Showing posts with label BUSH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BUSH. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2008

US To Declare October 'Economic Emergency', Suspend Elections


The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is reporting in the Kremlin today that the Bank of England has received from the United States Federal Reserve Bank a ‘notice’ that President Bush is preparing to declare an ‘Economic Emergency’ during the week of October 5th and will further announce that the American Presidential election due to be held on November 4th will be ‘indefinitely suspended’.
These reports state that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, had expressed his ‘shock and outrage’ to his American counterparts at the US Federal Reserve after the catastrophic collapse of one of the largest financial banks in the World, Lehman Brothers, and which caused both the Band of England and the European Central Bank to rush $42 billion into the European economy yesterday to keep it from collapsing, and their own banks from running out of money, necessitating the response from the US Central Bank leader Ben S. Bernanke.
As Prime Minister Putin had previously warned, and as we had reported on in our September 13th report “Hurricane Ike To Completely Destroy United States, Says Putin”, the horrific hurricane storm that has devastated the State of Texas, and where a humanitarian crisis is presently unfolding, has, indeed, proved to be the proverbial ‘straw that broke the camels back’ as the catastrophic damage from this storm raced beyond the Gulf of Mexico coast and ravaged the heartland of America to such an extent that the Governors of Ohio and Kentucky have declared States of Emergency as millions have been left without power.
The significance of this historic storm damage to the American economy, these reports say, led to the unprecedented pressures put upon the World’s largest insurance company American International Group (AIG) and its halt in negotiations, during a rare Sunday meeting in New York, to support the near bankrupt Lehman Brothers on Sunday, but which was then allowed to collapse and is now threatening to also destroy AIG itself.
Not being explained to the American people is that AIG, the World’s largest player in the $45 Trillion derivatives market, during the past two weeks had bet heavily on the World Markets against the damage from Hurricane Ike exceeding $2 billion in property damage, lost oil and gasoline production, lost wages and payments to companies forced to close, etc., it is obligated to pay, but which the actual damages are now being estimated will exceed $1 Trillion as the damages throughout the United States are finally tallied.
[Note: Derivatives are financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables. The main types of derivatives are futures, forwards, options, and swaps. The main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party.]
Such a calamitous action by AIG has basically shattered the Western economic system, and as we can read as reported by The Australian Business News Service in their article titled “Global banks brace for derivative blow-up”, and which says:
So here we are on the morning of D Day. The world's major couterparties on the $US455 trillion derivatives market go into technical default and no one is sure what is going to happen.
Lehman Bros yesterday formally petitioned the State Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District Court of New York for Chapter 11 protection.
Lehman would also have filed what are called "first day motions", which allow the bank to pay salaries and wages, while it continues to market its non-toxic, broker-dealer operations and work out what on earth to do with its highly toxic $US53 billion residential and commercial mortgage portfolio.
But, as scary and Spartan as it might sound, failure is as essential to the workings of an effective marketplace as is success.
Which means only that, given this shattered, battle-weary investment bank is unable to find itself a new owner or think its own way through the current calamitous circumstances, then one of the legendary brands of Wall Street should be left to fail.
In a weekend of unprecedented drama, the Fed seems to have been forced to play Solomon and choose between Merrill Lynch and Lehman. Both were facing mortal threat. But it seems only one could survive intact.”
Even worse for the American people during this unprecedented crisis is that one of their top economic experts, Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co, is now warning that over 1,000 US banks are nearing collapse, and one of their top economists, Nouriel Roubini, of NYU's Stern School and RGE Monitor, if further warning that “there is already a "slow-motion run on retail banks" occurring nationwide.”
Russian Military Analysts commenting on these reports state that though it is unlikely that the American President can suspend US elections solely on the basis of an Economic Emergency alone, it is entirely probable that he could do so should their Nation suffer another 9/11 type attack, and which they ‘cryptically’ observe could place as early as September 22nd as American Military Forces begin to conduct their World-Wide tests of their new nuclear alert system as they conduct another test of their so-called Star Wars Missile Defense System.
It should be further noted that as their once great Nation continues sliding towards the abyss of total ruin, these American people still refuse to acknowledge the substance of the many warnings being issued to them from all corners of the World as if even with eyes and ears they do not see and do not hear anything other than what they are programmed for by their masters.
How sad for these people, how much sadder for the rest of us these people are now all but lost.
© September 16, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.

[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]


Snowballing sell-off spreads worldwide


Friday, October 10, 2008



NEW YORK - Stock prices careened lower Friday in Asia and Europe and gyrated wildly in the United States, extending a stampede of selling that began on Wall Street a day earlier and deepening a global financial crisis that has defied all efforts to stop it.
President Bush tried to reassure Americans afraid for their life savings and their jobs. "Anxiety can feed anxiety," Bush said Friday, "and that can make it hard to see all that is being done to solve the problem."


