How Disgusting Is This?

Well congratulations, sheeple, for once again supporting the corrupt piece of crap in the White House. Just goes to show how totally ignorant and lacking in morals that many of you are. Apparently you love being lied to, oh, but please let me qualify that you don't mind being lied to by Republicans, only Democrats.

Of course considering how Republicans control most of the MSM in this country you have to wonder how much of this is actually the truth.

Bush’s approval rating rises to 42 percent Ratings are at highest level since last summer

Updated: 3:54 p.m. ET Dec. 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s improved standing with whites, men, Catholics and other core supporters has been a key factor in pushing his job approval rating up to 42 percent. That’s the highest level since summer.

Shifting into campaign mode to reverse his slide in public opinion polls, Bush has boosted his support among key constituency groups — particularly in the Northeast and West — on his handling of Iraq and the economy, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

“Now it’s not a one-sided debate,” said Republican pollster Ed Goeas, citing Bush’s recent speeches on the health of the economy and the high stakes in Iraq. “You have a message getting out there in a much more positive way.”

Bush improved his job approval rating from 37 percent in November to 42 percent now, though his standing with the public remains relatively low. Fifty-seven percent still disapprove, down from 61.

Bush spent much of the year pushing for a Social Security plan that went nowhere, and he was put on the defensive in September and October after the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina.

Those factors combined with Iraq and the price of gasoline hitting $3 a gallon left the president with the lowest public support of his presidency from September through November.

Gas prices down, approval ratings upNow, gas prices have eased, and Bush has been barnstorming the country to tout a stronger economy and claim progress in Iraq.

A recent report noted that the nation added 215,000 jobs in November, and Bush declared on Monday that “the best days are yet to come for the American economy.”

On Iraq, he’s halfway through a series of four speeches outlining — in the words of a huge banner behind him at one event — the administration’s “Plan for Victory” in Iraq. He has been claiming new strength for both Iraq’s troops and economy, while acknowledging difficulties caused by continuing violence.

The most important goal of the Iraq speeches is to shore up intensity of support with his Republican base, said Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego. “If he restores the strong support of Republicans, he can ride out the rest of the term and keep Republican politicians on his side as well,” Jacobson said.

Bush’s job approval among men has climbed from 39 percent in November to 47 percent now and among whites from 40 percent to 47 percent, according to the AP-Ipsos poll.
Catholics’ approval went from 32 percent to 41 percent. In the Northeast, Bush’s support grew from 27 to 41 percent, and in the West from 34 to 42 percent.

More satisfaction with economyOverall, approval of Bush’s handling of the economy was up to 42 percent in December from 37 percent last month, according to the poll of 1,002 adults taken Dec. 5-7 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll found approval for Bush’s handling of Iraq also was up, from 37 percent last month to 41 percent now.

Those disapproving totaled 55 percent on the economy, 58 percent on Iraq, both down slightly from November.

“I think he’s doing what he has to do,” said Charl-Deane Almond, a Republican from Bishop, Calif. “I appreciate him standing strong with all the pressure he’s under.”

Still, many have mixed feelings.

Said Jonathan Schuler, an independent from Georgetown, a small city north of Austin, Texas: “If we stay in Iraq too much longer, it will be another Vietnam. If we pull out, the terrorists will look at it as a victory.”

The people who disapprove of Bush’s performance cite Iraq most often as the leading reason, AP-Ipsos polling found in the fall.

The administration can win support from the public by emphasizing the possibility of success, said political scientist Christopher Gelpi of Duke University.

Gelpi and his colleague and research partner at Duke, Peter Feaver, have concluded from their research that the public is more likely to tolerate some casualties and deaths if people can see that a military mission will be successful. As a special adviser on the National Security Council,
Feaver is helping shape administration strategy on winning public support for the war.

While it’s important for the president to talk about victory, Gelpi said, “words without deeds on the ground will ring pretty hollow.”

