22 Million Missing Bush White House Emails Found

ctmurray writes "Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that had filed a lawsuit — which has now been dropped — over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record-keeping system. Earlier we discussed the Obama White House's opposition to the lawsuit that led to this discovery." The related links reflect our discussions about the missing emails over two years.

Comments

Love the spin

[sphealey]

I love the spin that is being put on this: "found", "technical problems", etc. - esp in the Washington Post. These e-mails just happened to have technical problems and get "lost" when 10 of the senior members of the Bush/Cheney Administration where under investigation concerning a conspiracy to violate foreign intelligence secrecy laws. Just happened to get "lost", yessirree.

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[Wyatt Earp]

If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.

If I can reformat a drive to DoD 5225-22 M and find someone to destructively dispose of a disk, you don't think the USAF folks in charge of White House communications can if they were ordered too? Same goes for civilians working at the White House. If the Bush administration really wanted emails to "get lost", they would have.

Re:Love the spin

[CannonballHead]

No, because the Bush/Cheney administration are incredibly talented at pulling one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of the US while being inept, ignorant, uneducated, stupid, and a horrible public speaker. In other words, one of the smartest stupid educated ignorant uneducated charismatic foot-in-mouther guys in the world was just POTUS and deceived the entire world while completely ruining - in secret, mind you - the US economy.

And for the next X years, anything that goes wrong with foreign diplomacy, military conflicts, or the US economy is Bush's fault that Obama (or whoever else) is "cleaning up" with "tried and proven methods" of some sort (that apparently we have known about since the 30s but I guess nobody wants to try them; that or they've been tried and failed but we don't want to admit it).

-1 Flamebait, but oh well.

-1 Fire Insurance Line Was Included ;)

Re:Love the spin

[Captain Splendid]

Where's Waldo? There he is, the bugger!

Re:Love the spin

[sphealey]

> No, because the Bush/Cheney administration are incredibly talented at
> pulling one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of the US while
> being inept, ignorant, uneducated, stupid, and a horrible public speaker.

Bush may or may not have been inept; on that we will actually will have to wait for the verdict of history. Cheney was however one of the most stunningly successful senior executives in US history, getting more of his agenda accomplished than any other President except FDR and possibly more than him as well (so much is still classified so we don't and may never know). To call Cheney "stupid" or "inept" is, well, foolish.

And if it is impossible for a large group to keep a secret in Washington DC, answer me this: besides Libby, Addington, and Yoo, who were the other 37 members of Cheney's staff from 2001-2009? Oh wait, their names, salaries, titles, and duties were kept secret for 8 years, Cheney used his self-granted power to classify the information secret, and it never leaked. Nor did the members or agenda of Cheney's 2001 oil conference ever leak. Again, after the events of 2002-2006 to say it is not possible to manage a secret concerted effort in DC is foolish.

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, it's logically consistent that emails should only become lost when someone has the need to look for them.

Re:Love the spin

[CannonballHead]

Bush may or may not have been inept; on that we will actually will have to wait for the verdict of history.

Then you aren't the type of person/attitude I was sarcastically aiming at :)

To call Cheney "stupid" or "inept" is, well, foolish.

I agree.

And if it is impossible for a large group to keep a secret in Washington DC, answer me this:

It's certainly not impossible; and while investigating is fine and I don't have a problem with that, many seem to run rampant with conspiracy theories based on nothing more than the fact that they don't know (even though with some of them, we probably do know, but it doesn't suit their particular political bent - whether R. or D.).

I was primarily venting because I get tired of - and not you, apparently - various people attacking Bush (or Obama, for that matter) as being both exceedingly cunning/educated/knowledgeable-about-everything-going-on and stupid/ignorant/high-school-dropout. Slightly exaggerated, depending on who you talk to. "My" side - since conservatives tend to be Republicans - do it with Obama, too. Obama is well on his way, apparently, to turn the US into a Muslim country, to completely ruin the country economically and to ruin health care, all the while being ignorant, inept, and completely inexperienced.

I actually disagree very strongly with Obama on many issues... unfortunately, when many people disagree, they get angry; and when angry, they apparently don't think rationally and start accusing of even contradictory things....

Re:Love the spin

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Re:Love the spin

[CannonballHead]

Re-reading, though, I still think there's a problem; if Cheney was so good at keeping these things a secret, you'd think his secret-keeping IT staff would have deleted the e-mails from backups, too, as WyattEarp said.

Even I would have done that if I were trying to cover up something that badly.

Something, at least, seems fishy there.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, let me just casually reformat this 22 million emails worth of backup tape...

Re:Love the spin

[geekoid]

We pretty much now know Bush was inept. So Inept Cheney illegally routed information into the Vice presidents office that was only suppose to go to the president, and the president didn't know.

In-fucking-ept.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Please keep your conspiracy theories to yourselves until I'm finished writ^D^D^D^Dfinding all the incriminating "lost" email.

Re:Love the spin

[Chyeld]

As any mob boss will tell you, just because you tell the 'lackeys' to 'disappear' the evidence, doesn't mean they actually will. It just means it'll go away for a while.

Especially if they have a good idea that you are on the way out and a new boss is on the way in.

Re:Love the spin

[Chris Burke]

If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.

Not necessarily, because if evidence of that deletion was found, then that in itself would have led to prosecutions. Violating the archiving laws is a serious crime, and letting the special prosecutor get them with an Al Capone gambit would have been foolish. No, much better that the data be "lost", as in present but unavailable for current use. After all, the e-mails would only have to stay missing until the investigation was concluded. Then the emails show up again, and voila -- as far as the official record goes, the Bush administration violated neither intelligence nor data archival laws.

Of course there's a simpler explanation. As TFA states: "Records released as a result of the lawsuits reveal that the Bush White House was aware during the president's first term in office that the e-mail system had serious archiving problems". So odds are that it was simply that their archival system sucked and it really did lose the emails accidentally. Sure one could argue that having a system that accidentally loses emails is convenient if you want to "accidentally" lose some emails without it being obvious, but again according to TFA they did try to get Microsoft's help to fix it before the issue even became public. And evidently failed.

Which is somewhat related to the topic my sibling post pointed out, the always droll "How can Bush be both an evil genius and a complete moron at the same time?" Well the obvious answer is that most people are some combination of smart and stupid at the same time. The Bush Admin being a perfect example. They were collectively extremely smart at getting the nation to think a war of choice was a necessity, yet they were terrible at prosecuting said war. They were great at political manipulations and neutering opponents, yet terrible at leveraging that advantage to achieve results. They were geniuses at filling positions with cronies and yes-men, but morons at hiring people who were actually competent -- including the IT department, apparently.

Anyway, getting back to the topic of these emails and how hiding them for only a short time is sufficient, the National Security Archive who the former White House spokesmen slams as "liberal" and "distorting the facts" demonstrates this clearly. They might be liberal, though they uncover dirt on liberal Presidents like Kennedy, and regardless I don't see how their liberal bias can modify the contents of documents received via FOIA. If you didn't know whether to believe that the U.S. government, and specifically Oliver North, were aware the Contras were smuggling drugs into the U.S. and approved of this, well, here's the U.S. government telling you in black and white. But it doesn't matter anymore, at least as far as North et. al. are concerned, now does it?

Re:Love the spin

[sphealey]

>> Bush may or may not have been inept; on that we will actually
>> will have to wait for the verdict of history.

> Then you aren't the type of person/attitude I was sarcastically aiming at :)

I suspect I will have to disappoint you then: personally I think the verdict on the outcomes of W Bush's /policies and actions/ is already in, and those outcomes were, are, and will be for the (now shortened) lifespan of the United States colossally bad. However, whether Bush was inept or was actually very ept and wily in executing those bad policies is something that will only become clear after a long time and with the release of such records as may still exist.

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[sphealey]

Brilliant analysis. I would also add that you have to factor in Karl Rove retaining his e-mail account and Blackberry on the Republican National Committee server, which was not covered by the Presidential Records Act, for use in his role managing the Republican Party, and then conveniently "forgetting" to switch back to his White House userid when he handled e-mail related to official government business in his government-salaried job. Potentially including the routing of classified information through the non-secure RNC system.

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

So inept that, despite having this on this:
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/pdb080601.pdf
on his desk in August of 2001, he still remained in that classroom for ten minutes until after the *second* tower was hit.

But when he stood on that preventable rubble and the bodies it held to deliver his speech, tears were shed and all was forgiven. And when he and Cheney falsely implied that Iraq had something to do with it, they were given the benefit of a doubt (not by the international intelligence community, or by their advisers, but by the American public).

So yeah, it's we who are inept. CannonballHead was right about everything except Bush (and his administration, but it's mostly Bush who gets this rap) being "ignorant, uneducated, stupid." It wasn't a weird coincidence that he went around saying "evil doers" despite having a stable of professional speechwriters, or that he and his press secretaries never apologized for anything in a time of war. They had good PR men and they understood the emotional needs of a frightened country. That never really struck me as dumb. It didn't strike me as ethical either, but that goes without saying.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

These emails, were actually "found" while Bush was still in office:
"Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the 22 million e-mails already had been recovered while Bush was still in office and that misleading statements about the former administration's work demonstrate "a continued anti-Bush agenda, nearly a year after a new president was sworn in."

http://www.military.com/news/article/22m-missing-bush-wh-emails-found.html

I wonder when Slashdot will start to cover the ENTIRE story.

Re:Love the spin

[Opportunist]

Everyone does the best he can. Why do we consider politicians to be some sort of know-it-all superheroes? They don't have the easy answers to the complicated problems either. If they did, a lot more people would because, guess what, they're not the smartest, best informed people on the planet.

A politician, at least a successful one, is usually good at one thing: Being a politician. Getting elected. That does not necessarily entail being a cunning businessman, an experienced expert for social problems, a perfectly rounded diplomat and a top of the line scientist all rolled into one. If anything, he might be a diplomat. If that.

Yes, they usually have advisors for the various areas. But they, too, have their own agendas which are not necessarily the same that would get the country ahead. Simply because they won't have to bear the fallout if (or when) people figure out that that oh so smart move and that great push ahead was anything but beneficial.

We tend to blame politicians for the blunders that happen. What we should do is look who actually made them do what they did. Usually it's not the politician's idea. It's not their job to have ideas. It's their job to get elected.

Re:Love the spin

[c6gunner]

Sure, let me just casually reformat this 22 million emails worth of backup tape...

See, this is why you'd never make it as a Sooper Seeekrit Government Squirrel. Everyone knows that backup tapes should be burned, not reformatted.

Anyway, 22 million e-mails is what ... 1 terabyte? What's the big deal?

Re:Love the spin

[c6gunner]

They were geniuses at filling positions with cronies and yes-men, but morons at hiring people who were actually competent -- including the IT department, apparently.

That's what they get for recruiting from slashdot.

Re:Love the spin

[Hatta]

You're right, it wasn't dumb. It was psychopathic.

Re:Love the spin

[ClosedSource]

It may just be that the "lackeys" knew that it was wrong to destroy the emails and so they got rid of them only to the extent that an average executive (or below average president) would understand.

Re:Love the spin

[Weirsbaski]

If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.

and if it really was unintentional, then they would've taken less than "new administration plus year+" to find them.

Maybe it was an accident, and they found them on some unlabeled backup tape. Maybe it was an accident, and this is the first time they thought of using low-level disk tools to undelete. Or maybe it was intentional, and someone doing the grunt work "forgot" to "accidently delete" the backup tapes (in a whistle-blower kind of way). But the intense secrecy ethic of Cheney-Rove run administration (c'mon, it's true) combined with a "nothing could be gained by telling exactly what happened" reasoning now, we'll never really know.

Re:Love the spin

[bsDaemon]

what happened to my skeeeeewwwww???!?!?!

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-reading, though, I still think there's a problem; if Cheney was so good at keeping these things a secret, you'd think his secret-keeping IT staff would have deleted the e-mails from backups, too, as WyattEarp said.

Even I would have done that if I were trying to cover up something that badly.