This week's coordinated interest rate cuts by the world's central banks to thaw frozen credit markets and boost investor confidence have fallen flat as markets remain gripped by fears about the scale and depth of the likely global recession.
Stock prices were swinging sharply on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrials fell nearly 700 points soon after trading began, regained all of that deficit temporarily - then slid to a loss of more than 300 points shortly after Bush's remarks.
The Wall Street Journal reported that government officials are considering temporarily guaranteeing all U.S. bank deposits and billions of dollars of bank debt, in addition to possibly buying stakes in individual banks. The New York Times also said officials are reviewing a British proposal that also includes repayment guarantees for certain types of loans.
Administration officials told The Associated Press that several financial rescue plans are being reviewed, but no announcements are likely before finance ministers from the seven biggest industrial nations meet Friday in Washington.
"The world is sending an unmistakable signal: We're in this together, and we'll come through this together," Bush said of the international planning.
The $700 billion federal bailout legislation enacted on Oct. 3 cleared the way for the government insurance limit for bank deposits to be temporarily raised from $100,000 to $250,000 in cases where bank or savings and loans fail. That guarantee covered $5.2 trillion of deposits, but another $1.8 trillion is not presently covered, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But a Treasury Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of market conditions, said covering all deposits is not now being considered. "We raised the limit one week ago and have no plans to remove the limit," the official said.
A spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., however, didn't appear to rule out the possibility that such a plan might be considered.
The Treasury had earlier requested from Congress authority for the FDIC to change deposit insurance limits to respond to disruptions in the banking system, in addition to the increase to $250,000 that was part of the bailout legislation, FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray noted in a statement.
"We believe that we have significant latitude, in consultation with Congress, under the systemic risk exception - which carries the threshold of approval of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary in consultation with the president - to protect depositors and adopt other measures to support the banking system," Gray said.
Thursday's anniversary of the U.S. stock market peak turned into one of the worst days in Wall Street history, with the Dow Jones industrials loosing a breathtaking 679 points, or 7.3 percent.
Asian markets followed Wall Street's cue, as key market gauges dropped 9.6 percent in Japan, 8 percent in India and 7.2 percent in Hong Kong. European stocks slumped by midday with key market barometers losing 7.3 percent in London, 7.7 percent in Germany and 7.5 percent in Paris.
A stream of selling forced exchanges in Austria, Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading, and the rout in Australian markets caused traders to call it "Black Friday."
"Overall it's the fact that despite the huge firefighting efforts of central banks worldwide we still haven't seen any thawing of interbank lending that is going to be causing the most concern now," said Matt Buckled, a dealer at CMC Markets in London.
The late burst of selling Thursday on Wall Street sent the Dow Jones industrials down to 8,579, crashing through the 9,000 level for the first time in five years and wiping out $872 billion of investment value.
As bad as the day was, even worse was the cumulative effect of a historic run of declines: The Dow suffered a triple-digit loss for the sixth day in a row, a first, and the average dropped for the seventh day in a row, a losing streak not seen since 2002.
"Right now the market is just panicked," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "Nobody wants to take on any risk. Everybody just wants to get their money and put it under the mattress."
Thursday's sell-off on Wall Street took place one year to the day after the Dow closed at its record high of 14,164. Since that day, frozen credit, record foreclosures, cascading job losses and outright fear have seized the market and sapped 39 percent of its value.
Paper losses for the year though Thursday add up to an staggering $8.3 trillion, according to preliminary figures measured by the Dow Jones Wiltshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies representing almost all stocks traded in America.
It was the second straight day that Wall Street was rocked by a final-hour sell-off, but this one was particularly shocking.
Most of the day was relatively calm, and the trading floor was quieter than usual because of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Wall Street awoke to news the federal government was brandishing a new weapon against the financial crisis - considering seeking an equity stake in major U.S. banks in order to stabilize them.
But that step appeared to be as ineffectual as the others Washington has rolled out in recent weeks, including a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, a coordinated interest rate cut by central banks around the world and direct lending by the Federal Reserve to private companies to provide them with short-term cash.
Acquiring a stake in the banks would be yet another startling intervention by the government in the free market, but economists said Bush was left with little choice because of the credit markets, where tight lending has choked off the everyday cash that is the lifeblood of the economy.
"In normal times, this would be out of the question, but in the present dire situation, I think the government should be employing all the powers that it can," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands.
Wall Street has been teetering on the brink of panic for a month now, vulnerable to any bad news. Thursday's sell-off was triggered when a major credit rating agency put General Motors Corp. and its finance affiliate under review to determine whether it should be downgraded.
Stock in GM, one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones industrials, lost 31 percent of its value and closed at $4.76 - its lowest level since the Korean War began more than a half century ago.
For the Dow, it has been nothing short of a free fall:
-The point decline Thursday was the third-worst in Dow history. The worst, 778 points, came less than two weeks ago.
-Of the last 19 trading days, there have been 11 triple-digit losses - including the unprecedented six straight. The six gains have all been triple-digits, and only one of them was enough to make up the losses of the day before.
In percentage terms, Thursday's drop in the Dow exceeded the day the markets reopened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was not close to the 22.6-percent decline on Black Monday in 1987, the last stock market crash.
---


AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Tom Raum in Washington and Patrick Rizzo in New York contributed to this story.


Bush Attempts to Reassure Americans as G-7 Finance Ministers Gather in Washington


President George W. Bush makes statement on US economic crisis at the White House, 10 Oct 2008


By VOA News 10 October 2008




Leaders of the world's largest economies confronted a global financial system in shambles Friday as they gathered in Washington to cope with a plunging stock market, a frozen credit market, and fears the world is headed for recession. U.S. stock markets plunged around five percent in the first few minutes of trading, but later recovered in volatile trading. Key European stock market indexes were down sharply in afternoon trading. Steep declines forced officials in Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading indefinitely. Brazilian officials suspended trading temporarily after declines of at least ten percent. And Japan's Nikkei index was off nearly 10 percent at the close - its biggest one-day loss since 1987. Officials from the Group of Seven industrialized nations (the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Canada and Italy) are gathering in Washington ahead of a meeting of the International Monetary Fund, and will meet with U.S. President George Bush on Saturday.


In televised remarks Friday, Mr. Bush tried to reassure investors around the world. He said officials are taking strong measures to solve the crisis, and blamed "fear" for what he described as the "startling" drop in stock prices. Mr. Bush said the United States is a wealthy nation with the tools and resources to solve these problems, and urged Americans to be confident in the country's future. Meanwhile, U.S. officials may be considering a plan to help ease the credit-crunch that sparked the current crisis.The Wall Street Journal's online edition reports today the U.S. may decide to guarantee billions of dollars in bank debt and temporarily insure all U.S. bank deposits.In an interview today with CNBC television, British entrepreneur and investor Richard Branson said he does not expect the U.S. stock markets to produce any sort of sustained rally.The president of the Virgin Atlantic airline and founder of many of the Virgin Group's other enterprises - including a space tourism company - also said he plans to get back into the mortgage business in the next six months.Many economists blame mortgage-related investments tied to the U.S. housing market for sparking the financial crisis.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.


Thursday, October 02, 2008

Not One Dime!




