Eideard

Former President George W. Bush made his debut as a motivational speaker Monday night, telling a Fort Worth, Texas crowd it’s futile to waste energy chasing popularity.

“It’s so simple in life to chase popularity, but popularity is fleeting, it’s not real,” Bush said at a “Get Motivated!” business seminar, a multi-city event its organizers describe as an “energizing, action-packed, star-studded, fun-filled, spectacular stage show.”

The president himself saw wild popularity swings during his eight years in the White House, garnering nearly a 90 percent approval rating in the months following the attacks on September 11, 2001 and exiting office with only the support of 31 percent of Americans, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll….

“Every single day, I was honored to be your president by bringing honor and dignity to the office,” he said. Bush also added later that his faith played a large role in guiding his decisions: “From a personal perspective, I don’t see how you can be president without relying upon an almighty.”

An almighty what? I’m so tired of self-proclaimed “motivational speakers”. I wish Chris Farley would come back.

This very day, Monday October 26, in the year of Our Lord 2009, at a huge event in Fort Worth, Texas, the latest motivational sensation will explain to a breathless convention how to make good decisions, lots of money and a big reputation. The name of this wonder of the world? George W Bush. Oh my God. Yes, the stumbling folksy Messiah is about to appear back on the radar screen, bearing a formula for personal success. Just when you thought it was safe to go out again.

The event at which the ex-president will be speaking is described online as a “motivational mega-show that packs more inspirational firepower than a stick of dynamite!” Right. Will they have some hideously crippled folk from Baghdad to testify about the effects of dynamite on one’s prospects for success? No, thought not. Dubya will be paid $100,000 for a 40-minute speech showing how you can get in touch with your inner eejit. Maybe he’ll use the money for supplies of OxiClean to get the blood off his hands.

But here’s something even crazier.

The Messiah has appeared at an Ikea store in Glasgow. No, not Dubya. Jesus Christ has shown up in a toilet at the Braehead store of the Swedish furniture giant. Embedded in the gents’ wooden toilet door at Braehead, a bearded face with long hair can be seen…

One shopper is quoted as saying: “It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood. I was only heading to the toilet and found God. It’s certainly not what you expect to find in an Ikea store.” Indeed not. If the image starts bleeding, the Braehead store will become a mega pilgrimage site. Thousands of punters will be able to get a toilet blessing from Jesus as well as a self-assembly wardrobe…

Did I tell you about the Canadian who saw the face of Jesus in a burned fishcake? No, I can’t go on. I’m mildly hysterical already. Meanwhile, George W Bush is getting ready to walk on stage to talk about success.

The world isn’t going mad. It’s simply run by the inmates – and they’re already mad.

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Drawing on 2006 remarks in which he compared former U.S. President George Bush to the devil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the United Nations, said, “It doesn’t smell like sulfur anymore.”

In a rambling speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Chavez spoke highly of current President Obama, saying he is an “intelligent man” and comparing him to President John F. Kennedy.

“I hope God will protect Obama from the bullets that killed Kennedy,” he said. “I hope Obama will be able to look and see, genuinely see, what has to be seen and bring about a change.”

Three years ago, Chavez spoke at the gathering the day after Bush spoke, and said the lectern “still smells of sulfur.”

But on Thursday he looked around the podium and said, “It doesn’t smell of sulfur. It’s gone. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope.”

I have agreements – and disagreements – with Chavez. Must admit I appreciate his understanding of American humor.

Of course, most of what he said was playing to the Latin American audience and went straight over the TV talking heads.

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US President Barack Obama has shelved plans for controversial bases in Poland and the Czech Republic in a major overhaul of missile defence in Europe.

The bases are to be scrapped after a review of the threat from Iran.

Mr Obama said there would be a “proven, cost-effective” system using land- and sea-based interceptors against Iran’s short- and medium-range missile threat.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has welcomed the US decision, calling it a “responsible move”. Russia had always seen the shield as a threat.

Unsurprising – the Republican subspecies of chickenhawks is upset.

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As his size 10s spun through the air towards George W Bush, Muntazer al-Zaidi – the man the world now knows as the shoe-thrower – was bracing for an American bullet.

“He thought the secret service was going to shoot him,” says Zaidi’s younger brother, Maitham. “He expected that, and he was not afraid to die.”

Zaidi’s actions during the former US president’s swansong visit to Iraq last December have not stopped reverberating in the nine months since.

Next Monday, when the journalist walks out of prison, his 10 raging seconds, which came to define his country’s last six miserable years, are set to take on a new life even more dramatic than the opening act.

Across Iraq and in every corner of the Arab world, Zaidi is being feted. The 20 words or so he spat at Bush – “This is your farewell kiss, you dog. This is for the widows and orphans of Iraq” – have been immortalised, and in many cases memorised.

Pictures of the president ducking have been etched onto walls across Baghdad, made into T-shirts in Egypt, and appeared in children’s games in Turkey.

Zaidi has won the adulation of millions, who believe his act of defiance did what their leaders had been too cowed to do.

RTFA. Learn a little bit more about how most of the world feels about the New American Century – as well as the previous.

