiest.

* Charles Keating, when asked if massive lobbying efforts had influenced the government officials, he replies "I certainly hope so."

* The rip-off began in 1980 when the government raised the federal insurance on S&L's from $40,000 to $100,000 even though the typical savings account was only around $6000.

* Some of the seized assets were a buffalo sperm bank, a racehorse with syphilis, and a kitty litter mine.

* James Fail invested $1000 of his own money to purchase 15 failing S&L's. The government reimbursed him $1.85 billion in federal subsidies.

* It sometimes took over 7 years to close failing S&L's by the government.

* When S&L owners who stole millions went to jail, their sentances were typically one-fifth that of the average bank robber.

* The goverment bail out will cost the taxpayers around $1.4 trillion dollars when it is over.

* If the White House had stepped in and bailed out the S&L's in 1986 instead of delaying until after the 1988 elections, the cost might have been only $20 billion.

* With the money lost from the S&L scandals, the government could have provided prenatal care for every American child for the next 2,300 years.

* With the money lost from the S&L scandals, the government could have purchased 5 million average homes.

* The authors of "Inside Job", a book about the S&L scandal, found criminal activity at every S&L they investigated.

Facts were taken from"Inside Job" and "It's a Conspiracy!" by the National Insecurity Council.

SOURCE:

http://www.inthe80s.com/sandl.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

29. Franklin Community Credit Union and stolen lives

....

George Bush was less than pleased with the media coverage of the prostitution charges and kept abreast of the scandal as it mushroomed. The Washington Times reported in an article titled ``White House Mute on Call Boy Scandal,'' that ``White House sources confirmed that President Bush has followed the story of the late night visit and Mr. Spence's links to a homosexual prostitution ring under investigation by federal authorities since they were disclosed June 29 in the Washington Times. But top officials will not discuss the story's substance, reportedly even among themselves.

``Press officers have rebuffed repeated requests to obtain Mr. Bush's reaction and decline to discuss investigations or fall out from the disclosures.''@s2 By midsummer, the scandal had been buried. The President had managed to avoid giving a single press conference where he would surely have been asked to comment.

As the call boy ring affair dominated the cocktail gossip circuit in Washington, another scandal, halfway across the country in the state of Nebraska, peaked. Again this scandal knocked on the President's door.

A black Republican who had been a leader in organizing minority support for the President's 1988 campaign and who proudly displayed a photo of himself and the President, arm in arm, in his Omaha home, was at the center of a sex and money scandal that continues to rock the Cornhusker state.

The scandal originated with the collapse of the minority-oriented Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha, directed by Lawrence E. King, Jr., a nationally influential black Republican who sang the national anthem at both the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. King became the subject of the Nebraska Senate's investigation conducted by the specially created ``Franklin Committee'' to probe charges of embezzlement. In November 1988, King's offices were raided by the FBI and $40 million was discovered missing. Within weeks, the Nebraska Senate, which initially opened the inquiry to find out where the money had gone, instead found itself questioning young adults and teenagers who said that they had been child prostitutes. Social workers and state child-care administrators accused King of running a child prostitution ring. The charges grew with the former police chief of Omaha, the publisher of the state's largest daily newspaper, and several other political associates of King, finding themselves accused of patronizing the child prostitution ring.
more
http://www.tarpley.net/bush21.htm

[Octafish]

40. Prescott Bush Jr reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealy likes China. Japan, too

Especially the dictatorial and Yakuza parts.



Carlyle's tentacles embrace Asia

EXCERPT...

Bush himself has had extensive dealings with Asia, particularly Japan. As president, he was popular with the Japanese elite because he played down trade friction in favor of closer strategic ties - a policy followed by his son, George W Bush. In 1991, Prescott Bush, the former president's brother, raised eyebrows in Japan when he signed on as an investment adviser to a man who turned out to be the head of one of Japan's largest criminal syndicates; Prescott, pleading ignorance of his client's background, immediately canceled the deal. In 1990, Jeb Bush, now governor of Florida and the brother of the current president, went to Japan for his Florida real-estate company and explained to investors that his contacts would make it easier for them to buy US property.