Mike Whitney – ICH October 1, 2008


For nearly a year, we have been asking ourselves why the investors and foreign banks that bought up hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from US investment banks have not taken legal action against these same banks or initiated a boycott of US financial products to prevent more people from getting ripped off? Now we know the answer. It's because, behind the scenes, Henry Paulson and Co. were working out a deal to dump the whole trillion dollar mess on the US taxpayer. That's what this whole $700 billion boondoggle is all about; wiping out the massive debts that were generated in the biggest incident of fraud in history. Rep Brad Sherman explained it like this last night to Larry Kudlow: "It (The bill) provides hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to foreign investors. It provides no real control of Paulson's power. There is a critique board but not really a board that can step in and change what he does. It's a $700 billion program run by a part-time temporary employee and there is no limit on million dollar a month salaries....... It's very clear. The Bank of Shanghai can transfer all of its toxic assets to the Bank of Shanghai of Los Angeles which can then sell them the next day to the Treasury. I had a provision to say if it wasn't owned by an American entity even a subsidiary, but at least an entity in the US, the Treasury can't buy it. It was rejected. The bill is very clear. Assets now held in China and London can be sold to US entities on Monday and then sold to the Treasury on Tuesday. Paulson has made it clear he will recommend a veto of any bill that contained a clear provision that said if Americans did not own the asset on September 20th that it can't be sold to the Treasury. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to bail out foreign investors. They know it, they demanded it and the bill has been carefully written to make sure it can happen." So, why hasn't the Treasury Secretary explained the real purpose of the bailout to the American people? Could it be that he knows that his $700 billion bailout would end up like the Hindenburg, vanishing in sheets of flames? This is a terrible bill, and it confers absolute authority on one of the central players in the scandal, Henry Paulson, who was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs at the time this MBS garbage was being peddled around the planet to credulous investors. Now Paulson will be in a position to buy up any "troubled asset" he that he believes could pose a threat to "financial market stability". That's just great! It is clear that Paulson will use his unchecked powers to wipe the slate clean and remove any possibility that foreign investors will take legal action against the real perpetrators; the giant Wall Street investment banks. So, how do the American people like paying off Paulson and Co. future legal bills? Is that how taxpayer revenue should be spent instead of on education, health care and infrastructure? There's another reason why Paulson is working so hard to pass the Bailout for Tycoons Bill; it's a windfall for the banking giants. Citi did not simply pick up Wachovia by happenstance nor did JP Morgan purchase Washington Mutual because it wanted to perform its civic duty and prevent a full-system meltdown. No way; they were clearly aware of the way the wind was blowing. In fact, neither case manages to pass the smell test. This is from AP's Sara Lepro: "Citigroup agreed Monday to purchase Wachovia's banking operations for $2.1 billion in a deal arranged by federal regulators, making the Charlotte-based bank the latest casualty of the widening global financial crisis. The deal greatly expands Citigroup's retail franchise—giving it a total of more than 4,300 U.S. branches and $600 billion in deposits—and secures its place among the U.S. banking industry's Big Three, along with Bank of America Corp. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. But it comes at a cost: Citigroup Inc. said it will slash its quarterly dividend in half to 16 cents. It also will dilute existing shareholders by selling $10 billion in common stock to shore up its capital position. In addition to assuming $53 billion worth of debt, Citigroup will absorb up to $42 billion of losses from Wachovia's $312 billion loan portfolio, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. agreeing to cover any remaining losses. Citigroup also will issue $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants to the FDIC. (Ed; Here's the punch line) "The government's proposed $700 billion rescue plan for financial institution, being voted on Monday by the House of Representatives, likely will prove of added benefit to Citi. While the plan broadly aims to prevent banks from profiting on the sale of troubled assets to the government, there is an exception made for assets acquired in a merger or buyout, or from companies that have filed for bankruptcy. This could allow Citigroup to sell toxic mortgages and other assets it gained from Wachovia for a higher price than the bank actually paid for them." ("Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations" Huh?!? So Citi not only gets an army of depositors (the cheapest capital available!) but, at the same time, is going to be able to dump it's mortgage-backed junk on the taxpayer? And, guess what? The JP Morgan deal looks nearly identical. Is this "insider baseball" or not? Does anyone want to wager that G-Sax will also get a privileged spot at the public trough sucking up billions of taxpayer dollars to patch together its tattered balance sheet? And what will the net result of Paulson's Bailout for Fraudsters be; more consolidation of the financial industry and the utter annihilation of local and regional banks. That's a sure thing. The mom and pop banks across the country are going to take it in the stern sheets if this bill is passed. Bet on it. The country has no time for this cynical scavenger-hunt. The system is listing badly and we have ONE chance to get this emergency bill right. There is no way an industry rep like Henry Paulson, who has spent his entire career feathering his own nest and handing out plums to his buddies, can operate in the best interests of the American people. Paulson has got to go! According to Bloomberg News , Sept 29: "The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone." (Bloomberg) Get it? The Fed has ALREADY brushed aside Congress's "No" vote and pumped money into the system; and look what happened. Nothing! Libor is still at historic highs, the Ted spread has widened to record levels and interbank lending is grinding to a standstill. There's a run on the money markets that is reducing the ability of businesses to turn over short term debt. The system is shutting down, folks, and Paulson's snake oil won't help. Why throw another $700 billion down a rathole? 400 reputable economists--not the "faith based" industry hacks that work for the Bush administration--are opposed to this bailout. It has to be stopped. This is a "real time" meltdown and it requires real solutions, not bailouts for foreign creditors and Wall Street Goliaths. (Foreign victims of this scam will have to sue the perpetrators not the US taxpayer) As Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics, points out, we are on the verge of the "mother of all bank runs", a cross-border savaging of reserves that would crash the entire financial system. Here's Roubini on the next shoe to drop: "The next step of this panic could become the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a run on the trillion dollar plus of the cross border short-term interbank liabilities of the US banking and financial system as foreign banks as starting to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures to US financial institutions; such a silent cross border bank run has already started as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of US banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run accelerates - as it may now - a total meltdown of the US financial system could occur. We are thus now in a generalized panic mode and back to the risk of a systemic meltdown of the entire financial system. And US and foreign policy authorities seem to be clueless about what needs to be done next. Maybe they should today start with a coordinated 100 bps reduction in policy rates in all the major economies in the world to show that they are starting to seriously recognize and address this rapidly worsening financial crisis." (Nouriel Roubini's EconoMonitor) We have no time for Paulson's self serving shenanigans. This is not how one goes about recapitalizing the banking system or bringing stability to the financial system. It's time to get rid of the lobbyists and banking vermin and bring in the economists and the people with real experience. Paulson's plan is loser. Not one dime should go to this latest Wall Street swindle. No bailout!





