John,
HOW could you turn your back on issues like this, is beyond ANY explanation.
"You're man" doesn't hold the same truths as you, yet the one man who does is ABANDONED by you. Please parse it out.

The problem at Grady is endemic of the whole system.
STUDY: US health care ranks last in preventable deaths.

Classic motif in film is "follow the money"...art really does imitate life....FYI...everybody's dirty in this..Bush...Kerry...you name it..

===================================

The Bomb in the Shadows: Proliferation, Corruption and the Way of the World
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 08 January 2008

This week, the Sunday Times lifted the lid on one of the most important stories of the last quarter-century: how American officials sold nuclear arms technology to illegal proliferators -- including ideological allies of al Qaeda -- in return for bribes and other inducements. This widespread corruption has been protected from exposure by the highest levels of the U.S. government, which has gone to enormous lengths to protect the truth from coming out. The entire planet has been put at grave risk by the greed -- and geopolitical gamesmanship -- that lies behind this criminal enterprise, which actually is even more extensive, and goes back further in time, than the newspaper's remarkable revelations.

The Sunday Times story is based on the evidence provided by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of state-enforced muzzling by the Bush Administration since she first tried to speak out about the corrupt connections between American officials and foreign agents she discovered when reviewing transcripts associated with the 9/11 investigation. As even the leaders of the whitewashing 9/11 Commission themselves now admit, that investigation was deliberately sabotaged by the Bush Administration – in part to cover up the nuclear proliferation network that has directly or indirectly enriched so many in the American elite over the past decades – including the sitting president of the United States, George W. Bush.

I.
Edmonds' revelations should be seen in their larger historical context, as an outgrowth of the activities of BCCI, the "Bank of Credit and Commercial International," a supposed financial group that a U.S. Senate investigation called "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history." BCCI was a prime vehicle for clandestine nuclear proliferation, among many other illegal activities, and was also used by the CIA and the White House for various covert operations, including secret military and financial support for Saddam Hussein. It also paid numerous grandees of the Democratic and Republican parties to front its operations – and gave George W. Bush $25 million to rescue one of his many business failures.

(Continued after the jump.)

Although BCCI as a "bank" eventually failed, spectacularly, costing its unsuspecting customers more than $10 billion, almost no one was punished for its myriad crimes, and the full extent of the organization's activities continue to be shielded by the many national governments that became entangled in its operations, including the United States and Great Britain, where the Labour government has made extraordinary interventions in court cases to protect BCCI's secrets, invoking the most draconian state secret laws to quash a lawsuit against the Bank of England for the blind but knowing eye that the regulator turned toward BCCI's deadly fraud.

Before exploring these deeper connections further, let's review the tip of the iceberg that Edmonds has courageously exposed, despite the very real threat of retaliation from the U.S. government. From the Times:

"Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions. Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

"The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. However, Edmonds said: 'He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.'

"She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents. 'If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,' she said."

Edmonds goes on to provide details of the operation, which "appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States," under the protection of Pentagon and State Department officials. Turkish and Israeli cut-outs were used to get nuclear info to the ultimate recipient, Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Abdul Qadeer Khan, "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. As the Times notes:

"The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief…Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

"The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist. Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan's nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme. Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden."

While the Times declined to name the top State Department official cited by Edmonds, elsewhere she has said it was Mark Grossman, "former #3 at the State Department, former ambassador to Turkey, and current Vice President at The Cohen Group, the lobbying company run by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen," notes the blogger Lukery, who has long done sterling service in publicizing Edmonds' plight and her revelations – which, as Lukery notes, are not confined to the nuclear proliferation angle featured in the Sunday Times.

Lukery goes on to note that the other "household names" mentioned by Edmonds include "Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and possibly Paul Wolfowitz. Less familiar names include Eric Edelman, Feith's replacement at the Pentagon, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz."

Lukery also zeroes in on this telling revelation:

"The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks -- including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the US because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.

"Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 9/11 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation."

(Grossman has denied all of Edmonds' allegations, telling the Sunday Times: "If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.")

