The biggest transfer of wealth in modern U.S. history very likely took place during the Bush Administration, 2000-2008. During these dark and terrible days, the Bush Administration emptied the U.S. Treasury into the pockets of Wall St., big business and 1-2% of the wealthiest Americans. In the process Bush Co. threw the rest of the population to the dogs.
Today in the late summer of 2010, middle and working class Americans can barely hold on. Folks are still out of work. There are hardly enough jobs and people continue to lose their homes. Are the Republicans slapping one another on the back congratulating themselves for successfully accomplishing their mission?
One would think so considering the Party's voting records in the U.S. Congress over the last 18 months. For the Republicans have done nothing but obstruct, stonewall and the filibuster each and every piece of legislation that would throw an economic life line to the American people.
Once again the Republican Party tells the unemployed, the middle and working classes of America to go f**k themselves.
It seems that Bush/Cheney Co. neoconservative policy of deep tax cuts for corporate America coupled with its crusade for acquiring the planet's oil through endless wars, failed to factor in the resulting economic and environmental devastation to the American people.
I would like to remind the drill, baby, drill and deregulate, baby, deregulate crew and the Texas Republican whiny boy politicians that is there is a reason why we blame Hitler for World War II.
The Republican Party and its decades long held belief in an unrestrained free market ideology and its crusade to deregulate all federal oversight agencies holds the lion's share of responsibility for the present devastation of the economies of the Gulf region. The economic carnage, thanks to reckless and unfettered deep drilling oil practices, include the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.
Maybe the Texas Republican imperative to drill, baby, drill was not such a good idea after all.
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson,(R),top aide to former Secretary of State, Colin Powell (R), squarely laid the BP oil disaster at the feet of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration.
Col. Wilkerson must be the only Republican left in the GOP who will take ownership of and responsibility for the actions and/or inaction of his irresponsible and reckless party.
The news continues to flow freely from an unplugged leak in the psyche of Republican Party's alternative universe of drill baby drill.
Now that the drill, baby, drill agenda has become the horrific and devastating leak, baby, leak in the Gulf of Oil today, Republicans are in deny, baby, deny mode. The GOP would like to forget about its decades long love fest with big oil.
W. set the stage for the GOP's bail from big oil now that BP will find it difficult to line its go to tool's pockets. Bush Co. intends to diversify.
Bail, baby, bail.
This week in Dallas, former President George W. Bush announced to the American Wind Association that we should diversify away from oil.
Really?
Republicans will never turn away a lucrative deal when self-serving opportunity knocks.
OILmageddon is what happens when two oil boys are in charge of our federal government. President Bush and Vice President appointed lobbyists to run our federal regulatory agencies.
The BP, Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton's unstoppable oil volcano, enabled by the W. Administration crusade to drill, baby, drill, continues to spew devastation into the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Alabama. Mississippi and Florida are next in line as recipients of the same ecological and economic carnage.
A Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen of Alabama and volunteer pilot Tom Hutchings of SouthWings flew over the Gulf of Mexico on Friday to get a look at the massive oil slick spreading from the site of the BP disaster.
It should come as no surprise to anyone (except for the Rush and Glenn teabagging Republicans) to learn that the Bush/Cheney Administration appointed lobbyists to serve as federal government "regulators."
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries - and I'm not just talking about Dick Cheney's energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it's not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry - although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" - cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees' minds.
Now, President Obama isn't completely innocent of blame in the current spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It's true that he'd only been in the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn't confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four months later. But the fact that the administration hadn't yet had time to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.
Republicans will say that it is not fair for Democrats to blame Bush for anything because President Obama has been in office a whopping 16 months. I vehemently disagree because the Bush Administration has left behind a devastating legacy that continues to cut the American people off at the knees.
W. and Cheney may have moved out of Washington D.C. a year and a half ago and they took some Republicans with them but all left the American people broke and strangled by their Administration's successful efforts to deregulate every regulated industry they could. For the eight years it held the White House, the Bush Administration embarked on a mission to pull back as many restraints as possible that had been placed upon the various industries. Their dogged efforts on behalf of the corporate sector was done at the expense of the American people.
According to an article in the Washington Post published on October 31, 2008:
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
Well, folks, it looks like we have another one of those typical Bush heckofjobs still in office. A holdover from the Bush Administration had skiing plans the day after the attempted underwear bomber attack. The official, Michael Leiter, did not find it necessary to cancel or shorten his vacation.
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter didn't cut short a ski trip until several days after alleged Nigerian attempted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy a commercial jetliner en route to Detroit Christmas day, veteran New York Daily News intelligence correspondent James Meek reports Thursday.