Last updated 02/10/2008


Thursday, September 25, 2008

Lawmakers: Financial Bailout Agreement Reached

Sept. 25, 2008
Lawmakers: Financial Bailout Agreement Reached

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Warned of a possible financial panic, key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement in principle Thursday on a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and said they would present it to the Bush administration in hopes of a vote within days.

Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman said, "We are very confident that we can act expeditiously."

"I now expect that we will indeed have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate (and) be signed by the president," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.

The bipartisan consensus on the general direction of the legislation was reported just hours before President Bush was to host presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain and congressional leaders at the White House for discussions on how to clear obstacles to the unpopular rescue plan.

Tony Fratto, the White House deputy press secretary said the announcement was "a good sign that progress is being made."

"We'll want to hear from (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson, and take a look at the details. We look forward to a good discussion at the meeting this afternoon," he said.

On Wall Street, financial markets grew more upbeat as the Dow Jones industrial average at times rose more than 300 points.

Key lawmakers in Washington said at midday that few difficulties actually remained, although no details of their accord were immediately available.

"There really isn't much of a deadlock to break," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

But there were fresh signs of trouble in the House Republican Caucus. A group of GOP lawmakers circulated an alternative designed to attract private capital back into the credit markets with less government intrusion.

Under the proposal, the government would provide insurance to companies that agree to buy frozen assets, rather than purchase them directly as envisioned under the administration's plan. The firms would have to pay insurance premiums to the Treasury Department for the coverage.

"The taxpayers haven't done anything wrong," said Rep Eric Cantor, R-Va., adding that rather than require them to bear the cost of the bailout, the alternative "pretty much puts the burden on Wall Street over time."

Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader, was huddling with McCain on the rescue. Earlier, asked whether the GOP presidential nominee could corral restive Republicans to support the plan, Boehner said, "Who knows?"

And Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the only House Republican in the bargaining meeting, did not directly say he agreed with the other lawmakers who emerged describing an imminent deal.

"There was progress today," said Bachus, the senior Republican on the Financial Services panel.

Bush told the nation in a televised address Wednesday night that passage of the package his administration has proposed is urgently needed to calm the markets and restore confidence in the reeling financial system. His top spokeswoman, Dana Perino, had told reporters earlier Thursday that "significant progress" was being made.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's agreement with Democrats on limiting pay for executives of bailed out financial institutions and giving taxpayers an equity stake in the companies cleared a significant hurdle.

The core of the plan envisions the government buying up sour assets of shaky financial firms in a bid to keep them from going under and to stave off a potentially severe recession.

It was not yet clear how lawmakers had resolved lingering differences over how to phase in the eye-popping cost -- a measure demanded by Democrats and some Republicans who want stronger congressional control over the bailout -- without spooking markets. A plan to let the government take an ownership stake in troubled companies as part of the rescue, rather than just buying bad debt, also was a topic of intense negotiation.

Bush acknowledged Wednesday night that the bailout would be a "tough vote" for lawmakers. But he said failing to approve it would risk dire consequences for the economy and most Americans.

"Without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold," Bush said as he worked to resurrect the unpopular bailout package. "Our entire economy is in danger."

Obama and McCain called for a bipartisan effort to deal with the crisis, little more than five weeks before national elections in which the economy has emerged as the dominant theme.

Presidential politics intruded, nonetheless, when McCain on Wednesday asked Obama to agree to delay their first debate, scheduled for Friday, to deal with the meltdown. Obama said the debate should go ahead.



Source: Copyright 2008 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Source:

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/2008/9/25/lawmakers_financial_bailout_agreement_reached.htm

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Mission Accomplished: Economy ruined

The Bush Administration
(An oxymoron)
He boasted that "The Mission" had been accomplished,
Well it has, we're finally more broke than a see-saw off its fulcrum.
We thought that he was referring to his brain-child, The War On Terror,
But, we missed the true meaning of the conclusion of the mission,
The accomplished task was the devastation of the American Economy,
Whether intentional or just coincidental,* the nation is beyond repair,
He wanted to make a name for himself,
Well, that name is 'Destroyer Of Our Wealth'.
It's and undeniable fact,
On his watch the train fell of the track.
He wounded Achilles' heel,
Tell's us W? How does it feel?
u
You're either with us, or with the terrorists?
Eight years of errors; And, who knows what lies before us?
.
.
Arsenio.
.
* I truly doubt it.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The U.S. Financial System in Serious Trouble

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The U.S. Financial System in Serious Trouble

by Rodrigue Tremblay

“… a bailout of GSE (Fannie and Freddie) bondholders would be perhaps the greatest taxpayer rip-off in American history. It is bad economics and you can be sure it is terrible politics.”

Matt Kibbe, President of Freedom Works

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), (September 1932)

[After the Bear Stearns bailout] "As more firms lost access to funding, the vicious circle of forced selling, increased volatility, ... and margin calls that was already well advanced at the time would likely have intensified. The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions."

Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman (March 2008)

In August 2007, at the very beginning of the subprime financial crisis in the U.S., and referring to the alchemy-like practice of creating artificial financial instruments, such as mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), here is what I wrote:

Like all 'Ponzi schemes', such pyramidings of debts with no liquid assets behind them are bound to implode sooner or later.” I also wrote about the Fed's intervention in such cases, that “it alleviates the 'liquidity crisis', for sure, but this does nothing to cure the underlying 'solvency crisis' of institutions holding large chunks of non-performing mortgage-based assets. Sooner or later, such low-valued derivatives will have to be written off, and this will necessarily lead to an erosion of these institutions' capital base. Bankruptcies of the most leveraged and imprudent institutions are to be expected.

In fact, such bankruptcies of over-leveraged financial institutions become unavoidable. For a while, forced mergers between banks, initiated by the Fed or the Treasury, can soften the blow. But after a while, outright bankruptcies cannot be avoided and balance sheets have to be balanced.

What is the cause of this financial mess?