The nuclear proliferation-for-profit ring is just one of the criminal operations that a genuine investigation of the 9/11 attacks would bring to light. Because once you start exploring any part of the dark nexus where so much of the world's business is really conducted – the shadowlands where covert operations, criminal networks, terrorism, high finance and state policy mingle, and battle, in profitable murk – all manner of chicanery is bound to emerge. And so, much as the probe into the assassination of John Kennedy was short-circuited in part to prevent exposure of a wide range of "black ops" involving the U.S. government, the Mob and other unsavoury players, so too the 9/11 attacks will never receive a full, unfettered investigation, but will remain forever – and deliberately – a matter of dispute, breeding arrant crankery and disturbing truth in equal measure, with the latter always tarred and obscured by the former.

II.
This is also true, in some respects, of the 1992 U.S. Senate investigation into what was known as "the BCCI Affair," which left several stones unturned and many questions unanswered. There are two main differences, however. First, the Senate investigation – although it operated within fairly circumscribed limits, pulled many punches, and shied away from some evidence that clearly led to the highest echelons of government -- was actually much more thorough than the official probes of the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. And second, unlike those two investigations, which continue to generate heated interest year after year, the BCCI Affair has been almost completely erased from public memory. Yet a grasp of BCCI's operations – many of which simply continued in other guises when the "bank" itself disappeared – is essential to understanding much of what is happening in the political world today, including Edmonds' revelations.

(The amnesia surrounding BCCI is even more remarkable when you consider that the man who led the 1992 probe – which turned up so much dirt involving the first Bush administration – was none other than Senator John Kerry. Yet Kerry – who knew where so many Bush bones were buried, and who had once displayed genuine moral courage in denouncing the Vietnam War after his service there – used none of this knowledge, and showed none of this courage, when seeking to oust the second Bush Administration, which retained many tainted figures from the first reign, and was headed by a man who had taken millions of dollars from BCCI. Instead Kerry spent the campaign – as he had spent much of his Senate career – trying to prove to the corporate and militarist elite that he was a "safe pair of hands," someone who wouldn't really rock the boat or kill the elite's flock of golden geese. Having thus disarmed himself, he failed to generate the landslide he would have needed to overcome the Bush Faction's election-skewing machinery – although it is very likely that Kerry would have won the election anyway had Ohio's votes been counted fairly. But here too he folded and refused to fight, choosing, like Al Gore before him, not to risk his insider status with a serious, genuine challenge to the system.)

The full details of BCCI's origins and activities – and its bipartisan corruption of American politics – can be found in the Senate report of its investigation, which is available in full at the website of the Federation of American Scientists. It is a long report, but repays reading. The extent of the criminality and moral corruption it documents is truly mind-boggling. Below is a very brief précis of the Senate's findings.

BCCI was founded by Pakistan tycoon Agha Hasan Abedi, who used what Senate investigators called his "extraordinary personal charisma" to charm his way into friendships with the world's global elite, including U.S. President Jimmy Carter and, more crucially for the operation's development, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, the illiterate ruler of Abu Dhabi, who had been installed as leader of the oil-rich state in 1966, after the British engineered a coup against his brother. Abedi became in effect the personal manager of Sheik Zayed's money – and the vast wealth of Abu Dhabi – which he used to fund the creation of BCCI.

As described by the Senate, BCCI's organization set-up sounds remarkably like the one set up later by Bush Family paymaster Ken Lay with his Enron Corporation:

"BCCI was from its earliest days made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relationships. By fracturing corporate structure, record keeping, regulatory review, and audits, the complex BCCI family of entities created by Abedi was able to evade ordinary legal restrictions on the movement of capital and goods as a matter of daily practice and routine. In creating BCCI as a vehicle fundamentally free of government control, Abedi developed in BCCI an ideal mechanism for facilitating illicit activity by others, including such activity by officials of many of the governments whose laws BCCI was breaking."

And what were the illicit activities that BCCI facilitated for its entangled crime gangs and government agents? The Senate report:

"BCCI's criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI's bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers."

The Senate investigators found that the CIA lied about is extensive, long-term contacts with BCCI, although the Kerry panel often couched this flagrant falsehood in more decorous tones, e.g., "the CIA inadvertently failed" to tell the proper federal officials about BCCI's criminal activities (emphasis added). Still, much of the findings are straightforward on this point: "After the CIA knew that BCCI was as an institution a fundamentally corrupt criminal enterprise, it continued to use both BCCI and First American, BCCI's secretly held U.S. subsidiary, for CIA operations."

