Sauce for the Goose

By- SadButTrue @ 12:21 AM EDT

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
— John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, 1630 —

A TERRIFIC POST from Bill W. (who is also a contributor at Crooks and Liars, who’ve also posted it) really lays on the line just how much harm the criminal Bush administration has done to international law, peace, and just incidentally, America’s reputation. And it comes with a great video clip! (uploaded to YouTube by Bill W. – man, this guy does it all and gives you your correct change to boot.)

Sudan Cites US Example Why It Won’t Comply With UN, ICC

One sad truth that Bill doesn’t go into (and I’m racking my brains here to find a base he hasn’t covered) – from the point of view of someone who isn’t an American (I’m proudly Canadian, eh?) – is that this is just another example of the idea of American Exceptionalism that has been accepted and even nurtured under the good old Stars and Stripes for far too long.

Ah yes, American Exceptionalism – the bastard child of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The not-quite-so-evil twin of Might Makes Right. Nurtured and fed on a falsehood that is older than the country itself – the idea that the US is so morally superior to everyone else that it can be described as The City on the Hill, The Beacon of Democracy, the Font of Everything That is Good in The World.

And the reason that the world doesn’t have to be concerned about the actions of America or its leaders? – because they’re just so darned peachy-keen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed gee whiz golly gosh dripping with good intentions. And if those good intentions turn out to make some US businesses a tidy profit? Well all the better! We’ll throw in a slice of hot apple pie, and teach your folks how to play baseball.

And if those good intentions lead to us backing a coup against your democratically elected leader and installing a business-friendly tinpot dictator who starts murdering the opposition? Well shucks, dang, and whoa there Bessie. That never happens! Except for a few times in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, and enough places that it’s hard to remember them all. But you can rest assured it will never happen again anyway. Trust us.

And not to seem too critical of our well-armed neighbour to the south, I’d like to add that this principle of Exceptionalism is running afoul of another principle that originated in the US, in fact the very principle that the ICC is based on. Yes, that’s right, it’s called the Nuremberg principle. The idea is that entire countries are not responsible for wars, their LEADERS are. Especially when the leaders in question have been caught in so many lies that no-one can even keep track anymore. And let’s not forget that indispensable adjunct to the Nuremberg principle, that the leaders must be held accountable for their actions. Please let’s not forget that.

If Bush and his gang of criminals are not held accountable, and significantly if that accounting is not spearheaded by America herself, any credibility you have internationally will be lost forever. Because in Bush’s eye’s it’s not the country as a whole that benefits from this status of City on A Hill, it’s himself personally. And that’s just not right. As important as it is for the world that Bush be brought to justice it is equally important to America that they take an active role. Else you’ll be painted with the brush of complicity in his crimes.

The eyes of all people are upon you.

---

Here’s some more relevant video from Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

All Presidential Accountability Goes Out The Window!

Oh, and there’s one other thing. Did I mention that this is all going on against the backdrop of a British Parliament report that US assurances that it does not torture can no longer be taken at face value? Well, I meant to. It seems relevant.

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Bush: “Wall Street Got Drunk” (Video)

By- Suzie-Q @ 5:00 PM MST

“Wall Street Got Drunk”: ‘Banned’ Bush Video Surfaces

Huffington Post- Greg Mitchell

Posted July 22, 2008 | 04:50 PM (EST)

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week — capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: “There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk —that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras — it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.”

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: “And then we got a housing issue… not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura’s over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker.”

No one is saying how ABC’s Miya Shay got the video or how it emerged.

UPDATE:  The YouTube video has been pulled but below are two links that have the video now:

http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Bush_in_leaked_fundraiser_video_Wall_0722.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/banned-bush-video-surface_b_114363.html

Greg Mitchell’s new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Fails on Iraq. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.

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American Express Takes A Big Hit On Credit Card Defaults!

GEF @ 7:38 PM ET

American Express profits fall on higher defaults

Bloomberg / Mumbai July 23, 2008, 0:21 IST

American Express, the biggest US credit-card company by purchases, withdrew its 2008 earnings forecast after second-quarter profit fell 37 percent on worse-than-expected consumer defaults. The shares slumped 11 per cent in extended trading.

Profit from continuing operations declined to $655 million, or 56 cents a share, from $1.04 billion, or 86 cents a year earlier, the company said today in a statement. The average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was 82 cents. American Express said it added $600 million before taxes to reserves for US loan losses.

“By almost any measure, the US economy and business environment are much weaker than the assumptions” the company had in January, chief executive officer Kenneth Chenault said today in a conference call. “Unemployment rates took the largest jump in over twenty years. Home prices declined at the fastest rate in decades and consumer confidence is at one of its all-time low points.”

The US economic slowdown worsened in June, affecting even American Express’s wealthier cardholders with high credit scores, Chenault, 57, said in the call. Late and uncollectible loans were higher than expectations in the quarter and will rise as the year progresses, Chenault said. The US lost 62,000 jobs in June, the sixth straight period of shrinking payrolls.

