BUSH LUNACY: ONE YEAR

One year ago today, this blog began with the following post:

BUSH: ETERNAL WINTER
The snow is pelting my office window for the upteenth time this winter. We never have this sort of snow in the mid-Atlantic.

It is a cold winter also in the hearts of those of us who have loved America, who have cherished the principles on which it was founded, who have hoped desperately for almost a generation that the half-slumbering behemoth would awaken from its dogmatic slumbers and shake off the lumbering chains of self-interest, greed, and blind self-satisfaction.

But this winter has iced our hearts with terror as we watch our mendacious, self-serving, power-mad government try to snow the whole world under avalanches of lies, and take us down the path to destruction.

This is a winter that will have no spring.

And the past year has been even worse than we though it would be.

W lied us into an unnecessary war just to try to put on the image of a "war president" (a frequent Republican trick).

Hundreds of young soldiers have died because of his lies.

Millions of jobs have been lost while W helps the wealthiest of the wealthy to siphon off all of America's treasure.

And the non-stop lies streaming from the White House and its right-wing surrogates continues to putrify the nation.

A year of hell.

Let us pray that it ends soon--and before we have lost our democracy to the jackbooted thugs of the Bush Brigade.

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P.S.

More lies from W about how much he cares for the average joe. Brought to you by The Center for American Progress

"Dishonest" Would Be An Understatement

Almost six months ago to the day, President Bush made a Labor Day visit to Ohio, a state which has "lost more than a quarter-million jobs," including 166,000 manufacturing jobs, since 2001. During a speech to workers there, he said he would "appoint an assistant secretary [of Commerce] to focus on the needs of manufacturers, to make sure our manufacturing job base is strong and vibrant…We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Yet, six months later, the country has lost another quarter million manufacturing jobs (and Ohio alone has lost another 9,000 manufacturing jobs) and the Administration has not only failed to offer a policy prescription, it has not even appointed the Commerce department specialist. And yesterday, the situation hit a boiling point: the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Mass Layoff report which showed "there were more mass layoffs in January 2004 than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept" – a report that prompted outrage from Sens. Schumer, Corzine and Stabenow. The promise to address the manufacturing situation with new policies and a new manufacturing czar – and then failure to follow through – is only the latest economic contradiction from the Bush Administration. What follows is a list of the most brazen and calculated economic distortions:

MYTH 1 – WE CARE ABOUT JOB LOSS: President Bush, echoing an oft-repeated sentiment from the Administration, said recently that "we care about our fellow citizens - we want to make sure somebody who's hurting has a chance to succeed in life by working." Yet, just a few weeks ago, the President personally signed a report wholeheartedly endorsing U.S. job loss to overseas outsourcing, claiming that it was a "good thing" and just an unpreventable side-effect of free trade. But as Paul Krugman notes, free trade is "viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net" – both areas the Administration has repeatedly slashed. For the last three years, the Administration has tried to cut more than $1 billion out of job training programs, while underfunding its own education bill by $27 billion – in essence robbing workers of the education/training tools they need to compete. At the same time, the Administration has cut funding for a plethora of health care and safety net programs. See more on the Administration's policies that are discouraging job and wage growth.

MYTH 2 – WE CARE ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS: The Administration has claimed it wants to "help the middle class." Yet, just this week, the President refused to distance himself from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's proposal to severely reduce Social Security benefits for ordinary people in order to protect the Administration's massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Greenspan said cutting Social Security – as opposed to reducing the tax cuts – was necessary to deal with growing deficits, "effectively embracing the lunatic notion that cutting taxes will generate more government revenue" and that protecting the rich should come before protecting the middle class. In 1966 Greenspan said "deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." Now, it is Greenspan and the White House using the "scheme" of deficits to justify Social Security cuts – and confiscate wealth from the middle class to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. See more background on the current state of Social Security.