The criminals of BCCI were intimately involved in the execution of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan-Bush administrations, including the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan officials shipped weapons to American hostage-takers in Iran in exchange for clandestine cash for the terrorist army it was using to wage proxy war against Nicaragua. When George Bush Sr. became president, BCCI became a primary conduit for funneling secret aid to Saddam Hussein. The organization also received extraordinary protection from the White House when lower-level federal prosecutors began indicting BCCI associates for laundering drug cartel money and running guns and money to Iraq.

As I have noted elsewhere, the Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary conduit used to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.

When three BNL officials were indicted in 1991 for a fraud scam used to mask payments to Saddam, Bush I moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department posts – where they supervised the officials investigating their old companies. The overall probe was directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, White House aides applied heavy pressure on other prosecutors to restrict the range of the probe – especially the fact that Bush cabinet officials Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had served as consultants for BNL during their pre-White House days as partners in Henry Kissinger's lobbying outfit, Kissinger Associates.

[In addition to these connections with the criminal network, another of Kissinger's partners, retired Brazilian diplomat Sergio da Costa "served as the front-man" for the BCCI takeover of a Brazilian bank, Senate investigators found. Tellingly, the Senate report's chapter on Kissinger Associates' contacts with BCCI was deleted from the final, published version – reportedly after pressure from Kissinger himself – although it can still be found in the FAS version noted above. Kissinger, of course, would later turn down an appointment from Bush II to direct the official investigation into the 9/11 attacks – in order to avoid public scrutiny of his business affairs.]

The Kerry report found that the 1991 BNL probe had been unaccountably "botched" – witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost," all sorts of bad luck. Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions.

One of the White House aides who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. In 1994, ByBee was appointed by George W. Bush to a place on the federal appeals court – a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. Mueller, meanwhile wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in by George W. in July 2001, where directed the FBI's response – or lack of response – to the torrent of terrorism alerts during that fateful summer.

III.
Bush II had good reason to reward those who helped his father provide cover for BCCI. In addition to the continuing "shadowland" relationships between U.S. intelligence and key players in BCCI operations (especially the ISI connections which had used BCCI to fund Pakistan's secret nuclear arms program), George Walker Bush had benefited materially from his own connection to BCCI. As Kevin Phillips points out in his devastating – and woefully ignored – book on the Bushes, American Dynasty, Bush II's first large-scale business enterprise, the Arbusto oil company, was almost certainly financed in part with investments from American frontmen for BCCI-connected Saudi grandees Salem bin Laden, older brother of Osama bin Laden and then the head of the family, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, a major stockholder in BCCI.

The failing Arbusto was later bought out by Harken Energy in a sweetheart deal that landed business failure Bush a plum spot on the Harken board and plenty of stock to play with. Bush soon worked his magic touch on Harken: the company began to tank. It was saved by an unusual infusion of $25 million from the Union Bank of Switzerland, one of BCCI's associates. The deal was brokered by long-time Bush family contributor Jackson Stephens – who, curiously enough, was also a major paymaster for Bill Clinton's political rise. In fact, in 1992, Stephens was the largest individual contributor to both Bush I and Clinton in their presidential contest.

Phillips quotes a 1991 Wall Street Journal story on young Bush's myriad ties to the criminal organization: "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were," the paper wrote. "But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken – all since George W. Bush came on board – likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

Given the copious documentation by the Senate and media investigations of Bush I's extensive use of BCCI to fund his and Reagan's illegal dealings with Saddam, Iran, drug cartels and the Contras, and Bush's strenuous efforts to block investigations of BCCI, the latter's huge payoffs to Bush II look more like payments for services rendered by the Bush Family, rather than just attempts to curry presidential favor.

IV.
Many of the same interests that employed BCCI for various black ops turn up again in Sibel Edmond's revelations: the ISI and Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Turkish and Israeli criminals/covert operators. Indeed, the latter played a key role in one of the Senate report's more chilling segments: "Training of Cartel Death Squads." From the report:

"In April 1989, a network of Israeli arms traffickers, operating out of Miami, made a shipment of 500 Israeli manufactured machine guns through the Caribbean island of Antigua for the use of members of the Medellin cartel. Later, one of these weapons was used in the assassination of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, and several other of the weapons were found in the possession of cartel kingpin Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha after his death in a gunfight with Colombian drug agents.

"The principals in the arms trafficking included Yair Klein, who had previously been identified in Colombian drug enforcement documents as involved in training paramilitary squads for the cocaine cartel in Medellin; Pinchas Shahar, an Israeli intelligence operative, and Maurice Sarfati, an Israeli "businessman" operating out of Miami and Paris.

