"The Republicans have an even stronger congressional majority. They have shown how gladly ruthless they can be in using their power. Bush and his allies have never believed in compromise. They have even less incentive to govern from the middle now, even though the nation remains bitterly divided.

There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

This is not sour grapes. This is reality."

Is there any doubt that Vice President Cheney is an influential person in the Bush government, and yet there is almost a total absence of media coverage concerning him, or at least in the American controlled mass media. Lately all attention has been focused on the George and Kerry horse race as each attempt to outdo the other on how severely they will smite the 'evildoers' once they are elected, nobody even knows who Edwards is, and the mass media is valiantly trying to keep Cheney out of the spotlight. Cheney's profile from "Project for an Old American Century" a PNAC watch group (also the source of the above picture).

HalliburtonWatch.org is one of the sites that keeps up to date on the latest tricks and dirt of Halliburton and its number one man in the White House, Dick Cheney. Dick claims there is no conflict of interest between himself and Halliburton but the facts beg to differ. Dick still receives a deffered salary, and he still has stock options in the company.

Halliburton has also been given no bid contracts for military support that cost plus, which means the bill is determined by expenses plus an additional percentage of expenses as profit, and yes that means the more money you waste the more profit you make, what a sweetheart deal that is, eh.

There have been attempts to bring him to justice, even to the point of subpoena but those apparently don't apply to vice presidents. As long as Dick stays within the boundaries of USA he is exempt from the law. Halliburton on the other hand is subject to law and sanctions by other countries, and Dick as well through his connections as former CEO.

The list just goes on and on, it never ends, so I'm opening this topic to serve as a repository more than anything. However, if anybody does want to jump into the frey to discuss this, please do.

enron hesitation on an end run and too late
if press house pets turn into feral hyienas
barking at barbarian pounding down the gate
multiple coverups play out political arenas
fools peekaboo and poke persuasive rhetoric
at the naked president whereas the big dick
and kenny boy are artfully dodging subpoena



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This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world's most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any number of times on the campaign trail, "By remaining resolute and firm and strong, this world will be peaceful".

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

George W. Bush, clearly, is one of history's great confidence men. That is not meant in the huckster's sense, though many critics claim that on the war in Iraq, the economy and a few other matters he has engaged in some manner of bait-and-switch. No, I mean it in the sense that he's a believer in the power of confidence. At a time when constituents are uneasy and enemies are probing for weaknesses, he clearly feels that unflinching confidence has an almost mystical power. It can all but create reality.

Whether you can run the world on faith, it's clear you can run one hell of a campaign on it.