MYTH 3 – WE ARE CUTTING TAXES FOR AVERAGE PEOPLE: As a presidential candidate in 2000, then-Governor Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." It was an oft-repeated sentiment for the next three years, with the Administration saying that its tax bills would be "an achievement for families struggling to enter the middle class." Yet, the data now clearly shows the Administration's tax cuts were overwhelmingly skewed towards the wealthy: By 2010, the top 1% - who make an average of $1 million - will have received more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks, and will have received over half of all the Bush tax cuts ever passed (this might explain why four in five Americans say they have felt no tax relief). To combat this embarrassing truth, the Administration resorted to disingenuous rhetoric, citing deceptive averages to claim that its most recent tax proposal would give "91 million taxpayers an average tax cut of $1,126." Yet, these averages were artificially inflated because they included huge tax breaks to millionaires. In reality, the middle fifth of all households received just $217, with 83% of Americans getting less than the "average" – all while the Administration is effectively raising taxes on the middle class. Most shockingly, the President himself admitted that he knew he was misleading Americans by claiming the tax cuts helped average people. As he asked his economic team when they were pondering even more tax cuts, "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"

MYTH 4 – TAX CUTS WILL NOT CAUSE DEFICITS: Facing questions about the massive size of his tax cuts, President Bush assured the nation that "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." When the tax cuts passed, the surplus evaporated and record deficits hit. Instead of fessing up to its distortion, the Administration blamed the recession for the deficit. Then, realizing that it couldn't take that track because it had said there would be no deficits "even if the economy softens," the President said "this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war" – claiming the deficit was caused by increases in defense/homeland security spending needed after 9/11 . Yet, hard data and the Administration's own budget documents show that tax cuts – not defense/homeland security spending - were the single largest factor in creating the deficit. Desperate for some explanation, the President said, "I remember campaigning in Chicago, and one of the reporters said, would you ever deficit spend? I said only -- only in times of war, in times of economic insecurity as a result of a recession, or in times of national emergency." Yet even this explanation was not true – as Tim Russert noted, "we have checked everywhere and we've even called the White House as to when the president said this, and it didn't happen."

MYTH 5 – WE CARE ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYED: President Bush has said, "I'm worried about those who are unemployed." Yet, with 760,000 scheduled to lose their unemployment benefits this month, his Administration refuses to demand that its allies on Capitol Hill stop blocking a House-passed bill that would extend unemployment benefits. Adding insult to injury, the Administration's key economic officials visited parts of the country hardest hit by unemployment, yet refused to actually meet with any unemployed workers.

BUSH: STILL A LIAR

The fact that W is a consummate liar seems to go down poorly with the ideologically blinded right-wingers who support him just because he fronts their agenda.

When we pointed out a few of W's many lies last week, we started to hear from some Bush-lovers. Apparently it really annoys them to have their man called out for his lying ways.

A number of messages accused of not being fair-minded because we didn't, in their opinion, take into account information from "unbiased" sources--namely the sources that cater to their biases, like reports issued by CentCom from Iraq or articles published in right-wing rags like the Washington Times or TV news stories aired on the ultra-right Fox "News" Network.

We would just like to point out that using this sort of material to judge W's honesty constitutes a logical fallacy--the fallacy called begging the question. This means "presupposing the proposition to be proved." The proposition in question is: W is honest. If one relies on statments made by him, or on statements made by those under his control, or on statements made by those who are ideologically inclined to trust anything his says, one is presupposing the very thing that must be demonstrated, namely, that W is honest.

The only way to demonstrate W's honesty (if he in fact has any) is to disregard what he and his minions and his blind supporters say, and to match his statements to the facts.

And on that score, as we said last week, W turns out to be a miserable liar, whose only contact with truth is accidental.

On top of that, the lying is as blatant as could be. Check out the latest ploy to try to ameliorate the dismal job-creation numbers at these three sites:

CBS News: Burger-flipping = Manufacturing?

NY Times: Bush Creates Great Jobs at McDonald's!

Misleader.com: Bush Resorts to Statistical Manipulation

And here is the story from the last site mentioned:

INSTEAD OF ADMITTING ECONOMIC TRUTH, BUSH RESORTS TO STATISTICAL MANIPULATION

President Bush, attempting to obscure his record as the worst economic
steward since Herbert Hoover, has become so desperate that he is exploring ways to manipulate statistics. Just days after Bush reneged on his pledge to create 2.6 million jobs and said with a straight face that "5.6% unemployment is a good national number," the New York Times uncovered a White House report showing that the president is considering re-classifying low-paid fast food jobs as "manufacturing jobs" as a way to hide the massive manufacturing job losses that have occurred during his term.