Citing two intelligence officials grousing about Leiter's continued vacation, Meek says the top counterterror boss declined to cut short his snow-struck holiday.
With heckofjobs like this, why not put a terrorist in charge of our national security?
What other horrors are we go learn about when President Obama releases the Christmas Day Bomber Report, I wonder?
Update: some folks over at Daily Kos have problems with Raw Story.com and the New York Daily News as entirely credible sources. I am therefore including a link to ABC News that also covered the story.
Liz Cheney, whose father served as one of the architects of two wars, one of which is unnecessary and which has broken us in terms of blood and treasure, and her father, who had also received five deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked President Obama for greeting our fallen soldiers at the Dover Air Force Base.
Only a Republican could turn a respectful and well-meaning Presidential act into an inappropriate or self-serving one.
How low can they go? Apparently the pit is bottomless, as readers will see later in the post.
Veterans over at Daily Kos have much to say about Liz Cheney and her father.
Remember all of the color coded alerts issued from Tom Ridge, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security? The red alerts and the orange alerts that would send chills down the spines of the American people? The ones that would make some hearts stop with fear? The alerts that would send CNN and all news channels into feeding frenzies that would in turn bring fear and anxiety into homes across America? Remember the huge and bold front-page headlines in our daily newspapers? How many children went to bed at night afraid? If parents were fearful, their children were terrified. For those who live in New York City and Washington, D.C. the fear was even more palpable because the residents know all about a terrorist attack.
And now we learn some of the alerts, if not most of them, were fake.
According to an article published in Politico posted on Daily Kos Tom Ridge admits he was pushed by the Bush Administration to announce terror alerts when it was politically advantageous to do so.
Tom Ridge confirms a long-held suspicion among Bush critics, writing in his new autobiography that he "was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over."
to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor tomorrow?
Based on the questions posed to Ms. Sotomayor by Republicans, when coupled with the hateful right wing ad below, I believe my question is completely legitimate.
Senator John Cornyn is indeed in total lock step with Senator Sessions' right wing racist fringe of the GOP. Cornyn continues to beat Ms. Sotomayor's comment about "Latina woman" like a dead horse.
Talk Show Host Mancow admitted water boarding is torture after six seconds.
At least the dude was willing to step up and put his ideology to the test.
Where are Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, G.W. Bush and other lovers of torture?
As I've written before, Republicans don't want us talking about torture and so they are creating a fiction about Nancy Pelosi and her lying about torture.
Hats off to diarist Muzikal203 over at Daily Kos for sharing the incredible video clip of Jesse Ventura's appearance on The View.
According to the some of the renowned Viet Nam War draft evaders and right wing war hawks
Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Bill Blunt, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Gramm, John Cornyn, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage
Nancy Pelosi personally ordered the CIA to find a link between Iraq and Al-Qaida. The GOP sissy boys also insist that when no links between the two evil doers could be found, Nancy the D Girl unilaterally ordered heinous torture to bring about the results the sissy boy cowards needed to gin up their war on Iraq.
Hats off to Ed Shultz of MSNBC for calling the Sissy Boys out for their psycho babble.
As we know Senator Arlen Specter changed his Party affiliation yesterday from Republican to Democrat. In his remarks the Senator had said the Republican Party had been recently "purified" by the right. Needless to say Specter's switch delivered a devastating blow to an already wounded GOP.
No wonder Dick Cheney has been appearing so frequently on FOX News. It's an attempt for him to defend his deplorable record and to distract the media and the public from the truth. Cheney has been attacking President Obama right and left in order to change the subject about torture.
A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing controversial interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
What else can one expect from the Party of Intolerance, No, Never, Hate, Ginned Up Warfare, Obstruction, Torture, Tax Cuts for the Rich, and Whores for the Fat Cats?
Thanks to the Republican jackasses in Austin and Washington, the video clip below gives us a glimpse into how the people of Texas are perceived.
First, from the Texas wing of The Party of Torture and Tax Cuts.
Senator John Cornyn, prominent member of the Party of Torture and willing player in the Bush Administration's
Journey to Depravity must think Democrats are quaking in their boots because, according to The Huffington Post he attempted to bully and blackmail them on the torture issue.
Cornyn apparently prefers to sweep the recent revelations of torture under the rug. That or pin the blame on Democrats who served on the Foreign Intelligence Committee at the time, and/or stick it to low level military and CIA officers at the bottom of the torture chain of command.
If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration's program of detainee torture, they'd better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.
"To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Jed Lewison of Daily Kos captured a video of our tea bagging Guv. Folks might want to read the comments below Jed's diary to see the level of scorn Rick Perry and other Texas Republicans have brought to Texas. It is not pretty.
