[WestsidePete]

Too many facts to list how Bush has put us in the toilet...

[Deuce]

Unreal.

He can only do so much. It is every single rooster boy in the senate, house, congress that has fukked this country up. You can't blame everything on Bush.

[Kingctb27]

Yeah, all his fault. He was behind 911 as well.

[durito]

We are in for some tough times.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Not about the financial crisis

The crisis isn’t the only scary thing going on. Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It’s not just a mob phenomenon — it’s visible in the right-wing media, and to some extent in the speeches of McCain and Palin.

We’ve seen this before. One thing that has been sort of written out of the mainstream history of politics is the sheer insanity of the attacks on the Clintons — they were drug smugglers, they murdered Vince Foster (and lots of other people), they were in league with foreign powers. And this stuff didn’t just show up in fringe publications — it was discussed in Congress, given props by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and so on.

What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have settled that once and for all.

What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.

The next few years are going to be very, very tough.

[WestsidePete]

Unreal.

He can only do so much. It is every single rooster boy in the senate, house, congress that has fukked this country up. You can't blame everything on Bush.

I agree Duece, but if someone is going to start a thread blaming it all on Obama...then let's balance it out here...It would be nice to actually hear and see both parties stand together and take blame for things...but that won't happen

[ryanXL977]

he can only do so much
he has more power than just about any president ever
he stated iraq himself, took the surplus and lowered taxes while starting a war. thats a very bright idea

[WestsidePete]

Yeah, all his fault. He was behind 911 as well.

Didn't say that and 9/11 didn't tear us apart as a country

[ms61853]

Drew Griffin had better watch out. If he continues reporting on Barack Obama like this, pretty soon the Obama campaign will target him as an extremist and a hate-monger. Griffin tells Campbell Brown on CNN how ACORN commits voter fraud, and then explains how Obama is closely tied to the group:

CAMPBELL BROWN: Now, it is officially nonpartisan. But this group works hard to register low-income voters who tend to vote for Democrats. ACORN’s under fire over allegedly phony voter registration in several states, and Drew Griffin of CNN’s Special Investigations Unit is digging into this for us. You’ll be pretty surprised by what he found.

DREW GRIFFIN: There are 5,000 of them.

RUTH ANN HOAGLAND: These?

GRIFFIN: These.

HOAGLAND: These.

GRIFFIN: Those?

HOAGLAND: And these.

GRIFFIN: They are new voter registration applications turned into by the community organizing group, ACORN, which has launched a massive voter registration drive, and with 5,000 applications in this one county dumped on just before the October 6 deadline; it looked like to Elections Board Administrator Ruth Ann Hoagland like ACORN was extremely successful, until her workers began finding problems.

GRIFFIN: A lot of them?

HOAGLAND: 50 percent. We had close to 5,000 total from ACORN, and so far we have identified about 2,100.

GRIFFIN: So roughly half of them are bad.

HOAGLAND: Correct.

GRIFFIN: Registered to a dead person, registered as a person who lives at a fast food shop.

HOAGLAND: Yes.

GRIFFIN: Or just all of them amazingly in the same hand.

HOAGLAND: Yes. Yes. All the signatures look exactly the same. Everything on the card filled out looks just the same.

GRIFFIN: Ruth Ann. Fraud?

HOAGLAND: We have no idea what the motive behind it is. It’s just overwhelming to us.

GRIFFIN: It’s not that some are bad. Once they started going through them, every one they looked at was bad.

HOAGLAND: Right. We’ve run into a lot of the same – we’ll go through ten cards, and the exact — in the exact same hand, the card is filled out the same, the signature is the same. We’ll make telephone calls, and every phone has been disconnected.

GRIFFIN: Hoagland decided to stop the review all together, work on other apparently legitimate registrations and get back to the other half of what she now calls “the fake pile,” later.

HOAGLAND: It’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating.

GRIFFIN: Here is another ACORN filled out registration form. It’s for Jimmy Johns, 10839 Broadway in Crown Pointe. Jimmy Johns. We decided to track him down. Here he is. Is there anybody here that’s actually named Jimmy Johns? Nobody registered to vote here named Jimmy Johns? This could really — I mean, there has been no fraud yet because people haven’t voted yet, right?

HOAGLAND: Correct. We’ll find out on Election Day.

GRIFFIN: But it certainly sets up a potential.

HOAGLAND: The potential, I suppose, is always there. It’s just that the volume — the volume is just incredible.

GRIFFIN: The elections board is run by both Republicans and Democrats. Regardless of whose party, we’ve got a problem with these ballots. These registrations.

SALLY LASOTA: Both sides, Democrats and Republicans. For us, it’s unfortunate. ACORN, with its intent, perhaps, was good to begin with, but unfortunately went awry somewhere.

GRIFFIN: It is fraud, says the Democrat Director, Sally LaSota.

