Washington Post: The White House endorsed CIA waterboarding policy in classified memos in 2003-2004

Condoleezza Rice:
Authorize torture?

No problem! Where do I sign?

Richard "Dick" Cheney: The Constitution
exists solely to make it easier for me to
lie. Disagree? Let's see if you disagree
under torture, muthafucka!

According to the Washington Post, the George W. Bush White House gave the explicit thumbs-up to the secret CIA torture of terrorism suspects:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

The rest of the article documenting this charming matter can be found here.

Our United States President: Never seen a torture I didn't approve of -- in writing!

Stop the creeping fascism of the GOP! Seriously. Let's stop these cynical, racist, authoritarian, totalitarian motherfuckers before it's too late. Who else is going to stop them? Antonin Scalia?

Talkin' Dirty Secrets Keepin', Executive Branch Authoritarianism Pushin', Disaster Capitalism Evincin', Patriot Act Recallin', Bailout Blues!

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson
("Hank" to his friends. So let's stick with Henry).

Q. Should Congress pass into law the $700 billion Wall Street bailout -- otherwise known as The Bailout, otherwise known as the Temporary Asset Relief Plan -- proposed by Secretary of State Henry Paulson (and supported, obviously, by all of the Bushies and the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke), in its current form?

A. No, if estimates by Daniel Bruno Sanz, and numerous other experts, predict correctly what fate will befall the value of the not-so-Almighty US dollar. (i.e.: free fall) (Huffington Post).

A. No, because it's "an enormously expensive plan that doesn’t seem to address the real problem," according to Paul Krugman, in whose view Senator Chris Dodd's counterproposal is vastly superior, and which "has a real chance" of edging out Paulson's, due to the paternalism, arrogance and pushiness of Paulson's demand for full Executive Branch control, with zero oversight (more on this in a moment). (New York Times Web site)

You want full immunity from any & all future prosecution??
Say it ain't so, Henry. We thought you were different.

A. No, because, first and foremost, Paulson's proposal gives the Executive Branch FULL CONTROL over the allocation of the $700 billion, with ZERO OVERSIGHT and FULL IMMUNITY FROM OVERSIGHT AND EVEN PROSECUTION. Patriot Act, anyone? Just fucking read this sentence, for which some sneaky little fuck in the Bush Administration wins the Totalitarian Fascist of the Year Award (actually, let's just award it to Paulson; oh, and the boldface is mine):

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Yes. That day has really come, America, where your Executive Branch is actually saying: "Just hand over to us all of the control over everything, and just trust us, we'll fix everything behind closed doors. All we need is this $700 billion! Please just sign on the dotted line immediately."

If you're not angry, America, you should be. You respond: "But, I'm too busy to pay attention to this. I've got a job and a wife and a car and mouths to feed, and...." All the more reason you should be angry, America. All the more reason you should be angry....

Here's a taste of what Yves Smith, contributing to Naked Capitalism, which is a fantastic blog for those of us who are looking for straightforward explanations of the Bush Administration's economic shenanigans, has to say about it this sneaky little provision, in a post titled "Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal":

This puts the Treasury's actions beyond the rule of law. This is a financial coup d'etat, with the only limitation the $700 billion balance sheet figure. The measure already gives the Treasury the authority not simply to buy dud mortgage paper but other assets as it deems fit. There is no accountability beyond a report (contents undefined) to Congress three months into the program and semiannually thereafter. The Treasury could via incompetence or venality grossly overpay for assets and advisory services, and fail to exclude consultants with conflicts of interest, and there would be no recourse. Given the truly appalling track record of this Administration in its outsourcing, this is not an idle worry.

But far worse is the precedent it sets. This Administration has worked hard to escape any constraints on its actions, not to pursue noble causes, but to curtail civil liberties: Guantanamo, rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaps. It has used the threat of unseen terrorists and a seemingly perpetual war on radical Muslim to justify gutting the Constitution. The Supreme Court, which has been supine on many fronts, has finally started to push back, but would it challenge a bill that sweeps aside judicial review? Informed readers are encouraged to speak up.

