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TODAY'S SHOW: FRIDAY JULY 20TH 2007

By krislopresto
We wanted to put a photograph of Cheney on the blog today but we couldn't decide which one was the funniest.  What do you think?  For your consideration we present, Option A, which we call "Puppetmaster"

Puppetmaster
Or do you prefer Option B, which we call "Cheney Rides Again"

Cheney Rides Again
Notice: whether he's lurking in the Bush's or riding a Segway, Cheney always wears the same smirk...

On today's show Rachel will be joined by John Nichols from the Nation joins Rachel to discuss the conflab between the Pentagon and Hillary Clinton who dared ask, "Hey guys?  So is there, like, a plan or anything?"

And then we've got a story for you that will really make your jaw drop.  Scott Horton tells the story of a former Democratic Governor who was deliberately prosecuted because he committed the cardinal sins in the Bush Administration Justice Department: was too good at his job and he was a Democrat.  Almost 50 attorneys general are petitioning for a review of his case. 

MENTIONED ON TODAY'S SHOW

"President Dick Cheney;" Children and small animals run for cover



Comments

(17)

¡G'Friday, Rachelistas and Kentorros!

Bush's butt examined, Dead-Eye Dick to sit on throne

Bush butt probed, Cheney in charge

(AXcess News) Washington - A shudder could be felt across Capitol Hill Friday after news came out that President Bush would be having his butt checked out which meant that while Bush was going through the colonoscopy, Vice President Dick Cheney would be in charge of the nation.

"It's a chilling thought," one passerby told AXcess News when asked if they were concerned over Cheney's short-term rule of the White House.  Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters this morning that President Bush would be going to Camp David, MD where doctors were going to perform what Snow termed a "routine examination" of the President's posterior.

Bush last underwent colorectal cancer surveillance on June 29, 2002.  At the time, the only thing doctors found was an attitude, which medical experts say is not cancerous though his administration has become quite malignant in their support of the President's plan to keep U.S. troops in Iraq.

Executive Order

Bush's boot stamping on a human face - forever  by zoee2102 on DAILYKOS.COMFri Jul 20, 2007 at 10:31:34 AM PDT

On July 17th, 2007, Bush signed the following Executive Order into law:

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

God help us.

zoee2102's diary

  • By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

    I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

    Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

    (i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

    (A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

    (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

    (ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

    (iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

    (b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

    Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

    (b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

    Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:

    (a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

    (b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

    (c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

    Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

    Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

    Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

    Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

    Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

    GEORGE W. BUSH

    THE WHITE HOUSE,

    July 17, 2007.

    Whitehouse.gov

    From the looks of this, we can be thrown in jail for "undermining the war in Iraq". By offering services, donations to others who "undermin the war in Iraq", we can have our possessions seized. Someone help me decipher this Orwellian-like document. Must I move to Canada now? If not for the free healthcare, then for political assylum, as my rights are being taken away?

    Just this morning, Bush accused Democrats of playing politics instead of appropriating monies for the war. Is he going to seize all of the property of Congress?

    In a letter from Eric Edelman, Undersecretary of Defense, to Hillary Clinton, The Pentagon claimed that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.

    "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote. He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

    Was this just political posturing? Or are they setting the stage for legal actions against Mrs. Clinton?

  • Gone rogue?

    Hi Rachel,

    First, please let your webmaster know that I HATEHATEHATEHATE this stupid "rich-text" editor. Please disable the stupid thing, or tell me where I can go to disable it for myself.

    Second, what's your source for the White House saying that Executive Privilege is now beyond the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committees?

    Chad

    Well, If You Insist

    There once was a man from Nantucket

    Whose d1#k was so long he could s#Xk it

    While wiping his chin

    He said with a grin,

    "If my ear were a c#!t, I would f#*k it."

    ----

    Sorry

    lbear, about that Nantucket thing you just did...

    ...for the first time in my life, and darling, do understand this, for  the very first time in my life, words fail me...

    There once was a man named Bruno...

    ...who said, "There is one thing that I do know.

    "That sheep are just fine,

    "And donkeys divine,

    "But llamas are Numero Uno!"