"The scandal broke after a broadcast by NBC News on August 21, 1989 about Klein's activities, and a Colombian judge charged Klein with having engaged in criminal conspiracy in training the private armies for the cartel. In the months that followed, the scandal extended to Antigua as well, an island with no substantial military force and no need for the 500 machine guns its foreign minister ordered from Israeli military industries."

Oddly enough, the arming and training of death squads in Antiqua grew out of yet another corruption of Reagan-Bush policy by BCCI: a U.S. government loan of $2 million to Sarfati, supposedly for a melon farm he was to establish in Antiqua. The money was funneled through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a prime channel of crony pork – and cover for covert operations – for decades. The loan was obtained after BCCI officials vouched for Sarfati's worthiness to OPIC. The Senate report says:

"Ultimately, OPIC lost its entire investment in the melon farm and concluded that it had been defrauded by Sarfati. After filing suit against Sarfati, OPIC sold its remaining interest in the melon farm, at a loss of 50 cent on the dollar, to an Israeli businessman, Bruce Rappaport, and an entity owned by him called the Swiss American Bank. Rappaport, a confidante of former CIA director William Casey, was in this period also in frequent contact with BCCI's original U.S. contact, Bert Lance [who had been forced to resign as Jimmy Carter's budget chief during a corruption scandal. Lance was also a major partner with Jackson Stephens and others in BCCI-related deals.] Coincidentally, one of BCCI's principal board members, Alfred Hartmann, who was also chairman of BCCI's secretly-owned Swiss affiliate BCP, also sat on the board of another of Rappaport's banks."

This is the way the world works. Behind the glitz and gossip of presidential campaigns, behind all the earnest "policy debates" on Capitol Hill, behind all the "position papers" and "vision statements" of think tanks and political parties, behind all the great panoply of state and our august Establishment institutions, thieves and murderers have their way, in league with the great and good.

Anyone who ascends to national power has to make a deal with the devil: either directly to plunge their hands into filth and blood, or else swaddle themselves in "plausible deniability," looking away from the grubby details but knowing full well that their minions, agents and backers are doing "whatever it takes" to keep the machine of power and money rolling on.

This doesn't mean that leaders can't also try to do good things as well, and occasionally accomplish them. After all, Al Capone was famous for his acts of benevolence. Indeed, some leaders pursue idealistic or ameliorative policies in order to "justify" the crimes and lies that sustain the system which has raised them on high. But the devil will have his due, and the price of power must always be paid – and it is ordinary people, especially the most innocent and vulnerable among us, who always end up paying it.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/The_Bomb_in_the_Shadows%3A_Proliferation%2C_Corruption_and_the_Way_of_the_World/

Sibel, Giraldi, American Conservative Mag

Philip Giraldi from Cannistraro Associates has a column in the April 24 (print) edition of The American Conservative magazine about the story surrounding Sibel Edmonds.

According to Sibel, (no link, via email), this is "a fantastic short piece by Phil Giraldi; it sums up the case very well, considering the length... as far as published articles go, this one nails it 100%"

I've liberated the article from print (errors are mine):

---------------------------------

"Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection. Israel has long cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara's neighbours and historic enemies - Iran, Syria and Iraq - are also hostile to Tel Aviv. Islamic Turkey has also had considerable symbolic value for Israel, demonstrating that hostility to Muslim neighbours is not a sine qua non for the Jewish state.

Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit. Investigators are also looking at Israel's particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other, less benign, consumers. The military-industrial-complex/neocon network is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked think tanks and "information" services. Feith, Perle and a number of other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors."

http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2006/05/sibel-giraldi-american-conservative.html

Dat uppity nigga, Dennis Kucinich be de onliest Democratic candidate dat be talking bout single payer universal healthcare, but you ain't gwine hear bout dat from de mainstream media o Barack Obama o Hillary Clinton o John Edwards o John Conyers, cose dem ole boys ain't gwinna bite de han dat feeds dem, en dats fo sho.

Nawsa, yall gon gets sum watered down version of universal healthcare, dat ain't gwinna hep nobody en de en, but de pharmiceutical en insurance companies. Yall ken bleve dat.

Yall ain't figgad out yet dat we iz livin en a facist state now, or yall'd be throwing big bags o fertilizer on de Capital steps. En when you got arrested, den sumone else would step up en tho another load of manure, until de whole Capital of these yhear United States would smell juss exactly like de stuff dey been feedin us fo de pass 7 years.