George W Bush himself had direct experience with non-performing loans when he was an oil executive and governor in Texas. His knowledge in this area was much in evidence last summer, when Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, paid his first visit to Bush. As Japanese reporters blinked in wonderment, Bush went on at some length to explain the importance of restructuring bad loans and banks.

Carlyle's forte is not only money-making. Its executives also influence policy - sometimes profoundly. Last week, Carlucci, who is chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council, a coalition of US multinationals doing business in Taiwan, invited Tang Yiau-ming, Taiwan's defense minister, to attend a closed-door summit of US and Taiwanese defense officials sponsored by the council and key US military contractors, including Carlyle's United Defense Industries. Tang's visit, which was capped by a meeting with US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, marked the highest-level defense contacts between Taipei and Washington since diplomatic relations were severed in 1979 - and paralleled President Bush's push to expand arms sales to Taiwan, where Carlyle has significant investments.

At the same time, Bush Sr has not been hesitant about offering advice to his son about issues that could affect Carlyle's investments in Asia. Last spring, after President Bush stuck a knife in Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" by saying North Korea couldn't be trusted, Bush Sr sent the president a memo written by Donald Gregg, his former national security adviser who once served as CIA station chief in Seoul, urging the new administration to ease its hardline policies.

CONTINUED...

http://www.atimes.com/china/DC20Ad02.html

[Octafish]

42. Banking good for BFEE biz: Jonathan Bush, CEO & Director of Riggs Bank

The Bush-Riggs Connection

The decision last week by federal regulators to fine Riggs Bank $25 million for a "willful, systemic" violation of anti-money-laundering laws is raising new questions about whether the Bush administration's ties to powerful moneyed interests is unduly influencing U.S. foreign and national security policy. Riggs Bank is headed by longtime Bush family friend Joe Allbritton, employs President Bush's uncle Jonathan as a top executive, and other executives have been financial donors to the Bush campaign. The bank is at the center of a controversy, according to the Wall Street Journal, for failing to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian and Equatorial Guinean embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) "said members of the bank's board of directors should be held to account for failing to exercise their watchdog role over Riggs's operations" and said refusal to follow money laundering laws "allows terrorists to funnel their blood money through the system."

CONNECTION – JONATHAN BUSH AND RIGGS: Jonathan Bush, President Bush's uncle, was appointed CEO of Riggs Bank's investment arm in May of 2000, just months after his nephew secured the nomination for the presidency. At the time of the appointment, Jonathan Bush had already become a major financial backer of his nephew, rising to "Bush Pioneer" status by raising more than $100,000 for his nephew in 2000. The move solidified the relationship between Jonathan Bush and Riggs, which was originally initiated in 1997 when, according to American Banker newsletter, Riggs paid Bush $5.5 million for his smaller investment firm. That transaction, according to the NYT, "deepened links to the Bushes." While Riggs denies any connection between Bush and the accounts being investigated in the money laundering probe, Riggs President Timothy Lex told the Washington Times in 1997 that "there's a blurring of distinctions between banks, mutual-fund families, broker dealers and everything else across the board."

CONNECTION - ALLBRITTON-BUSH LINK: Allbritton, who said during the federal probe that he was stepping down from Riggs's board, also was close to the Bush family. As the NYT reported, he (along with Riggs client Saudi Prince Bandar) was a financial backer of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, with National Journal noting he contributed between $100,000 - $250,000 to the project.  And there also appears to be a personal bond with the current President Bush: As the 2/15/01 WP noted, "When President Bush climbed out of his limousine on Inauguration Day at the corner of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, he spotted Allbritton, waved and said, 'Hey Joe, how are you doing?'" That might have something to do with the fact that, according to the 11/7/2000 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Allbritton-owned TV station KATV in Little Rock broke 39 years of precedent and publicly endorsed Bush in the 2000 presidential election. The station, which is the biggest in the state, proceeded to air its endorsement 10 times throughout Arkansas, and refused to give equal time to Democrats "who asked for the time to present an alternative to the station's endorsement."

ACTION – LOOSENING BANKING REGS THAT COULD AFFECT RIGGS: According to Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's "Age of Sacred Terror," upon taking office the Bush administration tried to halt efforts to tighten international banking laws – some of which may have affected Riggs. As he notes, the new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush administration opposed Clinton administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center."