As CBS News reports, "Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs." But if the president enacts the statistical change he is considering, this number would be purposely obscured because lower-paying fast-food jobs would be added to make the real manufacturing losses look smaller. Of course, fast-food jobs typically pay much less and have fewer benefits than real manufacturing jobs, meaning the statistical change would also obscure the fact that, under Bush, "in 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given way to jobs in lower-paying industries." All told, jobs in growing industries like lower-paid service sector/fast food jobs are paying 21% less than contracting industries like real manufacturing.

The president's efforts to manipulate statistics and mislead Americans is also getting a boost from his allies on Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK) was pointing to an optimistic "household" jobs survey as proof that "we're at an all-time high in employment" and that "the employment situation has improved rather substantially." The problem is that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said definitively that "payroll data" - not the household survey - "is the series which you have to follow" in order to be accurate. The payroll data shows "a loss of more than two million jobs since 2001."

None of us will be safe until W and the Bushites are out of power and under investigation for the damage they have done to our once great nation.

BUSH: HE EVEN LIES ABOUT SCIENCE!

That W lies about everything is too well-documented to need any explanation.

When any of the Bushites rarely lurch into the truth, it is no more than a momentary lapse or an accident: falsehood is their mother's milk. If you go back in the archives of this blog, you will find more than enough horrendous Bushite lies to convince you of that.

Today we get a report that demonstrates clearly how the Bushites have managed to find ways to lie even about the disinterested truth-gathering of science, and to turn those lies to their own political advantage.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has published a report describing how the Bushites have suppressed data, rewritten reports, mischaracterized findings, and just outright lied about scientific studies--all in order to twist the truth to fit their neolithic ideological ignorance.

This administration has censored public health date on the effect of agricultural product; it has ignored scientific findings about weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion; it has consistently misrepresented and distorted scientific findings about the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex-ed programs; it has distorted the science concerning logging and oil-drilling to suit its purposes. The list is too long to even mention, let alone compile.

If you want to get a good idea of just how duplicitous and mendacious this arrogant group of ideologues are when it comes to science, check out this website:

Politics and Science

The full version of the Union of Concerned Scientists' report can be found here (it's a PDF file, so you may need Acrobat Reader to read it):

UCS Report on Bush's Science Lies

But here is the executive summary, and it's aggravating enough:

The U.S. government runs on information--vast amounts of it. Researchers at the National Weather Service gather and analyze meteorological data to know when to issue severe-weather advisories. Specialists at the Federal Reserve Board collect and analyze economic data to determine when to raise or lower interest rates. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control examine bacteria and viral samples to guard against a large-scale outbreak of disease. The American public relies on the accuracy of such governmental data and upon the integrity of the
researchers who gather and analyze it.

Equally important is the analysis of fact-based data in the government’s policy-making process. When compelling evidence suggests a threat to human health from a contaminant in the water supply, the federal government may move to tighten drinking water standards. When data indicate structural problems in aging bridges that are part of the interstate highway system, the federal government may allocate emergency repair funds. When populations of an animal species are found to be declining rapidly, offi cials may opt to seek protection for those animals under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Given the myriad pressing problems involving complex scientific information--from the AIDS pandemic to the threat of nuclear proliferation--the American public expects government experts and researchers to provide more data and analysis than ever before, and to do so in an impartial and accurate way.

However, at a time when one might expect the federal government to increasingly rely on impartial researchers for the critical role they play in gathering and analyzing specialized data, there are numerous indications that the opposite is occurring. A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition,
these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies.

The quantity and breadth of these charges warrant further examination, especially given the stature of many of the individuals lodging them. Toward this end, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) undertook an investigation of many of the allegations made in the mainstream media, in scientific journals, and in overview reports issued from within the federal government and by nongovernmental organizations.

To determine the validity of the allegations, UCS reviewed the public
record, obtained internal government documents,and conducted interviews with many of the parties involved (including current and former government officials).

FINDINGS OF THE INVESTIGATION

1. There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being. Incidents involve air pollutants, heat-trapping emissions, reproductive health, drug resistant bacteria, endangered species, forest health, and
military intelligence.

2. There is strong documentation of a wideranging effort to manipulate the government’s scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration’s political agenda. These actions include: appointing underqualified individuals to important advisory roles including childhood lead poisoning prevention and reproductive health; applying political litmus tests that have no bearing on a nominee’s expertise or advisory role; appointing a non-scientist to a senior position in the president’s scientific advisory staff; and dismissing highly qualified scientific advisors.

