Bush Crime Family

Crooks and Liars points to this Bloomberg News story:

Italian Pensions Sapped by Private Funds Bush Backed
By Andrew Davis and Alessandra Migliaccio

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Italy did for retirement financing what President George W. Bush couldn’t do in the U.S.: It privatized part of its social security system. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

The global market meltdown has created losses for those who agreed to shift their contributions from a government severance payment plan to private funds meant to yield higher returns. Anger is rising both at the state, which promoted the change, and money managers such as UniCredit SpA and Arca Previdenza, which stood to profit.

So many diversions, so little time! That is part of the strategy, of course. Impoverish people so they must work harder to maintain their daily lives, while simultaneously overwhelming them with info overload and ersatz news. Decentralize the crimes themselves through a network of events and operatives over a time continuum, and choke off government scrutiny and regulation by reduced funding. Buy off the people's government. Throw in classic disinformation methods, and wrap it all in the cross (invoking religious endorsement) and the flag (inferring without actualizing authentic patriotism).

Blend, at a moderate but continuously increasing pace, with intermittent but increasingly harrowing instances of terror.

Is James Baker the real White House puppetmaster?

Did he write the plan to invade Iraq in April 2001, five months before 9/11?

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

By Dave Lindorff

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.

The Vatican’s recent snub of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is only the latest salvo in the battle between Pope Benedict XVI and President George W. Bush. This tug of war has profound implications for both U.S. foreign policy and the critical Catholic vote in 2008's presidential race.

Overlapping Agendas

Things haven't always been tense between Bush and Benedict. They share similar views regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button conservative issues. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (as Benedict was known before becoming Pope in April 2005) even helped Bush secure the White House for a second term.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - George W Bush

Much in the same way that US investors were “steered” into rip-off mortgage loans, the entire country has been “steered” into an economic crisis. The question is how to get out of it.

In the subprime loan scandal, unscrupulous brokers conned home buyers with poor credit histories into deals designed to profit lenders and bleed borrowers. Contract “teasers” hid ballooning monthly payments while a lack of regulation allowed the scam to continue unabated. Millions more Americans now face losing their homes.

Newsweek gloms onto the sentiment expressed in MoDo's devestating "Daddy Moment" op-ed with a ball-licking Poppy propagrandizing look at the failed Bush #41 Presidency and how he's gonna ride in and save Junior's failed pResidency. With Dim-Son at a 31% all-time low in the latest post election Newsweek poll (he's now as unpopular as Cheney at 31%), rather than promote Poppy as Dim-Son's saviour (ergo the country's) as the wizzard behind the curtain, they might as well have Cheney resign, then have Junior name Poppy as VEEP before resigning himself, thereby putting Poppy in to finish up Dim-Son's failed #43 pResidency... Do they really think the public, and Republican electorate, are going buy into this BS and be comforted by the "magic" of Poppy Bush waving his magic wand and pulling on metaphysical levers?

MoDo kills with her mid-week op-ed...

A Come-to-Daddy Moment
Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they’re taking it back. They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical. In a scene that might be called “Murder on the Oval Express,” Rummy turned up dead with so many knives in him that it’s impossible to say who actually finished off the man billed as Washington’s most skilled infighter. (Poppy? Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?)... (more)

Back in March I asked if Reverend Moon is one of the investors in Neil Bush's educational software company, Ignite! For one thing, Neil had been touring with Rev. Moon late last year. Also, Moon has enjoyed a long relationship with the Bush family, having given the Bush parents up to $10 million. Now it turns out that a foundation tied to Moon is donating towards Neil's business.

(BusinessWeek) The stars haven't always aligned for Bush, but at times financial support has. A foundation linked to the controversial Reverend Sun Myung Moon has donated $1 million for a COWs [Ignite's "Curriculum on Wheels"] research project in Washington (D.C.)-area schools. In 2004 a Shanghai chip company agreed to give Bush stock then valued at $2 million for showing up at board meetings. (Bush says he received one-fifth of the shares.) In 1988 a Colorado savings and loan failed while he served on its board, making him a prominent symbol of the S&L scandal. Neil calls himself "the most politically damaged of the [Bush] brothers."