     

    :down:

     

    "We are here on Earth to fart around.  Don't let anyone tell you different."--Kurt Vonnegut

    Go to Iraq and Fight, Mr. President by Keith Olbermann

      MSN Tracking Image  MSNBC.comOlbermann: Go to Iraq and fight, Mr. President Bush’s latest choice of scapegoat — Hillary Clinton — boggles the mindSPECIAL COMMENTBy Keith OlbermannAnchor, 'Countdown'Updated: 8:39 p.m. ET July 19, 2007

     

    It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.

    A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation.

    But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power.

    The Bush administration has opened this Pandora’s Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.

    The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

    The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

    The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total “jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly” tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

    The utter, blinkered idiocy of “staying the course,” of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

    The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total “Alice Through the Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault!

    The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now-vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, “Don’t take my son; don’t take my daughter.”

    Sen. Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to The Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

    This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman.

    “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

    Edelman adds: “Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

    A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman’s remarks are “at once both outrageous and dangerous.” Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq.

    After the South was defeated in our Civil War, the scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the ideas of the “Lost Cause” and “Jim Crow” were born.

    After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871, it was the imaginary “Jewish influence” in the French Army general staff, and there was born 30 years of self-destructive anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case.

    After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the “back-stabbers and profiteers” at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.

    And after the generation before ours, and leaders of both political parties, escalated and re-escalated and carpet-bombed and re-carpet-bombed Vietnam, it was the protest movement
    and Jane Fonda and — as late as just three years ago — Sen. John Kerry who were assigned the kind of blame with which no rational human being could concur, and yet which still, across vast sections of our political landscape, resonates unchallenged and accepted.

    And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own “profiteer” — your own scapegoat.

    Not for the sake of this country.

    Not for the sake of Iraq.

    Not even for the sake of your own political party.

    But for the sake of your own personal place in history.

    But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight not honor, but infamy.

    In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive: those who have sold this country out and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve.

    A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable, if you hadn’t just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee of the opposition party.

    And the accusation of spreading “enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia” might be some day atoned for, if we all didn’t know — you included, and your generals and the Iraqis — that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later, and we are doing it even if to do so requires, first, that you must be impeached and removed as president of the United States, sooner rather than later.

    You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they say, “Enough.”

    And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush.

    When Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from leading the next charge himself.

    After the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter-million Allied soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commission as a front-line officer in the trenches of France.

    Those are your new role models, Mr. Bush.

    Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here, who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002.

    Let them try it, until the end of time.

    Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail.

    This, sir, is your war.

    Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

    Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

    Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

    Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

     

    © 2007 MSNBC Interactive

    URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19859124/

    MSN Privacy . Legal© 2007 MSNBC.com

    2 requests

    1)  Could Rachel or the webmaster PLEASE post Rachel's 1-2 paragraph "horror movie plot synopsis" of the Bush regime/War On Terror?  Absolutely brilliant, needs to be disseminated.

    2)  Where's the posting about Bush's executive order authorizing torture?  Is it by any chance the same one referred to in the WaPo with the following headline and subhead (I Kid You Not:):

    "Bush Order Governs CIA Interrogation Techniques

    Executive order prohibits cruel and inhuman treatment in the detention of terrorism suspects."

     I'm not kidding.  That's the subhead.  (It's on the WaPo.com front page at the moment, not on the actual article page.  I think Fred Hiatt is meddling in headline writing again.)

     

    About the "horror plot"

    All I know is, in most monster movies, there are four entities that the Big Bad Evil Thingee always kills:  the custodian, the security guard, the homeless wino, and the dog.  Of those, I've been the first two, and am working on the second pair.

     

    This worries me, on many levels.

     

    "We are here on Earth to fart around.  Don't let anyone tell you different."--Kurt Vonnegut

    Conventional Wisdoms

    Bush Sees The Light?
    It takes a village to have an idiot - Actor212

    Add One More Drum To The Beat

    A National Treasure Calls For Impeachment

    It takes a village to have an idiot - Actor212

    Bush opposes pay raise?

