Cheney on Club Gitmo

Cheney, as the chief of transition, infested the Bush administration with the Neo-fascists (they call themselves Neo-conservatives) who have been dying to invade Iraq since the early 1990s. Go to the Project for the New American Century website and read all about it.

I should also note that almost none of the New Amercian Centurions, who are so anxious to send our brave military personnel into harm's way on dubious, poorly planned missions, ever served their country. In fact, it has been reported that professional military personnel refer to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Leith, and etc. as "chickenhawks".


June 24, 2005

Cheney Says Detainees Are Well Treated

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WASHINGTON, June 23 (Agence France-Presse) - Vice President Dick Cheney said on Thursday that prisoners at the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had everything they could possibly want and were well fed and well treated as they lived in the "tropics."

Mr. Cheney dismissed calls to close the facility, which holds terrorism suspects. "They got a brand new facility down at Guantánamo," Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNN. "We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated down there."

"They're living in the tropics," he added. "They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want. There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people."

Mr. Cheney categorized the prisoners as "terrorists," "bomb makers" and "facilitators of terror" who would "go back to trying to kill Americans" if freed.

Former President Bill Clinton has become the most prominent critic of the base in Cuba. "It is time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused," Mr. Clinton said in an interview published in Monday's editions of The Financial Times.

Read the Story Here

The Perfect Picture

Before leaving for Cuba, on my first trip back since 1970, I told Bill, one of my traveling companions who looks like Hemingway and whom we called Hemingway throughout our trip, that a perfect picture of our trip would be that of an old woman smoking a cigar.

Bill and I were sitting on a bench in the main Santiago plaza when up walked the perfect picture. Her cigar is most definitely no prop.

Did you know that the U.S. government permits huge agricultural corporations to sell products to Cuba while the State Department Office of Foreign Asset Control devotes greatly more staff to pursuing those traveling to Cuba than it does to investigating terrorist financing networks?

Dirys Adams Wilson - "Oh, my God"

I met Dirys Adams Wilson, known to her friends a Indira, in Santiago, Cuba. She was looking for someone with whom to practice her English and who would buy her a chicken and french fry dinner.

Indira would laugh, slap her knee and declare "Oh, my God." She was delightful company who provided me with lots of information about Santiago, one of Cuba's most beautiful Cities.

The cigar was just a prop for the picture, as she doesn't smoke.

Further Erosion of the Bill of Rights

The Supreme Court this week, in a 6-3 decision, declared that government can take your property and give it to another private property owner. Such transactions usually involve taking property from poorer folks and giving it to richer folks, and all that’s necessary is for those desiring the property of others to prevail upon a city council or other legislative body. Given the obscenely prominent role of money (legal bribery) in the formulation of public policy in our nation, such is easily accomplished.

As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated in her dissenting opinion: "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

Justice Thomas, who most often hews to the Scalia party line, also dissented; noting that the Supremes decision was "far-reaching and dangerous" and that in such situations property is usually taken from lower income folks and given to those of greater means.

The instant case involved the desire of the New London, Connecticut city council to increase its property tax revenue by seizing “seizing people's homes, clearing the land and turning it over to private interests that would build a residential, office, retail complex supporting new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer drug company.” Read about it here and Here

The fifth amendment to the U. S. constitution provides that, amongst other things, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Remember, the Bill of Rights was amended into the Constitution, four years after adoption of the Constitution, to protect individual citizens from the type of excesses and injustices perpetrated upon the colonies by the British crown.

Is it a “public use” for government to take property in order to hand it over to folks or corporations who will then use the property to enhance their personal or corporate wealth? The Supremes say yes.

A similarly inexplicable decision of the high court was its early June decision that federal anti-marijuana laws trump state medical marijuana laws. The court, in a fit of rhetorical gymnastics, construed there to be interstate commerce implications to the states’ medical marijuana laws. Again Sandra Day O’Conner, a true conservative, dissented, saying that the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use”.

Once again the Supremes have eroded the Bill of Rights, which in the tenth amendment provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Supreme Court, throughout its history, has generally restrained federal jurisdiction to matters involving interstate commerce.

Even the right reverend Justice Scalia, who forever is lecturing us dumb ass masses that judges should construe the Constitution from an “originalist” perspective, voted with the majority in the medical marijuana case. Scalia, being a Straussian philosopher, needn’t bother himself with consistency when it comes to regulating our private behavior. What an absolute hack.

