More than 2 million views already. Please help it spread."The plumber is clearly smarter than the Ben Bernank"
Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.
The two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive — said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.
[...]
The tally of missing e-mails, the additional searches and the settlement are the latest development in a political controversy that stemmed from the Bush White House's failure to install a properly working electronic record keeping system. Two federal laws require the White House to preserve its records.
The two private organizations say there is not yet a final count on the extent of missing White House e-mail and there may never be a complete tally.
Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said "many poor choices were made during the Bush administration and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records."
[...]
Records released as a result of the lawsuits reveal that the Bush White House was aware during the president's first term in office that the e-mail system had serious archiving problems, which didn't become publicly known until 2006, when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclosed them during his criminal investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
A Microsoft Corp. document on the Bush White House's e-mail problems states that Microsoft was called in to help find electronic messages in October 2003, more than two years before the problem surfaced publicly.
A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.Raw Story, on the 22nd of December 2008. The whole report is worth reading, but here's a quote:
The Republican consultant accused of involvement in alleged vote-rigging in Ohio in 2004 was warned that his plane might be sabotaged before his death in a crash Friday night, according to a Cleveland CBS affiliate.YouTube videos:
Obama will not prosecute Bush and Cheney
By Joseph A. Lopisi
Mark my words. President Obama will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors by not holding his predecessor, George W. Bush and members of his administration, liable for violating the United States Constitution and criminally responsible for treason, 9/11, financial fraud, mass murder and war crimes.
Along the same lines as his predecessors, President Obama will deal with the current financial crisis by pointing his finger at everyone except the real culprit, the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. executive and legislative branches and their partners in crime, the Wall Street financial institutions.
The Federal Reserve Bank is a cartel of private banks with only one motive-profit. Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson all knew about the all pervasive control that a private central bank has when it is permitted to print the money for the government and then lend it back to the government at interest. The end result of this scheme is that U.S. government is in debt to the Federal Reserve Bank and taxes our income in order to pay this debt. As a result, we all live our lives in debt. Being in debt is a form of slavery.
John F. Kennedy passed an Executive Order six months before his assassination. This Executive Order would allow the federal government to print money based on a silver standard. This order was the beginning of the end of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Mark my words, President Obama will be:
Just like Al Gore, who after fighting in Court against the 2000 election being stolen by computer fraud and voter suppression, capitulated on the floor of the United States Senate by stopping anyone from objecting to the Certification of the Florida electoral College vote.
Just like Clinton, who stopped any investigation of George H.W. Bush and his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair and his involvement in the assassination of JFK and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Now you see Clinton and Bush acting as if they are bosom buddies. That is because they are and always have been. Clinton was involved in allowing cocaine to be imported into a small airport in Arkansas when he was governor. George H. W. Bush was involved in the importation of this cocaine to fund the Iran-Contra affair and the secret government populated by CIA agents. Now that I think of it, the payback for Clinton allowing this was for him to be elected president.
Just like John Kerry who capitulated the day after the election knowing full well that Bush stole the election by voter suppression and computer fraud in many of the battleground states. Of course, he explained his concession in words that the everyday uninformed simplistic Americans would understand “I don't want to seem like a sore loser”. Since when would you be considered a sore loser if you accused your opponent of cheating when you knew he had and when the evidence was clear that he did.
Just like Gerald Ford who struck a deal with Richard Nixon which called for his resignation instead of impeachment hearings. In this way, the real reason for the Watergate burglary would be kept secret and the complicit Congress would continue to look good. The real reason was that there was evidence, including photographic evidence, placing E. Howard Hunt in Dealey Square on the day JFK was killed. If you are too young to remember, E. Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate burglars. He recently died. Before he died, he made an audiotape in which he clearly states that JFK assassination was a conspiracy of the CIA including Lyndon Baines Johnson. Of course, the mainstream media did not pick up on this earth shattering news.
While we are on the topic of Gerald Ford and the complicit mainstream media, Gerald Ford, on his deathbed, admitted that the Warren commission lied in its placement of the “magic bullet” as it went through JFK’s shirt. If not for this lie, the “magic bullet” theory would fall apart and consequently the “lone gunman” explanation would not be plausible. Of course, the mainstream media did not report this earth shattering news either. Just like the mainstream media does not question the official 9/11 conspiracy theory despite the fact that it is obviously a lie, has numerous unexplained circumstances and does not in any way talk to why WTC 7 collapsed on its footprint in freefall time late in the day on September 11. Neither does the 9/11 commission investigate in any way whatsoever funding of the attack. Any criminal investigator knows that if you follow the trail of the money you will find the perpetrators.
Just like Obama who will not investigate Bush and/or Cheney for all of the felonies, war crimes, financial fraud, treason including the planning and orchestration of 9/11. He will just chalk it up to “moving on for the good of the country”.
The good of the country requires the investigation and prosecution of all of these criminals starting with George H.W. Bush and moving forward.
Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The season of forgiveness is here, and federal felons everywhere are hoping some of it will alight on them.