LASOTA: Well, if you look, it’s the same signature for all three voters. It’s as though the one individual tried — did three separate applications but you can tell the signature—we’re not handwriting experts, but what’s obvious is obvious.

GRIFFIN: ACORN’s voter registration drives are under investigation or suspicion in several states. Just yesterday, local authorities raided this ACORN office in Las Vegas where ACORN workers allegedly registered members of the Dallas Cowboys football team. Over the last four years, a dozen states investigated complaints of fraudulent registrations filed by ACORN, and complaints of fraud by ACORN have exploded nationwide in just the last few weeks. We tried to contact the ACORN director in Gary, Indiana. But when the phone messages went unanswered, we went to the office. It’s abandoned. ACORN told us that the state director for Indiana ACORN is actually based in this office in Milwaukee. But today, we found it empty, too. ACORN’s attorney in Boston told us allegations his organization has committed fraud is a government attempt to keep the disenfranchised from voting.

ACORN LAWYER BRIAN MOLLER: We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes. We think that by attacking ACORN that they are going to discourage people who have may have registered with ACORN from voting.

GRIFFIN: Brian Moller says ACORN has its own quality control, has fired workers in the past, including workers in Gary. Despite its past, the Obama campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN to help fund its primary registration drive, and ACORN has endorsed Barack Obama for president. The Obama campaign reacted this afternoon, saying, it is “committed to protecting the integrity of the voting process and said it has not worked with ACORN during the general election”.

BROWN: Drew Griffin. Drew, though the campaign, or Obama, rather, has worked with ACORN, though, in the past. Is that accurate?

GRIFFIN: That’s accurate. As an attorney, he represented ACORN in a motor voter court case, which, by the way, Barack Obama won for ACORN. But all afternoon long, the campaign has been calling us, trying to distance themselves from ACORN.

BROWN: All right. Drew Griffin for us, tonight. Drew, as always, thanks.

I’m less surprised to see this on Campbell Brown’s show than on Anderson Cooper’s. I’ve appeared a couple of times with Brown, and she seems interested in hearing both sides of a story. When Cooper heard Griffin’s report on Obama and Ayers, Cooper looked like he’d eaten a bug and attempted to water it down somewhat. Brown not only let Griffin’s reporting stand, she gave him the opening to talk about Obama’s ties to ACORN.

How long before Team Obama sends an e-mail asking followers to start flooding CNN with outrage and demands that Griffin be taken off the air?

[durito]

Didn't say that and 9/11 didn't tear us apart as a country

It was the way they responded to 9/11 that did it. (using it as an excuse to pursue their far right agenda)

[WestsidePete]

MS, what about Enron's ties to the Whitehouse back in the day?? Personal calls to Cheney?? What about Haliburton getting contracts with no other bids even allowed? If all this happened while Clinton was President you wouldn't blame him since it happened on his watch?? I honestly feel McCain would be a decent President, but the narrow minded politics of this administration has hurt us in many ways and how people feel about Republicans right now...you say Obama is persoanly responsible for the mortgage crisis, how so?? I never new Obama had so much power that he alone can control the entire mortgage industry.

[ms61853]

MS, what about Enron's ties to the Whitehouse back in the day?? Personal calls to Cheney?? What about Haliburton getting contracts with no other bids even allowed? If all this happened while Clinton was President you wouldn't blame him since it happened on his watch?? I honestly feel McCain would be a decent President, but the narrow minded politics of this administration has hurt us in many ways and how people feel about Republicans right now...you say Obama is persoanly responsible for the mortgage crisis, how so?? I never new Obama had so much power that he alone can control the entire mortgage industry.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020408/greider

Enron Democrats

[ryanXL977]

do you understand how much ken lay had to do with bush winning in 2000

how do you decide which are the best blogs for you to parrot

[ms61853]

do you understand how much ken lay had to do with bush winning in 2000

how do you decide which are the best blogs for you to parrot

So now "The Nation" magazine is a blog?

And to clue you in, it's a pretty damn left wing magazine at that.

[WestsidePete]

Enron democrats?? what a joke...way to shift the blame again...Ken Lay had a direct line to the White House...MS, has the Bush administration done anything wrong in your mind in the past 8 years?? Even Bill O'Reilly said on his radio show today that Bush will go down as one of the worst Presidents we have ever had since all of this came on his watch...

[ryanXL977]

i dont read blogs, i dont watch anything but sports
but i have common sense and dont need to be led around by my ****ing nose.

what is it you like about bush so much? what is it he did that made the world and the usa a better place

have you ever been outside the usa?

[WestsidePete]

i dont read blogs, i dont watch anything but sports
but i have common sense and dont need to be led around by my ****ing nose.

what is it you like about bush so much? what is it he did that made the world and the usa a better place

have you ever been outside the usa?

Ryan,

people fukking hate us around the world...