SNIP...

ACTION – RESUMING RELATIONS WITH SORDID RIGGS CLIENT: Riggs's fines were also in relation to its business with Equatorial Guinea – the oil-rich West African country headed by brutal dictator Gen. Teodoro Obiang. As the LA Times notes, though the country's offshore oil fields "generate hundreds of millions of dollars, there are few signs of the petroleum boom" there, and the Guinean ambassador admits "the country's oil funds are held in an account at Riggs Bank" controlled by the dictator. But while the IMF and other international institutions have refused to do business with the regime until it accounts for its country's financial resources, the Bush administration "initiated a political thaw with the Obiang regime" in late 2001, "authorizing the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Equatorial Guinea, which had been closed six years earlier, in large part due to the country's horrific human rights record." The move came even though "there's been little, if any, improvement" on human rights.

CONTINUED...

Oh. Here's a Treason part:

Also, the 911 Victims' lawyers are on his case. Bless them:
Exerpt: From 9/11 researcher and counselor Allan Duncan:
"The President and CEO of Riggs Bank is W's uncle, Jonathan Bush. Riggs Bank was the bank that Princess Haifa (of Saudi Arabia) used to send money to San Diego that ended up in the hands of two of the hijackers."

Google cache:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:iY7c9QrFESYJ:www.ariannaonline.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1861.html+jonathan-bush+%2B+riggs-bank&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[seemslikeadream]

46. Allbritton Loses Riggs Bank

WaPo: Allbritton Loses Riggs Bank

Critics Say Allbritton Ruined Bank He Loved

By David Montgomery and Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page A01


Joe L. Allbritton loved Riggs Bank to death.

The strong-willed Texan bought control of the beloved and storied Washington institution in 1981 at its peak of influence and prestige. The "bank of presidents" served 21 first families over the years, financed the purchase of Alaska and became the largest bank in the region.

Yesterday, Washington awoke to learn that after more than 160 years, the Riggs name will disappear, swallowed by PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Allbritton once dismissed such faceless financial conglomerates as "toothpaste banks" -- Crestar, Sovran -- and vowed never to sell out to one. But by yesterday he had no choice. His Riggs was no longer the largest or most important bank in the Washington area, and it was enveloped in a thickening cloud of scandal over failing to guard against money laundering and catering to dictators along with presidents.

Over the years, Allbritton's passionate devotion to "the Riggs" never flagged, nor did his strong personal intervention in the bank's direction or his cultivation of rarefied segments of the market -- embassies, trusts, private banking for the richest of the rich.

...

Two top bank regulators -- the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- recently began a targeted review of Joe Allbritton's activities at the bank and its holding company, Riggs National Corp., to see if he violated any laws and whether any civil fines or criminal referrals to the Department of Justice should be made, government sources familiar with the investigation said.

At issue is whether Allbritton was an active participant in the daily operations of the bank even though he has not been a director or executive of the bank for three years, the sources said. If regulators determine he was an active participant, then he could face fines or other sanctions, government sources said.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=691609

"In 1539, the Knights Templar of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels- - - - - but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day."

[Octafish]

48. Riggs Bank Loses Buyer: Jonathan Bush's Bank Charged with Money Laundering

Couldn't happen to a nicer bank or corrupt organization.

America, wake up.

This bank laundered money. Jonathan Bush was the top dog at Riggs Bank.

Do I need to spell it out?

OK.

B-F-E-E.

PNC's Offer to Buy Riggs Bank Collapses

Associated Press
Update 5: PNC's Offer to Buy Riggs Bank Collapses
02.07.2005, 04:51 PM

PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s offer to buy embattled Riggs Bank collapsed in bitterness Monday as Riggs' parent sued the regional bank for damages after PNC slashed its takeover bid by about 20 percent. The developments came after Riggs recently pleaded guilty to violations of a law to prevent money laundering.

Uncertainty regarding those and other legal issues and declining deposits at Riggs branches rendered the bank less valuable for Pittsburgh-based PNC, analysts said.