What Goes Around Comes Around

I for one could not be happier. Bush and his Republican Administration have stood at the bully pulpit long enough. They've used it quite effectively in the past but now they're burning it up, trying to spin their lies into gospel.

I won't soon forget how Newt Gingrich sneered that, "everytime I get in front of a camera, I'm going to say "Monica Lewinsky," all the while he was having an affair with one of his own aides. I well remember Bush claiming during the 2000 Presidential election that he would bring "honor and integrity back to the White House" and that he would be a "uniter and not a divider."

Finally, we see that their lies catching up with them and as dear old dad used to say, "it's time to face the music." It's time for Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Frist, Libby and all of the low men on the totem pole to, "pay the piper."

The Times

December 10, 2005

Party that impeached Clinton gets taste of its own medicine By Gerard Baker

AMERICA’S online satirical newspaper of record, The Onion, captured the political mood rather well with a recent spoof headline: “Topeka Mayor is Now Nation’s Most Senior Unindicted Republican.”

For a party that likes to think of itself as the true protector of the Constitution and laws, the past few months have been a little awkward.

Consider the roll-call: Tom “The Hammer” DeLay had to step down as the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives two months ago after he was indicted on charges of breaking campaign finance laws. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, is under investigation over allegations that he benefited from inside information for some share trades. Criminal inquiries continue that could yet result in legal trouble for Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser. Last month Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a gruff conservative congressman from California, pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion and fraud. Other members of Congress are the focus of investigations into alleged corruption. What’s going on? A cynic might note that political conservatives start from a philosophical assumption that man is essentially fallen and conclude that they are just trying to prove it. But a number of explanations lie behind the spate of legal difficulties.

Most obviously, a high level of corruption pervades Washington’s politics. In the past ten years especially, money has sloshed around the capital like champagne cocktails in a Christmas punch bowl. Politicians need ever-increasing quantities of it to fight expensive re-election campaigns involving endless TV advertising.

At the same time public spending is surging, giving politicians access to vast government funds that they can distribute. Since Republicans have controlled Congress for most of the past ten years, they are the ones with best access to that money.

It is not all illegal, of course, but the temptations are considerable. It is unlikely that the soon-to-be-jailed Cunningham was the only one who steered huge defence contracts to his cronies and wealthy supporters over the past five years. A second factor is pure politics. Despite the separation of powers in the American Constitution, the judiciary is heavily politicised, with state judges and prosecutors often being elected positions.

Since it is hard to remove a member of Congress through the ballot box — more than 95 per cent win re-election (thanks in large part to their largesse with government funds) — opponents seek alternatives. Mr DeLay’s difficulties owe much to this factor: he is the target of a zealous Democratic prosecutor in Texas.

Republicans are also reaping that which they have sown. The impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 took judicial oversight of executive behaviour to new levels of eye-watering intensity.

Some of the same prosecutorial zeal is now making life extremely difficult at the White House in the CIA leak case. The political implications of all this are potentially large — as the party’s own success 11 years ago may demonstrate.

In 1994 the Republicans swept to power in Congress on a radical conservative platform under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. The triumph was owed in large part to the aura of sleaze that surrounded the Democrat-controlled Congress at the time. Scandals involving Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House, and Dan Rostenkowski, the Ways and Means Committee chairman (who later served prison time), disgusted voters who adopted a “throw the bums out” approach in the 1994 mid-term elections.

Could that happen to the Republicans next year? Voters are certainly in a sour mood. Iraq, of course, is the main concern, but a sense that Washington’s leaders are sinking deeper into a mire of corruption and lies is making it worse.

It will take a landslide to deprive the party of its House and Senate majorities. But this was the year the land started to shift, imperceptibly at first, then with more momentum as the legal problems piled on top of the political difficulties.

The White House is lying vulnerable in the path of any such landslide.

Speaking Of Rewriting History

Actually it's more like lying but that's certainly nothing new for this administration or Rumsfeld.