Something, at least, seems fishy there.

I'll contribute to the conspiracy theories!

Perhaps 18 months was how long they needed to sort through 22 million emails and remove any traces of illegal activity. Now that the emails have been sanitized, they have been miraculously "found".

Or, perhaps the provided reason for discovery points to why these email were not deleted... they were mislabeled as backups for a different system and thus never destroyed by the Cheney-ites. We may be days away from announcements of indictments against the Bush Administration!

Or, maybe the IT Staff were just incompetent and these emails will ultimately be meaningless.

This is fun!

Re:Love the spin

[puppetman]

Unless this computer was retired and moved out of the Whitehouse before the emails were deleted.

The emails accumulated over *years*, and then they all disappeared. Well, I am sure they ended up on several, if not dozens of computers. Even if they were deleted on purpose, there may be computer eye-witnesses that weren't "eliminated". Maybe a hope PC that was used for work - connecting to a VPN, downloading your email, but not really understanding there is a local copy. Then you donate your PC to some charity, and suddenly George, Dick, and the rest of the criminals have sweaty palms.

Regardless, the US political system is dominated by the corporation. I don't have much faith that anything they do is for the common good. See Empire of Illusion, specifically the last chapter.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

It may just be that the "lackeys" knew that it was wrong to destroy the emails and so they got rid of them only to the extent that an average executive (or below average president) would understand.

Any backup administrator who has ever been asked to "delete X, Y and Z", would understand.

"Deletion" of something specific from a sufficiently complicated (and audited) backup environment is almost impossible to guarantee for a number of reasons, and on top of those, this case involves email which could be recorded almost anywhere even outside your own system. Yah, you could fudge the auditing if you were in a position to do so, but it is next to impossible to hide the fact that you hid something. Take my word, the EOP has & HAD a sufficiently complicated & audited backup environment. Of course, a couple of years is enough time to hide about anything with a high degree of success..

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

I love the spin that is being put on this: "found", "technical problems", etc. - esp in the Washington Post. These e-mails just happened to have technical problems and get "lost" when 10 of the senior members of the Bush/Cheney Administration where under investigation concerning a conspiracy to violate foreign intelligence secrecy laws. Just happened to get "lost", yessirree.

sPh

If you talking about the Valerie Plame thing, it turns out that there was no cover up because it wasn't the administration that leaked the name. Remember Dick Armitage?

However, I will say that the administration didn't want an investigation into that leading to something else. I remember another president was being investigated for something he was cleared of (Whitewater) and ended up getting into trouble from something completely unrelated (Lewinski).

Re:Love the spin

[Anarchduke]

It was 22 million chain letters with lolcat powerpoint presentations attached, so at least 5 terabytes.

Re:Love the spin

[jpmorgan]

Wait... Bush being smart and stupid at the same time is perfectly normal. And you support this claim with an example... which is Bush being smart and stupid at the same time.

It's like a perfect storm of bad reasoning.

Re:Love the spin

[Dausha]

"Not necessarily, because if evidence of that deletion was found, then that in itself would have led to prosecutions."

So, you created a nice straw man hypothetical. The issue of the GPP is that the emails were not deleted, therefore there was no cover up. We don't have evidence (reported) that there was any deletion attempt (or success). That 22mio emails were found suggests something other than a cover up. You are right, _had they deleted emails_ that would have suggested a possible cover up. But, they _had not deleted_ emails. Therefore, your point is moot.

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

No, because the Bush/Cheney administration are incredibly talented at pulling one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of the US while being inept, ignorant, uneducated, stupid, and a horrible public speaker. In other words, one of the smartest stupid educated ignorant uneducated charismatic foot-in-mouther guys in the world was just POTUS and deceived the entire world while completely ruining - in secret, mind you - the US economy.

Uh, yeah. Bush and Cheney were secretly planning to ruin the economy because.... well just because they are evil.

As for who ruined the economy, and whose holding it down, if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch. So blaming Bush/Cheney or Obama/Biden really just shows ignorance. Congress controls the purse strings. I don't know if you old enough to remember, but just a few years ago, the economy was going gang-busters. When Bush took over, there was a slight recession, 9-11 made it worse, then one hell of a boom. The economy was going so well that the US government took in record tax receipts even *after* Bush's"tax cuts to the rich" (I got a tax cut. I had no idea that 50k/yr made you rich!) Then the economy tanked. What changed? Here's another hint, it rhymes with congress. The same party that took over congress then is still in control, and what do you know... the economy is still in the tank.

So, please, don't blame Bush or even Obama. It's not their fault. They just sign bills, boss the military around, and appoint judges (that still need Senate approval).

Re:Love the spin

[sphealey]

> If you talking about the Valerie Plame thing, it turns out that there was
> no cover up because it wasn't the administration that leaked the name.
> Remember Dick Armitage

Remember that Patrick Fitzgerald said he could not complete his investigation because of the conspiracy to obstruct justice, and that there was "a cloud over the Office of the Vice-President"? Remember that Novak testified that Armitage leaked the information to him, but that in no way proved that Armitage was the only person who leaked information, or even that Armitage was the first to leak? Remember the notes in Libby's handwriting on the typed minutes of his meetings with Cheney?

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[dbIII]

The "technical problem" was putting someone whose first job was VP of a Bank in charge of White House IT. It's amazing how close things were getting to a badly run feudal monarchy.

Re:Love the spin

[sphealey]

Interesting - a couple of Cheney fans with mod points apparently just hit the thread. Hi guys!

sPh

Re:Love the spin

[dbIII]

Obama is well on his way, apparently, to turn the US into a Muslim country

WTF?

completely ruin the country economically

Was done before he got there.

ruin health care

Was done before Nixon got there, and the reforms Nixon was trying to push were a lot more involved than what Obama is trying to get through. It really should be a bipartisan issue instead of being blocked by wreckers that don't want to see Obama succeed at anything even if it is in the national interest.

Re:Love the spin

[ppanon]

Well, it's been 3-4 years. That's plenty of time to go through all the GBs of backups, find the incriminating stuff, edit it out, and re-package the rest so that your hands look clean. Not that I think that's what happened, but if I were carrying things out for an evil conspiracy, that's about how I would do it: "Lose things" to buy time while I sweep away the guilty fingerprints.

Re:Love the spin

[Nazlfrag]

You can have both malice and incompetence, one doesn't rule out the other.

Re:Love the spin

[Jeremi]

now, we'll never really know.

I'm waiting for the entire archive to be posted to WikiLeaks. That ought to be fun; and the right wing has acknowledged the legitimacy of posting huge archives of other peoples' private email, as long as you can pull out a few nice quotes that look incriminating, so they won't mind if someone leaks it.

Re:Love the spin

[msimm]

Losing something can be considered negligent. A DoD wipe would be criminal. Which action do you think you'd be more likely to order?

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

He had a man sized safe in his office FFS and he shot a lawyer in the face...then got the guy to apologies WTF? He invented his own classification to hide anything he wanted without needing clearance and he pixelated his own house on Google maps (some say he didn't even ask google but rather he was bitten by a radioactive copy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as he was spawned)!

Re:Love the spin

[caerwyn]

As an Obama supporter:

Whoosh.

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

Remember that Patrick Fitzgerald said he could not complete his investigation because of the conspiracy to obstruct justice, and that there was "a cloud over the Office of the Vice-President"? Remember that Novak testified that Armitage leaked the information to him, but that in no way proved that Armitage was the only person who leaked information, or even that Armitage was the first to leak? Remember the notes in Libby's handwriting on the typed minutes of his meetings with Cheney?

I am so happy that I don't know the level of raw hatred and paranoia to continue to blame someone for a crime AFTER someone else has confessed (Armitage), that confession has been confirmed (by Novak) and the case has been closed.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you say they hired Microsoft to FIX it? That's just part of the cover-up to make you think they tried fixing it!

Re:Love the spin

[VocationalZero]

you don't think the USAF folks in charge of White House communications can if they were ordered too?

If there was any conspiracy, informing the USAF of your intent to commit a conspiracy and then ordering them to participate doesn't strike me as the brightest thing to do. Perhaps someone saved them all as "insurance" or for blackmail material for later; I've seen that movie. I also have serious doubts about the technical capabilities of the former administration, but that may just be what they want me to think >.> Or maybe they want me to think that thats what they want me to think @_@

--
"Its only a conspiracy if they're not out to get you."

Re:Love the spin

[Chris Burke]

So, you created a nice straw man hypothetical.

Indeed I did posit a hypothetical*, but like I said I think there's a simpler explanation in an unintentionally shitty archiving system.

The issue of the GPP is that the emails were not deleted, therefore there was no cover up. You are right, _had they deleted emails_ that would have suggested a possible cover up. But, they _had not deleted_ emails. Therefore, your point is moot.

Except my actual point is that implication isn't true -- not deleting emails does not mean there was no coverup. They could have also "lost" them, and this would actually be the smart thing to do since evidence of deletion would be evidence of a cover up. That's what I meant by "Al Capone" gambit: when you can't get them for the crime, get them for the cover-up. So, if you're the conspirator, don't let them get you for the cover up by not actually deleting the emails. By the time they're found, released, and read the emails to find anything relevant, the prosecutor and you are both long gone. NSArchive is full of examples of things past their political statute of limitations, released years later.

That their archive system seems to have legitimately sucked makes that sure seem a lot less likely, though. Al Capone had a hard time arguing he didn't have good accountants. If this was actually a conspiracy, then well played, Bush Administration.

But really in however many years before NSArchive has put up their Bush Jr. documentation, I doubt any of this will be the among the most interesting reading.

* But not a straw man, because at no point did I represent this hypothetical as being someone else's argument. :P

Re:Love the spin

[erroneus]

We don't expect super0human qualities. We expect them to do their jobs without being corrupted or serving their own interests or those of their associates. We expect them to represent our interests as they promised to do in their campaigns. We expect them to uphold the constitution as they swore in their oath of office.

Re:Love the spin

[GodfatherofSoul]

Wrong, they specifically said that there were no missing emails. These were MANUALLY mislabeled and "misfiled" emails from a particularly contentious time for the administration. This was deliberate.

Re:Love the spin

[GodfatherofSoul]

There's a BIG difference between "getting your way" and "succeeding".

Re:Love the spin

[Chris Burke]

Actually I claimed that most people are smart and dumb at the same time -- pretty obvious when you realize people have different strong and weak areas. And what exactly is wrong with supporting a claim by giving an example of it? If you don't agree with my examples of smart and dumb, that's fine. I'm just disputing that there is an inherent conflict between someone doing some things that are smart, and doing other things that are stupid. It's not a contradiction or some kind of paradox.

Re:Love the spin

[cryptoluddite]

if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch. So blaming Bush/Cheney or Obama/Biden really just shows ignorance. Congress controls the purse strings.

Fact is that the president ultimately has the same voting power as 1/6th of congress... 16 senators and 72 representatives. That's why the buck stops with the president, and why the deficit went down consistently every year Clinton was in office despite the congress changing hands. And yes, if the budget goes up (after correcting for Bush) then that's Obama's fault more than any other person's.

Re:Love the spin

[adamdoyle]

No, because the Bush/Cheney administration are incredibly talented at pulling one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of the US while being inept, ignorant, uneducated, stupid, and a horrible public speaker. In other words, one of the smartest stupid educated ignorant uneducated charismatic foot-in-mouther guys in the world was just POTUS and deceived the entire world while completely ruining - in secret, mind you - the US economy.

And for the next X years, anything that goes wrong with foreign diplomacy, military conflicts, or the US economy is Bush's fault that Obama (or whoever else) is "cleaning up" with "tried and proven methods" of some sort (that apparently we have known about since the 30s but I guess nobody wants to try them; that or they've been tried and failed but we don't want to admit it).

Congratulations on writing an entire paragraph full of ad hominem attacks without saying a single thing.

Re:Love the spin

[Kligat]

"'Bush's tax cuts to the rich' (I got a tax cut. I had no idea that 50k/yr made you rich!)"

