TRIFECTA!

[Octafish]

Besides seafan, who remembers the little turd from Crawford's statement?

"Lucky me. I hit the trifecta." -- George Walker Bush, actin' pretzeldent, Sept. 15, 2001



Krugman was prophetic:

It's Clear Bush Tax Cuts Have Hurt Americans

by Paul Krugman
Published on Sunday, December 9, 2001 in the Boulder Daily Camera

Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."

Lucky him, indeed. The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliche, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration the company did so much to place in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don't work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.

Earlier this year Bush used projections of vast budget surpluses to push through a huge, 10-year tax cut. Most of that tax cut went to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year. Now Daniels tells us that the budget — not just the budget outside Social Security, but the whole enchilada — will be in deficit through 2004. Since the administration's phony budget math ("fuzzy" just doesn't cut it at this point) gets phonier the further you go into the future, this means that we have effectively returned to a state of permanent deficit.

However, with television busy reporting from the caves of Tora Bora, this revelation — which shows that the tax cut was sold on utterly false premises — wasn't even considered headline news.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1209-04.htm

Gee. Missed and forgotten by Corporate McPravda and our current crop of elected officials: the trifecta wasn't lucky for America. The rich are vastly richer. The middle classes are becoming the new poor. The old poor are clear-off the radar. And the country? It's nearly broken, drowned in a small bathtub filled with red ink. Mission accomplished.

[alsame]

1. Luckiest man on earth, isn't he? Coincidentally, the

PNAC group also got their "New Pearl Harbor".

k&r

[Octafish]

3. Funny how that worked out for them.

How Bush Hit the 'Trifecta' on 9/11--and the Public Lost Big-Time

EXCERPT...

Think back to the days before 9/11. The topic on everyone's lips (Condit aside) was: what will happen when budget realities force Bush to raid Social Security? He had explicitly promised during his campaign to establish a contingency fund for severe emergencies that would keep Social Security untouched. But the economy was tanking and the costs of the tax cut made the raid inevitable. Even Daniels acknowledged that the government would be forced to tap Social Security to the tune of $14 billion to fund pending legislation. Strangely, Bush kept insisting, "We can work together to avoid dipping into Social Security." But, beginning August 24, he gave himself an escape clause: "I've said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in case of an economic recession or war." (Three days earlier he had said that there should be "special consideration" in the budget for these contingencies. Otherwise, this was completely new rhetoric.)

[Donnachaidh]

2. clear to anyone who doesn't work in Washington, that is

But of course, THEY personally benefit from he tax cuts... :shrug: K&R!

[Octafish]

5. One example is Trireme Partners...

That nice man Richard Perle was proprietor:

Lunch With the Chairman

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

by Seymour M. Hersh
Annals of National Security
The New Yorker
March 17, 2003

EXCERPT...

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact

USA! USA! USA!

[formercia]

20. Don't forget Feith

He was a partner in Trireme.

[Rex]

4. I remember watching that on youtube...a $5000 per plate event.

He aped it up on stage as the uber-wealthy laughed at his moronic apelike abilities...no not under the table, maybe over there behind the chair (yuck yuck). Little did the social elite know GWB was making fun of them by projecting how much of a total FARCE the 'war on terror' is/was! A defining moment for our country.

We let a mentally ill person be a puppet for an evil tyrant that lusted after oil and power.

[Octafish]

7. 'We're dealing with the issues in a way I hope makes you proud.' (applause)

Incredible, but true. Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neX5Sfr7iWU

[Rex]

9. Can you BELIEVE that man mocked his own countries misery and suffering?

Thanks for that link..>EVERYONE should go and look at it. The fact that he made it his keystone joke is sick and pathetic.

[nashville_brook]

6. i will never forget "trifecta"

[Octafish]

11. Good on ya, Brooksie!

War + Recession + National Emergency = America hits the trifecta!

As long as people still give a damn, we got a chance. Thank you!

[nashville_brook]

23. disaster capitalism needs YOU...to go back to sleep. sleeeeeeeeeeep.

:evilgrin:

[patrice]

8. CREW documentation links > Legal Filings > FOIA

This is a rich information source:

http://www.citizensforethics.org/

:hi:

[Octafish]

16. Love the fact CREW is willing to name names...

And the links lead to, eh, interesting information. F'r example:

The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress

Of course, the CREW executive director Melanie Sloan also serves as counsel to Valerie Plame Wilson.

Thank you very much, patrice!

[patrice]

22. Me too! I totally encourage them to go after un-ethical Democrats, because I WANT to know about them

[indurancevile]

31. i seriously doubt those are the most unethical congresspeople.

[patrice]

35. Something is usually more than nothing & one thing can lead to another if we don't make the perfect

the enemy of the good.

I also very much like the statement that "When it comes to the public tru$t, nothing is small." We need a little more zero tolerance on this stuff.