But dats work fo heroes, en dey doan liv en America no mo. So now what we gots is guvment of big bidness, by big bidness en fo big bidness. De people's ain't got no say so how de country's run no mo.

En de biggess Nazi ain't juss Bush en Cheney, naw suh. Deys plenty o dem Nazies up in Washington, en sum dem Nazies is sho nuff Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers, Harry Reid, Bart Gordon, etc., etc. Dey all saw dis dey commin' en dey all fell in line, lak good little stormtroopers. Dey don give two cans of shinola bout Democracy or de U.S. Constitution.

Dey all deserve to hang for treason.

But, as I dun said befo, dat jus ain't gwinna happen. We's gwinna have to pick between Clinton en Obama, cose dats alla choice dat wez gonna git, for sho.

Dennis Kucinich onliest gots a chance if Democrats decides to vote fo whut dey truely believe in, which means he ain't gots no chance at all. De fix is already well in.

"Lambs dat allows demselves to be led to de slaughter, ain't got no one to blame fo de slaughter but demselves."

I think ahm bout dun wid politics fo 2008. Yall have fun....

Impeachment: I don't care if they try and fail. I only care if they fail to try.

Rep. Michaud seeks to impeach Cheney
By Walter Griffin
Tuesday, January 08, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud has called for impeachment hearings into the conduct of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Michaud, who represents Maine’s 2nd District, expressed his position in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan last month. In it, Michaud charged that there was "no doubt" that the Bush administration had "dangerously expanded the scope of executive authority" and flouted "the constitutionally defined separation of powers."

Michaud said that serious allegations had been raised against the vice president regarding his role in providing "mischaracterizing information" in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq five years ago as well as the nuclear weapons capabilities of Iran.

He also cited the political retaliation against former CIA officer Valerie Plame, the abuse of detainees in contravention of the Geneva Convention and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens as other reasons for moving forward with hearings. Michaud referred to a recent poll which indicated that 70 percent of the American public believed that Cheney had abused his power.

Full article HERE

==============
I M P E A C H
or RESIGN !!!

You did John. It is your job to enforce the law, you refuse to do your job, and then shit like this is allowed to happen.

You, and they, should be in Gitmo.

Printed online today, by the New York Times. Here are a few paragraphs..

WASHINGTON — When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.

That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.

The contract between Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators.

The New Jersey prosecutor, United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, directed similar monitoring contracts last year to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration, as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.

Officials said that while there had been no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Christie or Mr. Ashcroft, aides to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey were concerned about the appearance of favoritism.

Mr. Mukasey, a former federal judge who was sworn in as attorney general in November, has vowed to remove political considerations from decision-making at the department in the wake of a series of scandals under his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales.

Mr. Ashcroft was awarded the contract last fall at the direction of Mr. Christie as part of his office’s settlement of criminal accusations against Zimmer Holdings and four smaller firms accused of paying kickbacks to doctors.

A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft said that the Ashcroft Group had not lobbied for the contract but was pleased by the referral.

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Under the settlements with the Justice Department, the companies negotiate the fees with the monitors themselves, a situation legal scholars say has the potential for abuse because companies might be overly generous to encourage leniency.

Department officials said that there were few internal guidelines for hiring independent monitors and that Mr. Christie was not required to seek approval from the Justice Department to name Mr. Ashcroft and the others and had not done so.

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Now why would the Just-Us department award this incredibly generous opportunity to their former boss? Could it possibly be to shut him up about the hospital visit by Gonzo and friends?

Once again, I'll use my crystal ball to see the future. Mr. Ashcroft will now refuse to madmouth his former bosses, as he tells Congress exactly what Cheney tells them.

Hell, I'll tell you the same thing right now, and I'll only charge you half.

"Go intercourse yourself." Where's my check?

When I HAVE to see a doctor, I go to the E.R. When they ask me why I didn't go to see MY doctor, I say I don't have one. Basically, it costs $200 to for me to be referred to a specialist. This sounds more expensive than it is, as I do this only when absolutely necessary. On average, three years between visits. Second point, My doc would charge to send me to the same specialist the E.R. doc sends me to.

This is how the poor (Hi!) get health care in this country. The downside comes when small problems turn into big ones BECAUSE they went unattended. Cancer, for example. Also, it is a given that "small" problems are simply endured rather than cured. As when I broke my wrist, last spring. I am enduring it. Likely will for the rest of my life. It is the sort of thing that diminishes my capabilities. Permanently.