[guitarjosh]

MS, what about Enron's ties to the Whitehouse back in the day?? Personal calls to Cheney?? What about Haliburton getting contracts with no other bids even allowed? If all this happened while Clinton was President you wouldn't blame him since it happened on his watch?? I honestly feel McCain would be a decent President, but the narrow minded politics of this administration has hurt us in many ways and how people feel about Republicans right now...you say Obama is persoanly responsible for the mortgage crisis, how so?? I never new Obama had so much power that he alone can control the entire mortgage industry.

You do know that did happen in 1997 & 1998 right?

[themajormt]

You do know that did happen in 1997 & 1998 right?

Actually it was 2001?????

[WestsidePete]

You do know that did happen in 1997 & 1998 right?

Haliburton got no competing bids in Iraq...

[guitarjosh]

Haliburton got no competing bids in Iraq...

I know, they also got no competing bids in Kosovo and Bosnia, both under Clinton

[ryanXL977]

Ryan,

people fukking hate us around the world...

no they dont
ive been everywhere and nobody hates us
they hate our government

[ms61853]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

From that right wing blog known as the Washington Post:

Democrats are savoring the chance to use embattled Enron Corp.'s Republican ties to embarrass the Bush administration at upcoming congressional hearings. But Republicans might turn the tables, to some extent at least, because Enron has courted and supported prominent Democrats as well.

According to internal Enron documents and the recollections of former employees, Chairman Kenneth L. Lay had the ear of top Democrats in the 1980s and '90s. He and his colleagues used that access to promote the company's interests with the Clinton administration and key congressional Democrats.

In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."

The following February, Lay met with Energy Secretary Federico Peña to urge White House action on electricity legislation favored by Enron. Peña "suggested that President Clinton might be motivated [to act] by some key contacts from important constituents," according to another Enron memo.

Taking the cue, Lay, one of 25 business executives on Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, wrote to the president the same day.

Lay and other Enron executives showed a clear preference for Republicans in their political giving. Lay personally gave GOP organizations $325,000 during the 2000 campaign. But the company itself was often more evenhanded.

The corporation contributed $532,000 in unregulated "soft money" to Democratic coffers during the 2000 election, only slightly less than the $623,000 that went to GOP groups, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington research group. Enron's political action committee also gave $10,000 to the New Democrat Network, which was co-founded by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee that year, now chairs the Senate Government Affairs Committee, which is leading an inquiry into Enron's collapse.

Several senior Enron officials spent election night at Vice President Gore's headquarters in Nashville.

The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that Republicans received 73 percent of total donations from Enron, its executives and its employees over the past 12 years. Still, many of the congressional members soon to investigate Enron -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- have enjoyed the company's largess. Enron or its executives have given money to nearly half of all current House members, and to almost three-quarters of the senators, according to groups monitoring political donations.

The company backed Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in his successful 1998 campaign to oust Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. Schumer's views on electricity deregulation dovetailed closely with Enron's. Two years later Schumer, who has advocated deregulation as a way of reducing New York state's high power costs, co-authored a bill to restructure electricity markets along lines favored by Enron.

Enron also has supported Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), whose state is traversed by a major east-west Enron gas pipeline.

Former employees say Lay's friendships with other Democrats were based as much on rapport as pragmatism. This group includes former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), whose brief 1992 presidential bid had Lay's backing, and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), with whom Lay served on the Eli Lilly Co. board of directors in the 1990s.

He donated to the 1994 campaign of Texas Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, and served on her business council. And it was a Democrat, former treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, who called a Treasury official last Nov. 8 to inquire about Enron's situation shortly before it collapsed.

As Enron transformed itself from an old-line gas pipeline company into an innovative, risk-taking trader of gas, electricity and more exotic derivatives in the early 1990s, it needed both Democrats and Republicans to help remove regulatory obstacles.

"Ken Lay would write letters and pick up the phone to call whoever was needed, and the party didn't matter that much," said one former employee.

In 1992, a Democratic-controlled Congress approved a major energy bill that set the stage for a new wholesale electricity marketplace. Trading companies such as Enron could use the transmission lines of regulated utility companies to sell blocs of electricity to private customers.

In 1994, the Washington-based Export-Import Bank approved a $302 million loan to promote Enron's investment in a power plant in Dabhol, India. According to a 1997 article in Time magazine, Clinton took a personal interest in the project, deputizing his chief of staff, Thomas "Mack" McLarty III, to monitor it. McLarty later became a paid adviser to Enron.

A McLarty aide explained yesterday that the White House involvement was part of a broader administration effort to help U.S. companies take advantage of new opportunities abroad.

In 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, stocked with Clinton appointees, helped Enron with a series of orders that weakened the monopoly of nuclear and coal-burning utilities. In July of that year, Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic Party.