"PNC is buying damaged goods and they understood that going into the transaction," said Gerard Cassidy, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. "The amount of damage has increased and it's worse than the fines. The fines are the easiest part. The bigger question is the damage that is being done to Riggs' reputation."

Pittsburgh-based PNC had agreed in July to pay $24.25 in cash and stock - a total of about $779 million - for Riggs, an old-line Washington institution that had a near-monopoly on business with the capital's diplomatic community.

CONTINUED...

http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/ap/2005/02/07/ap1810360.html

Riggs is where the Petrodollars put the Terrorists on the road.



Brigid O'Shaughnessy: Help me.

Sam Spade: You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.'

Brigid O'Shaughnessy: I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it, not at all in what I said. It's my own fault if you can't believe me now.

Sam Spade: Ah, now you are dangerous.

[Octafish]

49. Space Chimp

W whores for Star Wars. Remember how Richard Clarke said these turds, when they took office, were coming out of the 1992 icebox in terms of picking up the Cold War were it left off when they left office -- Star Wars being one of their big-ticket items. Gee. How many billions have gone to Carlyle aligned type companies?

U.S., Japan begin talks on developing missile defense system

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 at 02:04 JST

WASHINGTON — Japan and the United States have started talks to move the ongoing joint development of a missile defense system to the development stage, a U.S. Defense Department official said Monday.

The talks came after the Pentagon decided to embark on the development in fiscal 2007 of an enhanced version of its independently developed Standard Missile 3 interceptor, the official said. The two nations have been jointly researching the enhanced version. (Kyodo News)

SOURCE: Japan Today

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=327106

Meanwhile the Presstitutes say "Star Wars Budget Takes Big Hit in 2006." Who ya gonna believe?

[Cleita]

11. ....

:kick:

[Octafish]

25. President Jebthro should be sounding pretty scary round 2008.

Thanks for reminding me, Cleita. This thread could use a spot of detail to spotlight the depth of transnational criminality that is the BFEE:



PNAC member of the week: Jeb Bush

1-10-04
Project for an Old American Century

Editor's note: There is so much dirt on this guy that I didn't know where to begin or where to start. So I just threw a bunch of the main ones together. 

JEB BUSH  and a partner defaulted on a $4.5 million loan from a Florida S&L in 1988.  The default helped trigger the S&L's collapse, which cost taxpayers $285 million.  Bush and partner repaid only ten percent of the irregular loan and, incredibly, also got to keep the real estate that collateralized it.

In 1985, Jeb lobbied the federal government on behalf of Miami HMO owner Miguel Recarey to increase Recarey's Medicare business ultimately to a total of $1 billion.  The following year, Jeb received $75,000 from Recarey.  Recarey, who had longstanding business ties to the late Florida Mafia boss Santos Trafficante, subsequently fled the U.S. under indictment, suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud

One of Jeb Bush's crime family connections goes back to 1984 when Jeb Bush began a close association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence officer with the Batista dictatorship overthrown by Fidel Castro. Jeb Bush was then the chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda its finance chairman. Padreda had earlier been indicted on a $500,000 (?320,000) embezzlement charge along with a fellow exile, Hernandez Cartaya, but the charges were dropped, reportedly after the CIA stated that Cartaya had worked for them. Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the housing and urban development department of millions of dollars during the 1980s. The president's younger brother was also on the payroll in the 80s of the prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate President Castro. Recarey, who ran International Medical Centers (IMC), employed Jeb Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place, which raised questions at the time. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan contras with his father, then the vice-president, and helped arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Recarey was later charged with massive medicare fraud but fled the US before his trial and is now a fugitive.

CONTINUED...

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/jeb_bush.htm

[Just Me]

16. SERIOUSLY! Why isn't our #1 common objective exposing neoCONs?

We are scattered all over the damn place.

Why isn't our #1 common objective exposing these deceptive, manipulative, crooked profitteering predators who breach their oathes of office and commit "high crimes and misdemeanors" EVERY FREAKIN' DAY?

It's frustrating as hell!