Thanks to Think Progress for this article...

Rumsfeld Lies About Pre-War Predictions: “You Can Take That To The Bank”

Yesterday on PBS’ Newshour, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said no administration official made any predictions about the length or cost of the war in Iraq:

I was very careful. I never predicted any number of deaths or the cost or the length because I’ve looked at a lot of wars, and anyone who tries to do that is going to find themselves wrong, flat wrong…I don’t know anybody who had any reasonable expectations about the number or the length of the war or the cost of the war. I just don’t — no one I know went out and said these are how those three metrics ought to be considered. And you can take it to the bank.

The truth is, Rumsfeld and other top administration officials made predictions on all three metrics. You can take that to the bank –

Length:

Rumsfeld, 2/7/03: “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

Cheney, 3/16/03: “I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months“

Cost:

Daniels, 12/30/02: “The administration’s top budget [Mitch Daniels] official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion… Mr. Daniels declined to explain how budget officials had reached the $50 billion to $60 billion range for war costs…” [New York Times, 12/31/02]
Casualties:

Q: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. [Meet the Press, 3/16/03]

I'd Say This Is Impossible

Giving a speech at UConn the other day, Ann Coulter the rightwingnut columnist and embarrassment to the GOP made the assinine statement, “I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am." FYI, Ann, that is impossible because there is no one stupider than you.

As per usual Ann's speech was cut short after a mere 15 minutes due to all of the boos and jeers from most of the 2,600 students in attendance. heh heh

In the way of a reminder, folks, let's remember that Bush is a liar and so we cannot fall for his lies about the rosie outcome of the Iraq War.

The Corruption Never Seems To End

Deeper into the Wilkes/MZM scandals (Updated)

(Note: If you came here by way of LiePar Destin's excellent piece in Kos, you may want to read "Wilkes: The Invisible Empire" first. Also, I'm happy to report that this blockbuster piece on Wilkes in the San Diego Union Tribune strengthens the thesis presented here.)

The good news is that reporters working for the mainstream media have caught on -- in part. They understand that Randy "Duke" Cunningham is hardly the only Republican politician to receive economic "assistance" from Brent Wilkes, head of the Poway-based "defense" firm ADCS -- a.k.a. the Wilkes Corporation, a.k.a. Group W Advisors, a.k.a. lots of other names.

But they still treat this company as though it were something real. Not a single mainstream reporter has scrutinized those web sites and reported on the obvious signs of fakery.

No reporters -- and, for that matter, no procurement officers at the Pentagon -- bothered to do any checking at the patent office. If they had, they would have found that there are no patents covering the "proprietary" designs and innovative equipment advertised by the many ADCS subsidiary firms.

The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.

Want proof?

Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes -- a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128.

That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is www.mirrorlabs.com.

That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.

However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.

(Update: A background check on www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes' fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)

I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money?

Here is the organization that really has -- or had -- offices at that address: ADCS PAC. That's where the money went.

Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.

So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?

Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.

All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.

The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other "subsidiaries" were also used as funding mechanisms.

By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?

Other recipients of Wilkes' largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole -- whose husband, as you may recall from yesterday's post, lent his name to Reverend Moon's "stamp out the cross" crusade. Talk about being on the Dole! Did all these pols understand the ultimate source of the funds? Perhaps not. However, we know that Duncan Hunter -- chairman of the House Armed Services Committee -- was a big ADCS pusher:


Since 1994, Wilkes and ADCS gave $40,700 in campaign contributions to Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican who now chairs the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter has acknowledged that he joined with Cunningham in 1999 to contact Pentagon officials who reversed a decision and gave ADCS one of its first big contracts, for nearly $10 million." (USA Today, 11/29/05)

And then there's Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections.

Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you're missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself -- using "false fronts" to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials.

Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.

I rarely beg my readers, but in this case I must: Please get the word out. This type of investigative work should not be left to the likes of me (or John Dean, or Daniel Hopsicker). Someone in the major media -- or Congress, or the Justice Department -- must investigate.