3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about “sensitive” topics. In this context, “sensitive” applies to issues that might provoke opposition from the administration’s political and ideological supporters.

4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush
administration is unprecedented.

RESTORING SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
TO FEDERAL POLICYMAKING

This report calls on the president, Congress, scientists, and the public to take immediate steps to restore the integrity of science in the federal policymaking process. The president should immediately request his science advisor to prepare a set of recommendations for executive orders and other actions to prohibit further censorship and distortion of scientific information from federal agencies, and put an end to practices that undermine the integrity of scientific advisory panels.

Congress should ensure that this administration and future administrations reverse this dangerous trend. To this end, Congress should: hold oversight hearings to investigate and assess the allegations raised in this report; ensure that the laws and rules that govern scientific advisory appointments require that all appointees meet high professional standards, and protect against the domination of such panels by individuals tied to entities that have a vested interest at stake; guarantee public access to government scientific studies and the findings of scientific advisory panels; and re-establish an organization
able to independently assess and provide guidance to Congress on technical questions that have a bearing on public policy, similar to the former Office of Technology Assessment.

Scientists must encourage their professional societies and colleagues to become engaged in this issue, discuss their concerns directly with elected representatives, and communicate the importance of this issue to the public, both directly and through the media. And the public must also voice its concern about this issue to its elected representatives,
letting them know that censorship and distortion of scientific knowledge are unacceptable in the federal government and must be halted.

Lying about weapons of mass destruction, lying about 9/11, lying about ties to industry and corporations, lying about military records--and now lying about scientific facts! Is there no lie too audacious for W?

We encourage all conscientious and decent people everywhere to do everything they can to raise awareness among their fellow citizens about their deplorably amoral "leaders" so that America can turn them out in November.

If we cannot defeat them, they will surely destroy us.

BUSH: LYING MORE ABOUT HIS SERVICE RECORD

Now that W has his whole White House lying for him about his National Guard service, it's only a matter a time until he's finally revealed as the super-liar he has always been.

Provided, of course, that the mush-brained media don't let the Bushites distract them with irrelevant stunts.

As anyone who was ever a kid knows, one lie just leads to another. Now the Bushites have been lying about everything for as long as they have been in public life, but they have always succeeded in shifting attention away from their lies, and, if that didn't work, in stacking any investigations against them with cronies who tie up or subvert the inquiries.

Right now, the press is starting to get into a feeding frenzy on W's Guard record, which the Bushites are lying about and covering up. So if they keep at it, they will shortly be able to demonstrate the lying--which will demolish W's hypocritical act as an "honest guy." Finally.

Here is an article from the New York Daily News on the next level of lying from the White House:

Daily News: Bush moved to Alabama unit without Air Force permission

And here is an excerpt:

Bush moved to Alabama unit without Air Force permission

BY LARRY COHLER-ESSES AND BOB PORT
New York Daily News

NEW YORK - (KRT) - George W. Bush left his Texas Air National Guard assignment and moved to Alabama in 1972 even though the Air Force denied his request for a transfer, according to his military records.

In fact, Bush did not even ask for an official transfer until nine days after he moved to Alabama in May 1972.

The Air Force quickly rejected Bush's request, saying the fighter pilot was "ineligible" to move to the Alabama unit Bush wanted - a squadron of postal handlers.

Nevertheless, Bush stayed in Alabama until his Texas commanders finally gave him written authorization five months later to train there.

The controversy over Bush's Vietnam War-era record - and Democratic charges that he was AWOL - has prodded records documenting his service into public scrutiny. While they suggest he complied with the requirements of the time, they also show long absences from duty and that he was suspended from flying.

As the questions about his service continued at the White House for a second day, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan denounced them as "gutter politics."

Bush went to Alabama to work on the Republican senate campaign of Winton (Red) Blount. Mary Marks Curtis of Montgomery, Ala., who worked with Bush and dated him at the time, said that after the election, "he left and came back to Montgomery in late November or early December. He told me that he was coming back to Montgomery because he had to fulfill his Guard duty."

Defense Department payroll records released by the White House show Bush was paid for two days of Guard duty in October and four days in mid-November.

Another aspect of Bush's service that continues to prompt questions is why he missed a physical in 1972 that caused him to be suspended as a pilot.