[Octafish]

17. On DU, I read: "People don't steal elections to do good things."

That pretty much sums up the actions of the Bush Organized Crime Family, the operative gang of the PNAC crowd. Here's a nice example of how the circles of criminality, feudalism and perpetual war coincide in the name Bush. In it, Richard "PNAC" Perle tries to hustle 100 million out of Adnan "October Surprise to Selection 2000" Khashoggi, of all people...

LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The New Yorker
Issue of 2003-03-17
Posted 2003-03-10

At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact

Some serious players, there.

BTW: Want you to know that I am in complete agreement with you, Just Me. Exposing these monsters is my obsession.

[Carl Brennan]

24. Great job Octadude!

:toast:


I still want to know where Marvin was on 9/11 and when his babysitter ran over herself with a car.

[Octafish]

26. Thanks Carl! Sorry story what happened to "Marvin's Nanny."

This shows how few people read The Washington Post:



He looks like someone
who'd hang out with Junior.

Marvin Bush Employee's mysterious death - connections to 9/11?

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/101003_bush_death.html

A bizarre story, which appeared only in Washington Post so far.
Wayne Madsen thinks, there might be more behind it.
Did Bertha Champagne know more about Stratasec?

October 10 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) --

By Wayne Madsen

WASHINGTON, At around 9 PM on September 29, Fairfax County, Virginia police responded to a 911 call describing an accident. However, they soon discovered they were not dealing with a routine emergency but the mysterious death of an employee of the 47-year old brother of President George W. Bush, venture capitalist Marvin Bush.

Sixty-two year old Bertha Champagne, described as a long time "baby sitter" for Marvin and Margaret Bush's two children, son Walker, 13, and daughter Marshall, 17, was found crushed to death by her own vehicle in a driveway in front of the Bush family home in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County. Champagne reportedly lived at the Bush family home.
( Read More... | 4129 bytes in body )

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/101003_bush_death.html

Champagne had left the residence to retrieve something from her car, which police say had somehow been left in gear. According to the police report, the car rolled forward and pinned the woman between it and a small building next to the driveway (possibly a checkpoint built by the Secret Service when Marvin's father, George H. W. Bush, was president).

The car crossed Edgehill Drive, a small street in front of the Bush compound. The vehicle then crossed a busy two-lane street, Fort Hunt Road, finally coming to rest in a wooded area across the street that adjoins the prestigious Belle Haven Country Club. No explanations have been offered as to why the vehicle did not move until Champagne was in a position to be crushed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/10-16-03/discussion.cgi.16.html

[Octafish]

27. What WAS Marvin doing 9-11?

Bush-Linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United

by Margie Burns

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.

The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a ``completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center ``up to the day the buildings fell down."

It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.

McDaniel confirmed that the company has security contracts with the Department of Defense, including the U.S. Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, citing security concerns. It has an ongoing line with the General Services Administration - meaning that its bids for contracts are noncompetitive - and also did security work for the Los Alamos laboratory before 1998.

Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0204-06.htm

[babylonsister]

30. Loving this thread title-it's a gotcha!

I am sending it home-thanks!

[Octafish]

34. It's a hard act to clean up. Otherwise I call him what he is, a TRAITOR.

Remember how Bush fought tooth and nail to prevent an honest investigation of 9-11? Then the guy wanted Henry Kissinger to head the 9-11 Commission? He had to settle for Thomas "UNOCAL" Keane.

Bush Obstructs Investigation Into 9-11 Attack

Withholding funding and documentation, the Bush Administration is the major roadblock for the 9-11 Commission. Why?

By Frederick Sweet

President George W. Bush is obstructing the investigation of the 9-11 terrorist attack against the United States. Ever since the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also called the 9-11 Commission, had been set up to investigate the biggest crime of the twenty-first century, Bush and his administration have kept getting in its way.

The commission, established in November 2002, has the power to subpoena witnesses and has been granted all the necessary security clearances to review the documents requested by it. Officials said in early July that it may request interviews with President Bush and former president Bill Clinton, among other top officials.

When Bush signed the legislation creating the panel, he declared ''hope that the commission will act quickly and issue its report prior to the 18-month deadline.'' The White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan insisted that the president ''is dedicated to cooperation with the 9-11 Commission and has directed that the administration cooperate.''