The period from about Thanksgiving until precisely noon on Jan. 20, is prime time for pardons in a president’s last term.
Junk-bond baron Michael Milken wants forgiveness, ex- WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers a shorter prison term. More than 2,000 applications have flooded the White House and the Justice Department, most from run-of-the-mill crooks.
Then there are those people not yet charged, much less convicted, who nervously look for pardons, too. Suspecting the future might bring indictments, those within President George W. Bush’s administration who may have broken laws to carry out Bush- Cheney policies could use the boss’s protection.
Beyond the wiretappers, the perjurers, the obstructers of justice in the U.S. attorney firings are those who promoted the notion that torture isn’t torture, and even if it is, it isn’t necessarily illegal.
Will Bush preemptively pardon them? If he doesn’t, what are the chances some of them might wind up behind bars?
It would be pleasant to turn our back on the shame of the recent past, fervently denounce torture as un-American and, with a new president and a world eager to trust him, say it won’t happen again.
There is something to be said for forgiving the excesses of public servants, some of whom were risking their lives, who believed they were protecting their nation even if skating close to the law’s edge.
‘Not Even Past’
The problem with just moving on is, as William Faulkner put it, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
We can’t expect the enemy to respect anti-torture laws when they capture some of our guys, if we have flouted those same laws.
“It’s a question of protecting future military personnel in future conflicts,” says Scott Horton, a New York lawyer to whom military lawyers turned when they couldn’t get the ear of the civilian leaders at the Pentagon. Now he writes for Harper’s magazine, often on torture.
Nor can we allow to rest undisturbed the precedent Bush set for his successors. We can’t simply forget that an administration assumed it had authority to violate the law and human rights.
When the torture at Abu Ghraib prison was exposed in 2004, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate committee he should be held accountable, if only because it “occurred on my watch.”
Lack of Accountability
Held accountable?
Rumsfeld stayed on the job for another two years without so much as a reprimand from the president. It was as if the torture that killed at least one man, humiliated others and brought shame to the U.S. wasn’t sufficient grounds to kick him out of the Pentagon.
There has to be some sort of accountability for what happened. I am not talking about vengeance or political retribution. I mean a somber, thorough look at what happened and how to make sure it doesn’t again.
If, in the course of that, evidence turns up criminal conduct, we can take it from there.
I’m not especially worried about punishing interrogators who stripped detainees naked, forced them into contorted poses for hours at a time, hosed them down and refrigerated them.
True Investigation
Nor am I focused on those who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for example, to make the al-Qaeda leader think he was drowning, or who drugged and flew suspects to secret Central Intelligence Agency sites or countries like Egypt for more expert torture.
(But I wouldn’t rule out prosecution for anyone up or down the line, depending on what a true investigation shows.)
More than zeroing in on interrogators, I’m interested in those who declared that sort of conduct legal in the face of clear law that forbids it. This crowd includes former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Rumsfeld, some of Rumsfeld’s top aides and a slew of lawyers at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon. One of them, Jay Bybee, who used to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, now works as a federal appeals court judge.
They crafted memoranda that said interrogators could essentially ignore the Geneva Conventions, international treaties and U.S. law barring torture. They said the president can authorize it in time of war, even though he can’t legally. And they laid out a defense for those interrogators who engage in torture, bogus as that argument was.
Wise Counsel
To accomplish this, they had to reject the wise and persistent counsel of career military lawyers and leaders. These experts insisted time and again that in permitting torture, government lawyers would be breaking the law, making torture more likely for captured U.S. troops, giving the enemy recruiting material and inflicting irreparable damage to the U.S.’s reputation.
Writing a bad legal opinion doesn’t make the author a criminal conspirator. But it’s another matter if a lawyer whose duty is to guide government agents in behaving legally, instead writes memos intended to distort the law and gives cover for illegal conduct.
So far, none of the investigations have led to a definitive account of what happened, though more are under way. If none produce a complete picture, the next president should empanel a commission that will.
Whether through full disclosure or actual prosecutions, there must be acknowledgement of past sins, a determination not to repeat them and accountability for any sinners.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is working on a plan that would set up a government facility to take on bad debts from financial institutions, preventing a worsening of the global credit crisis, Wall Street sources have told CNBC.The good news for libertarians is that this will fail to make the markets recover on anything but a short term speculative rally. Why is that? Because the problem is not that the banks hold bad dept on their balance sheet and hence cannot lend anymore. This is the consequence. The problem is that the debtors are unable to take on more dept and are unable to pay back their current ones! Paulson and Bernanke, probably the biggest fools in the world (even bigger than George W. Bush) still don't get it!Such a move, according to its advocates, would allow banks to shovel bad debt off their balance sheets and allow the firms to go back to business as usual. It would also eliminate the need for individual company bailouts.
In turn, that could allow the housing market to recover because it would restore banks willingness to lend.
"This will bring real trust back into the market." Donald Marron, chairman of Lightyear Capital, said on CNBC. "It would free up real, spendable capital in these organizations. They can use that to make loans, to make transactions and to build confidence in the system. This is a confidence crisis."