DWINDLING NUMBERS
Quarter ended     Sales     Net
profit
Sep-07     7,953     1,074
Dec-07     8,400     839
Mar-08     8,105     974
Jun-08     8,340     655
Figures in $ mn
Source: Bloomberg

American Express fell $4.55 to $36.40 in trading after the close of regular US markets at 5:58 pm. The company’s results sparked a 0.9 per cent decline in Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures contracts expiring in September.

“They’re like any other consumer lender right now, caught behind the 8-ball,” Craig Maurer, analyst at New York-based Calyon Securities who rates the company “buy,” said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “I don’t think the environment’s going to be helpful to the company over the next nine to 12 months.”

American Express is “no longer tracking” to a prior forecast for 4 per cent to 6 per cent earnings per share growth for this year, he said. The company won’t meet longer-term targets until the US economy improves, Chenault said.
Profit in the company’s US card business dropped 96 per cent to $21 million from $580 million a year earlier as provisions for losses more than doubled to $1.5 billion from $640 million.

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3,000 GI’s Mob Obama In Baghdad

By- Suzie-Q @ 4:15 PM MST

3,000 GIs MOB Barack in Baghdad (Video and Goodies)

Daily Kos- by Al Rodgers

Tue Jul 22, 2008 at 09:00:37 AM PDT

► The US Embassy turned into a MADHOUSE last night, as GIs gave Barack an OVERWHELMING reception (transcript and pix below).

► Barack in Baghdad transcript:

(Wild Cheers)

Nightline: Monday night in Baghdad, Barack Obama is in the house.  The house, the U.S. Embassy and it was an amazing scene.

Barack: I just want to introduce myself, I’m Barack Obama.

(Wild Cheers)

Nightline: The troops and state department workers mobbed him.  And he responded with brief remarks praising their service.

Barack: So I don’t care whether you are a Sailor, a Soldier, an Airmen, or Marine.  A National Guard, a Reservist, active duty, we just want to say thank you.

Barack: Illinois in the house?

Crowd: I’m from Chicago!

Barack: Hey, Chicago!  South Side? West Side?

Nightline: As he makes his way through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama has come face to face with the men and women he seeks to lead –  American G.I.’S, who are sacrificing so much for our country.

Barack: Back home, as I travel all across the country, every single day I meet your friends, your family members, your co-workers, and the main thing they want me to communicate is how proud they are of you.

They may disagree on politics. They may disagree on the issues. But the country is absolutely united in the excellence, the devotion, the dedication with which you have performed your duties, here.

Nightline: Senator, are you ready to lead them?

Barack: I am [cool, confident emphasis, original].

MORE VIDEOS AND PHOTOS HERE

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Doomsday Government

anthony @ 22:33

1991 CNN Report: Secret Succession Plans Grants Cheney Special Authorities During Disaster

Devlin Buckley | OEN | July 20, 2008

“In the United States of America there is a hidden government about which you know nothing.”

So begins a revealing television exposé aired by CNN in 1991. The hour-long Special Assignment presented the findings of a yearlong CNN investigation into the ultra-secretive Continuity of Government (COG) program, commonly referred to as the “doomsday government” or the “shadow government”.

The COG program was originally designed in the 1950s to ensure the survival of the federal government in the event of a nuclear attack. The highly secretive emergency plans were substantially upgraded during the 1980s and have become a focus point of the current administration, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The COG program, which until recent years was believed to be reserved for nuclear disasters, was officially activated for the first time during the 9/11 attacks. The program, according to the most recent reports, was never completely shut down. Portions of the “shadow government” are presumably still operating to this day.

Recent efforts to reform and expand the emergency protocols, according to the best available reports, have been led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who played a major role in the COG program during the Reagan Administration.

The underground program is historically run out of the office of the Vice President through a clandestine agency, identified by CNN as the National Program Office (NPO).

In 1991, CNN found the Continuity of Government program and National Program Office to be rife with waste, fraud, and abuse.

The CNN report also disclosed the existence of a secret succession plan that would allow individuals outside of government to take positions of power in the event of a national emergency.

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KABOOM! There Goes Wachovia Bank…

GEF @ 6:18 PM ET

TOO BIG TO FAIL ?? REALLY ?

Wachovia loses $8.9B, cuts 6,350 workers, dividend

By Ieva M. Augstums, AP Business Writer

Wachovia slashes dividend, jobs, to shut mortgage unit after $8.86B loss in second quarter CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Wachovia Corp. reported a surprisingly large second-quarter loss Tuesday, deflating Wall Street’s hopes that the nation’s big banks are weathering the credit crisis well. The bank said it lost $8.86 billion, is slashing its dividend and eliminating 10,750 positions after losses tied to mortgages soared.

Even excluding one-time items, the results substantially missed analysts’ estimates.

But by the afternoon its stock joined a modest Wall Street rally and rose as much as 13 percent — after its shares sank to mid-1991 levels in premarket trading, and after Wachovia’s new CEO said he plans to cut $2 billion of expenses by the end of next year and sell parts of the fourth-biggest U.S. bank.

Its shares rose $1.19, or 9 percent, to $14.37 in afternoon trading.

“Our reported results today are clearly a disappointing performance for which we take responsibility,” said Wachovia’s Chief Executive Bob Steel on a conference call with analysts. “We are serious about getting on top of these issues quickly and we believe we have a good grasp of the challenges facing the economy, the industry and Wachovia.”