But New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer recently accused the Bush administration of intentionally impeding the probe for political reasons. The Senator called for an independent investigation of the matter, including whether witnesses have been intimidated. The Bush administration dismisses Schumer's charges.

White House denies funding to Commission

Bush's obstruction of the investigation began coming into focus last March when Time Magazine reported that the White House brushed off a request made by the 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, to boost his budget by $11 million. Kean had sought the funding as part of the $75 billion supplemental spending bill that the president had just requested to pay for the war with Iraq. Bush's refusal to increase the commission's budget frustrated and angered a number of the members on the 9-11 panel.

CONTINUED...

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=447

PS: Thanks for the kind words. Please feel free to copy and distribute. The Truth is what keeps us free.

[sadiesworld]

31. .

[Octafish]

39. Hi, sadiesworld! Here are Five Questions to Ask George W Bush, Crook.

The key 5 questions are these:

Was the SEC correct in requiring Harken to restate the 1989 sale of 80% of Aloha Petroleum (a subsidiary of Harken) to IMR (a partnership of Harken insiders) in 1989 that was largely financed by Harken (the buyers gave Harken a note)?

Did you know about this deal? If not, then how is that possible since you were on the board and the audit committee?

What was the purpose of that transaction if not to defraud investors and make the financials look good? Why did Harken's press release mention an $8M value of the deal, but yet not mention it was seller financed by Harken, that it was sold to insiders, and why didn't it even mention the entity name it was sold to?

Didn't you think the Aloha was a material fact that was not publicly disclosed until after you sold your stock? The SEC certainly thought it was material and not public since they required Harken to restate their earnings on Jan 23, 1991 and reverse $7.916M.

Should we punish people corporate executives who engage in transactions that defraud investors such as this one?

CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://www.skirsch.com/politics/Bush/insiderTradingQuestions.htm

[WillieWoohah]

32. A little malicious speculation...

Whenever I hear about Bush's litany of failed business dealings, the first thing that pops into my mind is that maybe they only "failed" on paper. It's possible that some of these business ventures were set up to deliberately take losses as part of some kind of tax scam or money laundering scheme, with the real money changing hands "off the record". In reality Bush was probably laughing all the way to the bank.

[Octafish]

33. W left more than a paper trail. He shafted UTIMCO.

It's almost funny to see how so many, uh, Texans have, uh, helped George W Bush stea-, er, accomplish so much, first from, er, for Texas and then from, oops, for America.

The Bass Brothers

Lee, Ed, Sid, and Robert Bass have been fortunate from early on. It has been estimated that their uncle Sid Richardson, who UT has an auditorium in his name, was worth around $800 million. Following in their father's footsteps, each of the four attended Yale University; Ed and George W. Bush were classmates and friends there. The brothers used their inheritance to acquaint themselves with those in power; they got to know the powerful Richard Rainwater by having him manage their family fortune.

Based out of Forth Worth, they know others from the Metroplex. Tom Hicks proposed in 1998 that UTIMCO invest $20 million in the Bass Brothers Enterprises through the limited partnership of Prime Enterprises II. This wasn't the Bass brothers' first foray into the university setting. In 1991 Lee donated $20 million to his alma mater Yale to revitalize the Western Civilization program. This was the largest single gift in the history of the school, and it was too political for Yale. Bass used the gift as leverage, thinking it gave him a say in the hiring of faculty and the setting of curriculum, where he feared that "multiculturalism" was pushing out the 'classics' in favor "of Toni Morrison and Malcolm X.1" Hence, the largest donation ever made to Yale was basically a way to ensure that the Ivory tower stayed that color. After Lee sought to participate in hiring decisions, Yale gave the money back. To ensure that the family name would not be dragged through the mud, Perry Bass (Yale '37) offered $500 million to the school to release a report saying that his son did nothing wrong. However, Yale President Richard C. Levin turned his back on the deal even at a time when the school needed the money.2

The Bass brothers pumped $210,000 into Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, via their PAC's (Political Action Committees) and their personal donations of roughly $273,000. The billionaire Bass family is Bush's number 5 career patron. As Governor, Bush appointed Lee Bass as Chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Amazingly, Bush later received $202,000 from the organization. TPWD made news when it was found to be passing out brochures at park entrances that contained tobacco and alcohol advertisements. TPWD also granted permits for their land that allowed hunters to make money from killing wild deer on Texas lands.

