George W. Bush

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Wild Acorns?

Conservative activists and talk show hosts, continuing a crusade begun during the presidential campaign, have been calling for their compatriots to dig up dirt on appointees and beneficiaries of Obama administration funding. The result has been an effort by the Democrats to quickly blunt any controversy by terminating links with anyone deemed controversial.
Recently, a low-level White House environmental official named… [Read the rest]

Silenzio! Demands Silvio

There’s a fascinating political-media brouhaha going on in Italy that is a kind of turbocharged mega-Lewinsky scandal, but it is getting comparatively little coverage in the United States. One of the country’s leading newspapers is challenging Silvio Berlusconi, the 72-year-old Italian prime minister as to the nature of a relationship he began in 2008 with a 17-year-old girl named Noemi.… [Read the rest]

US ATTYS: MISSING THE ORIGINS

The New York Times reports on new documents showing that Bush White House political honcho Karl Rove was much more deeply involved in the early moves that led to the firings of numerous United States Attorneys, seemingly for partisan reasons. But the article fails to focus on what matters most: Why?
Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the… [Read the rest]

The Foreign-Policy Establishment

Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, recently wrote an interesting piece for Foreign Policy magazine about what topics are considered “taboo” among establishment foreign-policy wonks—a group that includes Walt himself as a member. The article is equally compelling for what it says as for what it implies about Walt, as an example of the class… [Read the rest]

A Drive for Unrestricted Executive Power

The New York Times comes out with a strong editorial, calling for an investigation into Bush administration security abuses, now that it is clear that the practices were not necessary to protect the national interest.
We’ve known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke the law repeatedly in the name of national security. It is now clear that many… [Read the rest]

Goldman Sachs Record Bonuses: Where’s the Investigation?

Goldman Sachs is on pace to make record bonus payouts after a robust first half, the Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday.
Goldman staff in London were briefed on the outlook and told they could look forward to the bonus hikes if the company registers, as predicted, its most profitable year ever, the report said.
The surge in projected profit can be attributed… [Read the rest]

Obama’s Appointee Scorecard: Look #2

The other day, I wrote about the need to study the qualifications of presidential appointees. I noted how Obama’s choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, unlike Bush’s guy, Michael Brown, actually had decades of experience in precisely this area. However, before we start assuming that Obama only appoints people based on credentials, let’s look at this humorous,… [Read the rest]

Obama’s Appointee Scorecard: Look #1

One thing the media ought to do on a regular basis is provide updates on the quality of appointees a president makes. Irrespective of political philosophy, most of us can agree that people should be appointed to positions for which they appear qualified. And they should not be hired for positions where their experience runs directly counter to the fundamental… [Read the rest]

Paying More to Cut Costs

The Washington Post today reviews the political push that led to the $36.5 billion in Obama’s stimulus package devoted to modernizing health records. Behind the president’s rosy predictions about the plan’s cost savings is the very industry that stands to gain a fortune from the bill’s passage.
Candidate Obama promised $77.8 billion could be saved annually from upgrading health information technology.… [Read the rest]

obama-new

THE GAME THAT GOES ON AND ON: A SWISS BANK, A PRESIDENT, AND THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

THE GAME THAT GOES ON AND ON: A SWISS BANK, A PRESIDENT, AND THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

A little-noted presidential golf outing opens the door to an intrigue-filled world of financiers, murky international interests, money-laundering, tax evasion, and politics as not-so-usual.
 — 
Last August, the presidential press corps followed Barack Obama and his family to Martha’s Vineyard for their brief vacation. The coverage focused on summery fare—a visit to an ice cream parlor, the books the president… [Read the rest]

What Obama Is Up Against

What Obama Is Up Against

The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?
We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president… [Read the rest]

Behind Clinton Backer’s Arrest:  a Bipartisan, International Affair

Behind Clinton Backer’s Arrest:
a Bipartisan, International Affair

AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano

WhoWhatWhy.com reports exclusively on the background of Hassan Nemazee, the top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who was arrested and charged with forging loan documents. Early media accounts cast the event as an embarrassment for Ms. Clinton and the Democratic Party involving the financial misdoings of one prominent backer. Actually it is much more.  Behind the Nemazee… [Read the rest]

Hillary’s Bush Connection

Hillary’s Bush Connection

Research support for this story was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. Published in conjunction with The Nation.
IN THE CLINTONS’ PURSUIT OF POWER, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign before being unmasked as… [Read the rest]

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.
A Real News exclusive, first published on The Huffington Post
Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford.… [Read the rest]

25 Democratic Consultants

25 Democratic Consultants

Jack Quinn served as Vice President Gore’s Chief of Staff, and later as Counsel to President Clinton. Now he is a partner in a political consulting and lobbying firm with a close friend of Tom DeLay, and together, they have represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American consumers, and… [Read the rest]

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud… [Read the rest]

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