Day old note too late.

The earliest transition team in history, so it seems.
Less than 45 day from cut and run and we have transitioned from 06 to 08 transition.
A prediction I’m not sure I noted but the ouster of Cheney was a thought that applies to this transition.

Also going back to the QUAIL HUNT(Cheney accident), I saw not only a war on the press but a parting shot that would somehow work more than the WMD (WORK OF MEDIA DISTRACTION).

From cut and run to redeployment strategy in Rove from policy to politics. Must find a John Dean prediction of an October Surprise.

DID READ!

My comments:

...one nation, under LAWS...

One Party?

PRE-POST

What I thought I heard Bush say:
(High gas prices is like a tax?)

Is he finally getting it?

So are high health care, high insurance and low wages, not to mention rising education and housing costs.

What about profits and executive salaries?
NOT READ/FIRST READ

I am the detector...

and the borrower.*

A reporter asked Bush if he had taken the lie detector test on leaking which the CIA has required all it's agents to take and which even The Director took.

Bush said he already had taken it and he got the highest score ever recorded.

* Of course this is from a very ironic source: Al Franken.

The above joke was spun from* my urge to explain(aren't the best borrowed anyway) a good joke but then it takes the thinking and fun from it and who knows who may be laughing even without getting it.

Anyway here goes. Ya see, it is unlikely Bush would take one, and it is even more likely that lie detector don't give scores, only something the experts interpret anyway.

Hu's news? "There he goes again."

Hu’s news, "agree to disagree" and regrets.

Leaders may be followed no matter if what they mean can be verified or even understood.
Translation aside, "as friends" do they trust or will they even bother to verify?
Regrets of protest a shock that it takes a foreign leader’s appearance to demonstrate freedom of speech but at least the method of dealing with it is understood and appreciated.

Fog of preemption aside or tangentially let us hope that the intention to "cooperate more closely on trade and nuclear tensions over Iran and North Korea" is followed and bring desired results whether we can verify even the intentions or not. The point is that if war can preempt even intentions where does one start to stop them? Or is there any intention to blow off the fog of intention, contention or pretension.

A wink and a nod to Reagan, from the "Great Communicator" to "I'm the Decider", here we go again the hard work of deciding who will cross the road or control the trickling downers that democracy eggs or growed.

THE GRIDDLE:
Just when and what did who decide and when did who know it?
Thanks Woodward and Bernstein.

[Note: the link below implies no indication that I have or intend to read the book(not uncommon), but while one should not judge a book by it's cover, one may discern meaning from a title and give it credit if you get it, unless you have already decided.]

TMR-Day 54

So I got it backward. My 45-day review is 9 days overdue, as well as my last post. Well, just where is that Dubai port deal anyway or was there a review or just a fake. That I do not know, does not mean it does not exist, either the deal or the review. However that is different than knowing or in the case of the run-up to the war, just saying, that there is no doubt when there is documented.

Facts are not relevent to what you say when they are irrelevant to what you say first.(Hint: an attempt to sound Rummy)

Link to be provided later.

Going back to the last post and the con(text)nection to Rice and Rummy is the language and inconsistency of tactic or strategy of blaming others. Just whose job is strategy and whose is tactics and did they have it straight or even connected?

CONnecting the . . .

Dots.

Preemptive Comments:

My earliest recollection is that I borrowed it (connecting the dots reference to 9-11 failures/blame) from a news anchor since it hit the nail on the head(or at least in my mind). Since then I have been all over the map and found that others have similar maps. Those being on the track of "which came first" or who borrowed what or who was filtering whom, or leaking officially the "frame". Actually the implication is that there is a logical connection, or any connection, most of all direct. That is the least of it. In reality the connection is what is intended despite the dots otherwise know as intelligence "data", the path or what it takes.

Preemptive Links/Leaks:

Food Chain of Command


The road to intentions are paved with unread or misread links akin to the nuance of diplomacy or war by only means.
[Pardon my wordplay but not the administrations results.]
Further footnote: I have not fully read any of these links therefore the caution or pre-mea culpa, but please click bottom main link in con(text)nection to SeeMore Scary of the Rice Course in reading memos and playing/dealing hands.

Final Connection/Comment(Historical Reference):

George Washington may not have lied about chopping down a cherry tree, but Un-Curious George is still cherry-picking while swinging from one broken limb to another, about to be buried in his own Bushel.

More Heroes Needed.

Words I saved in file yesterday:

From George Washington who could not lie about cutting down the cherry tree to George Bush the cherry picking intelligence leak that is above the law. From Nixon’s "I am not a crook" to Bush’s "nerve". From checks and balances to "outing" the intelligence and killing the debate, and blaming the messenger.
Apparently not only when war comes truth is the first casualty, but a preemptive war must apparently preempt truth.

WHILE I ALREADY POSTED A RELATED COMMENT, THE FOLLOWING NEEDS NOTING:
Dear Senator Harkin:
[Italics are from link]
We, the undersigned, support your principled stand with Senators Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer in favor of holding President Bush accountable, and we urge you to bring the Resolution of Censure to the floor of the Senate for a vote. The President has brazenly, arrogantly and unapologetically broken the law - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which prohibits warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. Despite getting caught red-handed, he refuses to stop.

Government must protect Americans' security, and that's why the FISA law allows intelligence services to listen to terrorists' conversations legally - by going to the secret espionage and terrorism court to get a warrant AFTER listening.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. No American is above the law. That most certainly includes the President. If Congress fails to hold him to account through censure, then he will believe that he can continue breaking laws with impunity. This is profoundly dangerous to our democracy.

