The fall of the House of Bush
Herein we see that the family counts more than the country. Herein we see Bush the elder, whose Iran/Contra iniquities have been dutifully hidden by the son, continue to discredit himself as a process inseparable from his drawing breath.
The Bushes MUST live with the knowledge that they WILL be found out and their history as presidents will be known to all as shameful. They might die before it happens, but they must know: it will happen.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

Pink Floyd - Wish you were here

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.

March 29, 2004

How we live our days is how we live our lives

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
All rights reserved and actively enforced.

[...]
In short, the future will be made of a series of present moments. As the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “By taking good care of the present, we take good care of the future.” Whatever we regularly contain in our daily actions is what we choose to contain in our lives. If we want to buy low and sell high, we should hold that in mind in our daily actions. If we want happiness and peace, we should probably do the same.
[...]

news from "not from a news dept" dept

Scott MacLennan in Nepal

Failure

More...

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THE DAILY MIS-LEAD
< http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24792 > ===============================

WHITE HOUSE, 4/01: FOCUS ON BIN LADEN "A MISTAKE"

A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before the 9/11 attacks (1).

Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious
change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden." (2).

The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent (3). Specifically, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions" (4). Meanwhile, Newsweek has reported that internal government documents show that the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/11 (5). When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.

Sources:
1. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24793.
2. CNN, 04/30/2001.
3. Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry,
ABC News, 05/16/2002, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24794.
4. "Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11
attacks", Detroit News, 07/01/2002, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24795.
5. Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24796.

Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion. --> < http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24797 >

Clarke messed with the truth
Ah, it seems relatively small, but it is quite at the nub of the question: who knew what and when. Clarke did present us a different timeline while he worked for the White House. Clarke attributes any and all differences between his testimony now and he words then to "minimizing embarassment".
The fact that the administration was looking very very hard in the completely wrong direction is therefore considered an "embarassment"?
Nah: Clinton getting cum on Lewinsky's dress: THAT's an embarassment. Getting your country ambushed because you did poor work? Embarassing?
So, not a lie: we misspoke. Not a lie: we were minimizing embarassment.
No, judge, I was NOT stealing!!! I was trying to improve my lot and care for my family. It was certainly not my intent to steal!

I just had to post this one.

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THE DAILY MIS-LEAD
< http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24515 > ===============================

PUBLIC RECORD: BUSH IGNORED TERRORISM BEFORE 9/11

In the face of Richard Clarke's well-documented testimony to the 9/11 commission yesterday, the White House is continuing to say that it made counterterrorism its top priority upon coming into office in January 2001. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, echoing similar comments from top Administration officials, said that "this Administration made going after Al Qaida a top priority from very early on" in the face of increased terror warnings before 9/11 (1). But, according to the public record, the Administration made counterterrorism such a "top priority" that it never once convened its task force on counterterrorism before 9/11, attempted to downgrade counterterrorism at the Justice Department, and held only two out of more than one hundred national security meetings on the issue of terrorism. Meanwhile, the White House was cutting key counterterrorism programs -- Bush himself admitted that he "didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11 (2).

According to the Washington Post, President Bush and Vice President Cheney never once convened the counterterrorism task force that was established in May 2001 (3) -- despite repeated warnings that Al Qaida could be planning to hijack airplanes and use them as missiles. This negligence came at roughly the same time that the Vice President held at least 10 meetings of his Energy Task Force (4) and attended at least six meetings with Enron executives (5).

Similarly, Newsweek reported that internal government documents show that, before 9/11, the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism (6). When the "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.

Additionally, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions." This is consistent with evidence Clarke has presented showing that his January 2001 "urgent" memo asking for a meeting of top officials on the imminent Al Qaida threat was rejected for almost eight months (7). At the time, the White House said that they simply "did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat" (8).

Finally, the White House threatened to veto efforts putting more money into counterterrorism (9), tried to cut funding for counterterrorism grants (10), delayed arming the unmanned airplanes (11) that had spotted bin Laden in Afghanistan, and terminated "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaida suspects in the United States (12).

Sources:
1. Press Briefing Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24516.
2. The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment, 2003,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24517.
3. Statement by the President, 05/08/2001,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24518.
4. Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy, US General Accounting
Office,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24519.
5. "Cheney: We Met With Enron Execs", ABC News, 01/09/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24520.
6. Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24521.
7. "Clarke's Take On Terror", CBS News, 03/21/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24522.
8. "White House Rebuttal to Clarke Interview", Washington Post, 03/22/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24523.
9. Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24521.
10. "FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11", Washington Post, 03/22/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24524.
11. "Officials: U.S. missed chance to kill bin Laden", Helena Independent
Record, 06/25/2003, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24525.
12. "In the Months Before 9/11, Justice Department Curtailed Highly
Classified Program to Monitor Al Qaeda Suspects in the U.S.", PR Newswire, 03/21/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24526.

Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion. --> < http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=24527 >

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Corporate state

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The concept of the Corporate State developed under the context of Fascism in Mussolini's Italy as a means of regulating industrial relations. The theory divided society into a limited number of corporations. This collectivism then functioned as a means of control and a channel for government intervention. Theoretical underpinning came from the medieval traditions of guilds and craft-based economics.

Caldenvera! Heaven on Earth!

March 22, 2004
A Gathering Storm

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
All rights reserved and actively enforced.

