Cobbers

Mates on a mission

Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-In-Law

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In March 2003, when the world’s attention was focused on  U.S. soldiers heading to Baghdad, twelve senior officials in the Bush  administration gathered around a long oak conference table in the Eisenhower  Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex. They were meeting  to put the final touches on a proposed legislative package that would address  what was perhaps the most dangerous vulnerability the country faced after 9/11:  unprotected chemical plants close to densely populated areas.

The Washington Monthly article continues:

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ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign

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Bush Exxonmobil 05 Eng

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.

According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.
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Death sentence

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At Listics, Frank Paynter writes:

It’s ironic that the Texas executioner will never spend a night in jail, yet Saddam Hussein was hanged. As governor of Texas, George Bush executed 131 prisoners. He slept on clean sheets last night and enjoyed three hot meals today. Hussein, recently convicted of killing 148 people in 1982, was hanged this morning.

…

I won’t lose any sleep over Hussein’s passing, nor Gerry Ford’s, nor the recent demise of Pinochet. I do continue to regret the shallow and callous nature of George W. Bush.

(Frank then points to a 2000 report from The Chicago Tribune on an investigation of all 131 death cases in Governor Bush’s time. It made chilling reading.)

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Flash! President Bush Says He Reads Papers

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Is there hope for newspapers after all? Readers may be abandoning the printed versions, but over the last couple of years, at least one person seems to have started reading them, at least sometimes, according to the New York Times.

He lives in the White House.

President Bush declared in 2003 that he did not read newspapers, but at his final  news conference of the year last week, he casually mentioned that he had seen something in the paper that very day.

Asked for his reaction to word that Vice President Cheney would be called to testify in the CIA leak case, the president allowed: “I read it in the newspaper today, and it’s an interesting piece of news.”

That was a marked contrast with his position in 2003, when he told  Brit Hume on Fox News that he glanced at the headlines, but “I rarely read the stories,” because, he said, they mix opinion with fact.

He said he preferred to get his news from “objective sources” — like “people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

Bush and books?

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Bush Reading

Comedy writers and lovers of the absurd all across America have a bounce in their step today, writes Arianna Huffington, buoyed by news that President Bush is looking to raise half-a-billion dollars to build his legacy-burnishing presidential library.

The idea of Uncurious George building a $500 million shrine to his disastrous presidency is the political equivalent of a whoopee cushion; a veritable laff riot. The punchlines write themselves:

A George W. Bush Library? What’s it going to house, 100,000 copies of The Pet Goat — with some Shakespeares and a Camus thrown in for good measure?

Understanding Americans

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Understanding America through its newspapers — a quick guide doing the rounds on the Net.

  • The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
  • The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
  • The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.
  • USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.
  • The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it.
  • The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
  • The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
  • The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it, but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are a handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from any country or galaxy as long as they are Democrats.
  • The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

Dixie Chicks peck at Bush

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Maverick US country group the Dixie Chicks is still sniping at President George W. Bush, especially after his Republican party was hammered in mid-term elections.

The Texas band, which has felt a backlash at home for criticizing Bush’s Iraq war policy, played a sold-out concert in Vancouver Wednesday night.

Lead singer Natalie Maines couldn’t resist taking a shot at the humbled Bush administration as she praised her Vancouver fans. “Either the beer is free or you’re happy that Donald Rumsfeld resigned today,” Maines said.

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse

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Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a TIME magazine exclusive.

New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Live Vote: Should Bush be impeached?

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MSNBC.com is asking in a live poll: Do you believe President Bush’s actions justify impeachment? 

The last time we looked, the results from 350,644 responses were as follows:

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%

No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
4.4%

No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
6.7%

I don’t know.
1.9%

Oh dear.