The wealthy, of course, actually have those things that bother them dealt with, and also, they regularly visit doctors to get looked over for things that haven't yet bothered them. And, of course, the wealthy get to use phrases like "Punished for being Successful" at tax time.
Particularly when publicly funded health insurance is up for discussion.
See also "I got mine. Fuck you!"

So it goes. Naturally, my preference is for single payer. Either we are all on the same team, or we're not.

On to New Hampshire :
Bradblog
Anybody wanna stop the guessing and actually count the voters' ballots?...

Bob Koehler
First of all, before we get too enthusiastic about feminist solidarity or wax knowingly about New Hampshire Democrats’ traditional soft-heartedness toward the Clinton family, let’s ponder yet again the possibility of tainted results, which is such an unfun prospect most of the media can’t bear to remember that all the problems we’ve had with electronic voting machines — and Diebold machines in particular, which dominate New Hampshire polling places — remain unsolved.

Karl Rove
Whaa?? Karl Rove ?? On this Point ?? Now WHAT would this guy be doing here ??? Seem kinda like a put up job to you ? Why, except that Hillery is the most beatable dem, would Karl Rove be on this scent...?

Bottom line, if the polls (Pre AND Post) are reflected in the paper ballots used in some precincts, but not reflected by the Diebold machines used in other precincts...then you get to use the Phrase Prima Facie.

Fool me once, shame on you, etcetera.
Frosted Flake

Via Bradblog

In the statement above, Kucinich says that he's calling for a "recount". While it may seem a quibble, the fact is that until now, 80% of New Hampshire's ballots have been "counted" only by a hackable, prone-to-error, Diebold optical-scan machine. The systems were entirely programmed, serviced and controlled by one somewhat less-than-reputable company (LHS Associates). The machines are the very same model shown being hacked in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Hacking Democracy, in which the results of a live mock election were flipped via the gaming of the machine's memory card.

~~snip~~

Analysts at the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of state web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan v. votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the least.

Well, it looks like this gets to go the same way as this.

That being said, I would like to point this is out from FM 22-100:Chapter 5
Direct Leadership Actions

5-1. Preparing to be a leader doesn’t get the job done; the test of your character and competence comes when you act, when you DO those things required of a leader.

5-2. The three broad leader actions that Chapters 1 and 2 introduced—influencing, operating, and improving—contain other activities. As with the skills and attributes discussed previously, none of these exist alone. Most of what you do as a leader is a mix of these actions. This manual talks about them individually to explain them more clearly; in practice they’re often too closely connected to sort out.

5-3. Remember that your actions say more about what kind of leader you are than anything else. Your people watch you all the time; you’re always on duty. And if there’s a disconnect between what you say and how you act, they’ll make up their minds about you—and act accordingly—based on how you act. It’s not good enough to talk the talk; you have to walk the walk.

What good are any one's efforts if the Democrats refuse to address the problems? Again from FM 22-100:2-34. Personal courage isn’t the absence of fear; rather, it’s the ability to put fear aside and do what’s necessary. It takes two forms, physical and moral. Good leaders demonstrate both.

2-35. Physical courage means overcoming fears of bodily harm and doing your duty. It’s the bravery that allows a soldier to take risks in combat in spite of the fear of wounds or death. Physical courage is what gets the soldier at Airborne School out the aircraft door. It’s what allows an infantryman to assault a bunker to save his buddies.

2-36. In contrast, moral courage is the willingness to stand firm on your values, principles, and convictions—even when threatened. It enables leaders to stand up for what they believe is right, regardless of the consequences. Leaders who take responsibility for their decisions and actions, even when things go wrong, display moral courage. Courageous leaders are willing to look critically inside themselves, consider new ideas, and change what needs changing.

Yep, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the change moniker is just that: more political rhetoric. How can any of these so called Democratic candidates who want to be leaders and the next president claim they will change things when they lack the character to do so?

Paul Edwards, chair of Progressive Democrats of Montana, interviewed by Cindy Piester, chair of Citizens for Impeachment, Ventura County. Jan. 3, 2008. Produced by Maverick Media.

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I M P E A C H
or RESIGN !!!

Can anyone tell me how much gas was sold by Exxon/Mobil in the US vs. how much profits they made on that gas sold?

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...