The Supremes, some years ago, declared invalid federal legislation that enhanced penalties for those convicted of a crime involving guns when the crime was committed in proximity to a school, concluding no interstate commerce implications. Apparently providing marijuana as medicine to folks, who otherwise have found no medical relief, involves interstate commerce.

The fascism that has been creeping along in this nation for most of its history is now up and walking; and, with the advent of the national security state, it should soon be sprinting.

Bush’s Posada Dilemma

What is George Bush to do with Luis Posada Carriles? You perhaps have read recently about Posada, the self-professed tourist hotel bomber and U.S. government identified commercial airliner bomber, who illegally snuck into the U.S.

Posada, a former member of the regime of former Cuban dictator Fulencio Batistsa, trained by the CIA in explosives and assassination in the early ‘60s, a Bay of Pigs veteran, a CIA operative from the early ‘60s until the mid-‘70s, a Venezuela secret police official in the late 70s, and a fugitive from Venezuelan custody where he was imprisoned awaiting a third trial for the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner in 1976 that killed the greatest portion of the Cuban youth fencing teams. It should be noted that during a good portion of Posada’s CIA association, George Bush Sr. was Director of Central Intelligence.

Venezuela has requested Posada’s extradition and so far the Bush administration has refused, putting the lie to Bush’s professed war on terrorism. As it turns out, if Bush agrees with the desired end of terrorist acts, or calculates political advantage, he will forgive terrorist acts. Terrorism aimed at Cuba is OK.

Posada entered the U.S. illegally in March. Entering, no doubt, using one of the plethora of fake passports of which he bragged in a 1998 New York Times interview. An interview, by the way, in which he boasted of bombing several Cuban tourist hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist. The U.S. government took no measures to apprehend Posada until he held a press conference in May, thereby eliminating, for certain, any opportunity for the Bush administration to deny knowledge of Posada’s illegal presence in the U.S.

So what has been Bush’s response? Posada has been jailed for illegally entering the U.S. If he ships Posada to Venezuela it is likely that Posada may begin to chirp like a bird and tell all, to the presumed embarrassment of Bush Sr. Additionally, extradition to Venezuela would alienate the hard core anti-Castro Cuban expatriates in Florida who exercise an inordinate influence, afforded by their inordinate affluence, over the dispensation of the 27 Florida electoral college votes. Bush’s refusal to extradite Posada will illustrate Bush’s hypocrisy in his so called “war on terror.” On the other hand Bush could extradite Posada to another nation, within which Posada would simply disappear.

So what will it be? Bush will deny the Venezuelan extradition request and thumb his nose at (more likely flip off) the rest of the world which takes note of his hypocrisy and Posada will disappear after extradition to another nation.

In pursuance of Bush’s divine mission, the opinions of others are merely a distraction and in his ridged ideological vision of the world there is no room for doubt.

The Depravity of Bill Frist and Jeb Bush

During the media circus manufactured around the Theresa Schiavo matter, by demagogic politicians hoping to sew up the radical right vote for the 2008 presidential campaign, Senate majority leader Dr. Bill Frist, as you’ll remember, pronounced upon the Senate floor that he had watched a one hour video of Ms. Schiavo and determined that she was not in a persistent vegetative state.

"Speaking more as a physician than as a U.S. senator,” Frist , on the Senate floor on March 17, questioned the repeated diagnosis of Ms. Schiavo’s persistent vegetative state, “I say that I question it, and I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol,''.

Then on June 16, after release of Schaivo's autopsy results which indicated that her brain had atrophied to half the normal expected size, that she was blind, and that there was no prospect for her recovery, Dr. Frist declared that "I would never attempt to make a diagnosis by videotape.''

So not only is Frist such a lousy doctor that he publicly pronounces a diagnosis based upon his viewing a one hour video, but he’s also a liar.

I bet Frist is just dying to see the negative ads to be trotted out on this subject during his 2008 presidential campaign.

For pure depravity, though, it would be very difficult, indeed, to descend further into the depths of such depravity than has Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has requested an investigation into charges of spousal abuse against Michael Schiavo. Governor Bush has 2008 aspirations of his own.

I just love how the good soldiers of the radically sanctimonious wing of the republican party are all for smaller government; until, that is, they sense an opportunity to utilize the awesome power of the federal government to restrict personal freedom in the pursuance of their agenda to impose their “moral” values upon the rest of us.

Comments

This is a big night for Expatriate Ruminations. There have been four comments entered from two different commentators, "Anonymous" and my buddy Dan.

