The Telegraph:

President George W Bush requested and received funding of $400 million (£200 million) for the plan after he made a secret appeal to Congressional leaders last year.

The money is likely to be used for operations carried out by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, according to the New Yorker magazine.

The appeal for funds “was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change” said the magazine.

Alternet:

In the scenario concocted by Cheney’s strategists, Washington’s first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. Cheney himself hasn’t denied engaging in such war games. For years, in fact, he’s been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member of US President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” is inevitable.

Huffington Post:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected.

…so how do we stop it?

Caroline Kennedy has been named to head up a three-person VP search team for Democratic presumptive nominee, Barack Obama.

This differs from George Bush’s 2000 VP search team, headed by Dick Cheney, with only Cheney serving as membership, and - surprise! - decided Dick Cheney would be the best candidate for the job!

But does anyone worry with as much as Cheney is smirking and still acting like cock of the walk that you wonder if HE knows something (like what really went on with September 11th and Iraq, to name but a few) you don’t, which is why he’s not worried about having to leave the WH anytime soon.

You know, I wasn’t inclined to pay much attention to fomer White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s new book about his tenure beginning soon after our dance of death began in Iraq. As McClellan took the job, we heard a lot about how decent a guy Scotty was and that the only explanation for him taking a job like that was loyalty to Bush. Strange how loyalty with a Bush lasts only so long, eh?

But I tell you, the more the right jumps up - from current and former WH bigwigs to semi-dead former righties (like Bob Dole) to Republcans-dressed-as-objective-news-consultants (like William Bennett, Karl Rove, et al) - to denounce the book and McClellan, the more they’re convincing me to buy it.

I mean, why else would the right mount such a campaign over a relatively small disagreement in perspective? It’s not like the American people like Bush anymore. They’re trying to protect their own, which includes a lot of people who want to ride back into another term under the third Bush term known as the first McCain term.

Maybe you should read McClellan’s book, too. Then you can learn more for yourself how Bush was intimately involved in the “outing” of Valerie Plame, then one of the CIA’s major agents on WMD, at a time when Plame was invaluable to our “ending terrorism”. But Bush had to have her “put down” because it was more important to smarm anything attached to Plame’s critical hubby, former Iraq ambassador Joe Wilson, than to stop real WMD in the world.

No, don’t get me wrong: McClellan is no hero for telling us now. If he’d outed Bush at the time, however…. But the book might be worth a read if only to see what other scum surfaces in it.

Just in time to make us (appropriately) very worried about November’s presidential vote comes the star-studded HBO docu-comedy-drama “Recount” about the Bush v. Gore 2000 Florida contest. HBO airs it tomorrow (Sunday) at 9 PM EDT.

Just the Laura Dern-as-Katherine-Harris bit looks deliciously worth the watch, IMHO. Might bring a few laughs along with a reminder of the great injustice and tragedy done when Bush was allowed to steal the White House.

Have you noticed?

Despite how obvious it was that the Pentagon and the Bush Administration, in their most recent assessment of Bush’s big escalation of war in early 2007, were lying about how “peachy” the situation in Iraq is, all the Republican talking heads on TV now note that the surge worked, that this is indisputable fact, and that the only people who would claim Iraq isn’t going well are hateful, God-ridiculing Democrats.

They’ll claim this even when we see GI deaths going up again, larger and larger suicide bombings, on days when “insurgents” nearly blew up the First Lady of Iraq and days when they just sit back and watch “the American saviors” unintentionally kill a slew of civilians due to “bad intelligence.”

The worst part of all this, however, is that some of the relatively non-partisan news anchors and reporters don’t challenge the GOPers when they make this outrageous claim. A Republican strategist will let loose with the pronouncement of how wonderful Iraq is and, even if the headlines just reported another big bombing, the anchor sits without uttering a single question or asking the basis for such a preposterous claim.

While I think it’s a full-blooded guarantee that WHOEVER John McCain picks to run with him on the Republican presidential ticket for November’s election will be a 325% right winging whackjob with an agenda as big as his (or her, since SuckSecretary of State Condi Rice’s name keeps coming up in relation to McCain’s VP choice) ego, hearing former GOP challenger Mitt Romney is on the relative short list of potential veeps leaves me stone cold (and dyspeptic!).

Well, we’ve rarely seen such concentrated wealth in one party’s Prez/VP combo. Cindy McCain alone is worth a very conservative $200 million.

But, unless one or both of these folks wants to just write a personal check to pay off the national debt (and they’re welcome to write that check if they don’t get elected, too), I don’t think we need more over privileged, under taxed, rich emperor wannabees in the White House.

While the right just LOVES to depict Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as elitists out of touch with the people due to their money and celebrity, BHO and HRC at least earned their money, and not on the bloodied backs of so many broken Americans and laborers worked to death in factories propped up by our fair trade pact agreements that are growing, rather than curing, poverty and the unsustainability of declining resources.