Last month, I provided a short answer:

At the center of current financial problems is the failure to adapt standard financial regulation to new financial institutions, such as broker-investment banks, off-shore based hedge funds and large derivatives markets that remain, for the most part, outside of the traditional authority of regulators. However, when things go wrong, as they did with Bear Stearns last March, their demise threatens to destabilize the entire financial system and handy government bailouts are quickly called in.”

Today I say that this major crisis has to be placed at the very feet of the Washington establishment. This is a politico-financial establishment that has pushed to the limits its ideology of deregulation of financial markets and stretched the working of unregulated corporate market capitalism to the breaking point. Now, the system is imploding under our very eyes and financial institutions are falling like dominos. As I wrote last August, and repeated in April of this year, the U.S. financial problem is not one of liquidity, (there is plenty of liquidity provided by the Fed when banks and brokers can borrow at will newly printed dollars from the Fed’s discount window) but one of solvency, weak balance sheets, risky assets and debt liquidation. That's a horse of a different color.

Over the last twenty-five years, beginning with the Reagan administration and culminating with the current Bush-Cheney administration, the Washington establishment dismantled piece by piece the system of protection that had been built since the 1930's economic depression and removed nearly all government regulations that could stand in the way of greed and gouging on the part of unscrupulous market operators.

And that's where the rubber hits the road. Short of bankruptcies is the nationalization of the over-leveraged banks by the government. And the Bush-Cheney administration took a big step in that direction when it came to the rescue of the two largest mortgage financing institutions, Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association: FNM) and Freddie Mac, (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation: FRE) which were close to being insolvent. This step was initiated after foreign central banks (in China, Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Russia) threatened to stop buying U.S. bonds and debentures issued by the two shaky financial institutions.

But the Bush-Cheney administration, while providing public money to keep the two lenders in operation, stopped short of nationalizing them. Indeed, the U.S. government committed to invest as much as $200 billion in preferred stock and extend credit through 2009, to keep the two mortgage lenders solvent and operating.

But instead of taking them over by placing them into administrative receivership, in order to change their business model, as they should have done since the government is now guaranteeing their outstanding debts, (more than $5 trillion US) the U.S. government chose rather to keep the appearance that these were still two privately run banks and only appointed a legal conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even when they bail out what can be called two Government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), their market ideology prevents them from doing the right thing.

After years of irresponsible public deregulation and private mismanagement and irresponsible, pyramiding risk taking, the American financial system is now in serious trouble, and it may draw the U.S. economy further down with it in the months and years to come.

In the coming weeks, however, as other American financial institutions teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, the U.S. government will have to consider creating a Bank Resolution Trust under the model of the 1989 Resolution Trust Corp. which took over the savings and loans banks that were then in financial difficulties. For example, as recently as February 16 of this year, the British government did not hesitate to nationalize the Northern Rock bank and rescued this large British bank with about £55 billion ($107 billion) in public loans and guarantees. Sooner or later, the American government will have to do the same, in order to stabilize the financial system, because the financial problems in the U.S. are systemic and much more serious than elsewhere.

By the same token, maybe the U.S. government should correct an anomaly of the 20th Century, that is the semi-private status of its central bank. Indeed, the American Federal Reserve, is a semi-public and semi-private central bank organization that is as much responsible to large private banks as it is to the U.S. government and the population. This creates an unhealthy conflict of interests that is not fair to the American public. Indeed, the American practice of privatizing profits and socializing losses would be considered unacceptable in most other democracies.

What we are witnessing these days in the U.S. is a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers, savers and retirees to banks, their creditors and their managers. On the one hand, the Fed has pushed real interest rates deep into negative territory to help troubled banks, and, on the other hand, the American taxpayers have foot the bill for bailing out very large financial institutions.

I wonder what the two presidential camps, the Obama and the McCain camps, have to say about that! They both want to increase the federal deficit and add significantly to the already high national debt.

Source: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.html

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Sept 11 brought US into age of terrorism, anxiety

Sept 11 brought US into age of terrorism, anxiety

WASHINGTON -- Dead or alive.

President Bush said he didn't care how terrorism architect Osama bin Laden was brought to justice.

"We'll smoke him out of his cave and we'll get him eventually," Bush said confidently.

That was back in 2001 when the U.S. reeled in shock and horror after 19 men hijacked four airliners and turned them into guided missiles. The jets slammed into New York's World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, killing nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest attack in history on U.S. soil.

It was the beginning of a new era of anxiety and vulnerability for the country after only a few years of post-Cold War comfort. Americans suddenly woke up to the chilling threat of terrorism -- not in the Middle East or somewhere else around the world, but here, at home.

It was a turning point, too, for Bush, an inexperienced, little-traveled president who had shown marginal interest in world affairs.

Before Sept. 11, Bush was best known for winning his office in a controversial Supreme Court decision and then cajoling Congress into passing one of the largest tax cuts in history and enacting a major education bill.

After Sept. 11, Bush declared himself a wartime president. He denounced "evildoers" and launched a global war on terrorism. He rallied the nation and the world; his approval ratings soared into the stratosphere.

Now, on the seventh anniversary of Sept. 11, Bush winds down his presidency with those attacks and the aftermath standing as the defining events of his time in office.

"You have to view this as the seminal event of his presidency," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "It transformed him, it focused him and gave a sense of purpose to his presidency that really had not existed before."

Suddenly, Ornstein said, Bush's mission was clear: "Fight a war against terror and win it."

The president laid the groundwork for two wars in close succession, in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Today, he still is carrying the burden of those wars, still not won, and a tarnished U.S. image around the globe. Critics blame him for allowing people to be tortured, for domestic spying and for abuses of executive power.

Bush sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, to strike al-Qaida training camps and remove the Taliban rulers who harbored bin Laden. The Taliban fell quickly. Bin Laden slipped away.

Many key lieutenants, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, were captured. Others were killed.

On March 19, 2003, with solid support from Congress, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. The decision was justified largely on grounds -- later proved false -- that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction that, Bush said, "could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly sought to link Saddam to the Sept. 11 attacks. But the independent Sept. 11 commission concluded there was no such relationship. Bush eventually stopped making that connection, but still cast Saddam as a terrorist threat.