[Solly Mack]

10. Oh well...if Bush was so bad I'm sure that august body known as Congress would have

impeached and convicted him. Surely, if Bush had done anything harmful or criminal, or abused the power of office in any way, Congress would have roared with indignation and voted to impeach and convict with a swiftness.


lolololololololol

Wheeeeeee

[sad sally]

12. Or if the congress of his day didn't arrest, try, convict or impeach, maybe

the next administration and congress would investigate abuse and crimes (like an illegal war)? Oh wait, the new President nor new Congress thought nothing was amiss? No justice? Too bad for America...

[Solly Mack]

13. Golly, it's not like it could ever happen again!

Why, America was just going through a crazy spell and we've come out better for it! Who knew waterboarding was torture?

[sad sally]

19. You're right, but the crazy spell ain't over...

"A year on, the administration continues to look the other way when it comes to full disclosure of and remedy for human rights violations perpetrated by the U.S.A. in the name of countering terrorism." Amnesty International

“If the United States were a man instead of a country, we would say he must be schizophrenic, or at minimum deeply mentally disturbed, to believe he is peace loving in the face of a record like this,” Velvel writes in “The Long Term View,” a journal of informed opinion published by his law school.

[Solly Mack]

21. Oh, I don't buy that it was a crazy spell that America is now over

I just know some people prefer to think (pretend) of it as a one time thing and out of character for America.

Love the quotes!! Thanks!

[Octafish]

24. Gosh. Why wouldn't Congress do its Congressional duty?

Frank Church and the Abyss of Warrantless Wiretapping

EXCERPT...

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

Then there's Rupert and Roger Ailes...of the BFEE.

[Solly Mack]

33. Because many of them agreed with Bush's crimes and others were just plain chicken shit.

[amborin]

14. K&R

[Octafish]

26. ENRON fell off Corporate McPravda's radar PDFQ...

Enron's Global Game - Beyond the domestic fallout lies a sordid saga of government-business collusion to control energy supplies.

EXCERPT...

Clinton's first treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentson, yet another Texan, was a major recipient of Enron largesse-$14,000 for just one of his Senate campaigns-before his appointment. He was replaced in 1994 by Robert Rubin, whose relationship to the company dated to his work as an investment banker. When Rubin first joined the Clinton administration, he wrote to his former client, saying that he "looked forward to continuing to work with you in my new capacity."

Gawsh. When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world -- one where small heads rule.

[Blue_In_AK]

15. That jerk-off should be in prison

for so many, many reasons. One of my biggest disappointments in the Obama administration is that they didn't prosecute these criminals and instead have continued many of the policies that we all hated so much.

[Octafish]

27. The problems of corruption in government may be too big for government to handle.

That's sad.

"The men who perfected the guns-for-dope traffic moved to the Middle East as experts in the sale of sophisticated arms, protected by officials at the top in the Pentagon and CIA. Richard Armitage, now the key Pentagon official in counter-terror and covert operations is named consistently by investigators as the man who helped the drug warlords market their crops.... The most prominent name recurring in this connection is Vice President George Bush. While he was CIA director, much of these activities blossomed, but more serious charges are being made by former intelligence officers ..... who fear that their institutions have been corrupted by a few self-proclaimed patriots."

BANK OF INTRIGUE
Toronto Sun, 13 August 1987

Armitage is now Deputy Secretary of State under the new Bush Jnr administration

"While we usually think of corruption in relation to police officers on the street and local prosecutors, the drug war has managed to offer incentives for corruption that reach to the very highest levels of the United States government. It is indeed ironic that the very agencies of government who are beating the drums loudest in the war on drugs have also established an infamous record of accepting assistance from and providing logistical support to some of the largest drug trafficking syndicates in the world."

CRJ 875: Crime and Public Policy
Module 5: The Failure of Drug Control Policies
Gary W. Potter, Professor, Criminal Justice and Police Studies
Eastern Kentucky University

SOURCE: http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATcolby.htm

Sad for Democracy, too, that he and his crooked family and cronies are not.

[AzDar]

17. K & R

:kick:

[Fire1]

18. The absolute worst president of all time! n/t

[sabrina 1]

25. I remember that. At that time, I thought we still had laws.

Since then I've found out that the laws only apply to the 'lesser people' as Alan Simpson calls them.

He blatantly took the surplus and gave it to his rich buddies. To think these people are entrusted with the well-being of this country and its people. Conscienceless, pathological, corrupt, liars and thieves and imho, traitors. You don't do this to your country!

[seafan]

28. 'member this one? "Money trumps peace, sometimes."

"Money trumps peace, sometimes." George W. Bush, February 14, 2007


The little tu#@ from Crawford always liked 'little sayings'.



We won't forget anytime soon what these ba$tard$ have done.

[Octafish]

30. Good memory, yours.

"Lucky me. I hit the trifecta."

The things one finds on the GOOGLE.

[lonestarnot]

29. That little simple fucker sure enough fucked up the world.

[upi402]

32. k/r n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

34. Is that Grover Norquist drowning America in that small bathtub of red ink?

Just wondering.