I think you're being disingenuous. The point being made is that although the Bush tax cuts affected every bracket, the brackets they favored most were the highest ones.

"Then the economy tanked. What changed? Here's another hint, it rhymes with congress."

I'm sorry, but if you think that the Democrats in Congress did anything to affect the economy this badly in the space of only one year in office, I don't think you paid the slightest bit of attention to the legislation passed in 2007. You could cite legislation they passed in 2008 for making it WORSE, or reform they blocked while in the minority before 2007, but there's nothing to even correlate with the downfall of the economy for that year except for raising the minimum wage.

Secondly, in the year 2001, Republicans had a majority until June 6 when Jim Jeffords switched in June, and a 10 to 12 member majority in the House of Representatives. Using your own logic, then, the same party as the President must have been responsible.

In truth, what you describe is the official description of the president's role, but if you took a political science class, you would know the president has considerable influence over Congress. The President has used Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden effectively to mediate disputes between members of Congress and make sure that the interests of members in favor of a bill are aligned, such that less disputes arise between one faction fighting for something in a bill another faction wants out.

Re:Love the spin

[Mr. Freeman]

You're assuming that any attempt at a cover-up would be completely successful. If that's true then we'd never hear about scandals because they'd all be covered up.
The reason people hear about scandals because someone screws up the cover-up.

These emails might have once been deleted... after a backup was run that someone overlooked. Or these emails might have been stored on some hard drives that were boxed up for storage then later removed and destroyed, but no one thought that they might need to go wipe the backup tapes too. Or someone can't destroy data because there's a lot of other data on that same media that needs to remain intact.

Cover-ups need to be sneaky (for obvious reasons), this can lead to doing a less than perfect job. Let's say you have the hard drive from someone's personal computer. Sure, you could format the entire bloody thing and overwrite to ensure no chance of recovery and you know that the emails would be permanently gone... but then you have to explain the sudden disappearance of the master budget sheet and all the other data. So, you have to go into the drive and manually delete the emails and leave everything else alone. You delete the emails but had no way of knowing that the user had "backed up" his email to another directory as well because he was switching email clients or mistakenly thought that "backing up" to the same drive was OK.

Furthermore, an official order of "delete all this email" is... official. Which means there's records of the order being given. Records of orders to do illegal things are generally not a good thing to have during a cover-up.

Re:Love the spin

[LingNoi]

Would ten whole minutes made a difference? What did you expect him to do in that time? Use his superpowers to fly up to the second plane and fight the terrorists?

Re:Love the spin

[Xyrus]

Actually, the problems today began back in the 80's when the first wave of banking deregulation happened under Reagan. That eventually lead to the S&L scandal. However, that didn't keep deregulation from happening. The late 90's was the next big flub. After World War Web happened, interest rates were dropped through the floor. The deregulation removed leverage limits and all those other pesky regulations that prevented banks from acting like drunken sailors. Then the whole thing fell apart when everyone realized they were holding steaming piles instead of pipe dreams.

There is no one party to fault here. This was helped along by both sides of the aisle, at the insistence of big banking. Enough green and you can make anything happen in congress. It also helps if your elected congress creature can't tell the the difference between a CD and a CDS.

In any event, the greed fueled money orgy was pushed for by the banks and granted by congress with BOTH parties. The measures were signed by presidents of BOTH parties.

WE, the people, were screwed by just about everyone. At least they bought us a drink ("stimulus" checks).

~X~

Re:Love the spin

[misexistentialist]

That "one hell of a boom"--boom as in a bomb--was either actively or passively manufactured by the Bush administration (Fed rate too low, FDIC and SEC regulators told to sit on their hands). They were also directly responsible for the trillion dollar war. Their friends got richer, they got reelected, they got to play reganomist and general; and while all of these are banal goals, their narcissism and the means they chose do in fact make them evil.

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

As a literacy supporter:

Woooosh!

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on writing an entire paragraph full of ad hominem attacks without saying a single thing.

People who complain about ad hominem attacks are stupid.

Re:Love the spin

[dch24]

Could this be a case of --

"It is a well known fact that reality has a conservative bias?"

Good thing we can trust the official story told by the media! </sarcasm>

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am so happy that I don't know the level of raw hatred and paranoia to continue to blame someone for a crime AFTER someone else has confessed (Armitage), that confession has been confirmed (by Novak) and the case has been closed.

You have no curiosity as to why Libby did what he did and was subsequently convicted of?

Re:Love the spin

[Kelbear]

Deleting still isn't the best way for them to cover-up e-mails.

The best way would to be say you "lost them", take time to filter through and delete anything incriminating, then come out and say you "found them" so that people won't think you just deleted everything to cover yourself.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed !

Re:Love the spin

[Cassius Corodes]

As a human being: Woooosh!

Re:Love the spin

[scotch]

This is a stupid argument. 10 minutes may have not made much difference, but what did he accomplish by giving up those 10 minutes?  Oh yeah, he finished reading a story with some children. Colossally poor judgment.

Re:Love the spin

[dbIII]

As an adult:
Grow up. It was very clear what I was writing even if the previous poster was being sarcastic.

Re:Love the spin

[LingNoi]

It's not a stupid argument when then GP says..

But when he stood on that preventable rubble and the bodies it held to deliver his speech

Why is it stupid that I use some critical thinking to ask the question why it would have made a difference?

Re:Love the spin

[TemporalBeing]

I suspect I will have to disappoint you then: personally I think the verdict on the outcomes of W Bush's /policies and actions/ is already in, and those outcomes were, are, and will be for the (now shortened) lifespan of the United States colossally bad.

Oh, so you're one of the managers who only looks at the 1 year outcome - the quarter 1 year ago, the quarter one year in the future, and pretty much nothing else. Thanks for helping destroy the world economy.

Seriously - it takes a lot longer than 1 or 2 years after a presidents term to be able to see how they did in terms of history. We're still feeling the ramifications of Clinton; some would argue Carter or Reagan too.

Re:Love the spin

[TemporalBeing]

Perhaps 18 months was how long they needed to sort through 22 million emails and remove any traces of illegal activity. Now that the emails have been sanitized, they have been miraculously "found".

Or to interject incriminating evidence...goes both ways you know...

Then again, it could be the removal of all the bobama@whitehouse.com hrclinton@whitehouse.com emails...

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Clinton some how managed to "lose" some whitewater documents in the trunk of an abandoned car, only to be discovered after it no longer mattered. Kind of suspicious There could be some motivation for hiding evidence instead of keeping it. No telling. Rather interesting too that we have these revelations about Bush emails when Obama's popularity numbers are plunging to unprecedented depths. There are far too many coincidences up in Washington DC.

Re:Love the spin

[bennomatic]

Off topic, but FYI, I'm pretty sure the opposite of "inept" is "apt" (as in "apt pupil"), not "ept". "Competent" might be even better, but at least "apt" is a word, which "ept", sadly, is not.

Re:Love the spin

[TemporalBeing]

Why not tie it back to moving the US off the Gold Standard to allow the debt to grow?

Re:Love the spin

[colfer]

Also illegal. When the shit starts to come down, people consult lawyers. Same thing happened in Watergate: plenty of people chose not to destroy evidence, up to and including Nixon himself (a lawyer by training).

Re:Love the spin

[ClosedSource]

Well, there is some evidence that Nixon forgot about the taping (otherwise, why would he have said such incriminating things) and prior to the Watergate hearings very few people were aware that taping was taking place.

Then there was the 10 min gap in the tape that supposedly was erased by accident.

Finally, destroying evidence was a rather minor crime as compared to all the other stuff Nixon did.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

For that matter, why even clean up the mess? What's done is done, right?

I'd figure most people would take it as a given that you don't want your president screening the calls that come through on the red phone, so to speak. For one thing, they might have been able to do shoot down the second plane in the 15 minutes or so between attacks. But for the record, when I said "preventable" I was referring to the PDF I linked. I don't expect you to read all of the 9/11 Commission Report but at least read that PDF, especially the last few paragraphs.

Have your politics really blinded you to common sense?

Re:Love the spin

[bennomatic]

Bush and Cheney were secretly planning to ruin the economy

No, they didn't want to ruin the economy; they just wanted to concentrate greater wealth into the hands of fewer people. They don't see that as the ruination of the economy, since those with wealth continue to live in comfort as long as things don't get quite bad enough for a revolution.

Bush's"tax cuts to the rich" (I got a tax cut. I had no idea that 50k/yr made you rich!)

Depends on where you are and who you're comparing yourself to. But in most places outside the SF Bay Area and NYC, 50k/yr makes you pretty comfortably middle class unless you've got a mess of kids and you've bought more house than you can afford.

But the 3% or so that you saved translates to no more than $1500/year of tax reduction for you. It's something, but not a lot. Now, give that same 3% tax break to someone who's pulling down 100 million dollars per year, and suddenly you've left up to $3M in the pockets of one household. And that's not even considering all the other tax breaks that wealthier people have access to.

And the thing to think about here is the tipping point, the point where, for most Americans, an extra $100 a month is the difference between falling behind and getting ahead. Or the difference between saving for your kid's education or hoping for a scholarship. Or buying those new brake pads or waiting a month or two. $1500 a year in savings for a middle class person might make a more substantive difference in their daily lives than the $3M would for the person brining in $100M per year. Except for the principle of the matter, the richer person wouldn't even notice it.

And that's the core of why people complain about Reagan and Bush's "tax cuts for the wealthy". It's not that they didn't benefit a substantial number of average people in some way--they did. But they provided a windfall for the sector of society that simply did not need it, and with all the lost tax revenue, services for those who are the most in need of them have been repeatedly cut. Public schools, mental health institutions, scientific research, even our national parks have had to scale back services, privatize and focus on profits instead of their core goals, to what has been--I feel--the detriment of society.

I don't think that everything is the fault of any individual executive, but the POTUS does indeed set the agenda; tax cuts were one of Bush's mantra through the whole of his eight years. Combine that with a completely unbalanced budget, two major wars and the continuation of 30 years of removing checks on the banking industry, and the current economic situation was completely predictable.

I think the process of concentration of wealth within a society is not a bad thing overall, but when it gets to a certain point, it becomes difficult for that society to continue to grow and prosper, as there are so many people struggling to get by, surviving at the effective whims of the wealthiest classes. I say treat it like a game: Look! These people won. Now start over and redistribute everything and you get to play again. Think about it. How much fun would a game of Monopoly be if the winner from the last round got to start the next game with all of his or her holdings?

I don't believe in revolutions; they're too bloody. But bloodless redistribution of wealth is possible. It can be done through taxes, or the wealthy can just man up an let go of 90% of their holdings. Rich people don't need money; they'll get rich again. Look at Don Trump: it wasn't that long ago that he was over $100M under water, but that didn't stop him.

Re:Love the spin

[plopez]

I lived in Wyoming for an number of years, before and after 9/11. Even before 9/11 people would say "If you look down Bush's throat you'll find Cheney's hand".

Of anyone one in the WH at the time Cheney knew how to operate. The rest of the administration was his, whether they knew it or not. He should have been a deep cover CIA guy, instead he destroyed America.

Mark my words, he will be a respected Elder Statesman when he dies. Instead of a man guilty of crimes against humanity. Bush will take the blame and he will walk away (I hope I am wrong). He was just close enough to power to make it happen and just far enough away to avoid responsibility.

Right now his mistake is not shutting up. He may want to self-destruct. I'm not sure. If he keeps quiet he's OK.

It's telling that no one from the Republican party wants much to do with him. They're all focused on Sarah. Who is yet another sock puppet. I need to get off of this soapbox.

Re:Love the spin

[AlamedaStone]

You can have both malice and incompetence, one doesn't rule out the other.

But sufficient levels of either make them basically indistinguishable.

