More truth about Bush's lies

Ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was fired for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts. See, O'Neill lacked Washington smarts and refused to do the "leaving for personal reasons" crap. It got nasty. And now he helps Ron Suskind write a damaging book on the Bush Administration, and then talked to 60 Minutes.

"O'Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

"At cabinet meetings, he says the president was 'like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection,' forcing top officials to act 'on little more than hunches about what the president might think.'

"He also says that President Bush was disengaged, at least on domestic issues, and that disturbed him. And he says that wasn't his experience when he worked as a top official under Presidents Nixon and Ford, or the way he ran things when he was chairman of Alcoa.

"'From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,' says O'’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“'From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,' says Suskind. 'Day one, these things were laid and sealed.'

"As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as 'Why Saddam?' and 'Why now?' were never asked."

So what was BushCo's reply? To discredit him with unnamed sources saying he was ineffective and gaffe prone, they sent in life-long Dubya pal and chief fundraiser in 2000 (now Commerce Secretary) Don Evans to say Bush is a strong leader in cabinet meetings. As Paul Krugman points out they failed to discredit or disprove what O'Neill said about the war or tax cuts, because it is the truth.

"How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?"

My personal favorite is that they are already investigating O'Neill for a potential securty breach given that the word "Secret" appeared stamped on the illegible documents shown on a 60 minutes graphic. Yet at the same time, they sure took their sweet time with a real security breach when ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife was outed as an undercover CIA operative when he spilled the beans on Cheney's trumped up "evidence" of Saddam's ambitions.

In other maddening news about how BushCo is taking this country down the tube, the International Monetary Fund, who often chides 3rd world countries or poorer countries like Mexico, Argentina, or Bukino Faso for its budgeting to get loans, wrote a scathing report about its concerns about the US budget under George W. Bush.

The IMF is largely controlled by the US and EU because those who put in the most $ get the most say on how to spend it. But, unfortunately for Bush, they also happen to be staffed with Economists. In their report that warned of the dangers to the global economy posed by the United States' lack of spending discipline, its reliance on foreign creditors, and its failure to plan adequately for future government liabilities.

Meanwhile, the new Treasury Secretary, John Snow, seems to have no trouble lying. Saying we can go to the Moon, Mars, give Prescription Drugs to the elderly, occupy Iraq and Kabul, keep massive tax cuts for the rich, oh and halve the decifit in Bush's second term.

"In the 2000 campaign," notes Slate's Daniel Gross, "Vice President Al Gore said we should sequester the Social Security surpluses in a 'lockbox' to prevent appropriators from spending them. Bush agreed in principle. But that commitment went out the window soon after the inauguration. In his first three budgets, Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations—about $160 billion per year!

"By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004—which began in October 2003—if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion, rather close to the modern peak of 6 percent of GDP. And according to its own projections (the bottom line of Table 8 represents the Social Security surplus), the administration plans to spend an additional $990 billion in such funds between now and 2008." And we know that those numbers are low. Which means were in even worse shape than we think, for now and the future."

OK this is too depressing, let's talk about the (hopefully) 44th president of the US.


SUSA says: Clark coming on strong. Plus: more proof that Clark is more electable than Dean

Arizona (PDF) (12/16 results in parenthesis) MoE 4.7%

Clark 39 (29)
Dean 32 (31)
Lieberman 8 (10)
Kerry 5 (7)
Gephardt 4 (9)
Other 7
Undecided 4

New Hampshire (PDF) (12/14-16 results in parenthesis) MoE 4.7%

Dean 35 (45)
Clark 26 (11)
Kerry 13 (15)
Lieberman 9 (11)
Edwards 6 (6)
Gephardt 3 (4)
Other 5
Undecided 2

Missouri (PDF) MoE 4.7%

Gephardt 37
Dean 19
Clark 15
Kerry 6
Other 6
Undecided 6
Lieberman 5
Edwards 5

Rasmussen's national poll Notes that "In the "Red States," those carried by George W. Bush in the last election, Clark is the favorite of 21%, Dean is the choice of 15% and Edwards attracts support from 12%. In the Blue States (carried by Gore), Dean leads Clark 27% to 13%."