This scandal could and should be bigger than Plamegate.

Who is the "inside man" in the Pentagon? I cannot believe that checks went to Wilkes based purely on the say-so of Duke Cunningham or the other bribed pols. Someone in the Pentagon's procurement offices must be signing off on these expenditures. If investigators identify the person or persons involved, then this conspiracy can be blown wide open.

John Dean found that each of the DOD contracts to ADCS and its related firms were prepared by "DOD_MIGRATOR" -- whoever or whatever that may mean. I'm hardly an expert on Defense Department procurement procedures, so I cannot tell if this nomenclature is standard or unusual. But since each award is numbered, it should not be difficult for an investigator to track down the real person behind DOD_MIGRATOR.

Another oddity: According to Dean, on each ADCS form -- whatever the year -- the company is listed as having 130 employees and annual revenues of "$13,345,9." (Yes, that is the figure given.) These numbers, I am told, never vary.

On the MZM front: Is the other company that bribed Cunningham real or fake? What, precisely, do they do?

Ah, there's the rub: We're dealing with black budget stuff. We're not supposed to know what they do. Alas, in such a world we cannot easily know if they do...anything.

MZM, run by Mitchell Wade -- a longtime member of the Wilkes/Cunningham "posse" -- began life in the early 1990s. Yet during most of the ensuing years, it made little impact on the world. As a "defense and intelligence" firm, it seems to have sprung from nothing in 2002, like a Rambo-ized Venus from the brow of Ares.

This page from (of all things) the Panama American Chamber of Commerce contains some interesting info about MZM: The address is 1523 New Hampshire Ave., N.W.; Washington, DC 20036, USA. The only email contact addresses go to Wade and a man named Joel Cornelison.

Their line of work? Surprisingly enough -- it's a law firm!

When the firm began life in 1993, Wade and Cornelison -- the only names connected with the place -- were "business consultants."

More recently, MZM originated a 501(c)3 nonprofit called the "Sure Foundation" -- allegedly an organization devoted to refugee aid -- which shares the same address. The address was also used by the front company which purchased Cunningham's home at an inflated price.

The Sure Foundation website (the contents of which are quoted here) used to refer to MZM as its "first corporate sponsor." MZM's line of work has changed once more: Now they provide "data warehousing and information technology consulting services to both governmental and non-governmental entities."

That description may be literally true, if we presume that they kept a few floppy disks or notebooks hanging around the office.

So far, I've seen no evidence that the Sure Foundation actually transferred monies to starving refugees. However, we do know that MZM did distribute funds to certain "needy" individuals: Republican politicians.

Wade, unlike Wilkes, kept the MZM Pac housed in the very same office. (We must presume that they didn't have a great deal of office space, since unrelated tenants are in the same building.) When we look at the data on MZM Pac and its activities in 2003-2004, we learn that the population of this company has grown by leaps and bounds.

The PAC now lists roughly 100 names. A close scan of the names indicates that wives and children were recruited to the cause -- the cause being, of course, donations to G.O.P. candidates. (One of the named donors is "Joe Dollar." That can't be real -- can it?)

Nearly all the donors are listed as employees of MZM Inc., and many have grandiose titles -- Chairman of this, VP of that.

MZM employees, we learn, were told they had to make the donations or be fired. I believe there are laws against that sort of thing.

Frankly, I'm not at all sure how MZM transformed itself from a two-man law office (I'm picturing a Republican version of Daredevil's Nelson and Murdoch) into a go-go defense and intelligence firm.

For that, it would seem, is the final incarnation of MZM. According to the Center for Public Integrity,

MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company's Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.

In addition to its D.C. headquarters, MZM has field offices in Miami, Tampa, San Antonio, San Diego and Suffolk, Va. The company employs about 70 people.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has "come out of a flat period" with defense industry contracts.

In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.