In 1999, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said Bush missed his physical because he was in Alabama, and there were only a few special doctors who could do physicals.

McClellan would not even let the question be asked Wednesday. When a Daily News reporter tried several times to ask about the missed physical, McClellan said, "I'm not going to engage in gutter politics. I'm going to focus on what we're doing to make the world safer, to make the world a better place."

For more on this story, which is unfolding hourly now, check out this page at Misleader.org and this page at Buzzflash.com

As we have been saying all along, W and his handlers are the most mendacious and criminal cretins ever to rise to the top of this nations once proud government.

Perhaps soon they will be exposed for the evil monsters they are.

BUSH: SUPER-CRIMINAL

W's transparent attempt to whitewash the Bushite junta's criminal attack on Iraq is now in place.

We here at BUSH LUNACY cannot do any better than the blogger called ORSINUS in describing why W's so-called "commission" is just a paste-up up job filled with Bushite-beholden lackeys. So here is the link to Orsinus's site (look for Friday 6 February):

Orsinus: Speechless

And an excerpt:

The panel will be co-chaired by a Democrat and a Republican: Former Sen. and former Gov. Chuck Robb of Virginia, and former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman, a conservative who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

This description beggars the reality about Silberman. He's not merely a conservative. He's a jurist who has a proven track record of making decisions, and enforcing policy, based not on the law, reason or basic principles of fair play, but purely on how they will benefit or harm the Republican party. "Rabidly partisan" is an understated description.

On his track record:

-- Playing a central role in the "October Surprise" scandal by serving as the Reagan team's main contact with the Khomeini faction in Iran.

-- Overturning the Iran-Contra conviction of Oliver North on specious grounds.

-- Threatening colleague Abner Mikva: "If you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose."

-- Trying to overturn the independent counsel statute on behalf of a Federalist Society colleague, Ted Olson (currently the Solicitor General), in a ruling shortly overturned by the Supreme Court on an 8-1 vote.

-- Conspiring with another Federalist Society colleague, David Sentelle, to have Robert Fiske replaced as the Whitewater special counsel with Kenneth Starr.

-- Blocking the Clinton legal team's attempts to track down the leaks emanating from Starr's office and blocking any attempts at discovery in the matter.

-- Accusing Clinton of "declaring war on the United States" by trying to shield Secret Service agents from being forced to testify against Clinton.

From the Salon piece above:

Silberman also has attacked as too liberal a number of respected journalists who cover the federal courts, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times and National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, whom Silberman once alluded to in speech as "the wicked witch of the airwaves." He has publicly assailed the reporting of the Times' Neil Lewis as "obviously distorted and tendentious," failing to mention that Lewis had written about Silberman's threat to assault Judge Mikva.

Another member of the commission, John McCain, has already indicated in public that he doesn't blame the Bushites for going into Iraq.

And the "head" of the commission, ex-Senator Chuck Robb, after being named by W, apparently told Tom Daschle that he couldn't reveal his involvment in the commission to Daschle BEFORE the announcement, because the Bushites told him that he would not be on the commission if he told anyone else. How independent is he?

On top of all that, Robb himself is an idiot and a scumbag, as documented by Dan Conley. Here is the link (look for February 6 again):

Conley: Robb's Peccadillos

And here is an excerpt:

The Chuck Robb historical blooper reel includes:

* Obtaining an illegal tape of a phone conversation between then-Lt. Gov. Doug Wilder and one of his top supporters, then handing over the tape to a Washington Post reporter. Three of Robb's top aides did jail time for that incident and Robb himself barely survived indictment under bizarre circumstances that at the time were rumored to be a political payoff from then-President Bush for Robb's vote to confirm Clarence Thomas....

* Frequently attending parties in Virginia Beach, VA during his term in office as governor where cocaine was used. His staff secretly investigated his private life and determined that Robb had slept with at least a dozen young women in different Virginia Beach parties -- some of whom were under the age of consent. This Regardie's Magazine story from 1991 entitled "Beach Blanket Bimbo" details Robb's personal life, so bizarre it would make Bill Clinton blush.

* Being caught in a hotel with a former Miss Virginia and claiming "I only got a massage."

* Saying really stupid things in political debates like "I would take food out of the mouths of widows and orphans if it would help close the budget deficit." That and many other foot-in-mouth moments were captured in the 1996 film "A Perfect Candidate."