Social Security "Reform"

First, I must confess to a complete lack of credentials or training that would qualify me to address this subject; but President Bush has announced that “reform” of the Social Security System is one of his top priorities for his second term.

President Bush has indicated that the SS system is in crisis, that it must be reformed, and is recommending a system recommended by the CATO Institute, within which future workers would establish “private accounts” into which will be paid at least a portion of what is now paid into the SS system. The funds within the “private account” would be invested by the individual into a range of government approved investment vehicles representing a range of risk, from government bonds to stock market equities.

Of course, the current SS system involves your payment of payroll taxes to the government which the SS Administration invests in government securities. During the 1980s Congress raised the payroll tax to amass a surplus in preparation for the retirement of the large Baby Boom generation. The surplus in funds that has since accumulated has been spent by Congress, over the years, on other programs and the funds have been replaced in the SS Trust Fund by IOUs guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury. When Baby Boomers retire the Congress must find funds with which to redeem the IOUs so that retirees may receive benefits.

SS Administration actuaries say that current payroll taxes will more than cover promised benefits until 2018, that taxes plus interest on the trust fund's U. S. Treasury IOUs will cover promised benefits until 2028 and that the trust fund won't run dry until 2042.

So the problem is not that the SS system is facing imminent collapse, the problem will be finding the money with which to redeem the IOUs in the SS Trust Fund, from which Congress and Presidents have so freely borrowed over the years, so Baby Boomers receive promised benefits. The redemption funding will have to come from other government programs (military and health care, to cite two major areas of federal expenditure) or from higher taxes. Of course, the retirement age could be increased to push the problem off a bit further into the future.

President Bush’s proposal to partially “privatize” Social Security would require, according to the White House, about $2 trillion to pay for the “transition” from the current system to a system incorporating “private accounts.” Where will the $2 trillion come from? It will be borrowed.

So the current SS system is not in crisis and the President’s partial “privatization” proposal will significantly increase the national debt. So what gives? This is a case where ideology is driving policy.

Currently the Social Security administration staff administers the Social Security “Trust Fund”, investing the payroll tax revenues in U. S. government debt and earning a rate of return typical of government securities. Whether the “private accounts”, invested by individuals, would earn a higher rate of return depends entirely upon the assumptions one relies upon in making comparisons or projections. There is certainty, however, that the managers of the investment funds approved by the government stand to gain much and that the “management” costs charged by the managers will be considerably higher that the administrative costs of Social Security.

Another certainty is that in the coming months we will all be inundated with arguments for or against this proposal or that proposal. Just remember, that when it comes to this type of debate there will be a plethora of lies, damned lies, and statistics proffered from all sides.

Talk of Impeachment

It is now common knowledge (at least amongst the 50 percent of the U. S. population informed enough to know that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and that Iraq and al Qaida were not in league) that President Bush, Vice-president Cheney, former Secretary of State Powell, Condolezza Rice, and any number of other top administration officials lied their way into war with Iraq. Such is such common knowledge, in fact, that recognition of the fact has even permeated our sorrowful mainstream media.

Remember the aluminum tubes that Bush and Rice declared were intended for use in nuclear centrifuges, even after nuclear intelligence experts in the Department of Energy indicated they were rocket tubes? Remember the mobile biological weapons labs that Bush and Chency decried, even after the British government identifed the mobile units as hydrogen generators for filling weather baloons?

The fact is that many top administration officials were signatories of a 1998 letter from the Project For The New American Century urging President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein as the Iraqi head of state.
PNAC letter to Clinton

We also know from the July 23, 2002 “Downing Street Memo”, published in the Times of London on May 1, 2005 and largely ignored by the U.S. media, that already in the Summer of 2002:
Downing Street Memo
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”

And we know from the Downing Street Memo that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:
”…said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.”

We also know, from the reporting of Jeremy Scahil in "The Nation" that the Bush administration actually began the conquering of Iraq in May 2002 with increased bombing ostensibly to protect the “no-fly zones”, established after the Gulf War, but which were in reality:
Jeremy Scahil's report
“…offensive attacks on Iraq, that were intended to take out communications infrastructure in the country, the ability of commanders in the Iraqi military to communicate with one another, pretty much defensive mechanics for the country, and these attacks were happening with the justification that they were protecting the so-called no-fly zones in Iraq."