In November 2002, MZM opened a computer center in Charlottesville, Va., to house classified engineering intelligence in a digital mapping and architecture analysis system. Twelve employees in that office are developing the program for the Pentagon. It is designed to provide digital maps of thousands of buildings worldwide. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the mapping system will help soldiers and planners know details of buildings -- even which way doors open and close.

At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. The data page goes on to name a number of individuals involved with this work -- intelligence analysts, generals, the kind of people whom we would expect to be involved with such an enterprise. Cornelison seems to have disappeared.

But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL -- www.mzinc.com -- is blank, as is Google's cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000.

However, we do know that they did open a fairly large facility in Martinsville, Virgina.

The Center for Public Integrity is trustworthy, but they can only relate what they've been told -- and at this point, who can be sure if a company like MZM is telling the truth? Obviously, Wade's creation (unlike many of the Wilkes pseudocompanies) does actual work for the military/intelligence complex; as we've seen, they've even provided office furniture for the White House. Even so, we must still ask: How and why did Wade's tiny firm suddenly grow like Topsy? Who is Mitchell Wade? Is he a lawyer, a businessman, a spook, or...what?

Which brings us to the larger question surrounding these out-of-nowhere defense firms: How much of this stuff is real?

This'll Make Republicans Proud

Neil Bush Meets the Messiah
By John Gorenfeld, AlterNet. Posted December 5, 2005.

Why is the President's younger brother, Neil, touring with the leader of the Moonies?

"Those who stray from the heavenly way," the owner of the flagship Republican newspaper the Washington Times admonished an audience in Taipei on Friday, "will be punished."

This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row: Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream.

As he describes it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.

The name Peace King Tunnel would allude to the title of authority to which Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. congressmen paid respect on Capitol Hill in last year's controversial "Crown of Peace" coronation ritual.

Moon's lobbying campaign is "ambitious and diffuse," as the D.C. newspaper The Hill reported last year, and the sheer range of guests revealed just how many Pacific Rim political leaders the Times owner has won over, including Filipino and Taiwanese politicians. And the head of the Arizona GOP attended a recent stop in San Francisco. But perhaps the most surprising VIP to tag along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush's youngest and most wayward son, who made both the Philippines and Taiwan legs of the journey, according to reports in newspapers from those countries and statements from Moon's Family Federation.

While Neil Bush and Moon's church couldn't be reached for comment on the tunnel or his speaking fees, a brochure from Moon's Family Federation underscores that the project is "God's fervent desire," dwarfing such past wonders as the Chunnel and heralding a "new era of automobile travel."

Moon, reviled in the 1980s as the leader of a group that separated young recruits from their families, says he is the Messiah. His far-flung business empire includes the UPI wire service, Washington, D.C. television studios, a gun factory, and enormous swaths of real estate, and he donates millions to conservative politics. In 1989, U.S. News & World Report linked his group to the Heritage Foundation and other conservative organizations. "Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to [Moon's] church," wrote reporter John Judis, "conservatives ... fear repercussions if they expose the church's role."

The billionaire Moon has never been one to pander to the Sierra Club, having subsidized the anti-environmental "wise use" movement. Likewise, his group anticipates an anti-tunnel backlash by those who "demand the preservation of the polar region's ecosystem and the protection of polar bears and seals," and proposes an aggressive media strategy: "[P]ublic opinion polls must be carried out all over the world and it is absolutely essential that a public relations campaign to educate environmental groups, concerned organizations and residents near the proposed construction sites be carried out as well." (Moon has said in the past that Caucasians are descended from polar bears.)

In addition to the Taipei report, the Bush brother also surfaced in an article last week from the Manila Times, which placed him at a similar dinner in Manila attended by Washington Times president Dong Moon Joo and respected Filipino House Speaker Jose de Venecia. (It's unclear if Bush attended an intermediate stop in the Solomon Islands.) According to the Manila Times piece, Venecia proposed Moon's idea for a trans-religious council to President Bush in a 2003 meeting; President Bush was said to have called it "a brilliant idea."