We admire your courage in standing up to President Bush and saying enough! Now, we urge you to take the next step. We - ordinary Americans deeply concerned for the country we love - ask you to work with your colleagues to support and pass the Resolution of Censure in the Senate.


This is barely a start [AS I FURTHER NOTED]. Investigation into pre-war use of intelligence as demonstrated by the cherry-picking and leaking of intelligence must be debated as well. It is not a matter of what did the president know and when did he know it, but when did he know what he didn't want us to know, or not want to know himself?

How far back does it go that intelligence sources have been treatened with exposure for the type of intelligence they provide? How much intelligence has been lost by the declassification of intelligence for political gain? When the president and his supporters blame the media for the success of terrorism, how much does his own misuse of intelligence increase their strength?

It is one thing to be calling someone's bluff, but another to think that they don't know their own cards. Congress must recall the deck and reshuffle their oversight of the whole Bush administration.

While I thank Ed Schultz for supporting this issue, and I had already been contacting my Senators, I would also like to note three issues Thom Hartmann has listed as important to our economy: Labor Law, Trade Policy and Immigration. I would add that overarching or underlying these are the issues of social security and health coverage that government and corporations need to fit into the picture.

Much ado about democracy.

President Bush claimed that the media was just a filter and I cannot agree [with] him more, especially when it comes to events just now coming to light. Sometimes I think that the filter is all in my head, but it is better than the president thinking the law is all in his hands. A careful look at his words and we see that at times there may be a calculated absence* of a lie as well as a careful navigation around the truth.

Much ado about nothing? It is only about the rule of law, the concept of checks and balances, the conspiracy of the messenger, the cherry-picking of intelligence and the preemptive war on democracy.

[* comment inserted after footnote]
I cannot help but feel that there should be a bigger distinction between leaking intelligence and declassifying them, and I have long asked, not what did the president know and when did he know it, but when did he decide what he did not want us to know? This leaves aside the issue of other lies, and whether outing an intelligence source was part of the authorization, whether anything was documented as authorized, and whether Republicans and some Democrats have the stomach for a government of laws with checks and balances. It also leaves aside a lot that he was up front about and the poor filters we have.

"There is an institutional interest and ultimately a public interest in having these decisions documented," said Ronald D. Lee, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel to the super-secret National Security Agency. "You can't have a government where everything is sort of done in people's heads."

* I hope to run across the specific words again, that were not a lie, but it was only because leaks were legal in his mind that he could be weaving what seems the truth. And I must add that I came across the quote above after making my comments, but having noted that the first link was very uncritical and hence must be what Bush called an "objective filter" or a co-conspirator in preempting intelligence or stalling the messenger of preemption.

Political Football

What is worse than jumping to the conclusion that a bill has merit because both sides win some and lose some, is jumping to the conclusion that it is worth passing just because both sides compromised a little bit more. I am referring to the three separate paths of legitimate citizenship offered and the inclusion of guest worker programs. The path to legitimacy was sacrificed for some while the path to exploitation of others was left open. It is tempting to call it progress, but is it really, when the door is still open to guests that may require the same rights and needs that our citizens deserve while having little teeth in making sure that employers will not be exploiting workers rights and programs everywhere?

It just seems a shame that there is so much attention to something that is still so fluid and is actually taking a lot of their time and may get little done. Let us hope it is more than pandering and more than politics but it may be all we can get. I am embarrassed to point out that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and we can only hope that there is a lesson here to squawk about.

"An immigration system that forces people into the shadows of our society, or leaves them prey to criminals is a system that needs to be changed," Bush said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Friday. "I’m confident that we can change our immigration system in ways that secures our border, respects the rule of law, and, as importantly, upholds the decency of our country."

These are well chosen words, but the actual bill and bringing them to reality are another matter for debate.

WHAT NERVE!

We know he has nerve, but does he have a conscience. When he was running the first time, his conscience not the law was his guide, and he is still on the same course. The Einstein and King George III juxtaposition about following one’s conscience no matter the state is another interesting twist on uncurious George being worried about his own nerve. He is the state and he has only nerve. While he serves others I might add.

On the immigration tangent, if labor is only a substance to be used by those with the power to do so, then it is a drug where the users and abusers should be reigned in. This may mean a new perspective on the health of individuals and the community as well. Retrogressing to my earlier less footnoted or linked style of commentary, I will try to catch up on these later.

Before closing this post I was going to provide only one link, but ran across a news item where only the title sent me on a tangent to a comment:
What the heck is wrong with having a locally adjusted tax credit for the cost of living, by state. That would involve a deduction for the basic costs of living and then a flat rate based on the cost of doing business and government. More details may be the devil, but not necessarily any worse than requiring health care or pushing healthcare savings plans.

NOTE: The "more details" were not that bad in this case as they were more or less just a I imagined and went off on.

Immigration Debate

While my earlier post reflected the irony (1) of the juxtaposition or strange (2) bedfellows that may have had meaning as a compromise as well as the endorsement of People For the American Way as another indicator that it was balanced, I must highlight my retraction of the sparse indication of meaning which I had in mind if not in print. Here is a more reasoned if not unusual combo(3) which has similarity (4) in at least bucking the tide, not only of immigration but the troubles we find ourselves.

Hint 1. McCain-Feingold partners in campaign finance reform and possible opponents in 2008. [HINT 1B: (4-3-06) More of a comment on Feingold's principled approach on censure vs. McCain's political tact or flip-flop toward the fold.]
Hint 2. Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Kennedy-McCain) as well as the PFAW.
Hint 3. Unusual Combo: Hartmann-Carlson in order of my stumbling on the pieces, not the order referenced.
Hint 4.People for the American Way