Three rating agencies — Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings — downgraded their ratings on Wachovia’s debt, citing increased expectations of losses in the bank’s mortgage portfolio and its reduced flexibility to raise new capital.

Wachovia said it lost the equivalent of $4.20 per share in the April-June period. In the same timeframe last year, the bank earned $2.34 billion, or $1.22 per share.

Excluding $6.1 billion in write-downs to the value of its intangible assets and merger-related and restructuring charges of $128 million, Wachovia lost $2.67 billion, or $1.27 per share. Second quarter results include the bank’s October acquisition of A.G. Edwards Inc., which the bank said the merger is proceeding as planned and is 40 percent complete.

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John McCain’s Disaster Economics

anthony @ 19:06 BST

By Frank Rich, The New York Times. Posted July 22, 2008.

If voters got a fair presentation of John McCain’s economic plan, the idea of him winning the White House would cause mass panic.

The best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his.

Mr. McCain still doesn’t understand that we can’t send troops to Afghanistan unless they’re shifted from Iraq. But simple math, to put it charitably, has never been his forte. When it comes to the central front of American anxiety — the economy — his learning curve has flat-lined.

In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to “those issues.” As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read “Greenspan’s book” as a tutorial. Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how “to get online myself.” Perhaps he’ll retire his abacus by Election Day.

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this gets filed under wtf? department

By- Betmo @ 2:05 PM EDT

i was going to name this post ‘f**k me running’ but i thought that would drive the pron here- but amongst the other ‘legacies’ of this admin, i suppose single handedly reigniting the cold war ranks up there in the top 5:

russia mulls sending bombers to cuba

“Russia may start regular flights by long-range bombers to Cuba in response to US plans to build missile defence sites in Eastern Europe, the newspaper Izvestia reported Monday, quoting an official.”

wasn’t there just a top bushie in the military complaining about having 2 wars to fight already?

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Kill, Burn & Loot (3/7)

anthony @ 18:41 BST

Refugee camp in Zaire, 1994

The third in a seven part series examining the activities of former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root

KBR and The Congo Civil War:

Laurent Kabila

Kellogg-Brown & Root, which was connected to the, “International Strategic and Tactical Organization” (ISTO), made another appearance in Africa. This time, it was to do with the Congo civil war, which started in the late 1990s. The Congo was invaded in 1996 by forces from Rwanda under the leadership of Paul Kagame, as well as Burundi and Uganda sending in troops supporting rebel Congolese leader, Laurent Kabila, to overthrow the then-President of Congo [Zaire], Mobutu Sese Seko. (Hiatt, p. 94) KBR, “reportedly built a military base on the Congolese/Rwandan border, where the Rwandan army has trained,” and, what’s more, “The Bechtel Corporation provided satellite maps and reconnaissance photos to Kabila so that he could monitor the movements of Mobutu’s troops.” (Hiatt, p. 99) Bechtel’s board of directors includes former Secretary of State George Schultz and has former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Wienberger, as a legal counsel, while Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR at this time.

After deposing the former President of Congo, Kabila gave out juicy contracts to big corporations ready to rape the Congo’s resources. American Mineral Fields (AMF) got a huge contract for exploration rights over many rich minerals, and “Mike McMurrough, a friend of US President Bill Clinton, was the chair of AMF.” (Hiatt, p. 99) Another big company to profit off the death of millions of Congolese people is Barrick Gold Corporation, a Canadian mining company, with former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Clinton Adviser Vernon Jordan on its board of directors, and George HW Bush as a company adviser. (Hiatt, p. 99-100)

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Obama Is Popular Among Europeans

By- Suzie-Q @ 10:00 AM MST

Obamamania in full flight ahead of tour of Europe

Raw Story- Associated Press
Published: Tuesday July 22, 2008

BERLIN (AP) – Europe is about to give Barack Obama one of the grandest of stages for statesmanship. In this city where John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all made famous speeches, Obama will find himself stepping into perhaps another iconic moment Thursday as his superstar charisma meets German adoration live in shadows of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. He then travels to Paris and London where he can expect to be greeted with similar adulation.

It’s not only Obama’s youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. For Europeans, there have always been two Americas: one of cynicism, big business and bullying aggression, another of freedom, fairness and nothing-is-impossible dynamism.

If President Bush has been seen as the embodiment of that first America, Obama has raised expectations of a chance for the nation to redeem itself in the role that—at various times through history—Europe has loved, respected and relied upon.

“Americans need a change—and what’s good for America is good for the whole world,” said Maike Smerling, a physician who was born and raised in the former East Germany.

Ioannis Ioannidis, a 27-year-old salesman in Stockholm, Sweden, said Obama represented the American ideals of “We the People” and of an equal chance at success for all.

“He’s different from other politicians. He represents minorities and he’s down to earth and smart,” said Ioannidis. “He comes from nowhere. He wasn’t born into it, and it’s got nothing to do with what family he’s from.”

Beyond his electric personality, Obama is popular among Europeans because he hits all the right notes on the issues that are important to them.

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