Is Palin, Dick Cheney in Drag or worse?

We would say, no.


She is an entirely different personality type. That's not to say that she won't enjoy the "legal secrecy" that Cheney has instituted, when it is in her best interest, unless Congress makes V.P. secrecy a crime. But she doesn't have the clout or high-ranking allies in D.C. to move mountains as Cheney does.


There is one, and only one, reason that Palin was chosen....O.K..... actually two.


1) The Goopers wouldn't allow McCain to have either of the picks he wanted (Lieberman or Ridge). Why? Because both of those those men are pro-choice.



2) McCain was never going to excite the base (meaning the crusading crackpots of the christian- right, whom he had scolded as agents of intolerance in 2000 (or was that 2000 years ago. Sure seems like it.) . So, Palin was chosen to get out the vote. The votes of the citizens of Wingnuttia are necessary for the Goopers to win. They must have wedge issues so they won't have to talk, with any intellectual depth, about real issues. If they had to seriously address real issues, in more than a sound bite scenario, the GOP would never win another election.


They are on the wrong side of history

by Christine Bowman

The secretive and powerful Dick Cheney has expanded and compromised the office of the vice president. What would Sarah Palin do?

Dick Cheney has spent the past eight years, perhaps more, remaking the vice presidency of the United States of America. He has led the way towards establishing a "unitary executive" and has worked in many ways to expand the powers of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. No vice president before him has wielded power in the same way or to the same extent. For most observers the first clue of this came in 2001 with Cheney's creation of a secret energy task force.

A few months from now, Cheney presumably will hand over the office of VP to a new occupant. The GOP's candidate for that office, Sarah Palin, appears to be another politician committed to secrecy and central control, judging by her record in Alaska and her campaign thus far for the vice presidency.

(My educated two cents worth: Palin is not Cheney. Cheney is quite content to slither around the back halls of power, spreading toxic slime everywhere he goes. Palin will not be so content to play second fiddle to anyone. She is not a shadow type of gal. This woman will not be easily handled, once they get to the White House if, God forbid, they do and will prove to be a huge pain in the ass for McCain.)

New evidence of Palin's approach was reported by the Associated Press today, regarding her press "availability" (or non-availability) when visiting the United Nations and meeting foreign leaders for the first time:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, initially barred reporters from her first meetings with world leaders Tuesday ... At first, campaign aides told the TV producer, print and news agency reporters in the press pool ... that they would not be admitted ...

Palin bars, then admits reporters to meetings (AP)

Palin and the GOP operatives who orchestrate her events have endeavored and largely succeeded in insulating her from the "free press." Palin began her campaign for the vice presidency August 29th as a near-unknown nationally, yet reporters have had only brief and highly controlled opportunities to vet her more fully for the American public. Even the campaign itself seems to have done only a hasty vetting before announcing her selection. Consequently, Sarah Palin is more image than substance, more stump speech than in-depth analysis, and the election draws near.

Putting another person who embraces secrecy and unilateralism into the upper reaches of the Executive Branch carries with it risks that American voters need to recognize. Former White House Counsel and legal writer John W. Dean has the experience, from his Nixon White House and Watergate days, as well as the constitutional law training, to understand those risks and what harm a vice president can do.

Writing September 19th at findlaw.com, John W. Dean assessed Dick Cheney's tenure as our most recent Vice President. He wrote about Cheney and the Constitution in response to the recently published Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. A strong case is made in the book that Cheney's lies resulted in congressional approval of the Iraq War under false pretenses.

Last year, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman and Jo Baker, now of the New York Times, did an extensive series for the Post on Cheney. Now, Gellman has done some more digging, and published the result in a book he released this week: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. The book reveals a lie told to a high-ranking fellow Republican, and the difference that lie made. In this column, I'll explain how Cheney defied the separation of powers, and go back to the founding history to show why actions like his matter so profoundly.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20080919.html

Dean summarizes:

In short, it was this lie [to then Republican Majority Leader Richard Armey of Texas] that sealed the nation's fate, and sent us to war in Iraq. By lying to such an influential figure in Congress, Cheney not only may have changed the course of history, but also corrupted the separation of powers with their inherent checks and balances.

Dean accuses Cheney of "monumental dishonesty" and argues: "Cheney's great lie can be viewed not only as a great immorality and violation of the criminal code, but also and more fundamentally as the significant breach of his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution that it is."

Dean goes on to raise the larger issue of the Republican Party's lack of commitment to the checks and balances mandated by our Constitution and considered essential by the founding fathers. Dean's assessment is that the Republicans in congress today are unwilling to acknowledge Cheney's wrong-doing or to challenge him. This, Dean contrasts to a typical Democratic Party pattern of taking action and demanding accountability, even against "their own," when warranted.

