JEP @ 182

Kathleen at 180;

WOW, that’s a serious piece of commentary.

Thanks!!! This is a nice collection, I’ll save it to the desktop file with all the other very well-written and thought-out works I have gleaned from this site.

Thanks I am just a peasant and I am pissed off with all of the lies, death,
injuries and destruction.

What this world needs is more peasants and fewer honchos. It is the ingrained drive of some people to lord it over others that causes most of the grief in the world.

The wise Frenchman Blaise Pascal said that most of the problems in the world are caused by people who cannot sit quietly in their own room.

Scarecrow @ 100

Elliott @ 81

may I suggest the name George Schultz along with his friends at the Hoover Institute(Stanford) for starters.

So, you’re telling me we know that George Schultz gives marching orders to the Prez, the VP, to Rove? I don’t believe this.

Look, you can claim that lots of people/corporations have varying degrees of influence with this administration, and that there is a link between who these people are and the accumulation and protection of wealth — I don’t dispute this — but I don’t see how that supports an unqualified blanket statement that these unnamed people give “marching orders” to the Administration.

you’re right, it doesn’t support a blanket statement. I was offering up a name of a specific conservative leader, one who actually interviewed George W. Bush before he got Schultz’s “blessing” to run for President. And from my memory of the time, the Republican Party put forth one candidate for the Republican Party voters to “choose” from during their 2000 Presidential primary. And they did not appreciate McCain wasting their money in a primary fight where the candidates bad mouth each other.

Interesting that you should name George Schultz. Charlie Rose once interviewed Schultz and showed clips of Schultz “exploring” George W.’s interest in becoming president and, then, explaining to Charlie Rose that, while Bush had never prepared himself for that role and knew little about it, he showed great promise and asked interested questions.

At that point, when an experienced and intelligent politician such as Schultz uttered such hooey, I knew that some other forces were at work behind the scenes.

This, in combination with James Baker III showing up in FL in 2000 and, then, running to the Supreme Court to get GWB installed as president, convinced me that big, nefarious forces are at work that (a) care littleabout people, (b) care little for the US Constitution, and (c) are willing to pursue their secret agenda at any cost – any cost.

That is when I envisioned the struggle (provided that people would ever wake up and realize that their freedom was being pulled out from under them, piece by piece) with a metaphor that I recently mentioned in a post:

We are fighting our way out of a Russian Marisotshka doll (the nesting dolls). When you crack open one layer, there is a another, even bigger layer …

We have not come near the outer layer yet, as far as I can tell. Bush II/Rove/Cheney ain’t it.

One of the outer dolls – or layers of power grabbers – is occasionally showing its slip. Whenever Baker III shows up, the slip is showing … that’s when something went off the rails in their nefarious plans.
Examples:
– Baker III “rescued” the FL election (a young Bush not having delivered it properly)
– Baker III heads the Iraq Study Group (the other young Bush, the Boy King, not having delivered “Mission Accomplished sine problems”)

Bush I Baker III (who is incidentally also the lawyer defending the Saudis against the 9/11 families) Schultz
all the money in the world (non of which is under the control of any state or country) together form another layer of the Marisotshka doll.

Add to this, the establishment of a private army – Blackwater – that is accountable to no one in our present layer of the Marisotschka and you have a vision of the world that is a true nightmare.

I am immensely grateful to this blog for spreading the wake-up call and thankful beyond words to the New Democratic Congress. Let’s hope they can crack the outer layers of the bad Marisotshka before it chokes us to death by, for example, starting WW III.

we need the “EPU” definition posted on the home page…

Not only did I ask that question on my first visit, I’ve seen it now about a dozen times.

Just one more proof that FDL is an internet icon, “we” can claim more than one newly-coined phrase in the colorful, chameleon vernacular of the blogosphere!

I have come back to this thread hoping to learn the definition of EPU myself. Often times I wish I had an FDL dictionary. A while back a link was posted to someone’s site with exactly that. I thought it was posted in the Coming Out Party thread, but I combed the entire thing and couldn’t find it. Does anyone recall who’s site that is?

Just last night I learned this one:
c>n|k
geek shorthand for
coffee thru nose to keyboard

looseheadprop @ 145

From the NYTimes Editorial

It’s obvious why the Bush administration would edit those documents, but why the voting report? Because charges of voter fraud are a key component of the Republican electoral strategy. If the public believes there are rampant efforts to vote fraudulently, or to register voters improperly, it increases support for measures like special voter ID’s, which work against the poor, the elderly, minorities and other disenfranchised groups that tend to support Democrats. Claims of rampant voter fraud also give the administration an excuse to cut back prosecutions of the real problem: officials who block voters’ access to the polls.

I have been doing election monitoring since 2001, a little mentioned bit of trivia is that it was Primary Day here in NY on 9/11.
I teach courses on this subject I am in the middle of publishing a book on this subject, I have founded monitoring programs. This is something I knwo quite a bit about.

Voter Fraud, to the extent it exists in statistiaclly meanigful quantitites almost always involves ABSENTEE ballots.

So, ID rules and poll taxes won’t help a bit.

Voter suppression a/k/a Election Fraud, has about a thousand permutations which may be worht doing a full blown post about.

The Times has hit a bullseye with this one!