Back in the 1980's, George W. Bush was put on the board of directors at Harken Oil. In 1988, an oil venture to Bahrain was proposed. With Bush Sr. president at the time, the virtually unknown Texas company had beat out huge oil conglomerate Amoco for exclusive rights to exploration, development, transportation, etc. Even though Harken had no international experience and little capital for such a huge venture, Bahraini oil was theirs for the taking. Many thought that Harken was moribund, and without this contract they more than likely would have sunk. Harken got its big contract but couldn't finance it. The Basses then stepped into the picture by volunteering $25 million. Coincidentally, both were on Bush Sr.'s 1988 elite fundraising squad. Bush Sr.'s squad was the model for Bush's "Pioneers," to which Lee Bass belonged. This deal not only kept Bush's company afloat, but it was also a way for Bahrain to kiss up to the President.

SOURCE: http://www.utwatch.org/utimco/bass.html

BTW: A hearty welcome to DU WillieWoohah! Like the moniker!

[DS1]

35. Isn't that like saying let's not talk physics, Feynman was eccentric

:crazy:

[Octafish]

37. It's ALL politics.

There is no separation of economics, the media, defense, etc. etc. etc. that does not boil down to politics. When it comes to George W Bush, I wanted to emphasize the criminal aspects of his vitae.

Here it is, boiled down:

George Walker Bush is a CROOK!

Politically, that should read:

George Walker Bush is a TRAITOR!

[Cleita]

36. ...

:kick:

[Octafish]

38. The Trouble with Treason

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." -- John Harrington

W's original sin, as far as the political crookery goes:

None Dare Call It Treason

by Vincent Bugliosi
Posted January 18, 2001
The Nation

In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law. If you doubt this, try to imagine Al Gore's and George Bush's roles being reversed and ask yourself if you can conceive of Justice Antonin Scalia and his four conservative brethren issuing an emergency order on December 9 stopping the counting of ballots (at a time when Gore's lead had shrunk to 154 votes) on the grounds that if it continued, Gore could suffer "irreparable harm," and then subsequently, on December 12, bequeathing the election to Gore on equal protection grounds. If you can, then I suppose you can also imagine seeing a man jumping away from his own shadow, Frenchmen no longer drinking wine.

From the beginning, Bush desperately sought, as it were, to prevent the opening of the door, the looking into the box--unmistakable signs that he feared the truth. In a nation that prides itself on openness, instead of the Supreme Court doing everything within its power to find a legal way to open the door and box, they did the precise opposite in grasping, stretching and searching mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their choice for President, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally settling, in their judicial coup d'état, on the untenable argument that there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause--the Court asserting that because of the various standards of determining the voter's intent in the Florida counties, voters were treated unequally, since a vote disqualified in one county (the so-called undervotes, which the voting machines did not pick up) may have been counted in another county, and vice versa. Accordingly, the Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court's order that the undervotes be counted, effectively delivering the presidency to Bush.

Now, in the equal protection cases I've seen, the aggrieved party, the one who is being harmed and discriminated against, almost invariably brings the action. But no Florida voter I'm aware of brought any action under the equal protection clause claiming he was disfranchised because of the different standards being employed. What happened here is that Bush leaped in and tried to profit from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else. Even assuming Bush had this right, the very core of his petition to the Court was that he himself would be harmed by these different standards. But would he have? If we're to be governed by common sense, the answer is no. The reason is that just as with flipping a coin you end up in rather short order with as many heads as tails, there would be a "wash" here for both sides, i.e., there would be just as many Bush as Gore votes that would be counted in one county yet disqualified in the next. (Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that the wash wouldn't end up exactly, 100 percent even, we'd still be dealing with the rule of de minimis non curat lex--the law does not concern itself with trifling matters.) So what harm to Bush was the Court so passionately trying to prevent by its ruling other than the real one: that he would be harmed by the truth as elicited from a full counting of the undervotes?