John Dean is a man who stood up to Richard Milhouse Nixon and stood up for the Constitution. At this time in history, forty-some years later, Dean sees no person in government willing or able to stand up to Dick Cheney or challenge his views on government. Dean concludes:

Those of us who follow these matters have long known - and I have written before - that it is Dick Cheney who is molding his hapless and naive president to his will, by effecting endless expansions of Presidential powers, and acting upon Cheney's total disregard of the separation of powers.

Cheney does not seem to believe the Constitution applies to "real leaders" ... Nor does he believe in the separation of powers. ... It has long been clear that Cheney has been corruptly bridging the constitutional separation of powers throughout the Bush/Cheney presidency.

If Armey is right, Dick Cheney has not only behaved improperly, but also criminally: In addition, when lying to Armey, Cheney clearly committed a "high crime or misdemeanor" in his blocking the Constitution's checks and balances from stopping our march into Iraq. During the debates that took place during the Constitution's ratification conventions, it was specifically stated that lying to Congress about matters of war would be an impeachable offense. Congress has also made it a crime.

Nonetheless, nothing is likely to happen to Cheney, for Congress is too busy dealing with the disastrous economy that he and Bush are leaving behind as they head for the door. No one seems inclined to hold Cheney responsible, and he appears totally unconcerned about the wrath of history. Yet in lying even to those in his own party, about reasons to go to war, he has sunk to a low level few have reached, and it is no hyperbole to call his actions treasonous to the structure and spirit of the Republic.

(Perhaps, none of the Jellyfish in D.C. have much interest in holding Cheney responsible for his many crimes, but the people may think differently.)

Such is the legacy a Vice President Palin would inherit. Lying? Okay. Expansive powers? Yes. Secrecy? Of course. There are precedents now.

Is that a risk American voters want to take?

HELL NO!


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush and Harken Energy

If only the press and the MSM would do their damn jobs....

August 17, 2007

Bush's First Crime: A Cold Case Warms Up

By Russ Wellen

"In the corporate world, some things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures."

-- George W. Bush

The reluctance of Congressional Democratic leaders to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush may be frustrating. But there's an upside. For anyone seeking to file charges against Bush in lieu of impeachment, it relieves the urgency and buys time to make their case that much more airtight. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform alone is conducting 20 investigations.

We're also afforded the opportunity to arrange his crimes in chronological order, starting with the first. Remember Harken Energy Corporation and the charge that Bush used insider knowledge to make almost $850,000 selling his stock in the company?

Harken, on whose board Bush sat, was a Texas oil company engaging in oil and gas exploration, development and production. It's still in existence, but on June 6 it changed its name to HKN, Inc. It actually showed a profit at the end of the first quarter this year, as opposed to last. Yet it still felt compelled to announce a reverse stock split, which is considered either a gimmick to make a stock look more attractive to investors or a red flag that it's about to take a dive.

To refresh your memory, Harken's difficulties were more pronounced in 1990, when it was hoping for one last strike in Texas before the state was tapped out. As soon as Bush joined the board, another company came to its aid -- Harvard Management ("Harvard"). Why Harvard?

Not only had Bush obtained his MBA from Harvard, but a former Harken chairman of the board was also a Harvard alumni, while two Harvard Management Company officers owned substantial amounts of Harken stock. Besides, as a not-for-profit organization, Harvard had no shareholders to whom the principals need answer for questionable transactions.

As if that weren't enough, in November 1990, Harken formed an off-the-books partnership with Harvard in order to move debt and poorly performing assets off its books and onto those of Harvard. This helped disguise how much of a risk investing in Harken had become.

But it got a shot in the arm when, perhaps out of allegiance to Bush's Arab-friendly father and then president, the country of Bahrain awarded Harken an exclusive contract to explore a new oil field in the Persian Gulf despite its lack of international experience. The billionaire Bass brothers of Texas also chipped in, to subsidize the drilling.

As expected, Harken's stock, of which Bush Jr. owned a sizeable share, took off. Yet, in June 1990, though the ceiling seemed to be nowhere in sight, he decided to unload 212,010 shares ostensibly to buy a new house, though he used it instead to pay off a loan he'd taken out when buying a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Harken attorneys warned Bush that he was liable to be scrutinized for possession of "material non-public information." As a board member, he was not only privy to Harken's problems, he himself put forth the motion for the off-the-books partnership with Harvard. With characteristic defiance, Bush went ahead with the deal anyway. His insistence that the buyer remain anonymous didn't help allay suspicions.