On another sour note, if McCain is willing to consider Romney and Huckabee and Sam Brownback as VP possibilities, there really isn’t any hope that he would align himself with a sane, moderate type that might provide our only lifeline if the GOP steals this presidential election for a record three in a row.

One of our readers recommends this piece at Garling Gauge in reference to my post about the House of Representatives (almost exclusively Democrats voted nay) and its vote to reject the latest blank check George Bush demands to wage more war in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Thank you, reader!)

I think such a refusal is not only politically viable, I think it’s K-I-S-S and would have the support of the vast majority of the American people (since even former Bush supporters notice that for all of Bush’s previous claims to need the money for the GIs, our GIs and vets aren’t getting jack poop).

No joke. With crude oil prices already well past the record $100/barrel that we used to treat as the great marker for “peak oil”, where was the price going to go but WAAAAY up when Bush does the following in the past week:

* More saber rattling at Iran with “evil” charges amounting to the same damned things the U.S. is doing in Iraq
* Goes to Israeli Knesset (their Congress), plants a huge wet kiss on PM Olmert, and manages to dis both Iran and Barack Obama in the same charge as he also indicts Muslims in general
* Only then does he go to Saudi Arabia to ask them to increase oil production, at which point the Sauds flipped him the bird and sent him home as gas prices jumped by as much as 30 cents in a 24-hour period in some locations
* Threatens our own Congress who stopped the record levels of oil reserves Bush has been spending a fortune in storing (waaay above what any other admin has done, and Bush increases the reserve everytime the price rises like he wants to just hand energy companies all the tax dollars not being spent on the Pentagon)

Oil just closed on the stock market at a record $133.17/barrel. Thanks, President Bush! What latest horror will you enact?

We haven’t heralded this move by House Democrats last week (joined by two whole Republicans) that kept Bush from getting another blank check from them (on our dime and the lives of our countrymen and women) to wage endless, pointless war. It brought cheers and happy tears from this progressive!

As noted, however, the battle isn’t over. The Senate could pass the latest Iraq-Afghanistan spending bill from Bush, which would bring it back to the House to work through, perhaps as a newly minted entity. And unless the bill is defeated by a LOT, Bush will veto anything that comes to him with less than he demands (the tin-plated God he thinks he is).

So give your support by telling your House and Senate reps to vote AGAINST more blank checks that do nothing but kill and maim Americans, Iraqs, and Afghans while making war profiteers like Bush and Cheney’s best friends even richer than they were before.

And this figure does not include the juveniles, some as young as 11 or 12, sent to Guantanamo Bay on specious, oft-never-filed charges:

The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.

A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.

From Think Progress:

Yesterday, two former employees of embattled contract company KBR told a congressional panel that some of their coworkers frequently stole money and artwork from Iraq. One said that “some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal ‘and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.’” Another said that “a KBR foreman tried to take military equipment, including two rocket launchers, detonators and ammunition.” Two weeks ago, the firm was awarded a $150 million, 10-year contract for work with the U.S. Army.

This makes me ill in so many different ways. And John McCain’s nothing if not friendly to defense contractors.

After some six weeks of discussion as to how Pennsylvania Democrats would vote today, Hillary Clinton has won the primary there, which many believe gives her enough momentum (never to be confused, pretty please, with JoeMentum, as in Karl Rove’s favorite in-name-only Dem Joe Lieberman) to continue her challenge with Barack Obama for the party’s presidential candidacy.

However, Hillary completely lost me. I’m not talking Bittergate or the talk that her campaign is in debt (like that’s unusual for a campaign) or the silly issues of whether or not she wears a flag pin (she does not) or the foolish Bosnia story.

No, Hillary completely shot my potential vote (and readers here and on my personal blog know that I’ve been deeply divided who I want to be the Dem challenger to McCain) when she said she would annihilate Iran if they made any kind of attack on Israel.

Her words were pure Bush. I’ve had ENOUGH Bush and Cheney. The entire world has.

I very much support the right of Israel to exist and feel, due to our meddling in the Middle East (and not to mention the years the U.S. allowed the Holocaust to continue without action), we should support that nation. But besides getting the majority of our financial aid (the tiny nation gets more aid from us than any other country on the earth, though it’s one of the least populated), we spend a ton on sending Israel military equipment they use with wild abandon on their enemies. We also help subsidize the illegal settlements Israel keeps building outside their own borders, on Palestinian land. THAT I don’t support.

Mrs. Clinton sure as hell did not threaten to annihilate Israel when they were threatening to strike Iranian nuclear reactors which would have the potential to kill tens of millions of Iranians. She didn’t say anything against Israel when the latest of Israeli officials said (and we’ve heard it from them before) it was time to launch a holocaust against Palestinians. (My God, who would toss about that suggestion, even thoughtlessly in anger, considering what Jews suffered in the 1930 and early 1940s?)