Re:Love the spin

[thejynxed]

Two failed wars, a terrorist attack, the failure to capture, prosecute and imprison most of the culprits involved (far more were in the planning than were on the planes), Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay, USA-PATRIOT Act, yeah, he did such a FINE JOB THERE BUDDY, NO ONE WILL EVER LOOK BACK AND CALL THAT PRESIDENT A BUFFOON, NOSIRREEBOB! /sarcasm

For your reading pleasure, http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/articles/full_list/

Recommended to me by several of the 98% of historians who view Bush's presidency as a complete and utter failure.

Re:Love the spin

[Loki_1929]

Perhaps 18 months was how long they needed to sort through 22 million emails and remove any traces of illegal activity. Now that the emails have been sanitized, they have been miraculously "found".

So, wait... President Obama is conspiring with Dick Cheney?

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

As a mirror universe evil twin: Hsoooow!

...

Sorry.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo mama!

Re:Love the spin

[dakameleon]

Seriously - it takes a lot longer than 1 or 2 years after a presidents term to be able to see how they did in terms of history. We're still feeling the ramifications of Clinton; some would argue Carter or Reagan too.

I'd say that assertion would only apply to those attempt to put a yardstick alongside Obama - Bush's 8 years have given us plenty of time to see stuff in a little bit more context. You might argue that policies and actions of Carter, Reagan and Clinton are still influencing events today, but it's hard to say that their relative place in history can't be determined to some extent, and is unlikely to be changed significantly.

As for Bush and why he's so quickly dissected, when you're on the brink of bankruptcy, you tend to look back and try to identify what exactly has caused your current parlous state - given at the time of Clinton's departure there was a budget surplus, and eight years later America found itself up to its eyeballs in debt with two wars encroaching on the public purse and the idea of taxes to pay for them a total anathema to the very people who cheered loudest for them... you tend to have a fairly good idea of where that particular president has left the country.

(*Australian posting here - pardon any missed details.)

Re:Love the spin

[hairyfeet]

Yeah, I'm afraid that any doubt about what kind of president he was kinda left the building when he called the constitution a just a Goddamned piece of paper, at least it did for me,YMMV.

Re:Love the spin

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Complete destruction of all records is obvious (tampering with backup tapes leaves traces and signals intent) and could lead to serious repercussions (if the next guy in has balls, which he didn't.) Better to "mislabel" them and have plausible deniability. Besides, stuff only has to go missing until it's no longer relevant. Which it has, isn't that convenient ? By now you can have all the evidence you could dream up and the right wing media would just paint it as unfairly using the power of government to persecute a former president.

Re:Love the spin

[LingNoi]

I read your PDF and it's totally wrong.

Yes it mentions the world trade center as a possible target however it also mentions a great deal others too. It also says the group plan to use explosives (which is in the last paragraph you're referring to).

The world trade center wasn't blown up. Two airliners jets were flown into it. It's was such a shocking event because before this no one even considered the idea.

For one thing, they might have been able to do shoot down the second plane in the 15 minutes or so between attacks.

Even if it would be possible to detect that the plane had been hijacked ( at a time everyone thought it was an accident ) there is no possible way they would have been able to shoot it down in time.

Not only that, I bet if it was shot down everyone would be howling for the president to be put in jail for it because you don't just shoot down an airliner jet full of hundreds of people on speculation that they "might" take out a building.

Have your politics really blinded you to common sense?

America isn't my country and I have no sides either way. It is you that is blinded. Everything I said is common sense and based in reality, unlike your stringing of bits of PDFs as "proof".

Re:Love the spin

[Archangel Michael]

many seem to run rampant with conspiracy theories based on nothing more than the fact that they don't know

Yeah, the lefties call the (R) guy doing this ... Glenn Beck, while engaging in the very same thing that he does. I call it Irony.

Party hacks are useless tools. If you can't articulate your position without using "Evil" or otherwise demonizing your opponent, you probably should reconsider your views. In fact, if I was running for office, I'd use this very line. And I'd probably get demonized for it.

Re:Love the spin

[rishistar]

And don't forget Sarah Palin herself tried to circumvent archiving laws by doing business from a personal email account with yahoo

.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Some? America hasn't left South Korea yet. When did America enter Korea? 1950? America is still dealing with that, 60 years later.

Still, G.W.B. failed in terms of history. That much is easy to see. Diverting resources from Afghanistan for his personal war was pointless, especially since it allowed the Taliban to regroup (and take over parts of an allied land!). Saddam was an enormous asshole, mind you. And he should have been removed from power in 1992. Instead, we told Iraqis to fight Saddam, promise support, do nothing, let them get slaughtered for a decade while Saddam destroyed his opposition, and wonder why we're having trouble forming a stable government now. (Hint: the opposition party is dead)

It's still better politically than Vietnam was. At least we aren't trying to suppress a long standing popular revolutionary movement. (Indeed, Ho Chi Minh wrote several letters to the American presidents, hoping for our support in their revolution against France's imperialist power)

Let's not get into the ridiculous entitlements and tax cuts GWB gave the babyboomers. Promises for nearly 60 trillion dollars over the next 40 years are law, right now. America is on its way to bankruptcy, unless big (unpopular) changes are made.

Re:Love the spin

[poopdeville]

He wasn't being sarcastic. You just missed his point entirely.

Re:Love the spin

[sjames]

He was smart enough to convince someone else to be the "President" and take all the PR hits for him.

Re:Love the spin

[poopdeville]

The world trade center wasn't blown up. Two airliners jets were flown into it. It's was such a shocking event because before this no one even considered the idea.

That's just bullshit. Google for "Bojinka", a plot to crash planes into strategic targets Al Qaeda was known to be planning since 1992 or so. Indeed, Ramzi Yousef was the ringleader. The FBI and the CIA knew about this plot. Sound familiar?

Re:Love the spin

[smash]

There are pre-2001 emergency document floating around wtih planes flying towards buildings. You think that bin laden, et al are so intelligent that they thought up the idea of flying into buildings, yet the "best and brightest" in the US were unable to?

Re:Love the spin

[agrippa_cash]

Have you seen the Beckian conspiracy diagrams? These tend to involve or implicate thousands of individuals. A diagram of the Bush/Cheney email/DOJ/bad intelligence/Plame conspiracies would collectively require fewer arrows than Obama's nefarious plan to eliminate the meal of Dinner.

Re:Love the spin

[Xest]

Unless someone or some people decided to keep a copy outside of the official places that investigators would look for it in case it came in useful.

Re:Love the spin

[hanabal]

i think that was an attempt at humour. pointing out one of the many many illogical and strange systems of the modern English language.

Re:Love the spin

[Philip K Dickhead]

You are mistaking the objective.

The Bush II Administration was the most successful in living memory. It accomplished every one of it's objectives. Stage one dismantlement of the constitutional republic was completed.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, North and South Korea are still at war, they are just taking a breather.

Re:Love the spin

[geminidomino]

Actually, I think it's "adept". "Apt" is more of a general mental quickness.

Re:Love the spin

[geminidomino]

failed wars, a terrorist attack, the failure to capture, prosecute and imprison most of the culprits involved (far more were in the planning than were on the planes), Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay, USA-PATRIOT Act, yeah, he did such a FINE JOB THERE BUDDY, NO ONE WILL EVER LOOK BACK AND CALL THAT PRESIDENT A BUFFOON, NOSIRREEBOB! /sarcasm

On the other hand, he managed to convince a good chunk of the population that these were all good things/successes/victories... Sort of puts Steve Jobs to shame...

Re:Love the spin

[geminidomino]

We don't expect super0human qualities. We expect them to do their jobs without being corrupted or serving their own interests or those of their associates. We expect them to represent our interests as they promised to do in their campaigns. We expect them to uphold the constitution as they swore in their oath of office.

You expect too much.

Re:Love the spin

[geminidomino]

The world trade center wasn't blown up. Two airliners jets were flown into it. It's was such a shocking event because before this no one even considered the idea.

Except that Jack Ryan writer guy...

Re:Love the spin

[Opportunist]

If they were honest, well meaning individuals, the point I was trying to make is that they're not alone in their decision finding. They're surrounded by a bunch of advisors and information carriers. And they have to rely on them because, as was stated as well, they don't know everything. They need those advisors to get information about things they don't know.

Now every single one of them would have to be a honest, well meaning individual with the intent to put the country first and his personal (or the group's he is representing) interests behind.

I think to expect that every single one of them is working in the best intent of the country or even humanity is asking a tad bit much from humankind.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

When queried about that little tirade, I can just see Bush disingenuously retorting with that texan twang, "but I was taken out of contest, godammit!"

Re:Love the spin

[lwright84]

Ya because prisonplanet is an accurate source of information. Geez, hogwash ignorant "news" sites like that do more more harm to our country than any single POTUS ever has or ever will. They are breeding hogwash ignorant Americans by the thousands. Ok, back to 'Loose Change' everyone, sorry for the interruption..

Re:Love the spin

[b4dc0d3r]

Sounds like a rant for a 911 truther, not a lost mail archive discussion. It's clear from the closed-door meetings and other stifling that the Bush administration wanted as much privacy as possible. I'm sure they were trying to achieve the bare minimum allowed records archive, but not capture everything. Rove's non-governmental coverage, used for government work, is the best example.

Yes they tried to cover up a lot, no they weren't good at it. Doesn't change the fact that they were extremely closed to the public.

When any argument is taken to the extreme, it becomes ridiculous. At that point you have to stand back and get some real facts. Based on the facts at hand we can say: If the Bush administration could have done everything in complete privacy, it seems like they would have done so. Good and bad, conspiracy or no. Mislabeling e-mails so they can be recovered if threatened with prison time sounds plausible compared to planning multiple hijackings, yes?

The problem is the administration played everything so close to the chest, it's impossible to tell what was intentional and what was ineptitude.

Re:Love the spin

[scotch]

He could have taken the rest of the week off at his ranch in Texas and it would not have made any difference.  Colossally poor judgment.

Re:Love the spin

[jimbolauski]

So the Bush administration was the one who forced banks to give out loans to people who couldn't pay them back, or was it the Bush administration who's boyfriend was the head of fannie may and the administration blindly defended them stopping a probe many years before the housing crash. Was it the Bush administration that feveroushly fought to stop drilling for oil in the US which would lead to more money staying in the country. I'm not saying that Bush did not make mistakes but to say he was directly responsible is ignorant, there is more then enough blame to go around.

Re:Love the spin

[jc42]

I'm afraid that any doubt about what kind of president he was kinda left the building when he called the constitution a just a Goddamned piece of paper

Yeah, because anyone who bothers to check the facts quickly learns that the US Constitution is on parchment, not paper.

I mean, when Bush couldn't even be bothered to get such a trivial detail right, it told us something about his general respect for the truth. That little error pretty much works as a symbol for the rest of his administration.

Fact checking isn't just for validating journalists ...

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Banking deregulation is only part of the problem. A huge problem is GSEs like Fannie and Freddie incentivizing horrendous risk-taking because of implicit and explicit government backing, and lower underwriting standards to complete political and social housing goals ala the FHA.

As much as you hate Regan, if you want to get to the root cause of *this* financial crisis right now, it has damn near jack shit to do with the 80's and everything to do with 95-2007. Easy money. Incentives for subprime lending. PLUS deregulation. Perfect storm.

Re:Love the spin

[jc42]

As a pedant: No; "whoosh" is correct. The "woo*sh" spelling is a recent innovation, presumably originating in one of the English dialects that have merged the /wh/ consonant with /w/. If pairs like which/witch and where/wear are homophones for you, then you speak such a dialect. (I don't pronounce them the same.) English spelling tends to be conservative; it tends to preserve such distinctions even when the pronunciation in major dialects has lost them.

Re:Love the spin

[TemporalBeing]

Clinton's departure there was a budget surplus,

There was the appearance of a budget surplus. Why? B/c they fudged the numbers by including Social Security when they shouldn't have. It was purely a numbers game. Of course, we now also realize how bankrupt the Social Security program is.

The debt issue goes back to nearly every President and Congress since the Great Depression. Between WWII, Social Security, Medicaide/Medicare, and Social Security you can account for nearly all the debt. The amount of spending during Bush's 8 years would pail in comparison (if all figures were adjusted for inflation).

The debt has little to do with Bush - and nearly everything to do with Congress over the last 50+ years.

May not be politically popular but it is the truth.

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

I am so happy that I don't know the level of raw hatred and paranoia to continue to blame someone for a crime AFTER someone else has confessed (Armitage), that confession has been confirmed (by Novak) and the case has been closed.

You have no curiosity as to why Libby did what he did and was subsequently convicted of?

Libby was convicted of perjury. He was asked about a conversation he had a year or two before and his recollection was different than the other person in the conversation. The prosecution needed a conviction to show for the money.

Re:Love the spin

[the_pooh_experience]

Just for the record here, here is what I could find on the US Tax incomes:

Year US Tax Income ($M) GDP ($B) Tax/GDP
2009 $1,398,542 (a) Not Available ---
2008 $1,602,823 (a) Not Available ---
2007 $1,571,322 (a) Not Available ---
2006 $1,478,945 (a) $11541.614 (b) 0.128140224
2005 $1,339,363 (c) $11163.759 (b) 0.119974200
2004 $ 998,328 (c) $10822.914 (b) 0.092242970
2003 $ 925,477 (c) $10466.951 (b) 0.088418967
2002 $1,006,389 (c) $10095.771 (b) 0.099684214
2001 $1,145,414 (c) $ 9910.034 (b) 0.115581238
2000 $1,211,749 (d) $ 9887.749 (b) 0.122550542
1999 $1,064,160 (d) $ 9671.089 (b) 0.110035178
1998 $1,017,274 (d) $ 9237.081 (b) 0.11012938

(a) source: http://www.fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b2009_4fd.doc
(b) source: http://forecasts.org/data/data/GDPC96.htm (c) source: http://fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b45.pdf
(d) source: http://fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b42.pdf
This, combined with historical information about Congress:

Year House Maj.(e) Senate Maj.(f)
2009 Democrat even
2008 Democrat even
2007 Republican Republican
2006 Republican Republican
2005 Republican Republican
2004 Republican Republican
2003 Republican Republican
2002 Republican even/Democrat
2001 Republican Democrat
2000 Republican Republican
1999 Republican Republican
1998 Republican Republican

(e) source: http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/index.html
(f) source: http://senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm

We also note that this is *not* spending, but simply tax income. Keep in mind we should expect that tax income should lag tax law by about a year for the tax law to take effect. The GDP steadily rises, so the main difference is the tax income (total dollars). As a nation, the US tends to hang out around 11%-12% Tax/GDP ratio. There were some low years (2002-2004) which seems to align (with said lag) with the Democratic control of the Senate, although it could also be blamed on the "Bush Tax Cuts" (2001, if I recall correctly).

Short answer, looking at a president, a congress, a party, etc. is potentially a myopic view.

Re:Love the spin

[jc42]

There were also the critical analyses from the NY Fire Dept people saying that the design of the World Trade Center buildings could lead to a small fire (e.g. a burning trash can or laptop battery next to a filing cabinet) that would sufficiently weaken the building's steel skeleton to cause a collapse similar to what actually happened. A number of engineer types have commented that the buildings could have easily withstood the impact of an airliner (as the Empire State Building did decades earlier); the problem was the softening of critical steel beams by the heat of the fire. There were even conjectures that this was the plan in that incident a decade earlier, with the burning van in the underground parking area, which was apparently done by part of the same gang that pulled off the 2001-9-11 caper.

When reading about such things, I found that it was hard to avoid the mental image of a bunch of engineers standing around talking about how helpful it was of al Qaeda to actually perform the experiment, and verify the accuracy of the engineering analyses. We all know how difficult it can be to get funding to actually perform such useful tests of new or marginal designs.

There's also the alternate theory, based on the fact that Mohammed Atta was an architecture student. This theory says that his leading the team that destroyed the WTC wasn't an act of terrorism; it was an act of architectural criticism. He successfully removed an out-of-place eyesore from the New York skyline. But note that this theory doesn't conflict with the above engineering explanation; it talks about motive, while the other deals with method.

(I also like the concept of "spin". But then, the "minor" part of my CS degree was in linguistics. ;-)

Re:Love the spin

[Beezlebub33]

Excellent. I'm glad they were found. Now, when, exactly, where they found? When was the press release that they were found?

And exactly how does this guy know (since he's not part of the White House currently, and presumably not part of the recovery activity or investigation) that the emails in question are the same ones that were 'found' way back when?

You see, I think that Scott Stanzel is probably lying out his ass. He is completely making this up, and doing what politicians do, which when confronted with embarrassing information, say "That's old news; we've already dealt with that".

Re:Love the spin

[Smegly]

Actually, the problems today began back in the 80's...

Actually, it started its long slide August 15th, 1971... in response to a little war going on at the time in Vietnam. What happened on August 15th, 1971? If you do not know I suggest watching this series of videos, in particular chapter 9 "A Brief History of US Money".

"Everything that follows, is a result of what you see here."

Re:Love the spin

[MillenneumMan]

I was stunned by your quotation of Bush. I had never heard anything like that before and agree that such a statement coming from a sitting President (or even a former President) would be very disturbing. I followed the link, read the article, and noticed that the author did not cite ANY sources of this comment. I noticed he also attached outrageous statements to other administration officials, also without citing any references. I searched the internet could not find any other sources for any of the author's claims, other than repetition of the same article you linked to. I must conclude that the writer of that article is not telling the truth and you have been duped. If there had been any truth to this kind of statement, other media would have latched onto this. I am not saying there aren't numerous other reasons to despise Bush, it simply appears that this one didn't actually happen.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

What do you mean? Pretty much everyone even slightly intelligent and knowledgeable noticed he was ruining the US economy.

It's just no one listened to them.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

There was the appearance of a budget surplus. Why? B/c they fudged the numbers by including Social Security when they shouldn't have. It was purely a numbers game.

All budgets borrow from Social Security. That's the way the program is set up. If there is excess in the SS trust fund, and there has always been, and will be for the next several decades, it gets loaned to the general budget, which is a hell of a lot better than borrowing from the Chinese.

Acting like Clinton just randomly decided to borrow from there is lying.

And whether or not we actually hit total parity is not the point. Clinton actually got the deficit low enough to reduce the external debt.

Now, he didn't manage to reduce it far enough to let us stop borrowing from social security...which wouldn't happen anyway, we would have just started converting external debt (You know, what we actually pay interest on.) into SS IOUs. But what he did would get us far enough to start paying back our external debt, for the first time in quite a long time.

We, of course, continued to raise our internal debt owed social security the maximum amount, like we have done for every single year we've had social security and a debt.

People are standing there arguing if Clinton really ran a five minute mile, because it was downhill. Well, maybe he didn't, maybe it should count as 5:15 or something, but he did a fuckload better than the right.

Of course, we now also realize how bankrupt the Social Security program is.

Social security is not slightest bit bankrupt, you moron. It will, like all taxes with actual dollar amounts written into it, require adjustments due to inflation. The fact we hadn't adjusted it every year while updating tax rates was stupid to start with.

I swear, you're like someone who claims the postal service is bankrupt because in a decade there's no way they'll afford being able to move those letter for what they're charging for stamps.

Re:Love the spin

[hesiod]

Of course they are: they're both aliens, and I don't mean from Kenya!

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

I don't even know why Plame would be a 'conspiracy'. I mean, someone was actually convicted of obstructing justice into the investigation of that, and her identity was, in fact, leaked.

If someone commits a crime, and someone else obstructs justice to keep the first person from going to jail, you ipso facto have criminal conspiracy somewhere. I mean, is there really any sort of way that couldn't be a conspiracy, legally speaking? (I guess if Libby himself leaked her name...)

Likewise, conspiracy theories about these emails being lost on purpose would sound crazy...if, you know, members of the Bush administration hadn't gone to jail for obstructing justice. So yeah.

I actually have a conspiracy theory about the right I can't prove: They keep floating crazy theories so that the actual demonstrable criminal conspiracies they engage in sound like 'the normal crazy stuff you hear in politics'.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

So why did Libby get a partial pardon instead of a full pardon?

Seems like Bush at least felt he was somewhat culpable.

Re:Love the spin

[DarthVain]

If I could have inserted the Dramatic Gopher here I would have.

Besides, the US hasn't been constitutional nor a republic for a long time.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

I'm wondering how all the people who blame it on 'subprime' lending (Aka, those poor people) are going to feel when the wave of commercial foreclosures becomes visible.

Here's a hint: 'Subprime lending' had jackshit to do with this. The FHA had jackshit to do with this.

Fannie and Freddie had almost nothing to do with this, and, strangely enough, in the opposite direction you seem to think. They 'caused' the problem by accepting most of the good loans, so that banks traded them all their good loans, and kept the bad ones.

However, it turns out banks were lying to everyone, and enough of the loans they accepted were bad enough that they had to be bailed out, but that really doesn't have anything to do with the crisis at all. If it did, the crisis would have been over when they were bailed out.

The problem was banks inventing ways to loan money to each other by propping the money on imaginary financial instrument that were made up of risky investments (That happened to be mortgages), that were mathmatically hallucinated to be sound.

It has nothing to do with what the instruments contained. They could have contained lottery tickets for all anyone cared. It was how banks made 'safe bonds' out of taking a billion risky investments and slicing them up, and not only selling them to people, but selling them to each other. (So they could then turn around and loan each other money based on them.)

Subprime mortages are risky investments, and absolutely no bank is required to make them, ever. Or any loan. (Certain banks have to make a certain percentage of loans to certain areas, at whatever level they're willing to make loans to everyone else, but at this point that's not relevant, as the banks subject to that rule make up maybe 25% of all actual home lending, and thus maybe 1% of all total loans were required like that.)

Subprime loans are fine things for banks to issue and treat like subprime loans. They are not fine things to be converted to pretend bonds and magically creating 10x the amount of the loan out of thin air.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

So the Bush administration was the one who forced banks to give out loans to people who couldn't pay them back

Hey, moron. Banks were not forced to do any such thing. Less than 25% of all loans in this country were subject to the rule you're talking about, which means maybe 1% of loans were loans banks wouldn't give out normally. Most subprime lending (Which I'm sure you claim was the problem) were done by lending institutions not subject to those rules.

Banks gave out loans to people who couldn't pay them back because they could sell the loan to other banks who invented money out of thin air using them.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

The simplest reset is to jack up the estate tax to something like 90% on estates worth more than a few million. You have your life time to set your kids up, and then they have to find something useful to do, instead of being professional heirs. And best of all, you're not taking anyone's hard earned money away from them.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

Yes, but any backup administrator working for the government would also understand that being asked to delete emails was probably illegal.

But what was asserted here is that they weren't backing up email in compliance with the law, not that the backups were deleted.

Apparently, the systems were still being backed up, in some other way.

Re:Love the spin

[hesaigo999ca]

This is where you are wrong, I am sure someone had cloned a drive as backups and was forgotten about, even though someone can quick format a drive, it still has the info on it. I think the previous admin was not as good as the new admin (working for Obama) seeing as Obama is the first president to really kick up a notch when it comes to online presence, even setting up a website for people to blog and share their views and ideas with his close assistants.

Remember the blackberry issue, I think he is surrounded with much more powerful computer kung fu artists then the previous president was (we shall not mention his name...as well I am sure the previous president is shaking in his boots right now!)

I want to see blood!!!

Re:Love the spin

[hey!]

I dunno. Incompetent, sure. The idea that Bush was stupid and uneducated is oversold so. He was neither. The fault wasn't in the Bush administration, but the American people. It was we the people as a whole who were stupid and uneducated. We didn't bother to educate ourselves about Iraq. We didn't bother to get reliable information on how 9/11 happened, and what to do about it. No. We left the thinking to our betters, and we got the just reward of lazy citizenship, which is bad government.

The people are not more competent at picking leaders than some secret elitist cabal would be. However, even though they don't know the cure to their problems, they can *usually* tell when the prescription is killing them. So democracy doesn't ensure wise government; it only gives people less drastic means for ridding themselves of governments that haven proven bad.

But there's another factor in play. We like to believe the universe is biased towards our welfare. We like to believe God has a purpose in giving Dick Cheney twice the span of years on the Earth than Mozart. So we rapturously voted Bush a second term, waiting for the amazing turn of fortune that always comes in the third reel of the movie.

After 9/11/2001, America saw in this man the leader it *wished* it had, not the man whose puny moral character was evident for anyone who was willing to see.

My first impression of Bush was listening to him early in the primary explain how he was a self-made man. That told me everything I needed to know about him, which is that he is a big phony. That's not just my liberal bias; I'd never say that Bob Dole was a phony. I can see that Dole's a great man I happen to disagree with. Bush was the first candidate I ever thought was to too *infantiile* to hold office.

There's nothing wrong with being born into privilege. I've had such people working for me and benefited from the superb education they received. People born to privilege are often the most admirable of men and women, and we benefit greatly when the best of them offer themselves for public service. But there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong about a man who can't say, "I was fortunate in life and I had parents who gave me advantages most people could only dream of." The Bush administration was marked by denial and wishful thinking, which sadly is not limited to the stupid and uneducated. Plenty of uneducated people manage to deal with reality quite well. Lacking the advantages of social prestige and wealth, they have to.

Now don't think I don't see the wishful thinking parallels with Obama. I happen to support him; I *think* he's going to prove a pretty good president. He's got the communication skills to get things done, and I happen to agree with the direction of his policies. So I certainly don't think he's the second coming of Hitler. But some of the hero worship on *my* side of the political spectrum is a bit scary.

Let's keep remembering, folks, these guys work for *us*.

Re:Love the spin

[hey!]

I agree that the really *big* screw-ups were not exactly secret. At least not that kind of secret.

It's kind of like when a woman asks her best friend whether her husband might be cheating on her. The fact that she's gotten to the point of asking that question should tell her everything she needs to know. Escaping the consequences of a brazen affair turns out to be easier than escaping the consequences of leaving the toilet seat up, because you are aided by wishful thinking.

Re:Love the spin

[ildon]

if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch.

I'm glad you cleared that up. It seems to have been a bit of a matter of contention for the past 120 or so years. Never mind "sharing of power" or "checks and balances".

Re:Love the spin

[caerwyn]

Yes, it's clear what you were writing. It just had no relevance to what the parent was saying, hence the "whoosh". The initial bit of "As an Obama supporter:" was intended to convey that my response was not due to any particular dislike of what you were saying, but merely for the purpose of pointing out that you'd rather missed the point.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

So who leaked to Matt Cooper?

It's a simply question. Go ahead. Answer it.

Re:Love the spin

[BlindIdiotGod]

Yeah...sorry, but this offers pretty persuasive evidence that the "goddamned piece of paper" quote is bogus.

Re:Love the spin

[TemporalBeing]

Clinton had nothing to do with the balanced budget. That was, is, and will always be a Congressional issue. The Constitution gave Congress the purse strings.

The difference is not whether or not we borrowed against SS. The difference is that prior SS was not attributed to the balancing of the budget. Congress (a Republican congress, mind you) changed that.

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

He was convicted of a lot more charges than perjury.

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If it so simple, why don't you answer it?

Re:Love the spin

[jimbolauski]

WHOOSH! I guess your too stupid to understand sarcasm

Re:Love the spin

[cmiller173]

...All budgets borrow from Social Security. That's the way the program is set up. If there is excess in the SS trust fund, and there has always been, and will be for the next several decades, it gets loaned to the general budget, ...

Less than one decade. In 2016 SS will be at the point where it has to pay out more than it takes in, so the government will have to start paying back those IOU's.

In 2037 the IOU's (assuming they are actually paid) will be exhausted and SS will only be able to pay 76% of the benefits.

Source: The 2009 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds. Available here: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2009/index.html

Re:Love the spin

[HereIAmJH]

But what he did would get us far enough to start paying back our external debt, for the first time in quite a long time.

As much as I understand and agree with your point that the Clinton administration left us in a much better financial state than the GW Bush administration, the above is not actually true. The best year of the Clinton administration (the last one) the national debt increase by $17b. Overall the Clinton administration spent $1.6t more than it brought in. Roughly the same as the Reagan administration.

The last time the US has reduced it's debt was during the fiscal year ending in 1957, under Dwight D Eisenhower. Although over his full administration ended with a net increase in the debt.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're too stupid to understand that he was responding to your sarcasm with facts.

Re:Love the spin

[HereIAmJH]

Except that Jack Ryan writer guy...

Actually, Jack Ryan was the character in the book. Tom Clancy was the writer. The book is Executive Orders, and in it a Japanese terrorist flies a 747 into the Capitol during a full session of Congress being addressed by the President. And at the same time, the Iranians are spreading Ebola around the country.

It was published in 1996, so if the theory is that fiction is a good indicator of what could happen, there was plenty of time to analyze the plot.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

As for who ruined the economy, and whose holding it down, if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch. So blaming Bush/Cheney or Obama/Biden really just shows ignorance. Congress controls the purse strings.

Re:Love the spin

[HereIAmJH]

Uh, yeah. Bush and Cheney were secretly planning to ruin the economy because.... well just because they are evil.

I prefer to think the recession was like Katrina, too little too late. There were signs that there was a problem with mortgages long before the stock market started dropping. Well back into 2007. Since the government regulates banks it was their job to understand that the way the banks were handling mortgages had them way over leveraged. And if the government had taken control of Fannie and Freddie during 2007 and implemented the foreclosure circuit breakers that eventually came later, it's possible that it would have all been avoided. But that reeks of incompetence rather than anything nefarious.

But, if you want attractive conspiracy theories, look at where the money goes. In the wars started during the Bush administration it's pretty clear that companies like Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater made out like bandits. Haliburton was getting no-bid cost plus contracts for services because 'no one else was big enough'. KBR and Blackwater where providing services that the military was already trained and equipped to provide, and those service men were re-allocated because in the Army, 'everyone is an infantryman'. And then Blackwater and other security contractors are using the money earned from federal contracts to poach resources from the armed forces.

In the economy, who came out ahead? I believe all the big banks but AIG have now made plans to repay the TARP funds that were used to prop up their balance sheets and executive bonuses are still on track. These loans were virtually free. On the other hand, have you seen what has happened to the value of all those foreclosed houses? Someone who had capital and expected the crash could be scooping up billions of dollars of real estate at fire sale prices. And while it is depressing the values of houses in certain regions, within a couple years after the rest of the economy recovers they will be valued right back where they were in 2007. So a theory could be presented that wealthy investors sacrificed the big financial businesses, knowing that they had congressional support for 'too big to fail'. And then picked the corpse.

That is, if we really thought there was a cabal capable of pulling off such complicated conspiracies.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

As for who ruined the economy, and whose holding it down, if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch. So blaming Bush/Cheney or Obama/Biden really just shows ignorance. Congress controls the purse strings.

You're absolutely correct- except, in the the case of Bush43, you're absolutely wrong. Congress is supposed to control the purse strings- they are also the only entity that is supposed to make a declaration of war. However, I might remind you that while Congress NEVER declared war on IRAQ under Bush43 (REQUIRED to take an act of Congress), we as a nation, went to "war". Hell, it's almost 2010, and we're still there! How is that?

Well, Congress never had enough balls to stand up to the Administration who was "beating the drums of war" the whole time, and pull back those purse strings. It would have been political suicide to not continue to fund the war, as Congress had the ability, nay, the RESPONSIBILITY, to do MANY times, as the Administration went back to Congress REPEATEDLY to beg more money to support "The War" under the guise of "Supporting the Troops"- (which are two ENTIRELY different issues- I support the troops, but I DO NOT support this "war").

In most stupid American's minds (of which I am one), 9/11=Iraq + WMD=Iraq + Saddam=bad = Iraq=BAD. Direct result? ~4,000 US troops dead, an indeterminate number of Iraqi's dead, and regarding your post, Bush/Cheney used the war to line their own pockets and those of their cronies to the DIRECT detriment of the US and thus WORLD economy. A few decades of Republican laissez-faire economics and deregulation of industry, particularly the insurance, energy and banking (really, they're all one-in-the-same anymore) industries led us to precipice of economic instability that the war and Bush43 drove us (almost?) over.

You and I have taken the time to read the Constitution. Bush/Cheney spent much of your and I's hard-earned tax dollars and much of their time in office finding ways to subvert, disclaim and out-and-out IGNORE the Constitution. Research such topics as Executive "signing statements", habeas corpus, act of war, the GAO and Iraq, and former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales- you'll see.

Re:Love the spin

[geminidomino]

Yeah, I knew Ryan was the character, and couldn't remember Clancy's name (in my defense it was very late/early).

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the 9/11 Commission report, then. You don't have to take my word for it. They pretty much do everything but put "Bush let it happen" in big red letters on the front page. The August 6 briefing is probably the most damning example, but there are others. Clinton, for his part, claims to have told Bush during the transition that the only thing he'd need to worry about is Al Qaeda.

When Clinton put troops in Somalia (a country which had ties to Bin Laden), all the news said here was that he was trying to wag the dog. When we went to Iraq, the intelligence was found to be fraudulent almost immediately and the links to bin Laden were of course only implied. All of this was a non-issue for the press.

So yeah, if anything my rage has blinded me. I see what this country could be internationally and I see what it is instead. Fun, huh?

(What you said specifically that didn't strike me as common sense was that 10 minutes [plus the initial 15] makes no difference in responding to a national emergency. I guess we'll just have to disagree on that one.)

Re:Love the spin

[Cal27]

Those are some pretty lofty expectations.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor nitpick: The 110th Congress (2007-2009) finished so early that for most of 2009 the 111th Congress (2009-2011) is in session, where the majority is the Democratic Party with 58 seats. I think it would be better to use that figure for 2009. I didn't check your summary for other years, but having "even" in the senate column for 2009 just jumped out at me due to most of the MSM (inaccurately) reporting that Democrats have a 60 vote senate majority this year.

- T

Re:Love the spin

[commodoresloat]

The case could not be closed because Libby lied and obstructed justice in order to protect most likely Cheney and Rove. Dick Armitage was always a distraction in this.

Re:Love the spin

[Philip K Dickhead]

OK

Point taken.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

The best year of the Clinton administration (the last one) the national debt increase by $17b.

Well, okay, I'll accept that correction. I was looking at the actual budget, but there's always 'let's pretend this spending doesn't count' off-budget spending.

17b is essentially a drop in the bucket, though. Too bad he didn't get it under.

What I think is an interesting thing to look at is how much spending was minus interest payments on the debt as of the president getting in office. I.e, you count the interest on any debt he runs up while in office, but not any pre-existing debt, or debt from interest on that debt, etc. As if each president had started with a clean slate.

You can really see what's going on when you look at it that way. I wish I could find the chart that showed that.

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

He was convicted of a lot more charges than perjury.

From Wikipedia's Scooter Libby entry:

Libby resigned all three government positions immediately after he was indicted on federal charges of obstruction and perjury resulting from the grand jury investigation into the leak of the covert identity of Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame.

So, if by "a lot more", you mean ONE more charge, then you are correct. However, I feel you are being dishonest by implying that there was "a lot more" when there was really only one more charge and it was related to the charge of perjury.

In other words, it is intellectually dishonest to say that two is "a lot more" than one. But, if suspending your common sense and believing that Libby was convicted of "a lot more" than one charge justifies your hatred, then go for it.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

The answer is Karl Rove.

You know, the guy in the 'administration that didn't leak the name'?

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

You know, I keep running into more and more people who seem to be operate out of some 4th grade civics textbooks about what the branches of government 'are for' instead of, you know, what they actually do.

The president writes the budget and gives it to Congress. That is not the Constitution, that just is. It is the actual facts of the matter. It just needs a Congressional sponsor to get up for a vote, usually the president's party leader in Congress.

Congress, of course, can fight over it, and often does. Gingrich shut down the government over Clinton's budget.

But, in the end, it was still Clinton that wrote the barely-not-balanced budgets.

Re:Love the spin

[DavidTC]

There's no excess after 2016 if we stupidly leave social security the way it is.

But that would be idiotic.

There are essentially two things we need to do. Firstly, raise eligible taxable income to 90% of your income. Right now, people only pay social security on the first...$35,000 (?) of their income.

Change that, we're 40% of the way to fixing the problem.

Then add a 1.5% increase of SS taxes, and that should be enough to carry us past the baby boomers.

Although the idea that we'll run into trouble in 2037 is an interesting one. Do we really think things will be the same in 2037? I don't think we can possibly extrapolate that far.

And while we're be at 76% in 2037, we'll be at 74% in 2083, pretending we could actually know this in advance, so it's not like this is some decline...it's just, right now, SS taxes are not high enough, and will make us pay less benefits if we don't fix them when the trust runs out.

Like I said, this is essentially extrapolating that post offices will only be able to be open one day a week in 2030. Well, yes...if we don't raise stamp prices! Seriously. This is an imaginary problem.

What I'm really worried about, the actual problem, is the less and less we can borrow from SS, and hence the more and more interest we're going to have to pay on our debt. We really need to balance the budget before we get to 2016 and have to stop relying on social security, and we've going to have a lot of trouble doing that thanks to crazy spending.

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You are apparently not a truth seeker. I am sorry I misjudged you.

From Wikipedia's United States v. Libby entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby

Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007, on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.

In other words, it is intellectually dishonest to say that four is "two." But, if suspending your common sense and believing that Libby was not just prosecuted but also convicted because "The prosecution needed a conviction to show for the money" justifies your hatred, then go for it.

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

You are apparently not a truth seeker. I am sorry I misjudged you.

From Wikipedia's United States v. Libby entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby

Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007, on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.

In other words, it is intellectually dishonest to say that four is "two." But, if suspending your common sense and believing that Libby was not just prosecuted but also convicted because "The prosecution needed a conviction to show for the money" justifies your hatred, then go for it.

OK, we'll use your math. Four is not "a lot more" than two. It is exactly a "couple more" than two. The argument stands.

Well, my source just listed perjury and obstruction of justice. But, if you want to use your source, that's fine with me. From that source:

Libby was charged with lying to FBI agents and to the grand jury about two conversations with reporters, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. According to the Indictment, the obstruction of justice count alleges that while testifying under oath before the grand jury on March 5 and March 24, 2004, Libby knowingly and corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct and impede the grand jury’s investigation by misleading and deceiving the grand jury as to when, and the manner and means by which, he acquired, and subsequently disclosed to the media, information concerning the employment of Valerie Wilson by the CIA.

I don't understand how he could mislead the Grand Jury as to when and how he disclosed Plames' employment with the CIA since he wasn't the one to do it. The only way that statement could be true is if Libby lied and said that he was the one to leak the name.

Anyway, my point is that Libby, like Clinton a few years before him, was the victim of a very expensive witch hunt. Except with the Plame case, the only one to go to jail was NOT the one who actually did the crime. That's how you know it was a political witch hunt. Don't you think that if the point was to serve justice to the party guilty of the crime being investigated, that the guilty party would be the one punished? It was as if they found out that it was not a high level Bush appointee/staff member and gave up on the actual investigation and went after whoever they could get that worked for the political opposition.

Re:Love the spin

[ps2os2]

My information is a bit dated and may not be pertinent to this story if so please ignore.

I had a friend who worked in the White House and employed by a third party (not political).
He was told to recover some emails that had "disappeared". This goes back a bit but he involved an organization that built the drives and with a major effort they were able to recover about 20 percent of the emails.

I cannot disclose the name of the company or the individuals name (although he is retired) as I was not there to "prove" went went on. The company is a major world wide company and its disk drives are considered the best in the world (bar none).

I did not ask (Nor would I have asked) for any specifics, I worked with him a little and I will say he is not prone to exaggerate or fabricate things and he has a spotless record though out his career and I believed what he told me (in confidence). I think its fare to say I still respect my promise to him not to repeat specifics.

Re:Love the spin

[ps2os2]

Sphealey spoke thusley: "I suspect I will have to disappoint you then: personally I think the verdict on the outcomes of W Bush's /policies and actions/ is already in, and those outcomes were, are, and will be for the (now shortened) lifespan of the United States colossally bad. However, whether Bush was inept or was actually very ept and wily in executing those bad policies is something that will only become clear after a long time and with the release of such records as may still exist"

I will have to agree with you but will add this: Bush (and Cheney) set back the world's opinion of the US by about 100 years and possibly more. I am still having to apologize to non US types about the treatment they are getting as a result of the both of them. One person was slugged by a border person because he got out of his car. No screaming no nothing and he was roughed up. I have friends in Europe that their hostility towards America is so bad they do not talk to me anymore.
The Patriot act was the most heinous bill ever enacted and we haven't seen the end of that monstrous piece of legislation yet.

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

OK, we'll use your math. Four is not "a lot more" than two.

No. That's YOUR MATH. My math is that four is a lot more than ONE. 400% more to be precise.

Well, my source just listed perjury and obstruction of justice.

Wait, wait, wait. Your source? You came into this conversation like an expert with a well researched opinion. Now the best you've got is wikipedia articles? I'm the one who was wondering why Libby was convicted of a lot more than just one charge. You were the sanctimonious one accusing people of hatred because you knew better. You clearly are no truth seeker if you think making excuses like that is compatible with lecturing others.

I don't understand how he could mislead the Grand Jury as to when and how he disclosed Plames' employment with the CIA since he wasn't the one to do it. The only way that statement could be true is if Libby lied and said that he was the one to leak the name.

Now you arguing with a wikipedia article? That is really illuminating, NOT. That's little better than proofreading. If you can't understand it, then it fucking-a behooves you to dig deeper and really figure it out. But going around accusing people of being full of hate because they question something obviously questionable when you can't do any better is a waste of hot air.

Obviously the JURY understood it. Maybe you ought to too before telling everybody else the jury was just part of a conspiracy.

It was as if they found out that it was not a high level Bush appointee/staff member and gave up on the actual investigation and went after whoever they could get that worked for the political opposition.

Deputy Secretary of the department of state - the #2 guy appointed at the department - is not high enough level?

Re:Love the spin

[ArcherB]

OK, HERE is a better write up. Um, also don't hammer me for using a wiki source. As I recall, you used a wiki source as well.

Now, I never said Libby didn't lie. I never said that Libby wasn't innocent. What I did say was that he was innocent of the crime being investigated, and in that entire investigation, he was the only one convicted, or even charged with any crime. They even know who did the crime they were investigating and didn't charge him! Why was he not charge? (forgive me for using another wiki quote):

A close associate of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Armitage was regarded, along with Powell, as a moderate within the presidential administration of George W. Bush.

That's right! He was not an evil neo-con. He simply wasn't conservative enough. Besides, when all this was over, he was retired. No point in dragging some poor Powel fan moderate out of retirement just to convict him for committing this crime we are investigating. Let's go after that evil, no-heart VP's chief of staff.

Re:Love the spin

[adamchou]

Then the economy tanked. What changed? Here's another hint, it rhymes with congress

umm..... progress! You have a messed up sense of progress

Re:Love the spin

[Sarlin]

Drink more Kool Aid...

Re:Love the spin

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Um, also don't hammer me for using a wiki source. As I recall, you used a wiki source as well.

Oblivious?

*I* used a wiki source because you did. I was parodying your argument by mirroring it.
As for your linking to the WSJ EDITORIAL - come on, you clearly just went googling for something and are now throwing it up and hoping it will stick.

Now, I never said Libby didn't lie. I never said that Libby wasn't innocent.

And I asked why he went to the effort of lying as much as he did to deserve conviction on four charges. What was his motivation? You dismissed it as trivial. The jury clearly didn't - nor did Bush who only partially pardoned the man - leaving him $250K in the hole.

That's right! He was not an evil neo-con. He simply wasn't conservative enough

Lol. Now that's some serious conspiracy theory shit to be slinging around for one so quick to play the hate card. It doesn't take much to come up with plenty of other theories that fit the facts you have provided.

So far all you've done is prove your own partisanship here.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

All budgets borrow from Social Security. That's the way the program is set up. If there is excess in the SS trust fund, and there has always been, and will be for the next several decades, it gets loaned to the general budget, which is a hell of a lot better than borrowing from the Chinese.

No the trust funds were intended to be totally "off-budget", see the following (reprinted from here

):

The trust funds are "off-budget" and treated separately in certain ways from other Federal spending, and other trust funds of the Federal Government. From the U.S. Code:

        EXCLUSION OF SOCIAL SECURITY FROM ALL BUDGETS Pub. L. 101-508, title XIII, Sec. 13301(a), Nov. 5, 1990, 104Stat. 1388-623, provided that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the receipts and disbursements of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund shall not be counted as new budget authority, outlays, receipts, or deficit or surplus for purposes of - (1) the budget of the United States Government as submitted by the President, (2) the congressional budget, or (3) the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

While I'll admit that arguably it is better to borrow against these funds than from foreign governments (especially if they are potential economic rivals) and it was done for decades before the Clinton Administration; this borrowing is not officially sanctioned by the original or subsequent legislation defining these funds.

   

Re:Love the spin

[CannonballHead]

used...Joe Biden effectively to mediate disputes

That is hard to believe. ;) [/sarcasm]

Re:Love the spin

[Uberbah]

I lived in Wyoming for an number of years, before and after 9/11. Even before 9/11 people would say "If you look down Bush's throat you'll find Cheney's hand".

Which is why they voted to re-elect Bush by more than a 2 to 1 margin in 2004.

Re:Love the spin

[Uberbah]

If you talking about the Valerie Plame thing, it turns out that there was no cover up because it wasn't the administration that leaked the name. Remember Dick Armitage?

You poor guy, I see you rammed your head up your ass again. Yes, Armitage leaked. But that does nothing whatsoever to change the fact that other members of the administration were also leaking. The only difference with Armitage is that his leak was the one that got published.

Re:Love the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'd ordered the USAF to do so, there'd have been paperwork on it. Said paperwork would be evidence of a federal crime. That's assuming the USAF folks in charge would even have obeyed such a blatantly illegal order. Easier to lose 'em in the shuffle, to be found (or not) after they leave office. And once an administration leaves, it's damn near impossible to get any future administration to pursue criminal charges based on anything they find in the emails.

Public opprobium, on the other hand ... me, I've got Wikileaks in my blogroll and a serious case of drool.

TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[zoomshorts]

Why is this even showing up on Slashdot? Has Slashdot become the DIGG duplicator?

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[wizardforce]

Slashdot has never really been the place to come for the latest news. It is however, the best place to discuss news.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who comes to Slashdot to read the news is an absolute idiot. There are just a million sites out there that are much better and that don't need to spin every story into a sensationalistic storm.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you say is true (and I note that 7 digit ID of yours), then Slashdot's tagline should read "Discussion for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Years ago Slashdot was a cutting-edge source for nerd-worthy news. It's long-since been surpassed by other news websites. Today it's really just a shadow of its former self.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[wizardforce]

If Slashdot's primary function was to simply present a news story without regard to comments, there'd be little need for a moderation system or comments for that matter. The only reason Slashdot got as far as it did was the moderation system that allows fruitful discussion of articles. Without it, Slashdot would be long dead.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[selven]

Back then it didn't have the same number of users and the same quantity of good discussion. It's not dying, it's changing.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Shakrai]

Slashdot has never really been the place to come for the latest news.

I'm not so sure that I can agree with that. It may or may not compete with digg (not having ever visited digg I can't compare the two) but I often see stories pop up on the so-called "mainstream media" (CNN, MSNBC) sites a week or two after they are featured here. I've noticed this with a lot of technology articles but /. also seems to beat them to the punch on various political issues as well, particularly those that focus on our civil liberties and online rights.