Though unexplored by the SEC, there was another dimension to the insider trading charge –- the imminence of the Gulf War. Had the White House leaked news of its planned attack to Bush? Perhaps more to the point, could the White House not have let him in on it? Sure enough, when Iraq actually invaded Kuwait, Harken's shares, in part because of concern about the difficulties of drilling for oil during war-time, decreased 25%.

In any event, the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation came to a premature end. Though no evidence of impropriety was found, it should be borne in mind that the SEC chairman at the time was a friend of the Bush family who had been nominated by Bush Sr. Still, the SEC said that closing the case "must in no way be construed" as an indication that "the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result."

In retrospect, the SEC's statement resembles a cry for help from its rank and file. Will someone out there whose hands aren't tied please re-open the case? Ironically, it's in Harvard's SEC filing of its Harken transactions where evidence of Bush's wrongdoing can be found hiding in plain sight.

All that's known of the purchaser of Bush's stock is that it was institutional. Was it Harvard again? There's no mention in Harvard's SEC filing that it took Bush's Harken stock off his hands. And what if it did?

Since Harvard was already enmeshed with Bush and Harken, it would be difficult for it to claim it was unaware of Bush's rush to dump his stock before Harken's inevitable reversal of fortune. Harvard might then have been required to reveal that knowledge, thus not only hanging Bush out to dry, but also implicating itself in insider trading.

Organizations like Harvard Watch and Charles Lewis's Center for Public Integrity had already established that Harvard had become a dumping ground for Harken's stiff of a stock. But it took Massachusetts CPA Steve Rose, who once prepared charitable organization returns for one of Harvard's venture capital arms, Aeneas, to show that Harvard most likely bought Bush's shares as well.

Rose had discontinued working for Harvard because he was uncomfortable with its questionable business practices. When its Harken investments came to light, he decided to do what accountants call a reconciliation. Approaching it as a puzzle to be solved -- kind of like an advanced form of su doku -- he zeroed in on the SEC's website.

Corruption in Action

An SEC filing is a land where investigators and journalists fear to tread. Its sheer bulk and eye-glazing itemizing flag it as a text best steered clear of. But we're fortunate to have Rose scouting out this desolate terrain for us. He'll show us the guideposts indicating exactly how Harvard appears to have taken George Bush's Harken stock off his hands.

Now let's step into the badlands of Harvard's Aeneas Venture Corporation SEC Form 13D/A.

In March 1990, as part of its selfless campaign to offload Harken stock, Aeneas bought 868,450 shares. Then it transferred all those shares to another one of Harvard's affiliates, Phemus Corporation. Yet, despite divesting itself of those shares, Aeneas bought more -- exactly 50,000.

Stranger still, the sale of those 50,000 shares went unreported in the filing. Then how do we know it occurred? Because Rose did the math.

Why buy 868,450 shares and shuffle them along, only to buy 50,000 more shares from the same company? One can't help but wonder if the two sellers were different actors in the same company. Transferring the institutional-sized purchase might have been a sleight of hand by the buyer, Harvard, intended to obscure the personal-sized purchase. Especially if the 50,000 were bought from Bush and bore the stink of insider trading.

But Harvard was just getting warmed up for the shell game to follow.

Next, Rose bushwhacks his way through amendment five of the filing, in which he finds Aeneas increasing its Harken shares by 228,250. Again, there's no mention of the purchase. The numbers just kind of appear on the table. Bear in mind that when it wants to, Harvard is capable of itemizing that's as conscientious as it is scrupulous. (For an example, see Phemus's transactions on pages 87 and 88 of amendment five.)

But one can only gaze in awe at the audacity Harvard displays in slipping 228,250 shares -- unannounced -- into a SEC filing. Implicit in such an act are two assumptions, both dripping with arrogance: that the press finds SEC filings daunting and that the SEC doesn't bother to check the filings.

Other transactions also slipped in through the back door. In amendment five, the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the college itself) failed to mention its disposal of an armload of Harken shares, while another of Harvard Management's entities, Harvard Yenching Institute, added a handful.

Meanwhile, Michael Eisenson, who also owned shares under the umbrella of Harvard Management, must have thought the double life he led as a director for both Harvard and Harken wasn't enough of a red flag. He too left transactions unexplained, as did Donald Beane.

Now for the scene of the ambush. When Rose totals the unreported shares Aeneas bought between amendments four and five, he arrives at the number 212,750. Recall that Bush sold 212,140 shares during the same period. Only 610 shares separate what Aeneas bought and Bush sold! Your tolerance for coincidence has to be awfully high to ignore the obvious -- that Harvard bought Bush's shares.