What more can we say? W is the most amoral, conscienceless, filthbucket ever to lead this nation.

And he's taking it straight into hell.

BUSH: A CRACK IN THE MEDIA DEFENSES?

Finally a few media voices are beginning to get the idea that W and his handlers are corrupt beyond belief.

We just heard Howard Fineman of Newsweek say on The Chris Matthews Show that the fact that George Tenet was not fired for the Iraq intelligence debacle means that he, Tenet, has some real dirt on the Bushites that would blow them out of the water.

Well, duh. When Tenet went to Congress THE DAY BEFORE THEY VOTED TO GIVE W MAXIMUM LEADER POWERS and told them that the intelligence wasn't good, that was him trying to cover his butt for what he knew was a purely political and power-hungry decision to attack Iraq. But the Bushite, media-fed, conservative-stoked steamroller was already too far gone with vengeance-inspired, jingoistic war-mongering to stop it at that point.

Of course Tenet has something on the Bushites. Funny how it takes the media months to grasp the obvious.

Also on the show, Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that before the war she wrote about Congress's handing W absolute war powers as being very similar to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which allowed Johnson to escalte the war in Vietnam without congressional direction (or responsibility)--an abdication of it's constitutionally mandated role: Congress is supposed to declare war, and the President is supposed to do their bidding, prosecuting the war under Congress's direction. The Constitution did not want half-baked, tin-pot dictators like W waging war whenever and wherever they like.

Ms. Tucker also uttered the single most critical sentence we have yet heard on the mainstream media about the Bushite junta's bloodthirsty war-mongering. She said, "The idea that 500 soldiers have died for 'weapons-of-mass-destruction-program-related-activities' boggles the mind."

Yes, it does boggle the mind. Those of us who have always seen and understood the amoral criminality of the Bushite junta have had boggled minds since the 2000 election--which alone should have sent the junta to jail for corrupting the electoral process. The whole series of actions that followed their corrupt installation in the seats of power has gone very, very far into the territory of ultra-fascist mega-corporate criminal violence against all decent people of the world. And yet the American media, until now, have registered barely a mild dissent.

And for a great op-ed piece on why Americans should be calling for impeachment because of the Bushites' criminal war-waging, take a look at this fanstastic article by G. Jefferson Price III in today's Baltimore Sun:

Price: Why America Deserves a Profound Apology from W

Here is an excerpt:

Imagine that you are the parent, or the brother or sister, or the wife, husband or child of a young man or woman killed in Iraq - one of the 138 who died in the march on Baghdad, or one of the 384 who have died there since May 1, when major combat was pronounced over.

Imagine, for that matter, that your loved one is among the almost 3,000 men and women who have been wounded in Iraq since the war began - many of whom will forever bear their horrible injuries as a reminder of where they were and why.

The why of it was torn apart last week.

Now, imagine how appalled the friends and the beloved of Iraq's casualties must have been last week to hear David Kay, the recently retired chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq tell the world, "It turns out we were all wrong."

Or to hear President Bush - who ordered the war in Iraq on the basis of "wrong" intelligence - changing his story, saying now that it was still a justified war because Saddam Hussein was such a bad guy and just the sort who would have developed and used weapons of mass destruction as only he could have.

Or Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, badgering Kay into acknowledging the very remote possibility that some day, somewhere, someone just may find evidence that Iraq had some sort of weapons program to justify the invasion and the cost in American lives and resources.

Or Vice President Dick Cheney still handing out the baloney about some trailers found in Iraq being tied to production of weapons of mass destruction even though Kay and all others have said it isn't so.

Imagine how the loved ones of the dead may feel as they watch the spectacle of political jockeying over who should take the blame for a war being started on the basis of flawed intelligence, over whether there will be an investigation, and over the effect the timing of such an investigation may have on Bush's campaign to get himself re-elected.

If I were such a parent, or spouse, or child, or wounded soldier, I expect my fury would be visceral and overwhelming. I would not let these men forget what they had done to my family. Blood is on their hands.

Perhaps the cracks in the media's dyke are finally beginning to widen. Perhaps the reservoir filled with the evil intentions and motivations of the Bushite junta will finally being to spill out into public consciousness. If it does--and all decent people can only hope and pray that it will--what we will get is a flood of criminality that will make Watergate look like a child's game.