And if the Court's five-member majority was concerned not about Bush but the voters themselves, as they fervently claimed to be, then under what conceivable theory would they, in effect, tell these voters, "We're so concerned that some of you undervoters may lose your vote under the different Florida county standards that we're going to solve the problem by making sure that none of you undervoters have your votes counted"? Isn't this exactly what the Court did?

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&s=bugliosi

PS: Thanks for giving a damn, Cleita!

[Disturbed]

43. GW Bush, The Silverspoon Sociopath has

heavier teflon than anyone in Amerika.

[Octafish]

47. Their Big Lie Machine is a Mighty Whorelitzer.

Its name, Corporate McPravda. Its main monster, the television.

Money, Media & the Mess in America

By Robert Parry
January 28, 2005

Sometime after 2009, when historians pick through the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush’s administration, they will have to come to grips with the role played by the professional conservative media infrastructure.

Indeed, it will be hard to comprehend how Bush got two terms as President of the United States, ran up a massive debt, and misled the country into at least one disastrous war – without taking into account the extraordinary influence of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from the Washington Times to the Weekly Standard.

Recently, it’s been revealed, too, that the Bush administration paid conservative pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher while they promoted White House policies. Even fellow conservatives have criticized those payments, but the truth is that the ethical line separating conservative “journalism” from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.

For years now, there’s been little meaningful distinction between the Republican Party and the conservative media machine.

In 1982, for instance, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon established the Washington Times as little more than a propaganda organ for the Reagan-Bush administration. In 1994, radio talk show host Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the new Republican House majority.

The blurring of any ethical distinctions also can be found in documents from the 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/012805.html

Wow, Disturbed! "Silverspoon Sociopath" absolutely PEGS the little turd from Crawford!

Your phrase is Truth. And that is how we will beat these bed-wetting BFEE bastards.

[oasis]

50. A thread of factual, bookmarkable and damnable information on W.

A kick for the red state kool aid drinkers. :kick:

[Octafish]

52. People need to know about PNAC

Red State or Blue, most Americans haven't heard of the Project for a New American Century. If they did, most'd see the connections to 9-11 and the pretzeldental sock-puppet.

The Neoconservative Plan
for Global Dominance

EXCERPT...

Over the last year corporate media have made much of Saddam Hussein and his stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Rarely did the press or, especially, television address the possibility that larger strategies might also have driven the decision to invade Iraq. Broad political strategies regarding foreign policy do indeed exist and are part of the public record. The following is a summary of the current strategies that have formed over the last 30 years; strategies that eclipse the pursuit of oil and that preceded Hussein's rise to power:

In the 1970s, the United States and the Middle East were embroiled in a tug-of-war over oil. At the time, American military presence in the Gulf was fairly insignificant and the prospect of seizing control of Arab oil fields by force was pretty unattainable. Still, the idea of this level of dominance was very attractive to a group of hard-line, pro-military Washington insiders that included both Democrats and Republicans. Eventually labeled "neoconservatives," this circle of influential strategists played important roles in the Defense Departments of Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr., at conservative think tanks throughout the '80s and '90s, and today occupies several key posts in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. Most principal among them are:

·Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, our current Vice-President and Defense Secretary respectively, who have been closely aligned since they served with the Ford administration in the 1970s;
·Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the key architect of the post-war reconstruction of Iraq;
·Richard Perle, past-chairman and still-member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board that has great influence over foreign military policies;
·William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and founder of the powerful, neo-conservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century.

In the 1970s, however, neither high-level politicos, nor the American people, shared the priorities of this small group of military strategists. In 1979 the Shah of Iran fell and U.S. political sway in the region was greatly jeopardized. In 1980, the Carter Doctrine declared the Gulf "a zone of U.S. influence." It warned (especially the Soviets) that any attempt to gain control of the Persian Gulf region would be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the U.S. and repelled by any means necessary, including military force. This was followed by the creation of the Rapid Deployment Force — a military program specifically designed to rush several thousand U.S. troops to the Gulf on short notice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/1.html

PS: Thanks for the kind words, oasis! If it weren't for you and your fellow veterans, no one would be free to read them. May the American people become aware of what this gangster government does in their name.