If I wanted nothing but more bloodshed and another billion or so people throughout the world hating us, I’d vote for (bleeping) McCain because he’s Bush III. While I still respect Hillary a lot and would like to see her continue to do what good she does in government service, I won’t vote for someone who uses Bush foreign policy to score votes. Un-uh.

Let’s see: the situation with the troops has gotten so very bad that the Pentagon is EAGER to accept wife beaters, those making terroristic threats, and other violent felons?

Oh good. That’ll help everyone.

Interesting point: in many states felons, even if they’ve paid their debt to society (as it’s euphemistically called), can’t vote. But we’ll happy to send ‘em to Iraq where they’re probably going to have to do terrible things to civilians under Defense and White House orders WHILE carrying guns and other weapons of destruction. Can’t be trusted to vote, however.

What’s wrong with this picture?

That representatives of us, the citizens of the United States of America were DIRECTED by senior members of the Bush Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and with Bush’s full blessing) in secret meetings we now KNOW were held and chaired by former NSA director, Condoleeza Rice (now flunking her way through YET another job as Secretary of State) to perform waterboarding on multiple detainees/arrestees is against our Constitution, against what we claim to hold sacred, and AGAINST U.S. law.

For Republicans who LOVE to present themselves as the moral authority (with their 2, 3, 4 ex-wives, multiple mistresses and other extracurricular sex partners - or whatever the hell Larry Craig was up to in airport bathrooms) yet who can’t think about upholding this nation’s laws and Constitution et al, this is about the most atrocious “sin” I can imagine.

But for Americans as a whole, and certainly for anyone who has read and embraced our Constitution, have a CIVIL, ETHICAL, and MORAL obligation not simply to impeach the Bush Administration as a whole, but to arrest them immediately on charges of war crimes - and I would suggest they more than meet the criteria for charges of treason as well - and try them fairly in a court of law.

To do anything less is immoral and yes, unAmerican. If not, we need to perhaps charge ourselves with a complete patriotic failure.

People who can’t catch a rather distinctive man of 6′4 and extraordinary means named Osama bin Laden KEEP ACTING like it’s Mom and Pop America that needs to be locked up. Ay carumba! Reported at Common Dreams and filed under the Rape and Plunder of Civil Liberties:

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

(Cough. I hope this headline doesn’t get picked up the wrong way. Cough.)

Bush has fallen to yet NEW lows of presidential approval. But I have the same question I’ve had for his entire monarchy: how the hell did even one person approve of him in the first place, let alone now?

And let me know where the big differences between Bussssshed and McCain lie; short of an electron microscope, I’m thinking maybe we won’t see many.

Well, his words yesterday seemed like whole big repeats of late LAST summer (when the surge was supposed to be nearly over) and the Bush Administration lines on the Iraq war for more than four years.

I could barely contain myself when the Three Putzketeers (McCain, Lieberman, Lindsey Graham) helped to use the “update” on Bush’s escalation of war - while the deaths and bombings the last few weeks have been off the chart - to spin more misinformation to assure them the White House.

Polls in various media have been showing a minimum of 60% of respondents saying the war has gotten no better or brought us any closer to an end since the escalation began when more troops were sent in ahead of approval starting in December 2006 and January 2007.

Your take?

The battle between the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr and those of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signals a new stage in the war: the feared bloodbath has begun. Over the years “bloodbath” has become synonymous with an Iraqi civil war in which various factions fight it out for control of the country. That is exactly what happened last week. (more…)

I won’t necessarily win myself lots of new friends by saying this, but I’d love to see Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama toss away the Bush-McCain mantra of “Those damned ungrateful Iraqis need to fix things themselves; anything else is to spit on the freedom we blessed ‘em with.”

Wow. Can you REALLY keep spinning a war that was failing perhaps EVEN before we entered Iraq in March 2003, that has torn a nation once nearly united under/against the tyrant Saddam Hussein, into something the Iraqi people have flunked?

Yes, many Iraqis are making what to us seem like very bad choices. But I can’t see or hear about one of these cases and wonder, “OK, what would we do IF someone was invading and occupying OUR towns, states, country?” Even as a pacifist, I find a hell of a lot of perspective once I run the “how could the Iraqis DO this?” question against the “what people do when attacked” filter. And who the hell really believes that many Iraqis continue to feel a great love for what has been done to them?

Blame the Bushies for the war and keep anyone (read: McCain) from office who wants to continue to support the Bush occupation of Iraq; don’t blame the people who LONG since stopped asking us to come in and take out Saddam when Bush rode in on Bush-generated lies of WMD and Iraqi scuba terrorists about to attack San Diego or Kennebunkport, Maine.

They say all politics is local, which if it is true means the Republican Party may be digging itself a deep hole by engaging in some ugly purge tactics. (more…)

Despite the Democratic primary already having happened in Vermont (eenie-meenie-minie-mo) and a notebook close to full of points for which I know where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stand and where I still have huge questions, and full too with pro/con, I have not decided which candidate I would like to see run for president for all of us, rather than just for my personal viewpoint. I think that, despite a huge