    I LOVE Rachel. I can't stand Bush, Rush, Fox, etc... I was outraged when I heard on 20 july Rachel mentionning Bush opposing a pay raise for soldiers. Then, I came across the same topic at Crooks and Liars. But, there, they quoted the text where Bush expressed his opposition back in May:

    "Military Pay: The Administration strongly opposes sections 601 and 606. The additional 0.5 percent increase above the President’s proposed 3.0 percent across-the-board pay increase is unnecessary."

    http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/21/bush-was-against-troop-pay-rais...

    I interpret this as more a disagreement at the level of the raise. Congress proposed 3.5, Bush proposed 3.0. Yet, I got the impression from Rachel that Bush was proposing zero percent.

    I have a bad feeling about this. Since I only listen to Rachel, Olbermann and, in the past, Franken, I need to know that they are beeing honest. Listening to the other side is not an option (puke a little in mouth).

    Why???

    Why after 2 weeks am I still not able to stream TRMS? I click the link and I get an error message on the media player.  Is anyone else having this problem?   I'm not able to listen to the show live, so I usually listen the following day at work....  it's really frustrating not being able to tune in!

     

    Thanks!

    giloo, talk about being

    giloo,

    talk about being honest... 

    do you honestly really think that Bush vetoed the bill with the pay raise for the troops because of the 0.5%?  please!  he vetoed it because he doesn't want to give the people the money.  the 0.5% crap was a sorry a$$ of an excuse.  AS IF he couldn't include a signing statement saying the raise will be 3% instead of the 3.5% if he really wanted to give the troops a raise.

    racial divisions in the area's gay community.

    Assault heightens tensions in S.F.
    The rape of a man in the Castro district spotlights racial divisions in the area's gay community.
    By John M. Glionna
    Times Staff Writer
    http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBT6Y0Kcvqc0G2B0ImHL0EP

    July 23, 2007

    SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Welsh chokes up as he describes his rape last fall and the word his two assailants kept repeating.

    "They kept saying 'faggot' over and over again," whispers the 51-year-old owner of a video store in the Castro district. "It went on for what seemed like forever."

    Welsh came forward about the attack to publicize sexual assaults against gay men in the Castro — which he says police have downplayed.

    His outrage helped spark a new anti-rape education program as well as volunteer citizen patrols in one of the nation's best-known gay neighborhoods.

    But because both Welsh and another rape victim say their assailants were black, news of their attacks has heightened tensions in a community that for years has been accused of racial exclusion.

    In 2005, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission ruled that a Castro bar called SF Badlands discriminated against black patrons by requiring them to present multiple forms of identification before entering.

    Officials now require the bar's owner, Les Natali, to post a notice informing patrons of state anti-discrimination laws.

    "It's rare," John Carr, spokesman for the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, said of the requirement. "We wanted to send a strong message that we were going to keep an eye on them."

    Still, many African Americans say they're made to feel unwelcome in the Castro. "There's an unspoken language, whether you're a black man or woman, that there's no space for you here," said Lisa Williams, a local activist who is black.

    Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. -Martin Luther King, Jr. :coolmad:

    Addressing Poverty

    Despite the record low approval ratings, President Bush and his administration are still arrogant and blinded by the Iraq War.  The people of this country are fed up with Bush’s senseless war and the lack of domestic policies.  There are much more important issues in this world that the US should be taking part in, such as global poverty.  According to the Borgen Project, whose goal is to fight global poverty, US is one of the nations pledged in the Millennium Development Project.  MDP is aimed at eliminating world poverty in half by the year 2015.  However, this country has done anything but reducing poverty.  The war on “terror” has created more poverty, more hunger and more violence within Iraq and the United States.  It is time for this country’s president to rethink the direction where this great nation is going.  Perhaps the second lowest approval rating since Watergate will be a wake up call to President Bush.

    Submitted by Mstessyrue on July 24, 2007 - 12:18pm

    Perhaps the second lowest approval rating since Watergate will be a wake up call to President Bush.

    No offense, but have you been in a coma for the last 7 years?

    In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
    - H.L. Mencken

    Comments

    (17)