These were not inmates running an asylum. That would require forgiving the demented. This was crime and corruption at the highest levels of government. Deceit and profiteering by those elected to serve the needs of the people.

Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007…

The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. Regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the general public, it was delivered to the House and Senate on Friday, ready for members’ return from the Labor Day recess…

The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals, Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements, and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases.

This references the official and “approved” arms market. During the lame duck year of the Bush-Cheney Reich.

The taxpayers of the industrial world should be proud of their participation. Right?

Amrit Singh and Jameel Jaffer

In the spring of 2003, long before Abu Ghraib or secret prisons became part of the American vocabulary, a pair of recently hired lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union noticed a handful of news reports about allegations of abuse of prisoners in American custody.

The lawyers, Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, wondered: Was there a broader pattern of abuse, and could a Freedom of Information Act request uncover it? Some of their colleagues, more experienced with the frustrations of such document demands, were skeptical. One made a tongue-in-cheek offer of $1 for every page they turned up.

Six years later, the detention document request and subsequent lawsuit are among the most successful in the history of public disclosure, with 130,000 pages of previously secret documents released to date and the prospect of more.

The case has produced revelation after revelation: battles between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military over the treatment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp; autopsy reports on prisoners who died in custody in Afghanistan and Iraq; the Justice Department’s long-secret memorandums justifying harsh interrogation methods; and day-by-day descriptions of what happened inside the Central Intelligence Agency’s overseas prisons…

But Mr. Aftergood said the case also illustrated how costly litigation was often necessary to unearth documents the government preferred to protect. “The law gives you standing to fight,” he said. “It doesn’t guarantee victory.”

Nor, in reality, does it guarantee the American people an open and trustworthy government. The months and years of stonewalling by the Republican administration and the bureaucrats loyal to obfuscation rather than the Constitution they were sworn to uphold – leave us with only a few lawyers dedicated to the task.

RTFA. Think about it. We’re supposed to be the freedom-loving nation that shines the light for the rest of the world – if you accept the propaganda. Then why should we even need a Freedom Of Information Act – and why do we have to sue our elected officials to wring out the truth of what they do in office?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch him cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to plant secret service bodyguards to spy on the senator’s behaviour.

“Do you have anybody in the secret service that you can get to?” the US president asked his aide John Ehrlichman in a stark series of Oval Office conversations about Kennedy before the 1972 election. “Yeah, yeah,” Ehrlichman replied.

“Plant one,” Nixon said. “Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful…”

Because Kennedy was not a presidential candidate in 1972 he did not qualify for full-time secret service protection. But Nixon offered it to him, given the assassinations of his brothers, President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy…

“You understand what the problem is,” Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman on 7 September 1972. “If the [son of a bitch] gets shot they’ll say we didn’t furnish it [protection]. So you just buy his insurance.

“After the election he doesn’t get a … thing. If he gets shot it’s too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the secret service men.

Nixon pressed for more wiretaps and a combing of tax records, not only on Kennedy but other leading Democrats. “I could only hope that we are, frankly, doing a little persecuting,” he said.

Republican “family values” have always been guided by corruption and deceit.

The Dems are just ordinary sleazy politicians. For the Republicans, the battle against representative democracy is a commandment in their state religion.

Former U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said he squashed a plan to raise the terror alert level just before the 2004 general election.

“An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government” after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of (President George W.) Bush, Ridge wrote in his book, “The Test of Our Times.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had pushed to raise the security threat level to orange, even though Ridge believed a threatening message “should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level,” CNN reported Friday.

The threat level was not raised…

“We certainly didn’t believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren’t seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous,” Ridge wrote. “‘Is this about security or politics?’”

Everyone is covering this, today. Wander back through a number of blogs and you’ll see that many skeptics presumed that the Bush-Cheney Reich was playing the same sort of “terror” politics with the 2004 election – as they did with every aspect of their incumbency.

Another sad example of how gullible the American people are – and how cowardly our press is.

This is a long and intricate piece of research and writing. It deserves your full attention.

So, turn off the talk shows whining over cops with hurt feelings, skip the local news telling you about 665 new jobs from the Obama stimulus [in my neck of the prairie] – let your brain and sensibilities reflect upon what we have let politics become in this sad nation.

Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. “We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.

Bush had already decided the week before that Libby was undeserving and told Cheney so, only to see the question raised again. A top adviser to Bush says he had never seen the Vice President focused so single-mindedly on anything over two terms. And so, on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2009, Bush would give Cheney his final decision.

These last hours represent a climactic chapter in the mysterious and mostly opaque relationship at the center of a tumultuous period in American history. It reveals how one question — whether to grant a presidential pardon to a top vice-presidential aide — strained the bonds between Bush and his deputy and closest counselor. It reveals a gap in the two men’s views of crime and punishment. And in a broader way, it uncovers a fundamental difference in how the two men regarded the legacy of the Bush years. As a Cheney confidant puts it, the Vice President believed he and the President could claim the war on terrorism as his greatest legacy only if they defended at all costs the men and women who fought in the trenches.

When it came to Libby, Bush felt he had done enough.

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