The Taiwan paper similarly revealed high-powered support for Moon, describing Republic of China Vice President Annette Lu as listening "rapt" to his speech.

In the United States, Moon's end-of-democracy vision has been honored on the floor of Congress. According to the Congressional Record, on June 19, 2003, Democrat Danny K. Davis joined Republican Curt Weldon in recognizing Moon's "effort to create an international council of religious leaders ... this body will provide a direct link between international leaders and the various religious peoples in their constituencies," Davis said. "We are grateful to ... the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon] for promoting the vision of world peace, and we commend their work."

Davis later took part in Moon's March 23, 2004 Capitol Hill ceremony in which he was brought a gold crown and royal robe to coronate him Peace King. The sponsor of the event was the Virginia Republican Senator John Warner, who later told the Washington Post he'd been "deceived" into hosting the event, a charge that organizers rejected, saying the ritual was taken out of context.

While Moon's proposal has been deliberated by politicians around the world as a mere religious council, church promotional materials make clear that it's intended to forge "God's fatherland," and not just idle talk. A video from his group stresses that the U.N. will give way to a "Peace United Nations," as Moon terms it, with fantastical reverberations.

"Like a candle that burns down, sacrificing itself to give light to the world, the light of wisdom and hope will shine from the headquarters of world governance -- the "Peace United Nations" -- into all realms of life," a narrator says in a Family Federation video (available here via BitTorrent). "This light will radiate beyond the high barrier separating nations and will illuminate the road to peace, the path to the fulfillment of humanity's hopes -- and dreams ..."

Moon has frequently gone on the record against Western-style democracy and individualism, calling them results of the fall of Adam. "There are three guiding principles for the world to choose from: democracy, Communism and Godism," he said in a 1987 sermon. "It is clear that democracy as the United States knows and practices it cannot be the model for the world."

"Individualism," he also said at the speech -- entitled "I Will Follow With Gratitude And Obedience" -- "is what God hates most and what Satan likes best."

Neil isn't the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father, President George H.W. Bush, traveled to Buenos Aires with the Reverend in one of several such fundraising expeditions. "The 41st president, who told Argentine president Carlos Menem that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires for the money, had actually known the Korean reasonably well for decades," writes former top GOP strategist Kevin Phillips in his book "American Dynasty." "Their relationship went back to the overlap between Bush's one-year tenure as CIA director (1976) and the arrival in Washington of Moon, whose Unification Church was widely reported to be a front group for the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency." Moon and his aides have called such claims bogus, saying his accusers were controlled by "Satan" to distract from his campaign to destroy communism.

Reverend Moon is the latest in a line of unusual partners for Neil Bush in recent years, including the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who has been promoting the younger Bush's educational software company, Ignite!, according to the Washington Post.

A messy divorce case in 2003 exposed his dalliances with prostitutes in Asia. Moon's group didn't return e-mails asking how this bore upon Neil Bush's contributions to last week's events, whose central theme was "Ideal Families."

[Libby: There are many reasons why the Republicans [I would say only Neocons but it seems even the run of the mill republicans are involved] are a danger to America but imo, this is why that party must be destroyed and not allowed to hold any kind of Governmantal or political positions in the United States. This article should send the Conservative Christians running and screaming but sadly, they are too stupid to think for themselves and will follow Bush and the Neocon movement to their deaths.]

Is George Bush The Worst President...Ever?

Well yes, without a doubt in my book he is but then again, I'm just a Liberal Woman. However, some historians have come together to rate GeeDumbleU and see what the facts say about the good old boy.

Let me also qualify they claim it is too early to really evaluate a President, it usually takes decades. [yeah, sure]

Here's what they think...

IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER?
By Richard Reeves Fri Dec 2, 8:13 PM ET
PARIS --

President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington ..."

But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out.

"No one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation -- "Manifest Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.