Near the peak of the stock market bubble a few years ago, as many technology stocks were soaring, Yale economist Robert Shiller appeared on CNBC, detailing his views about the overvaluation of the U.S. stock market. Answering a question about what investors or policy makers could do to avoid the consequences of the bubble, Shiller noted that while certain investors could defend themselves, it was impossible for the market, in aggregate, to do so. Summing it all up, he said, “It's just an unfortunate situation.” I'll never forget that phrase, and the baked-in-the-cake inevitability that it implied.

Examining the condition of the U.S. economy with regard to personal, corporate, federal and international indebtedness, the same conclusion is unavoidable. It's just an unfortunate situation.

Amid the glib opinions of CNBC guests that the economy is expanding, the unrelenting déjà vu that jobs are just around the corner, and the misplaced confidence that stock prices will follow corporate earnings higher, there is only faint recognition of how profound the U.S. debt problem is, and how ineffective standard fiscal and monetary policy tools will be in escaping its consequences.

More
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc040322.htm

It works! e-Voting works! It works! It works! Yes!!! Hot Damn!
from the "just like you thought it would" dept.

..."After recounting more than 13,000 absentee paper ballots, Northern California's Napa County reported Thursday that an electronic voting machine used in the March 2 primary election missed more than 6,000 votes." here

..."If the problem had occurred with their electronic ballots or with the tabulation software (that sits on the county server) they would have been hard pressed to reconstruct their election," she said. "Or they might not have ever known there was a problem at all. If they were doing the manual count on the electronic ballots there would be no record to look at to determine what the accurate vote count should be."
and here

A QUOTE FROM STERLING HAYDEN'S BOOK, WANDERER

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea... "cruising" it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

Sterling Hayden

Worth Reading Again.
THEY CALL IT DEMOCRACY by Bruce Cockburn (1985)

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North south east west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

I see the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
And it's open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy, and they call it democracy
And they call it democracy, and they call it democracy

You see the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
And they call it democracy

Cockburn Bruce They Call It Democracy Guitar Tab - All Good Tabs and Lyrics

Bush fears the truth will set him free

Bookman

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/15/2004

Last November, the Bush administration and congressional GOP leadership did some extraordinary arm-twisting to pass a Medicare prescription-drug plan that President Bush wanted as a centerpiece of his re-election. Republican conservatives were particularly reluctant to pass the bill, given its $400 billion price tag over the next 10 years at a time when the deficit is soaring.

At one point, things got so heated that one Republican congressmen later accused his party leaders of attempted bribery on the House floor, a charge reportedly now under FBI investigation.

What none of those congressmen realized, however, was that they were being snookered. Some of them had been promised that the program's cost would not exceed the $400 billion estimate; yet five months before the vote took place, government analysts had concluded that the program's actual cost would be closer to $550 billion.

In a serious breach of ethics, the actuaries who produced that figure were ordered by Bush appointees to conceal their findings from Congress and the public on pain of being fired. Even congressmen who asked specifically about cost estimates were told they did not exist.

"This whole episode, which has now gone on for three weeks, has been pretty nightmarish," actuary Richard Foster wrote in an internal e-mail to colleagues back on June 26. (The message was recently obtained by Knight-Ridder newspapers.) "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy-makers for political reasons." (Foster still has his job.)

Two months after the critical vote in Congress, the White House finally admitted the truth, after a fashion. It announced that it was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that the actual cost of the Medicare bill had zoomed to $534 billion.

"That really is a shocker," Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the anti-deficit Concord Coalition, said at the time. "It's a huge change. If a number like this had been floating around the Capitol last fall, it never would have passed."

Exactly.

What we have here is government by willful deception, a scandal compounded by the fact that ethical public servants were actually intimidated into not doing their jobs. And unfortunately, it is only part of a pattern of such behavior.

Three weeks before the crucial congressional vote committing this country to war against Iraq in 2002, the Bush administration had learned that North Korea had restarted its nuclear weapons program, a fact that dramatically altered the nation's strategic situation. With that news, the possibility of a military conflict on the Korean peninsula rose sharply.

Members of Congress needed that information if they were to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities wisely; with that knowledge, they might have been less likely to commit our troops to Iraq, where roughly half of the Army is now deployed. But the administration chose to keep Congress in the dark about the information until after the Iraq vote had been cast.

Again, in the days leading up to the war vote, administration officials told Congress it had no idea what a war would cost. When Lawrence Lindsey, then head of the White House's National Economic Council, let it slip that it would probably cost somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion -- far higher than unofficial estimates by the Pentagon at the time, and in the end pretty accurate -- it led to his dismissal.

Even now, the administration is playing the game again by refusing to include the cost of occupying Iraq in the 2005 budget it has submitted to Congress, a ploy that keeps the projected 2005 deficit artificially low. That budget takes effect Oct. 1, yet the White House says it won't release its request for additional money until January, long after people have cast their ballots.

Apparently, the White House finds the specter of well-informed voters pretty frightening.

from the "gee, isn't that wrong?" dept.
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
more...Hey, lighten up! It isn't at if they invaded another country or anything!

Fighting a War
In WW II, battle techniques were designed to fight the submarine wolf packs that attacked the Atlantic merchant fleet. There's a lesson in here: terrorism is a tactic: what is an effective counter measure?

Why is this man smiling?

Widespread Panic Over Dihydrogen Monoxide

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - dihydrogen monoxide info

Stupid Intern! DOH!