As retired navy, I once fit, on numerous occassions, the description of a “drunken sailor,” but I still never spent like the rethugs have these past six years.

Any money I ever spent during drunk or non-drunk shore leave was strictly my own. I didn’t mortgage my great-grandchildren’s future for momentary pleasure.

So please stop

This is from 2001

The F Word

…On November 9th, Attorney General Ashcroft announced that he was ordering the Justice Department to begin wiretapping and monitoring attorney-client communications in terrorist cases where the suspect was incarcerated. This was not even discussed in HR 3162. That same day Senator Patrick Leahy (D), Vermont wrote to Ashcroft. He had many questions to ask about what the Justice Department had been doing by violating the trust of Congress and assuming powers which were not authorized by either law or the Constitution. Leahy even quoted a Supreme Court case (U.S. v. Robel [389 U.S. 258 (1967)]):

[T]his concept of “national defense” cannot be deemed an end in itself, justifying any exercise of . . . power designed to promote such a goal. Implicit in the term “national defense” is the notion that defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.

Leahy asked Ashcroft by what authority had he decided on his own and without judicial review to nullify the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. He asked for an explanation and some description of the procedural safeguards that Ashcroft would put in place. He asked Ashcroft to appear before the Judiciary committee and to respond in writing by November 13.

His answer came a little late.

On November 16, Patrick Leahy received an anthrax letter. And, as of this press time, Ashcroft has not responded in writing. …

…Moving up the ladder we come to the Vice President, Dick Cheney. The Washington Post reported on November 9 that all summer a major Constitutional clash had been brewing as the former head of oil giant Halliburton refused to surrender to Congress’ investigative arm, the GAO, records from his energy task force. The Post story said, “Comptroller General David M. Walker described the fight as a direct threat to the GAO’s reason for being, a separation-of-powers issue that would determine whether the legislative branch could exercise the oversight role envisioned by the founding fathers.” But the Sept 11th attacks have changed all that. A planned suit by the GAO against Cheney to get the records of his task force on oil has been put on hold. Cheney’s violation of the law goes unchallenged in the goose-stepped march of manufactured polls showing support for the administration. Congressman Henry Waxman (D), CA has blasted Cheney on constitutional grounds but there’s little else he can do in the current climate

And now we come to your President, the guy we started with, by asking what legal meat he eats. Apparently he eats anything he damned well pleases. On November 1st, after several months of delays, George W. Bush broke the law himself by changing an Executive Order and declaring that in this national emergency he was going to prevent the release of papers from the Reagan presidency, even though release is mandated by The Presidential Records Act of 1978…..

…These papers would probably shed glaring light on the criminality of the Reagan-Bush (the elder) years of Iran-Contra, the savings-and-loan plundering of American taxpayers and the hand-over-fist drug dealing by the CIA at the direction of G.H.W. Bush. But now, in violation of the law, you will never see them. Nor will you likely ever see the papers from the 89-93 Bush presidency, or the Clinton years not to mention those of the current administration. What a convenient way to cover up criminal actions.

Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D), Ill, and the ever-brave Henry Waxman rose to the challenge and wrote Bush a letter on November 6th. They said in closing, “These provisions clearly violate the intent of the law. . . . The Executive Order violates the intent of Congress and keeps the public in the dark. We urge you to rescind this executive order and instead begin a dialogue with Congress and the public to determine the need for clarification of this law.” …

Hi Montag,
I am so looking forward to The Waxman Show. And maybe impeachment, too. CSPAN will have to add more channels.

Hi, HF. Yeah, C-Fraud, C-Secrecy, C-orruption, C-ronyism. More channels! :)

But, when I asked Sid Blumenthal about whistleblowers, his answer, approximately, was that they were going to be coming out of the woodwork if the Democrats took control of Congress.

We’re going to hear stories about millions wasted and/or stolen. If there were real auditing going on, that aggregate amount would likely be more like $100 billion over several years. But, when you have situations like Rumsfeld handpicking the lawyers that would staff the DoD IG department, it’s going to take a long, long time to pry out the information. February is actually pretty prompt.

Think of the stealing of Billions by Bushite & Co. as a perverse feedback loop for NeoConJobs.

They don’t have a majority of the population backing them, ideologically or financially, so take the majority’s money (in the form of tax money) steal it, save it ‘off shore’, then bring it back in a few years, (at well timed intervals) and hammer the crap out of ‘The Majority’ in elections, with their own money.

Pretty slick, pretty sick.

But that is in effect what the NeoConJobs have really accomplished here, unless we the people, in some way or other, reclaim the ‘diverted’ funds, and shut down this ‘kickback’ loop.

I’ve heard the term ‘Blowback’ bandied about in reference to intelligence matters.

These stolen Billions by Bushite & Co will be the ultimate blowback on the progressive/liberal community unless it is addressed, not just hearings to show they were stolen.

Some large chunk of the stolen billions will make it’s way back into national, state and yes, local politcal races in 2008 and well beyond.

Sounds like a good time to push for govt-funded elections.

Kucinich!/and … ummm I need someone really tall here…..

Ms Nancy is about 6′7″, so far as I can tell.

I”m proposing that we all-caps SURGE from now on. It’s an absurd word for an idiot’s policy, and I think it deserves all-caps for its lunacy. Who’s with me?

Me! Let us SURGE forth!

In all the talk lately on Waste, Abuse and Fraud (W.A.D.) I have not seen any on the follow thru concept of:

OK, Bushite, Big Dick and the Rethuglicans have stolen hundreds of Billions of dollars of taxpayer money in the last 6 years, where exactly is it? Physically that is, as in, what off-shore accounts does all that stolen money actually reside in. What investment/taxdodge/”project” was all that siphoned loot parked in?

Because Henry Waxman telling me it was stolen doesn’t do a thing about actually recovering some of it if you don’t have the foggiest idea of where it actually went.

Don’t just bang your hand on the table and express outrage it was stolen:

Show Me the Money

Because dear friends, if Henry and the New Posse on the Hill can’t find the Dough, it means that the Bad Guys will simply hunker down, weather the storm for the next few years, and then bring those Billions and Billions and Billions of stolen Bushite Era dollars BACK from their off shore hidey-holes, and Totally warp, distort, bend, spindle and mutilate the American Political process and elections in 2008.

It will dwarf any amount of fund raising by Demos or Progressives.

It will not be spent in legal campaign channels, all those Billions will buy Alot of Swiftboating (whoever)

This smells true and is worth keeping in mind.