The Buck Stops Where?

The Blame Game

Rove: "Congress Pushed Bush to War in Iraq Prematurely"
Paul Abrams

You are not going to believe this, well, actually you will... According to Karl Rove (on Charlie Rose), the Bush Administration did not want Congress to vote on the Iraq War resolution in the fall of 2002, because they thought it should not be done within the context of an election. Rove, you see, did not think the war vote should be "political".Moreover, according to Rove, that "premature vote" led to many of the problems that cropped up in the Iraq War. Had Congress not pushed, he says, Bush could have spent more time assembling a coalition, and provided more time to the inspectors.If you are like me, you have stopped reading/listening, and are rushing to get your anti-emetic.It is worth remembering that the Senate in the fall of 2002 was controlled, barely, by Democrats. Get it? George Bush, we are being told, wanted to delay, wanted to hold back, wanted to take the time to build a coalition and let the inspectors finish their job, but that damn Congress just pushed him into it. George Bush, you see, is a careful, prudent, leader, deeply concerned about the consequences of premature.Get it? If Biden, Clinton, Dodd or Edwards is part of the Democratic ticket, the Republicans will run a campaign charging the Senate Democrats with rushing to judgment, of pushing the poor President to premature...(well, you fill in the blank)....Not that Iraq is that big of an issue. Rove claims that, if Iraq had been a big issue, that Joe Lieberman, who was pro-war, could not have won in Connecticut, defeating receiving more Democratic, Independent and Republican votes than any of his opponents.I have purposefully NOT provided the (obvious) answers to his claims because to answer is to give him control of the argument. That's Rove's tactic, and I have written about that many times in these pages. Instead, this should be used as a trigger to talk about Rove's history of dissembling, how that is reflected in the Bush Administration's entire approach to public policy and public information. Bush, through Rove, should be attacked for trying to escape responsibility and accountability. And, it will help to make some historical references to rulers whose tenure was so dismal that they could not allow historians to provide objective analyses, and thus try to write the history themselves.As might have been predicted, Rove raises "historical revisionism" to new depths, what may become known as "hysterical Rovisionism."
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THANK YOU, ABU DHABI!

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street rebounded Tuesday after the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority said it will invest $7.5 billion in Citigroup Inc. (C) - a vote of confidence for the nation's largest bank, which has suffered severe losses amid the ongoing crisis in the mortgage market.

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Well maybe cause I am old but I remember when the U.S was independent, when we loaned money not borrowed it. I know this $7.5 billion pales in comparison to what the govenment ie: Bush's government $ 750 billion a year is borrowing on which the interest on the national debt is $250 billion a year but it is indicative of the state of the Union. A Debtor nation!

I don't recognize my ( and yours) country any more. At least not in the way the nations business is conducted, torture, invading soverign countries because we don't like their leader,spying on it's citizens, using mercenaries to fight it's wars and torture it's supposed enemies and locking up so called combatants without charges. I have truly felt as if I have been living under occupation by a foreign government in which I have no say as to its actions because no one is representing me.
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The way to disaster!!

When making purchases I used to look for made in the USA merchandise, I don't bother anymore because there isn't any.

Americans have been buying staggering quantities of goods from overseas using money lent by foreigners. Foreign exporters have been relying on American consumers to keep them in business. For years, this dynamic has made for increasingly lopsided terms of trade: Last year, American imports outstripped exports by $764 billion, with foreigners stepping in to cover the difference.
"If you’re a global benevolent despot, you want a five-year period where China booms, India booms and the U.S. consumer takes a decided back seat," said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the brokerage and advisory firm ITG. "You need to have a period where Asia booms and we limp along, because the No. 1 worry for the world economy is large, unsustainable trade
imbalances."
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How can you have any Freedom without any Responsibility?
by Leslie H

The corruption and abuse will stop on the day that the American people wake up and say, "Stop."
Read this article to see what I'm talking about:
Please don't skip the article. You'll have no idea how bad it has gotten or why this post/email is even being written if you don't read it. Okay, you read dailyKos, maybe you would have an idea without reading the article, but at least go back sometime and read it ... if for no other reason that to illicit a few good curses of the darkness from your righteous American soul.
At the risk of being a bore I'll repeat myself ... this kind of corruption and abuse in government will end on the day that the American people -- you -- say it does, and not a minute sooner.
Leslie H's diary :: ::
It will end when more than 45% of the American people begin to understand that our Freedom is our Responsibility and begin to pay attention and to vote.
Our freedom did not drop out of the sky into our laps. Our forebears created this government, this freedom that we enjoy and they passed it down to us -- not to abuse or to ignore or to take for granted -- but to keep for the next generation. It is not ours. We have no right to squander it away by action or neglect. It is an eternal and sacred trust, intended not only for us, but for our posterity ... our descendants ... equally.
I would submit that we have only one job as American citizens when we reach the age of emancipation, and that is to keep and expand this freedom, our Liberty, for those who come after us.
And we are failing in our duty.
Likewise, we do not teach our children that this is their task to see through.
Mark my word, your grandchildren will not have the Freedom you've enjoyed unless we all do more to keep it. Keeping it requires that we listen, care, vote, get involved and even run for office. Because it is a fantasy to hope that any government will ever be better than the general quality (heart, mind and soul) of people who manage it and work in it.
We as a moral and idealistic people must teach our children better. We must teach them to listen to what goes on in the halls of government, to care about what goes on in the halls of government, to educate themselves about the good things government can do and the bad things government can do, that they do indeed have the power to correct the bad and encourage the good in government, and at the very least -- to vote.
Each generation took care of our freedom as best they knew how. It has gone in fits and starts, but ever the march through time has been towards expansion of liberty, justice and the common good. Our living and dead ancestors expanded it to include peoples who before, had no freedom at all. They strengthened laws that protect the common citizen from abuse by the powerful. They plugged holes in the shields of liberty to ensure that all of us could live free no matter who in our midst didn't want "all" to live free. They tried to fix weaknesses in our checks-and-balances to ensure that power could never corrupt our government absolutely ... because no one person or group could ever hold absolute power.
And they have each, in turn, passed this freedom, our Liberty, our Freedom down to us.
No friends, our Freedom is not a thing that simply materialized out of thin air or came down to us off a mountain.
Our Freedom is a thing fashioned by human minds, hands, courage and backbone.
Our Freedom was forged by men and women of long memory and far reaching foresight.
Therefore, keeping it requires good minds, hands, hearts, spines, memories and understanding.
If our Founders and ancestors, living and dead, could find the will and the skill to create our Liberty and pass it on, surely we, a well educated first-world nation, can find the will and the skill to keep it from the machinations of small minds and shriveled souls.
To paraphrase Pink Floyd;
How can you have any Freedom, without any Responsibility?