In an Oval Office speech on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, Bush said, "I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take."

The war at first was popular, when it looked like a relatively easy victory. Bush made protecting the U.S. the central theme of his re-election campaign and staged the 2004 Republican convention in New York, a reminder of the attacks.

On the seventh anniversary this year, Bush will mark the day simply by going to the Pentagon for the unveiling of a Sept. 11 memorial.

History will judge his presidency on the war in Iraq, which Bush decreed the central front in the war against Islamic extremists. It has lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I and World War II. It has claimed the lives of more than 4,100 Americans and cost about $653 billion.

Many people already have come to a decision.

A Gallup Poll in March found that 54 percent of Americans believe Iraq will be remembered as a failure and that 59 percent think it was a mistake to send U.S. troops there in the first place.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama calls the war "one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in our history" and says "al-Qaida's leadership is stronger than ever because we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan" to invade Iraq.

Republican John McCain is emphasizing the same national security theme in his campaign that the Bush White House won with four years ago. McCain also distances himself from Bush, saying the incumbent mishandled the war until he adopted the combat troop increase strategy last year that has led to a sharp reduction in the violence.

As security in Iraq has grown in the past year, however, it has deteriorated in Afghanistan. Bush says Afghanistan is a central front, too. More than 500 U.S. troops have died there or in neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan since 2001, and the Taliban is regrouping. More American troops died in Afghanistan in July than in Iraq, for the first time since the Iraq war started.

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's vow to get bin Laden remains unfulfilled. From time to time, bin Laden taunts Bush with Internet insults and threats taped in his hide-out, presumed somewhere in the lawless border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bush says he does not think much about bin Laden, that his influence has been diminished.

Still, U.S. intelligence officials worry al-Qaida is establishing cells in other countries and training for attacks in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States.

"Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States," Mike McConnell, the national intelligence director, told Congress this year. FBI Director Robert Mueller said al-Qaida continues to present a "critical threat to the homeland" and warned that "homegrown terrorists" inspired by al-Qaida's propaganda on the Internet posed a threat as well.

So far, the United States has not suffered another terrorist attack, though some allies have. Bush says the U.S. and its allies have thwarted some major plots.

"I vowed that day that I would not rest, so long as I was the president, in protecting the people," Bush remarked after a briefing in 2006 at the U.S. Central Command, the military command that oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "So a lot of my decision-making is based upon the attack."

Each workday at 8 a.m., McConnell and an intelligence briefer sit down with Bush in the Oval Office to update him on threat assessments, turmoil and problems around the globe.

As the wars have gone better and worse, so has the look of Bush's legacy.

"The Bush presidency has been more of a roller coaster presidency than anything I've seen in my lifetime," said Lee Edwards, a historian of the American conservative movement at the Heritage Foundation. "No one has soared higher or dipped lower than George W. Bush."

Today, his approval ratings are low. But Lee said that just as history changed its initially dim view of Harry Truman's decision to send U.S. forces to Korea, it will conclude over time that Bush made the right move in Iraq.

Ornstein says the jury is still out. "We don't know what history is going to say about this until it shakes down in a number of years."

Bush said he worries Americans will lose patience with the fight against terrorism, lulled into a false feeling of safety. But he says he does not worry about his legacy.

"Oh, I don't know," Bush told an interviewer recently. "I'll be dead when they finally figure it out."

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Source: http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO87392/

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

New executive director for federal panel on religious freedom



New executive director for federal panel on religious freedom


WASHINGTON (AP) — James Standish, a former legislative affairs official with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has been named executive director of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.


Standish, whose appointment was announced Aug. 20, succeeds Joseph R. Crapa, who died last fall. The commission is an independent, bipartisan federal agency that advises the president and Congress on religious freedom issues worldwide.


Standish worked for seven years as director of legislative affairs at the Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters, representing the denomination on Capitol Hill and on country visits around the world.


Standish received his bachelor's degree from Newbold College in England, his master's degree in business administration from the University of Virginia and his law degree from Georgetown University.


___


http://www.uscirf.gov/


Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRiEfTrANJniD2CWpkC3hNQnnBgQD92R8NF80

Note: Bolds and Highlights added for emphasis. ....Arsenio.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

New Book Says Bush Committed Impeachable Offense

New Book Says Bush Committed Impeachable Offense

New Book Says Bush Committed Impeachable Offense

By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Monday, August 04, 2008

Published in : Nation/World

An explosive new book by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist alleges President George W. Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to create a forged document showing a link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda to create a "false pretense" for war.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from [the director of the Iraqi intelligence service] to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” reporter Ron Suskind writes in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Furthermore, Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction nor was the country an imminent threat, which is what the March 2003 invasion was predicated on.

The director of the Iraqi intelligence service informed the White House “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

“They secretly resettled [the intelligence official] in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,” Suskind writes says.

Suskind, who won Pulitzer Prize during his tenure as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes in his new book that the plan to use the CIA to create a bogus link between Iraq and al-Qaeda appears to be in direct violation of a statute that prohibits the CIA from conducting cover operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media.”

“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”

The allegations would appear to back up claims made by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says Congress has plenty of evidence that Bush deserves impeachment for misleading the nation into war in Iraq, authorizing torture and other grave crimes, and violating the Constitution – and it is now time to act.

Aides to Kucinich said Monday the congressman is contemplating how to best proceed with his plan to have Congress hold impeachment proceedings following a House committee hearing two weeks ago on Bush’s “imperial presidency.” At the hearing, Kucinich ticked off numerous high crimes and misdemeanors Bush committed during his two-terms in office.

In June, Kucinich stunned colleagues when he introduced an impeachment resolution on the House floor and then spent nearly five hours reading the 35 articles, alleging that President Bush was guilty of a wide range of crimes.

The articles of impeachment were introduced a few days after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a long-awaited report on prewar Iraq intelligence that concluded Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney knowingly misled the public and Congress about Iraq's links to al-Qaeda and the threat the country posed to the United States.

The House sidetracked Kucinich’s resolution by voting – 251-166 – to send it to the House Judiciary Committee. At the time, Kucinich said he expected Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to hold hearings within a 30-day deadline Kucinich had imposed, but Conyers chose not to act.