Nouriel Roubini does not think it passes the smell test:

`He's asking for a huge amount of power,'' said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, `Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy.''

A. No, because the proposal is fundamentally dishonest, and furthermore, would not work. Smith goes on to articulate a significant (and in a couple of respects, shocking) substantive (again, the boldface is mine) problem:

...The Treasury has been using the formula that it will buy assets at "fair market prices". As we have noted, there is simply huge amounts of cash ready to bottom fish in housing-related assets (we saw an estimate of $400 billion a couple of months ago). The issue is not lack of willing buyers; it's that the prospective sellers are not willing to accept prices that reflect the weak and deteriorating prospects for housing.....

...[T]he plan makes no sense unless the Orwellian "fair market prices" means "above market prices.".....Confirmation of our view came from a reader by e-mail:

I worked at [Wall Street firm you've heard of], but now I handle financial services for [a Congressman], and I was on the conference call that Paulson, Bernanke and the House Democratic Leadership held for all the members yesterday afternoon. It's supposed to be members only, but there's no way to enforce that if it's a conference call, and you may have already heard from other staff who were listening in.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that, behind closed doors, Paulson describes the plan differently. He explicitly says that it will buy assets at above market prices (although he still claims that they are undervalued) because the holders won't sell at market prices. Anna Eshoo pressed him on how the government can compel the holders to sell, and he basically dodged the question. I think that's because he didn't want to admit that the government would just keep offering more and more.

I don't think that our leadership has been very good during this negotiation (or really, during any showdowns with this administration) at forcing the administration to own their position. If Paulson wants this plan, then he needs to sell it to the public, and if he sells a different plan to the public (the nonsense buying-at-market-price plan) then we should pass that. I'd rather see the government act as a market maker for the assets to get them transferred over to private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds and other willing holders. And if we need to recapitalize these companies, it seems like the cheapest way for the taxpayer is to go in and buy up the distressed debt and then convert that to equity.

So unlike the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took on dodgy assets which had fallen into the FDIC's lap due to the failure of thrifts, and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, which was established in 1934 after the housing market had bottomed, this program is going to swing into action with the clear but not honestly disclosed intent of buying assets at above market prices when future markets and the analysts with the best track records on forecasting this decline (you can add Robert Shiller, CR at Calculated Risk, and Nouriel Roubini to the list) believe it has considerably further to fall.

A. No. But also, Naomi Klein warns us to be equally wary of alternative far-Right proposals, particularly those of Newt Gingrich, that seek to use this moment's crisis as an opportunity to shotgun through legislation that would push agendas of privatization, reverse what few social justice safeguards we may still recognize in this country, and -- of course -- to deregulate the private sector even further, including the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This is serious and twisted shit. Excerpt of Klein's piece, which draws upon her convincing theory of 'disaster capitalism' (Huffington Post):

I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).

The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.

Drill, Baby Drill! God damn, am I sick of the Grand Old Party. I mean, although I have always found his politics to be barbaric, its underlying principles deeply racist in character, in a weird way I have always found Newt Gingrich to be essentially a principled and intellectually honest man. (Keep in mind, this is in comparison to the majority of the bullshit artists of the Far Right.) Having said that, this is one of those moments in which I'd like nothing more than to punch him right smack dab in the middle of that fat, smug, pink, greasy cracker face of his.*

Newt Gingrich: "What about the plantation-owners??"

_______________
* What's gotten into me today?

Bush & McCain are both Republicans: the party of lies, torture, warmongering, destruction of public infrastructure, widening gap between rich & poor.

John McCain and George W. Bush are members of the same political party.
(Let's all remind our friends, relatives, colleagues and coworkers.)

Jon Stewart / George Orwell expose eery similarity between totalitarian 'doublethink' and Republican 'talking points'.

Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, September 3, 2008 (thanks are due to Jennifer Anne for bringing the existence of this video to my attention):





Passages from George Orwell's 1984, describing 'doublethink':

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

His [Winston's] mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink.