NEW ENERGY BILL HIDES TOM DeLAY SWEETHEART DEAL

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20050727165629-26334.pdf

NEW ENERGY BILL HIDES TOM DeLAY SWEETHEART DEAL

Majority Leader Tom DeLay may have faded from
the front pages, but he's still up to his dirty tricks.

Congress of the United States -- I am writing to draw to your attention a provision in the Energy Conference Report that raises serious procedural and substantive concerns. At its essence, this provision is a $1.5 billion giveaway to the oil industry, Halliburton, and Sugar Land, Texas. The provision was inserted into the energy legislation after the conference was closed, so members of the conference committee had no opportunity to consider or reject this measure. [Click for report]

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Yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman revealed that DeLay slipped “a $1.5 billion giveaway to the oil industry, Halliburton, and Sugar Land, Texas” into the energy bill.

But it gets worse. The provision was "mysteriously inserted" into the text of the energy bill "after the conference was closed, so members of the conference committee had no opportunity to consider or reject this measure."

More proof that the morals of Tom DeLay has launched an assault on the democratic process.

Here is the anatomy of DeLay’s scam: The 1.5 billion bucks is designated for "oil and natural gas drilling research." Ordinarily, any company could apply for this money directly from the government. But the crooked DeLay does things a little differently. In this case, the bulk of the money must be handed over to "a corporation that is constructed as a consortium." Guess what? As it so happens, "the leading contender for this contract appears to be the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) consortium, housed in the Texas Energy Center in Sugar Land, Texas," Tom DeLay's home district RPSEA "has been advocating such a research program and is in a better position than any other group."

(DeLay testified in support of the program before a House subcommittee last year.) If RPSEA wins the contract they can keep "up to 10% of the funds - in this case, over $100 million - in administrative expenses." And you wonder why Tom DeLay has so many moral and ethic charges against him?

DeLay added the $1.5 billion giveaway after "Democratic negotiators went home Tuesday at 4 a.m. believing a deal had been finalized and the provision wasn't in the bill." The program was not included in the draft version of the bill and a DeLay spokesman lied, saying "he could not explain how the item was added to the final version of legislation prepared by the Senate and House negotiators." (WHAT A MYSTERY!)

The bigger question is: why do taxpayers need to provide another huge subsidy oil and gas corporations? (So they have more to donate to the GOP?) As Waxman said "The oil and gas industry is reporting record income and profits. According to one analyst, the net income of the top oil companies will total $230 billion in 2005." Halliburton, which is a member of the consortium, would be eligibled to "receive awards from the over $1 billion fund administered by the consortium."

GOP Crooks Circle the Wagons: Instead taking responsibility for his crooked actions, DeLay makes like the neocons around here and attacked the messenger. DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said, ''Henry Waxman knows zero about Texas, zero about energy security, and apparently even less about how a bill becomes law." The RPSEA consortium, for their part, doesn't want to know. Melanie Kenderdine, who represents Gas Technology Institute, a company in the consortium, said, "how the sausage is made is not important to me."

The GOP sees the end coming and is robbing and stealing everything they can before the end. And you neocons go right along with it.

Jerry Sturdivant

WESH.com - News - Wipe-Out: Bush Crashes Bike At G-8

WESH.com - News - Wipe-Out: Bush Crashes Bike At G-8Wipe-Out: Bush Crashes Bike At G-8
President Suffers Minor Scrapes, Bruises

POSTED: 4:08 pm EDT July 6, 2005
UPDATED: 4:59 pm EDT July 6, 2005

GLENEAGLES, Scotland -- President George W. Bush has some scrapes on his hands and arms after a bike collision with a Scottish police officer at the resort where the G-8 summit is taking place.

The officer has been taken to a hospital. Police said he has a "very minor" ankle injury.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush was going at "a pretty good speed" and took a spill after the crash. He needed bandages from the White House physician. The presidential bike took some damage.

McClellan said the officer is from a nearby town and was on a security detail. He said Bush was worried about the officer and talked with him after the crash, and will likely call the officer later.

Bush attended a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth at the Group of Eight economic summit after the crash. He wore a tuxedo and showed no signs of distress.

What is it with Bush and Bicycles...did he fall off the wagon again?

Bush Says He's Fine After Bike Accident

Thursday July 7, 2005 10:31 AM


AP Photo XGLE102

By TOM RAUM

Associated Press Writer

GLENEAGLES, Scotland (AP) - Fresh bandages on his left hand from a mountain biking accident, President Bush said Thursday he's doing well - and so apparently is the Scottish police officer with whom he collided.

``It just goes to show I should act my age,'' Bush, who turned 59 on Wednesday, joked with reporters.

Bush lost control of his bike Wednesday on a slick stretch of pavement and ran into the local officer, who was on foot, knocking him over.

``When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall. Otherwise, you're not riding hard,'' Bush said.

The spill occurred as Bush was exercising after arriving here to attend a summit of the Group of Eight nations.

Bush, who was wearing a helmet, suffered minor scrapes and bruises to his left hand and arm that required bandages by the White House physician, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. The officer, a member of the police department of Strathclyde who was on a security detail, was briefly taken to the hospital and suffered a minor ankle injury.

The president said he called the officer's cell phone later Wednesday and talked to him as he was on his way home from the hospital. ``He's doing fine,'' Bush said.

``I was less concerned about myself and more concerned about him,'' Bush said.

Bush said the accident happened after he had been riding for about an hour on the grounds of the golf resort here that is the site of the summit. Bush said he was ``flying'' on his bike. ``The pavement was slick...The bike came out from under me,'' he said.

Bush's bike was damaged, requiring him to ride back to the hotel in a Secret Service vehicle.

But the fall didn't affect the president's schedule. Dressed in a tuxedo and showing no signs of distress, he attended the summit's opening dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth on Wednesday night.

On Thursday morning, Bush appeared alongside British Prime Minister Tony Blair with flesh-colored bandages on two fingers of his left hand.

``I think I found my limitation,'' the president said.

A year ago, Bush was cut and bruised when he sailed over the handlebars while riding a mountain bike at his Texas ranch.

========Snip===========
And..taking a trip down memory lane..here's another story from
CodeWarriorz Thoughts about another of his bicycle crashes..

Bush's "Accident Proneness" Goes back a while
"Bush Bruised Diving To Avoid Truck "

Now, more recently we remember poor little Georgy almost choking to death on a pretzel, falling off the couch and hitting this head...he fell off his bike and scraped his face and hands up....
and looking back to 1999...
"AUSTIN, Texas –– Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential front-runner, sustained minor injuries to his right leg and hip Monday when he dived to avoid a truck trailer that overturned near his jogging path.
Bush was treated at the scene and later traveled to New Hampshire for a scheduled campaign swing, said Linda Edwards, Bush's press secretary.
Staff Sgt. Roscoe Hughey, a 39-year-old Texas Department of Public Safety agent who was accompanying Bush on a bicycle, received bruises to his left side, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said. He was treated at the Brackenridge Hospital emergency room and released about four hours later, said hospital spokeswoman Stephanie Elsea.
Bush was running on the hike-and-bike trail around Town Lake in downtown Austin when the accident occurred about 12:06 p.m, according to Ms. Edwards and the Austin Police Department,
A truck pulling a dumpster-like trailer was traveling on the street that parallels the jogging trail when the trailer overturned. Debris – including chunks of concrete and wood – were dumped across the jogging path.
"We're not clear what made it lose control, but the truck was out of control," Ms. Edwards said.
She said Bush told her the injuries to his right leg and right hip were suffered when he dived to get out of the way. "
============SNIP=================
For a non-drunk, he sures does have a lot of accidents.

Rogues Gallery

USED OF FORCE CONTINUUM = ALASKA

USED OF FORCE CONTINUUM = ALASKA: "USE OF FORCE CONTINUUM
This Use of Force Continuum is from the Alaska State Troopers
The court case is just one of many
to demonstrate what I proffer is true.


What people are not understanding is that the police, firemen, FBI, ect are all members of a paramilitary organization(s) They have been militarized and not not civil officers to which they appear to want us to believe they are. Ask them? I have the commissioning documents on the AST, but this is not included as yahoo will not pass all of the info in one post. If wanted, e-mail and I will forward.

They use the Use of Force Continuum against us. All Police Force types will have a policy and procedures manual, which will have a Use of Force Continuum contained within. You may have to lean on them to produce the Use of Force Continuum parts, as they don't want the public to know who they are and what they are doing.

FROM Alaska State Troopers Use of Force Continuum parts:

1. First read the 107.101 intent of the disclaimer as evidence.
2. 107.020 (A)(1) the purpose of the use of the force is to gain control of a person, ect.
3. 107.020 (B), when practical, a verbal warning should be used before force is being used.
4. 107.020 (C)(1) Can't use force as punishment or retaliation.
5. 107.020 (C)(2) Accomplish the officers 'lawful' objectives, etc including physical control.
6. 107.020 (C)(3) can use any level of force
7. 107.020 (C)(4) The Use of Force Continuum
a. Officer presence, uniform
b. Verbal Commands [military orders in reality]
c. Soft hand techniques - grabbing you and a heel hand hit.
d. OC - pepper spray [you will got to j"

Brent Bozell: Penn and Teller trash Mother Teresa

Brent Bozell: Penn and Teller trash Mother Teresa
"Penn and Teller trash Mother Teresa
Brent Bozell (archive)


June 3, 2005 | Print | Send


A year ago, I attended the Viacom shareholders meeting in New York. When an investor questioned the propriety of this media behemoth launching a gay cable television network, Chairman Sumner Redstone virtually leapt at the opportunity to defend Viacom's commitment to tolerance and diversity.

But not for Catholics. Viacom has no problem whatever insulting Catholics.

The Catholic League's William Donohue is America's leading watchdog of all things anti-Catholic in the media and the culture. In 12 years at the helm he's seen a lot of bashing and trashing and believes there's been nothing as outrageous as the May 23 edition of the professional magician duo Penn and Teller's aptly titled show "B.S." [spelled out] on Viacom's pay-cable channel Showtime.

While the episode titled "Holier Than Thou" ends with a few smacks at Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, Penn Jillette mostly savaged the world's most beloved woman of the 20th century by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The woman beatified by Pope John Paul II and surely to be declared a saint was known as Mother Teresa. On this Viacom/Showtime program she is called "Mother F---ing Teresa."

The show features notoriously vicious anti-Catholics like Christopher Hitchens and Aroup Chatterjee. Viewers are told that she intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. "She had the f---king coin and pissed it away on nunneries," says Penn Jillette.

Donohue said it did not bother him they called him "Catholic Boy" on the show, and not even when they referred to him with the F word since he could "only see good in her." But when they mocked the Catholic Church's teaching on the meaning of suffering; when the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa in the Missionaries of Charity were referred to with the F-word and the offensive C-word for female genitalia; and when they said of the poor that "They had to suffer so that Mother [F-word] Teresa could be enlightened," he protested. "They are behaved like monsters ... It turned into hate speech."

This anti-Catholicism is no accident. The Showtime website actually boasts about the aching anti-religious bigotry behind the show. "By their own admission, Penn & Teller have been dying to do a show like this. Confirmed skeptics and pro-science atheists (they call God an 'imaginary friend'), these magicians are big fans of the art of debunking." The Showtime booster copy continues: "As our increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-science culture moves on each day to new crackpot subject matters, Penn & Teller are there to aggressively shoot down whack-jobs and fuzzy thinkers, no matter where they originate."

Isn't Showtime a piece of work? This junkyard of "edgy" programming was the final resting place of "The Reagans," the canceled CBS TV-movie making up vile charges against a man on his deathbed. It has two regular dramatic series celebrating the gay lifestyle, "Queer as Folk" for the men, and "The L Word" for the women. It recently began airing the original movie "Our Fathers," a movie on the Boston pedophile-priest scandals, which even the Washington Post called "Showtime's Unholy Mess." Four years ago at this time, Showtime was airing the original film "Sister Mary Explains It All," starring Diane Keaton as a vicious nun who ruined the lives of schoolchildren.

Now it has the two smart-aleck magicians reviling, with F bombs, the holiest women walking the face of the Earth while attacking the entire concept of holiness as a racket for "whack jobs and fuzzy thinkers."

The Catholic League protested outside this year's shareholders meeting of Viacom in New York, but tight-lipped Showtime could only remark on this inflammatory show by patting itself on the back as a haven for free speech. They claim they're "in the unique position to give artists the creative freedom to express their views," unlike other broadcast and cable networks who avoid "controversial subject matter." Sadly, and predictably, the TV writers who've happened upon the Penn and Teller show haven't exactly criticized their shtick. Associated Press reporter Frazier Moore praised the duo as "sassy secularists in a priesthood of knaves."

Didn't anyone involved in the making of this trash -- the writers, director, producers and the like -- see the wretched ugliness of the product? What of the Showtime front office -- the programming executives, the public relations/marketing staff? In fact, they all saw it and approved it. What of the Viacom leadership, the board of directors? One presumes they didn't see it, so busy are they giving speeches about corporate commitments to diversity and tolerance."
=======SNIP============
Penn Jillette is an asshole. I've said it before, and say it again...he and all
the atheists at Skeptical Inquirer are A-HOLES...yeah Michael Schirmer ..you're an asshole...get used to being called that !

DallasNews.com | News for Dallas, Texas | Points

DallasNews.com | News for Dallas, Texas | Points
"But the main Downing Street document does not introduce us to any hidden, arcane or occult knowledge, and it explains no mystery. On a visit to Washington before the Iraq war, some senior British officials formed the strong and correct impression that the Bush administration was bent upon an intervention. Their junior note-taker committed the literary and political solecism of saying that intelligence findings and "facts" were being "fixed" around this policy.

Well, if that doesn't prove it, I don't know what does. We apparently have an administration that can, on the word of a British clerk, "fix" not just findings but also "facts." Never mind for now that the English employ the word "fix" in a slightly different way – a better term might have been "organized."

Who is there who does not know that the Bush administration decided after September 2001 to change the balance of power in the region and to enforce the Iraq Liberation Act, passed unanimously by the Senate in 1998, which made it overt American policy to change the government of Iraq? This was a fairly open conspiracy and an open secret. Given that everyone from Hans Blix to Jacques Chirac believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons, it made legal sense to advance this case under the banner of international law and to treat the Iraqi dictator "as if" (and how else?) his strategy of concealment and deception were prima facie proof.

The British attorney general – who has no jurisdiction in these 50 states – was worried that "regime change" alone would not be a sufficient legal basis. One appreciates his concern. But the existence of the Hussein regime was itself a defiance of all known international laws, and we had before us the consequences of previous failures to act, in Bosnia and Rwanda, where action would have been another word for "regime change."

Many in the British Foreign Office, like many in the State Department and the CIA, felt more comfortable with the status quo as they knew it. But theirs is only one opinion among many. How odd that the American left, when it is not busy swallowing the unpunctuated words of the CIA, follows this with another helping of wisdom from the most reactionary institution of the British state.

If such a left is not careful, it will end up consoling itself in futile bitterness and resentment in the way the Old Right used to do: by brooding on the hellish manner in which Franklin Roosevelt told the Japanese to "bring it on" at Pearl Harbor. I favor taking such theories at face value, as a thought experiment, to see how they pan out. It is clear that Roosevelt hoped the Japanese empire would make a mistake and furnish a pretext for war: The plain evidence of this hope is what keeps the conspiracy theory alive.

I rather doubt he would have wanted to start such a war with the loss of the Pacific Fleet, but still, he did think a confrontation was inevitable, as indeed it was. And William Casey may have seen the chance for a double coup: taking credit for the release of the Iranian hostages and discrediting Jimmy Carter in the bargain.

But if it had all come out at the time, and been proved, would this change my attitude to Japanese imperialism or to Iranian hostage-taking theocracy? Certainly not. The demand would be to impeach those responsible in Washington and to form a national bipartisan alliance to fight even harder against our enemies and in defense of our friends.

Full circle, then: The outrage about the Downing Street memo has led Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., to demand that we tell the al-Qaeda forces in Iraq exactly when we intend to give up. Mr. Jones is the right-wing bigmouth who once wanted to rename french fries "freedom fries." He was a moral and political cretin when he did that, and he has been unable to stop being a moral and political cretin since. "
=SNIP=======
This is from Christopher Hitchens, a man who has written a book attacking Sister Teresa, and who argued
against making her a Saint at the Vatican...
Read what he says and consider the source I say!