Kucinich said he had whittled down the 35 articles of impeachment to a single article, alleging Bush “deceived” Congress into believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to get lawmakers to back a U.S.-led invasion of the country.

“We need to send a message to the next President that if he conducts himself in a similar capacity it would be met with a response from the Congress that you are going to be held to account. … There is a point at which you reduce Congress to a debating society,” Kucinich said in an interview in June.

Rebuffing Kucinich’s calls for impeachment hearings, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony about Bush’s “imperial presidency” and several of his administration’s scandals.

Bush knows that Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers, have long ago rejected impeachment proceedings, the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield against a President who has abused his powers.

In his book, The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind claimed that Bush had become obsessed with a high-value al-Qaeda associate named Abu Zubaydah who was captured in 2002.

But Abu Zubaydah was not the “high value detainee” the CIA had claimed. He was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind's wrote.

Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind wrote.

But Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.

“And, so, the CIA used an alternative set of procedures” to get Zubaydah to talk, Bush said in the spring of 2002, after Zubaydah was captured.

Abu Zubaydah became one of the first prisoners in the wake of 9/11 to undergo some of the harshest interrogation methods at the hands of American intelligence officials.

Despite the fact that Bush was briefed by the CIA about Zubaydah’s low-level al-Qaeda status, the president did not want to “lose face” because he had stated his importance publicly, Suskind wrote.

“Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Abu Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of US targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. The waterboarding was videotaped, but that record was destroyed in November 2005.

John Durham, an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, was appointed special counsel earlier this year to investigate the destruction of that videotape as well as destroyed film on other interrogations.

Yet, Suskind wrote, the information Abu Zubaydah had provided under duress was not credible.

Still, that did not stop “thousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each … target.” And so, Suskind wrote, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

In Suskind’s 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.

O’Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill told Suskind, adding that going after Saddam Hussein was a priority 10 days after the Bush’s inauguration and eight months before Sept. 11. As treasury secretary, O’Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” Suskind said. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”


Source: http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/1-nationworld/240-bush-used-cia-to-create-bogus-link-between-iraq-al-qaeda-author-claims.html

Thursday, July 31, 2008

"His Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI" and the war


This morning President George W. Bush held an impromptu press conference outside the Oval Office of the White House. In his speech he mentioned several things pertaining to Iraq, and "The War on Terror". A few that stuck in mind are the following:



  • The surge has worked.

  • The (tour of duty) deployment of troops to Iraq will be reduced to 12 months, rather than 15 months.

  • "P.M. Maliki recently... held important diplomatic discussions with Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Berlusconi, and His Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI."

  • "We remain a nation at war".

The statement about the meeting of Al Maliki with "His Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI", really stuck me as unwarranted and peculiar. This is a sticking point for me, and I hope also with many others. Since when does the President of the largest secular (protestant) republic refer to the head of the Catholic Church, as "Holy Father"? Is this a form of paradigm shift in the making. To sensitize the American people to think of this mere mortal who represents the Church of Rome, as holy? Is this where our republic founded on the principles of separation between Church and State, revert to old-world Catholicity? Where the pope is the supreme authority over all heads of state, including ours a representative democracy?


Here's my concern for what I consider to be a descent down the slippery slope of Catholic influence in our nation; The chicanery being used against the unsuspecting citizenry. A reproduction of what took place between President Reagan and John Paul II; When they secretly discussed (collaborated) American Top Secret Information to "defeat" the Polish Communist stronghold, and eventually the Soviet Union. This same arrangement is taking place before our very eyes; In which Benedict XVI is being made privy to American Intelligence, and vice versa, The Vatican is sharing intelligence with President Bush. Who is benefiting from this 'closet confidence sessions'? Is the Catholic Church now an arbiter in secular international issues? Why this flagrant violation of our Constitution is taking place is simply flabbergasting? Are we a Catholic country subject to the Vatican's meddling in our affairs. Why the adulation? Adulation for a German Catholic Bishop who resides in the Vatican? Is the holy see a nation or a religion? Which one does the U.S. exchange state secrets with? Something is extremely wrong here and no one seems to notice, or mind. What I see is prophecy being fulfilled before our eyes. Wars, and rumors of war... The Image of the Beast is now a fact for all with 'eyes that see', to see!


Arsenio.


-END-


Here's the transcript of that press conference; Read and weep:


88887777


President Bush Discusses Iraq
Colonnade









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En Español


Fact sheet In Focus: Iraq

8:04 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This has been a month of encouraging news from Iraq. Violence is down to its lowest level since the spring of 2004, and we're now in our third consecutive month with reduced violence levels holding steady. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker caution that the progress is still reversible, but they report that there now appears to be a "degree of durability" to the gains we have made.

President George W. Bush addresses his remarks on Iraq to reporters Thursday morning, July 31, 2008 on the Colonnade at the White House. President Bush said it has been a month of encouraging news from Iraq, with violence down to its lowest level since the spring of 2004.  White House photo by Eric Draper A significant reason for this sustained progress is the success of the surge. Another is the increasing capability of the Iraqi forces. Iraqi forces now have 192 combat battalions in the fight -- and more than 110 of these battalions are taking the lead in combat operations against terrorists and extremists.

We saw the capability of those forces earlier this year, when the Iraqi government launched successful military operations against Shia extremist groups in Basra, Amarah, and the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Because of these operations, extremists who once terrorized the citizens of these communities have been driven from their strongholds. As a result, our Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, was able to walk the streets of Sadr City last Wednesday, as something that would not have been possible just a few months ago.

This week, the Iraqi government is launching a new offensive in parts of the Diyala province that contain some of al Qaeda's few remaining safe havens in the country. This operation is Iraqi-led; our forces are playing a supporting role. And in the moments -- in the months ahead, the Iraqis will continue taking the lead in more military operations across the country.

As security in Iraq has improved, the Iraqi government has made political progress as well. The Iraqi Council of Representatives has passed several major pieces of legislation this year, and Iraqi leaders are preparing for provincial elections. And Prime Minister Maliki recently returned from a successful visit to Europe, where he held important diplomatic discussions with Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Berlusconi, and His Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

The progress in Iraq has allowed us to continue our policy of "return on success." We now have brought home all five of the combat brigades and the three Marine units that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. The last of these surge brigades returned home this month. And later this year, General Petraeus will present me his recommendations on future troop levels -- including further reductions in our combat forces as conditions permit.

