How very uncivil. From Uruguay Indymedia:
Click for the full image, though you may wish you hadn’t. At least do it after eating and not before.
Madness of King George
Decidering Dictatorship
Can’t say he didn’t warn us can we?
A commenter at one of the US liberal blogs at the start of the Attorneygate hearings, I forget who, wondered idly what Bushco were up to while the rest of us were watching the dog & pony show in Congress, on the general principle that they’re tricksy, ruthless bastards and should never be understimated, despite their apparent incompetence. Could Attorneygate be another Bushco bait and switch, masking other, wickeder misdeeds?
That struck me, and I’ve been wondering myself ever since.
If you’ve ever interviewed anyone in a counselor/client situation you’ll know that there’s a presenting problem and then there’s the real, underlying problem. Same with Bushco: the scandal you’re presented with is never the one you should be looking at. I know now what I should’ve been looking at.
Even as the political corruption of the Justice Department and the machinations of his corrupt administration was being exposed Bush was making an end run round Congress and any future oversight, issuing the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive; it’s declared purpose the
“Assignment of Power to Executive Branch: the directive assigns sole power to the executive branch of government.”
Screw oversight, screw impeachment: Bushco have been preparing a White House coup, to be implemented by Homeland Security at presidential decree.
Darth Chimpy On Tour: Silence, Peasants!
You may remember this post a while back about the ridiculous security lengths Cheney forced his .au hosts to go to on his vice-imperial progress around Sydney. That was bad enough.
But of course big, brave Chimpy McFlightsuit, because of his ego, has to go that little bit further even than the batshit insane Cheney’s paranoid, arrogant ridiculousness. Chimpy’s not even going to risk accidentally hearing anything bad Sydneyians might have to say about him:
Mobile blocking helicopter to trail Bush in Sydney
Fighters, SAS on alert as ‘Blue Luminary’ goes Down Under
By Lewis Page Published Friday 18th May 2007 16:14 GMTUS President George Bush will be followed about by a helicopter which jams mobile phone signals during an upcoming visit to Australia, it has emerged.
According to reports in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, train stations will also be temporarily shut down and parts of the city will “become restricted areas”. The Age speculates that “heavily armed [Australian] SAS troops” could be deployed on the Sydney streets, with “expanded rights to shoot to kill”.
President Bush is to visit Sydney along with 20 other world leaders in September for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit. The summit and President Bush have been seen as a likely target for terrorist attacks on previous occasions.
The rash of news reports into APEC security comes as New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma announces likely measures and proposes temporary legislation on security powers.
Conjecture around the phone-jamming helicopter has arisen as a result of its appearance in attendance on Mr Bush at the 2005 APEC summit in South Korea. Reporters covering the conference said that a Black Hawk chopper would shadow the presidential motorcade, and as it passed overhead mobile phones would lose touch with the local network.
“Whenever Mr Bush visits a foreign country local sovereignty is surrendered to US authorities as he moves around in heavily armoured vehicles that follow him around the globe,” said the Telegraph.
More…. ®
Ah, the old ‘hearts and minds’ strategy.
Comment Of The Day
A little perspective on the World Bank/Wolfowitz affair, from Digby commenter Joejoejoe:
The White House says giving your girlfriend a $60,000 raise to $193,000 for a no-show job is “not a firing offence”.
I was talking to the cashier at my local Sav-a-Lot after he gave me too much change one day (two bills stuck together) and he told me if he’s off by more than $5 in his drawer at the end of the day he gets a warning. If it happens a second time he gets fired.
My local cashier lives his life two sticky bills away from being unemployed and yet it’s somehow excused that Paul Wolfowitz basically cheated the World Bank out of sixty large US. I wish the press would put some kind of “real world” context in every story about the elites. The dollar figure from Wolfowitz’s screw job is enough to get 6,000 cashiers fired but it’s not enough to fire the World Bank president. What a cruel farce.
joejoejoe | 05.15.07 – 3:58 pm | #
The Big Swingin’ Dick’s Been Busy Swingin’
dept. of dubious rumors
Oh Hey, Cheney’s Maybe On the DC Madam’s ListThanks to the 700 people who sent in the latest “anything’s possible” rumor from angry local blogger Wayne Madsen. Here’s the new Contract With America: We will post it, and you will quit e-mailing it to us. Okay? Okay.
The “former CEO” supposedly on the DC Madam’s phone list is “former” Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. He paid money to some poor girl and stuck his thing in her deal. ABC News all but dropped the story when Cheney threatened to jam that prop phone up three feet up the ass of Brian Ross. That’s why the formerly explosive scandal story instead got seven minutes at the end of whatever ABC News show Friday night.
There, are you people happy now? Didn’t think so. Do you know why we’re underwhelmed by this rumor? Because even if it’s a fact, which it probably is, there’s no way it would have any impact on Cheney’s “career.” This is a draft-dodging half-human war criminal with a pregnant lesbian daughter who tells senators to fuck themselves and shoots his own friends in the face. Ordering an outcall hooker is positively innocent compared to the well-known things Cheney does every day.
Cheney Rumor You Have To Scroll Down For Because Wayne Madsen Still Doesn’t Know What a Permalink Is
Given that the escort agency’s speciality was ‘fantasy sex play’ I bet a shooting in the face was involved there somewhere. Or maybe a game of of ‘you be the insurgent, I’ll be the marine captain’ or maybe he just wanted to be told a bedtime story about Jimmyjeff, the commander in chief and the tin of bald-head polish.
I could go on with this for hours…