As Rose is fond of repeating, "The devil is in the details."

Harvard Management's former CEO, Jack Meyer, wasn't concerned. He told The Boston Globe that, "Our [Harken] position increased 1.4 million shares in 1990." All, he maintained, were acquired by Harvard Management from Harken. "We didn't buy any of these shares from any shareholders." (Such as Bush.)

There's much more in these and subsequent filings that make Harvard Management look like it's trying to hide its unlawful acts behind Harvard University's ivied facade. But at a time when his former supporters are distancing themselves from Bush, there's nothing to stop Harvard too from hopping on the hawser and abandoning his sinking ship like yet another rat.

Since there's no expiration date for amending its amendments, Harvard can still come clean. With its endowment rising 16.7 percent in the last fiscal year to an eye-popping $29.2 billion, a settlement with the SEC would be painless.

As for Bush, indictment might give this president an actual legacy. Thanks to him, future presidential hopefuls will be forced to open his or her closet and watch as any financial skeletons hidden inside come clattering out.

Authors Bio:

Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also a columnist and editor at Freezerbox.com.

"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth."
-- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

I know What You Did Last Summer.....

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

20-27 August 2007 Issue

I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or "The Simpsons Movie" on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved "probable cause" before Americans can be searched or spied upon. This is not the feverish imagination of left-wing bloggers and the ACLU. It's the plain truth of where we've come as a country, at the behest of a president who has betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution and with the acquiescence of Democratic congressional leaders who know better. Historians will likely see this episode as a classic case of fear - both physical and political - trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security.

Congress had good reason to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After the shift from satellites to fiber-optic cable for most international phone calls, the statute was as out of date as disco. With Congress, the courts and President Bush squabbling over his illegal wiretapping program, the government was actually conducting less surveillance of foreign nationals than before 9/11, which was crazy. We had to do more listening in, especially with scary new intelligence "chatter" suggesting an unspecified attack on the U.S. Capitol this summer. Congressional sources who attended the late-July classified intel briefings, but won't talk about them for the record, say these threats didn't sound like spin. After all, we're not talking here about trumped-up Iraqi WMD, but Al Qaeda terrorists who have already tried to kill us.

So members of Congress are legitimately afraid that they and their families will get blown up this summer. Fair enough. But then they lost their heads and sold out the Constitution to cover their political rears while keeping the rest of us mostly in the dark. The reason we don't know more about what happened is that the United States has moved sharply in recent years from legitimate secrecy - regarding sources and methods - to the bogus kind the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others warned will wreck democracies. For instance, the abstract legal arguments used by the shadowy FISA court to strike down Bush's surveillance program are secret. Why? Because they might be politically embarrassing.

Here's what we do know. We know that the Democratic leadership rightly conceded to Adm. Michael McConnell, the once widely respected director of National Intelligence, to allow eavesdropping on foreigner-to-foreigner communications routed through American phone companies (no biggie; we've always spied on foreigners). We know that the Democrats thought they had a deal until McConnell, who is supposed to be nonpartisan, went back to the White House and got fresh marching orders to squelch reasonable judicial oversight by the FISA court. And we know that the administration's new position was that the attorney general (the disgraced Alberto Gonzales) should have the sole authority to spy without a warrant on any American talking to a foreigner, even if it's you and the guy from Mumbai fixing your printer.

Then the Democrats said: "Wait a minute! That's unconstitutional!" Right? Actually, no, they didn't. Even liberals like Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argued in two heated, closed-door meetings on Aug. 3 that the Democrats might as well cave. Otherwise, they would be pounded during the August recess for ignoring national security and destroyed as a party if the country were actually attacked. Even though the leadership and 82 percent of House Democrats voted against the bill, they did not block it, delay the recess and hold the Congress in session. The private excuse was that the liberal base wouldn't be satisfied no matter what they did, and that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't make the more conservative Senate go along anyway. Apparently, there's always an excuse for leaving for vacation on time.

Afterward, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly that many provisions were "unacceptable" and the House would revisit the newly signed legislation "as soon as possible." Democrats obtained a sunset clause that requires the whole thing to be reauthorized in six months. But real damage has been done. At a minimum, we have suspended the Fourth Amendment for the time being. Doing so might conceivably be excusable if we're likely to catch terrorists this way. But with a tiny number of Arabic speakers asked to translate thousands of transcripts, there's little chance we'll find a needle in the haystack. If our snooping technology were so terrific at nabbing bad guys, we'd brag to Al Qaeda about it as a form of deterrence instead of keeping it secret. "Secrecy is for losers," Moynihan liked to say, in a time before we began losing freedom and security simultaneously.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.