The Clinton administration's interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron's business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases. Such a system would curtail the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants that emitted large amounts of carbon dioxide, while encouraging new investments in gas-fired plants and pipelines -- precisely Enron's line of business.

But the effort faced powerful opposition from automakers, oil companies and utilities. In early 1997 the Senate unanimously instructed the administration not to agree to any carbon-reducing strategy that would harm the U.S. economy.

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

At Lay's meeting with Peña on Feb. 20, 1998, he spoke of restructuring the U.S. electricity market in ways that would benefit Enron. Lay pressed the administration to propose legislation that would assert federal authority over a national electricity market.

According to a company version of the meeting, Lay and Peña agreed that a go-slow approach to deregulation, advocated by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), was unacceptable. Peña asked Enron officials to keep Energy Department staffers posted on developments in Congress, and solicited comments on the administration's draft of its Comprehensive National Energy Strategy, an Enron document said. Lay felt the draft was "headed in the right direction" except for a few points, the document said.

The 2000 presidential election posed a dilemma for the company, sources say. While Lay supported George W. Bush, some officials in Enron's Houston and Washington offices backed Gore and Lieberman. Lay personally contributed $325,000 in soft money to GOP campaign organizations that year, and gave no soft money to Democratic groups. After the election, Lay chipped in $100,000 to the Bush inaugural festivities.

On the eve of the 2000 election, Enron hired a Democratic official from the Treasury Department to run the company's Washington office. Sources say the move infuriated GOP House leaders, who retaliated by shutting Enron representatives out of several key strategy meetings on electricity legislation.

Hoping to return to the GOP's good graces, the company in April 2001 hired the Washington lobbying firm of Quinn & Gillespie. Its senior partner, Ed Gillespie, had been a top campaign adviser to the new president, Bush.

For the first half of the year, the firm collected $525,000 in fees from Enron, a hefty sum but well worth it, according to a former Enron employee.

"It was Eddie [Gillespie], not Ken Lay, who got us to people in the White House and Congress," the employee said.

[WestsidePete]

I know, they also got no competing bids in Kosovo and Bosnia, both under Clinton

But companies were prepared to give bids in Iraq and were rejected...doesn't look good for the Vice President to have still been bringing in a million a year on the Haliburton board while competing bids were rejected that were lower than Haliburton's...

[pavyracer]

no they dont
ive been everywhere and nobody hates us
they hate our government

Ditto. Everyone loves me when I go overseas for business. When they ask me about Bush we all share jokes. It's fukking hilarious sharing Bush jokes with Ukrainians.

[ryanXL977]

exactly. i dont know anyonw who hates americans. they hate our govt, and so do most americans

newsflash, we are in iraq for no reason, everbody knows this. nobody argues otherwise anymore. other countries governments act against their interests sometimes, like ours

we are losing our democracy bc our government no longer does what the people ask of it

[WestsidePete]

no they dont
ive been everywhere and nobody hates us
they hate our government

Yes, they hate our government, true most don't hate our citizens but some don't separate the difference between the people and government....

[WestsidePete]

Ditto. Everyone loves me when ago overseas for business. When they ask my about Bush we all share jokes. It's fukking hilarious sharing Bush jokes with Ukrainians.

You're right Pavy.... they respect us as businessmen

[ryanXL977]

Yes, they hate our government, true most don't hate our citizens but some don't separate the difference between the people and government....

not in my experience, not at all
have you experienced this?

if you meet an iraqi do you assume he is a dictator? if you meet a russian do you hate him bc of putin? i just dont agree that people hate us bc of bush. they hate bush, and they should. anyone with half a brain should

[reno cool]

It was the way they responded to 9/11 that did it. (using it as an excuse to pursue their far right agenda)

tell me you didn't know that was a lock the second the towers fell.

[ryanXL977]

they had to have 911 to go into iraq. had to. thats why people think it was bush who did it.
i personally dont think bush could tie his shoes so how the **** could he manage two towers coming down

only someone with half abrain could do it

hence bin laden has dominated bush in straight sets 6-0, 6-0, 6-1

[losturmarbles]

But companies were prepared to give bids in Iraq and were rejected...doesn't look good for the Vice President to have still been bringing in a million a year on the Haliburton board while competing bids were rejected that were lower than Haliburton's...

who the fck cares, youre blatantly biased. even when someone points it out to you, you simply ignore it.

[WestsidePete]

The following can't be disputed by MS, from his own post...

1)Ken Lay personally contributed 325K in soft money to GOP
2)Enron hired the Gillespie & Quinn lobbying firm
3)Gillespie was a top campaign adviser to Bush
4)Ed Gillespie connected Enron to people in the White House

[pimike]

don't forget the dems

[smitch124]

It was the way they responded to 9/11 that did it. (using it as an excuse to pursue their far right agenda)

See PNAC

[pimike]

fanny mae