The fact the Bush was intent upon go to war in Iraq from the earliest days of his administration has been previously reported by former Treasury Secretary O'neill:
CBS report of the content of O'neill's forthcoming book
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration- eight months before Sept. 11. "

The evidence that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, and etc. lied their way into a war against a nation that both Powell and Rice declared in 2001 posed no threat to the U. S. is overwhelming. I am hoping that the talk of the impeachment of Bush, now percolating in both the Congress and the media, results in actual impeachment.

Sunrise Christmas Morning

I posted this photo, taken from my front door a few years ago on Christmas morning, for Bernadette, who says she likes pictures of sunrises and sunsets.

Cuba

I couldn't resist taking this photo of these Cuban school children bouncing up and down on a tree branch as I climbed a hill in the Vinales Valley, Cuba to visit the Aquaticos.

The Aquaticos are a group of folks who live in the hills, accessible only by foot or horseback, who believe that their water has healing qualities. They bath in the special water, multiple times each day, and dry themselves in the air . You can see in the background a hill the locals refer to as mogotes. Mogotes were once columns that held up the roofs over a vast cave systems carved out of the limestone by flowing water. Cuba, like the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico is composed of limestone laced with underground rivers and caves. The magotes were once columns that supported the roofs of caves. Over time the roofs collapsed but the columns, magotes, remained. The Vinales Valley provides spectacular vistas in addition to producing fine tobaccos and a wide variety of food crops.

Did you know that Cuba, a poor third world nation, has a world class health care system that has reduced child mortality to a level less than that of the U.S. and a public education system that has produced a higher literacy rate than that of the U.S? In Cuban cities there is a doctor that serves each block and its health care system is free to all.

Cuba has an advanced biomedical industry that produces vaccines exported throughout the world and has so many doctors that Cuban doctors are serving in poor nations throughout the world at no charge. Additionally, Cuba provides medical education for students from all over the world, including 150 U.S. students, at no charge.

Deepthroat

The revelation of the identity of "Deep Throat", Woodward and Bernstien's source for their award winning Watergate investigative reports who remained unidentified for 30 years, elicits memories of the drama of the Congressional Watergate hearings and the ultimate demise of President Nixon.

The nonpartisan Watergate hearings, the prosecutions of many nefarious Nixon adminstration officials , and the impeachment and resignation of Nixon demonstrated to even the most cynical that justice could ultimately prevail in our system of government.

I believe that, in terms of mendacity and venality, President Bush and his minions have rendered Nixon to piker status; and I do not expect similar justice to be visited upon the President or any administration officials, who have lied their way into an unjust, beastly war against a nation that posed no threat to the U.S. and which has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

If you or I lie to Congress we will suffer legal sanctions, but elected officials may lie to us with impunity without consequence. I think that elected or appointed government officials who lie to the public should be subject to the same penalties to which we are subject for lying to Congress. And I hope to some day see Bush et al answer for their crimes.

Read Bob Woodward's story of "How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'"

WSCO Petroleum and the Local Economy

This evening, after consuming a couple glasses of red wine at Saginaw’s and enjoying conversation with Dan Meldrich, my friend and neighbor of 28 years, and Josh Wood, proprietor of the Bank at Saginaw’s, I had the good fortune of running into, and enjoying a great conversation with, Gene Tish and Shauna DelaMare, of WSCO Petroleum.

I hope all of those who call the Elma community home recognize the great things that Gene, Shuana, and their boss, Glenn Zirkle, have done for Elma.

WSCO, for those who don’t know, has constructed the Elma Microtel Inn and Suites hotel, as well as owning and operating the recently re-branded Gateway Exxon and operating the S. 3^rd St. Exxon station.

Not only has WSCO invested multiple millions of dollars in Elma but the company is populated by very bright, entirely unassuming folks of wonderful humor. The WSCO folks see opportunity in Elma that most folks in Elma, I believe, don’t realize.

I think WSCO’s investment in Elma’s first hotel will encourage further development of the Elma area economy. The hotel should enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the Grays Harbor Fairgrounds. The hotel should encourage more bookings of Fairground events, and the Fairgrounds will provide business to the hotel.

“Elma's fortuitous location at the interchange of State Routes 8 and 12, providing ready access to the Interstate 5 corridor to both the North and South; its modern utility infrastructure, including a state of the art sewage treatment facility and two fiber optic pipelines; great school district; competent, reliable workforce; abounding natural beauty; and an excellent quality of life bode well for Elma's economic future.” (This paragraph has been stolen from the City of Elma web site, but since I wrote it I guess it’s OK.)

WSCO Petroleum has demonstrated great confidence in the future of the economy of our community and I think we sould all take heed.