As part of the "return on success" policy, we are also reducing the length of combat tours in Iraq. Beginning tomorrow, troops deploying to Iraq will serve 12-month tours instead of 15-month tours. This will ease the burden on our forces -- and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.

We're also making progress in our discussion with Prime Minister Maliki's government on a strategic framework agreement. This agreement will serve as the foundation for America's presence in Iraq once the United Nations resolution authorizing the multinational forces there expires on December the 31st.

We remain a nation at war. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq -- but the terrorists remain dangerous, and they are determined to strike our country and our allies again. In this time of war, America is grateful to all the men and women who have stepped forward to defend us. They understand that we have no greater responsibility than to stop the terrorists before they launch another attack on our homeland. And every day they make great sacrifices to keep the American people safe here at home. We owe our thanks to all those who wear the uniform -- and their families who support them in their vital work. And the best way to honor them is to support their mission -- and bring them home with victory.

Thank you very much.

END 8:08 A.M. EDT


Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/07/20080731.html

Monday, July 21, 2008

Tony Snow - Dies 1 Month After Tim Russert

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Further underscorces Jesuitical U.S. 'Mainstream' Media

Former GW Bush Administration press secretary whose earlier career was promoted via the 'ex' Jesuit led McLaughlin Group

From Wikipedia:

Early career

Snow began his journalism career in 1979 as an editorial writer for The Greensboro Record in North Carolina, next working as an editorial writer at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia (1981–82), editorial page editor of The Daily Press in Newport News (1982–84), deputy editorial page editor of The Detroit News (1984–87) and editorial page editor of The Washington Times (1987–91). Also, The Detroit News published his commentary from 1993 to 2000, and he was a Counterpoint Columnist for USA Today from 1994 to 2000.

Snow also wrote a syndicated column for Creators Syndicate between 1993 and 2000. As a nationally syndicated columnist, his commentaries appeared in more than 200 newspapers nationwide. Snow won numerous awards during his print career, including citations from the Virginia Press Association, the Detroit Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press and Gannett.

He appeared on radio and television programs worldwide including The McLaughlin Group, The MacNeil–Lehrer NewsHour, Face the Nation, Crossfire, and Good Morning America. Until 1994, Snow was the writer, correspondent and host of the PBS news special The New Militant Center.

In 1991, Snow took a sabbatical from journalism to work in the White House for President George H. W. Bush, first as chief speechwriter (Deputy Assistant to the President for Communications and Director of Speechwriting) and later as Deputy Assistant to the President for Media Affairs (1992–1993).

From 1996 to 2003, he served as the first host of FOX News Sunday, a Sunday morning interview and roundtable program produced by Fox News, airing on affiliates of the Fox Broadcasting Company and later in the day on Fox News Channel.

Snow served as the primary guest host of Rush Limbaugh's program from the mid-1990s on. He was also a frequent commentator on National Public Radio. Snow's own Tony Snow Show on Fox News Radio premiered in late 2003. It ended when he became White House Press Secretary in April 2006.


From Wikipedia:

Education and Early Career

McLaughlin earned two master's degrees (philosophy and English literature) from Boston College, and a Ph.D. (philosophy) from Columbia University. Upon entering the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church and being ordained a priest, McLaughlin spent years as a high school teacher at Fairfield College Preparatory School, a Jesuit prep school in Connecticut. A Republican, he originally opposed the Vietnam War and, in 1970, sought permission from his order to run for a seat in the United States Senate, representing Rhode Island. His superiors denied him this, even though they did grant permission to fellow Jesuit Father Robert Drinan to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for Massachusetts. McLaughlin defied his superiors and ran anyway, losing to the incumbent four-term Senator John O. Pastore.

Through a friendship with Pat Buchanan, McLaughlin became a war supporter and a speech writer/advisor to President Richard Nixon. Because priests are not allowed to take on political jobs, he was ordered by his Jesuit superiors to return to Boston and, rather than obey, he left the Society of Jesus.

Prior to entering broadcasting, he was associate editor of America, a weekly opinion journal. From 1981 to 1989, McLaughlin was Washington editor and author of the monthly political column, "From Washington Straight," for the National Review.

http://www.catholic.org/photos/photo.php?news=28568

http://www.catholic.org/photos/photo.php?news=28613


http://dcist.com/2008/07/17/tony_snow_funeral_well_attended.php#comments

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Northeast Washington was full of big name mourners this morning for the funeral of former White House Press Secretary and conservative commentator Tony Snow, who died from colon cancer last weekend at the age of 53.
http://www.nationalshrine.com/site/pp.asp?c=etITK6OTG&b=4345771

(excerpt)

MASS OF CHRISTIAN BURIAL FOR ROBERT ANTHONY “TONY” SNOW

The Mass of Christian Burial for Robert Anthony “Tony” Snow was held at The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 10 a.m.

Well over 1000 people attended the Funeral Mass, including President George W. Bush who delivered a tribute in honor of his former Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Other attendees included First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mrs. Lynn Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Cabinet members, White House Administration Staff—past and present, members of Congress, colleagues from the press, family and friends.

Open to the public, some who attended the Mass included those who did not know Mr. Snow personally—but felt they had on account of his public profile working on both sides of the media.

The Mass was presided over by The Most Reverend Donald W. Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington. Very Reverend David O’Connell, C.M., President of The Catholic University of America, was the principal celebrant and homilist. Monsignor Walter R. Rossi, Rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, was the principal concelebrant.

At the Mass’ conclusion, Archbishop Wuerl led the Prayer of Final Commendation:

“Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our brother Tony in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, he will rise with Him on the last day. We give You thanks for the blessings which You bestowed upon Tony in this life: they are signs to us of Your goodness and of our fellowship with the saints in Christ. Merciful Lord, turn toward us and listen to our prayers: open the gates of paradise to Your servant and help us who remain to comfort one another with assurances of faith, until we all meet in Christ and are with You and with our brother for ever. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

In the sure hope of the resurrection, we take leave of our brother: Let us go in peace.