I am hoping you can answer a question I have had: If African-Americans make up roughly 12% of the US population, and not nearly enough AA vote, why is voter fraud always refererrd to as “voting while black,” would that small percentage of voters make that much difference in an election?

ABSOLUTELY! That’s why it’s Rove’s primary issue. Think Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004. Think of the razor thin margins in the races that gave Democrats control of the Senate; the many close races among top Republican members of Congress, on the rails because of their close association with Bush. Think of the many statehouse races that give Republicans control of legislatures.

For Karl, politics is not war by other means. It’s just war.

Or is even the slightest bit of integrity and independence too much to ask from Republican members of Congress these days?

I know I’m late to this thread. But if we are to expect the R’s to exhibit integrity a nd independence we only need look to the MSM to see this expectation is folly. I have not seen MSM challenge R talking points since Reagan. I have seen the mentally ill being expelled from safe, and yes sometimes bad institutions,put out onto the streets. I have seen more homeless sleeping in doorways. I have heard about our ‘might’ in attacking Granada. I have read accounts of babies in incubators in Kuwait being murdered.

Has any of this been challenged by MSM? And neither will the talking points being tossed about by the Bush administration (like anti-depressants and diet pills) for us to swallow.

When was the last time a Dem was held up as a positive model on MSM? Did you see the Nancy Pelosi/Campbell Brown interview? We have “journalists” who are sleeping with (literally) the honchos in the administration. When we finally get independence in TV and print news, it will be when GE and other war profiteering corporations divest themselves of those same news providers.

At the end of MSNBC news, they don’t show the GE tower because it’s part of the skyline.

Kathleen at 180;

WOW, that’s a serious piece of commentary.

Thanks!!! This is a nice collection, I’ll save it to the desktop file with all the other very well-written and thought-out works I have gleaned from this site.

Thanks I am just a peasant and I am pissed off with all of the lies, death,
injuries and destruction.

WOW, that’s a serious piece of commentary.

Thanks!!! This is a nice collection, I’ll save it to the desktop file with all the other very well-written and thought-out works I have gleaned from this site.

Not only did I ask that question on my first visit, I’ve seen it now about a dozen times.

Just one more proof that FDL is an internet icon, “we” can claim more than one newly-coined phrase in the colorful, chameleon vernacular of the blogosphere!

Thank you Christy and other FDL writers for all of your research and work

Was unable to watch the Sunday news shows. Went to the Meet the Press website and the Zinni interview is not up yet. Does anyone have another link?
If you have not seen the interview that David Gregory did with Zinni on April 11 on Hardball it is worth the watch.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

Many of us heard Zinni before the invasion give clear and wise reasons not to invade a sovereign nation that had not attacked us. I know many of us took our stand against the invasion based on what we were hearing Zinni, Albright, Brezinski, Ritter, El Baradei, Kofi Anan, Carter and many more who warned against such an invasion. Here is one of Zinni’s interviews on NPR that influenced me early on before http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..Id=1149119

Zinni’s thinking about his meeting in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb.11,
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..Id=5323611

Here is the testimony of Feith, Grossman, Zinni on Feb 11, 2003. If you have never read this. Seriously worth while. Feith is a lying psychopath.
http://www.iraqwatch.org/gover…..021103.htm

Kennedy must have been talking to Zinni before the invasion
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/new…..012403.htm

Christ All mighty if only the Bush administration had not been so bloody successful with their endless lies being repeated without serious challenges coming from most of the press. If only Judy Miller had not had the freedom to write endless unsubstantiated claims, turning out to be complete lies about WMD’s in Iraq in the New York Times. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive today, hundreds of thousands would not be injured and millions of Iraqi’s would not be displaced.

Those who voted for the war resolution based on lies, many in the press who did not do their jobs (New York Times etc, but most of all those who created and dessiminated (Office of Special Plans, White House Iraq Group, Office of Net Assessments) are up to their collective necks in Iraqi and American blood and body parts.

We want to witness those responsible for the WMD lies held ACCOUNTABLE. This is the very least our reps can do for those who have lost their lives in this “war of choice”.

I don’t agree with those who claim that Bush’s hand in the DOJ firings is just “unethical”, and not “illegal.”

I can’t say why for sure, but it seems to me there were just too many hoops to jump through for us to accept the “President’s pleasure” bullarky.

There is just too much subterfuge involved for this not to cross legal lines, but IANAL so I can’t say for sure where those lines are.

I’m sure if Bush was a Democrat, one of the remaining 85 DOJ co-consporators would be able to find enough “thin” charges to toss him and Rove and Deadeye in the pokey.

Wouldn’t it be real justice if those tables could be turned?

But is there much doubt that the earliest wiretaps were a violation of our own federal laws, and if Bush ordered or signed-off on those (not just the ones they have admitted to, but the ones we don’t know about yet) he committed high crimes, not misdemeanors?

Assuming they would hold onto both houses was their one(really big)political mistake. Had this political sea-change not occured, Bush, Cheney, Rove et al might have gotten away with the biggest “heist” in history.

Considering the billions their war-machine bubbas have hauled in, they probably think they have, ultimately, succeeded.

They anticipated remaining in the Republican-controlled shadows throughout their tenure, but now, because of their own unmitigated hubris, oversight equals sunshine.

SURPRISE!!!

“Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun,
and I say, ‘Its’ allright’”

The light shines through the darkness, as all the little cockroaches scurry for the cracks.