This time they didn't -- I saw this story on CNN a few days ago -- but they often do.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we're half agreeing. But only half.

As I mentioned, I noticed your high ID number. I started reading Slashdot in the late 90's, when this site NOT ONLY provided excellent discussion, BUT ALSO cutting-edge news. (I'm on the road right now and consequently not logged in.) And I mean fresh news, not stories that other sites picked up a few days ago (not that there were many sites with equivalent audiences back then, but there were some). The volume of material that I found engaging here on Slashdot was enormous. Unless you were around back then, you really can't appreciate how much it's dwindled. During the dot-com years, I had no problem sitting at my desk 9-5, reading as many Slashdot news stories and discussions as time allowed -- as "research" related to my job, of course (hey, this WAS the dot-com era!).

Sure, Slashdot has the occasional great discussion even today. But not at the volume it once did, and it certainly isn't as fast to post news stories as its competitors are today. And I suspect you and I both know that the lag is not a result of high-quality editing taking place behind the scenes before stories are carefully posted! ;-)

I'd argue that the stories posted by Rob Malda over the past few years show that even Slashdot itself is aware of the lighter readership. But I'm not going to go digging up those stories 'cause it's late here. Well, there is the subject of the recent "Idle" category. I don't think many are going to disagree that that's primarily a foray into attracting more eyeballs in an effort to appease advertising demands, no?

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it is a great place to discuss news if you want to hear the opinions of paranoid libertarians.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

>It is however, the best place to discuss news.

you must be new here

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

I humbly disagree. Furthermore, I can actually provide a little evidence to contradict you. Check out Slashdot's Hall of Fame. 9 out of the 10 top stories all occurred in 2005 or earlier.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[AmberBlackCat]

How can a place, where people can make comments they disagree with just disappear, be the best place to discuss anything?

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[wizardforce]

Most of the comments that I've seen that get modded into the ground are ones that tend to e inflammatory or off topic etc. There are exceptions to this which is why Slashdot archives all comments; even those modded to -1 for people to view. The system isn't perfect; no system is, but it tends to elevate comments which are reasonably insightful, informative, funny etc. which does help keep the discussions rather civil. Even fairly unpopular viewpoints in a post can be elevated to +5 if you have the writing skill to do so. Honestly, it isn't terribly different than everywhere else you voice an opinion- everyone here can there's just not a guarantee that anyone will listen.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[scotch]

Grandpa, is it true what the say about early slashdot being so magical and pure and full of ponies?  Can you tell us some stories about how you would go to work and read titillating news stories on slashdot all day? Grandma, how come you don't remember your name anymore?

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[scotch]

Yeah, those are some pretty cutting edge stories.  When the US attacked Iraq, you could read about it on slashdot before anywhere else.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[poopdeville]

I've been reading at -1 for many years now. The +5 comments are not usually any better than the -1 Trolls. -1 Flamebaits can be significantly more informative than +5 informatives.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[macshit]

If Slashdot's primary function was to simply present a news story without regard to comments, there'd be little need for a moderation system or comments for that matter. The only reason Slashdot got as far as it did was the moderation system that allows fruitful discussion of articles. Without it, Slashdot would be long dead.

Yup. It's always amusing to see these "LOL! sladhdot is all dups and wackiz editrz, and flurbalgog.com totally pnsz sldhsdot!1!" comments, because usually they manage to miss the point completely.

Slashdot has always been about the comments; the stories merely need to be good enough to get people to start talking. It still hits the sweet spot of a lively but informative conversation because it has:

• a nerdy but informed user base (as opposed to digg, for instance, which has a huge but largely mouth-breather user base)
• a well-tuned comment system that tends to keep noise in check, but still largely avoids moderation wars and allows minority opinions to be seen (the usual accusations of "groupthink" have some basis, but are typically way overstated); I think one thing slashdot has shown is that restricted moderation with positive and negative feedback mechanisms works far better than "everybody can moderate" systems
• enough users so that there's a reasonable selection of interesting and informed comments for the moderation system to grab hold of, and enough minority or unusual viewpoints to provide some back and forth.

Re:TWO DAY OLD NEWS

[selven]

Aside from some, like the school shooting, they are all major world events. The world is just going through a period of temporary lack of sudden activity.

Wait

[BitHive]

Are we to understand that it was the people in Bush's white house that failed, and not "the gubbermint"? Nonsense and tosh! If people are the root cause of government's failures then the party of "government sucks" has some mirror-gazing to do.

Re:Wait

[wizardforce]

Oh I wouldn't be so quick to defend the democrats either. Most of congress was right there with Bush on a number of controversial issues up to and including when the democrats had control. Both parties are guilty as frak and you'd have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that that kind of corruption and failure will be limited to Bush and friends.

Re:Wait

[BitHive]

Who's defending the Democrats? I'm challenging the notion that "government" is more prone to corruption and incompetence than "people" in general..

Re:Wait

[wizardforce]

The government is made up of people in a very high position of power. There's no reason to believe that they're any less corruptible than anyone else. The abuses of power continue despite Bush's administration being replaced. The government as a whole did fail. It wasn't something that was solely Bush's doing; it was and continues to be systemic.

Re:Wait

[TubeSteak]

Are we to understand that it was the people in Bush's white house that failed, and not "the gubbermint"? Nonsense and tosh!

Clinton's Administration didn't seem to have a problem with archiving e-mails.
I imagine that if Obama's Administration was having problems, we'd know about it by now.
So with that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and say that yes, it was the people in Bush's white house that failed.

Re:Wait

[khallow]

I'm challenging the notion that "government" is more prone to corruption and incompetence than "people" in general..

The difference between government and ordinary people? Opportunity. Back to you.

Re:Wait

[BitHive]

Sure, but that applies just as well to rapists, murderers, and investment bankers.

Re:Wait

[BitHive]

Right, so are you describing a feature of government, or of people?

Re:Wait

[wizardforce]

Both.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton's Administration didn't seem to have a problem with archiving e-mails

Yeah, but they did have problems with "missing" legal billing records, sought after by special prosecutors for years, turning up on a table in the private residence in the White House after they'd been given up on. Gosh, how mysterious. They did have a problem with raking in cash from fugitives and felons, and then issuing them pardons in the last minutes of Clinton's presidency ... and our current Attorney General was right there helping. If you really think that the people running Clinton's administration were fresh as daisies and ethical, you're ... wrong.

Re:Wait

[khallow]

Sure, but that applies just as well to rapists, murderers, and investment bankers.

So what? In case you haven't noticed, the government bashers have a ready solution for this problem. Cut the size of government and its power and you cut the opportunity for mischief and mayhem. It doesn't matter if government is made of ordinary people or people who have a magic susceptibility to corruption. The solution works in both cases.

Rather than debate some dubious position not held by most people and irrelevant even in the cases where it is believed, in other words a strawman argument, how about you debate the pros and cons of government reduction since that is the issue that such people are advocating?

Re:Wait

[wchin]

Cut the size of government and its power and you cut the opportunity for mischief and mayhem.

If only it were that simple. If the functions that a particular government organization is performing are cut and then are merely transferred to private enterprise, then the opportunity for mischief and mayhem remain, at best, the same. In addition, private enterprise is by many metrics less transparent, less accountable, and more profit driven than government. If that function was for the public good, then going private enterprise means less accountability and more mischief and mayhem... but at least with less transparency, you and I might know less about it.

I am not advocating bigger government or smaller government. In the end, there are no easy solutions which makes public policy and the business of government very boring and unsuited to 30 second soundbites. Our system is still very flawed and the way our politicians play the game these days just makes it worse. But of course, it is the people that lets this happen and the people in the end have to decide as collective to fix it.

Re:Wait

[khallow]

If only it were that simple. If the functions that a particular government organization is performing are cut and then are merely transferred to private enterprise, then the opportunity for mischief and mayhem remain, at best, the same.

So if government isn't jailing me for not recycling my plastics, then some private enterprise will fill that role? If government can't execute me for badmouthing Big Brother, then some private enterprise will step up to the task?

Here's where the government bashers and I agree that you are wrong. There simply is far more opportunity for villainy and harm unto others in government than in corporations. And those functions that a particular government organization perform need not be transferred to anyone at all, public or private. If no one checks to see if I'm recycling or saying the right things about Big Brother, then that's ok with me.

Re:Wait

[wall0159]

Exactly - pure capitalism is just like democracy, except that the strength of your vote is dependent on the size of your wallet.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

If only it were that simple. If the functions that a particular government organization is performing are cut and then are merely transferred to private enterprise, then the opportunity for mischief and mayhem remain, at best, the same.

You can cut the size of a particular government by giving smaller, more decentralised governments the responsibilities instead of larger ones. Such as states in the case of the federal government, local government in the case of the states. That way the government has less power because you can more easily get away from their jurisdiction. Many people could move to a new local government area and still keep their jobs and circle of friends.

Often too, the function to be taken away from the state could be performed by the individual. Private sector does not primarily mean mega corporations, it means you.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

But if non-critical functions are transfered to the private sector, the organization are compelled to run it efficently.

Transparency and accountability can be as good or better than government run organizations, because it's the government that is watchdogging them - which is harder (not impossible) to "protect against". It's easier for the government to effectively demand transparency from a corporation that works for it than it is for a people to demand transparency from a government that rules them.

And if they are caught being inefficient, corrupt, etc. they can have their contracts revoked - immediately [well, almost immediately]. It would be much more difficult to, say, drop the USPS and create a new postal organization from scratch.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

There is going to be less accountability with private enterprises. They will try to make money. That is what human nature drives us to do. Period. However, competition keeps the nefarious activities in check. You cannot rake the consumer over the coals too much if another company is offering better prices and services.

No one complains about UPS and Fed Ex because they compete against each other while offering better service and prices than the government. Cable companies have de facto monopolies on high speed internet because of government intervention; there is no competition and people are always complaining about service.

A government only solution offers nothing in the nature of competition. With this, competition is stifled, and there are no market forces to drive prices down and service up. Fact is, companies, the government, your neighbor, you mother are going to attempt to make more money using any technique available. The only check is a competitive marketplace that supplies the consumer with the power of choice.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

government = group of people with power

Don't dodge the issues with semantics.

Re:Wait

[spazimodo]

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
P. J. O'Rourke

Re:Wait

[DavidTC]

And if no one checks to see that people aren't selling you products with lead in them?

Re:Wait

[khallow]

And if no one checks to see that people aren't selling you products with lead in them?

If all else fails, I can test for lead myself. I can also rely on a private certification organization much like Underwriters Laboratory. But as I was pointing out, there's a number of powers and functions of government that wouldn't be duplicated by private enterprise or even missed.

Re:Wait

[fastest fascist]

In a system as legalistic as most western societies are, allowing individuals to systematically corrupt the system is a failure of the protocols intended to protect the system against such corruption.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

So if government isn't jailing me for not recycling my plastics, then some private enterprise will fill that role? If government can't execute me for badmouthing Big Brother, then some private enterprise will step up to the task?

If there is a perception that by either imprisoning or killing a person will significantly increase a corporation's profits, and a realistic possibility that they can get away with it, most corporations would do either without much hesitation. Oh and under some circumstances "Big Brother" could just as easily be a corporate oligarchy.

Here's where the government bashers and I agree that you are wrong. There simply is far more opportunity for villainy and harm unto others in government than in corporations. And those functions that a particular government organization perform need not be transferred to anyone at all, public or private. If no one checks to see if I'm recycling or saying the right things about Big Brother, then that's ok with me.

The main problem that I have with people like you is that while being honestly skeptical of the government is all well and good, you don't seem to think corporations are an appreciable threat to individual rights. The exact nature of the threat may differ, but the magnitude is at least as great. Not matter its source, power and influence can be abused! I'll leave you with some links about of how a group of economic interests stripped an entire ethnic group their voting rights, as well as many others that didn't meet arbitrary standards, and ultimately destroyed a sovereign nation with significant participation of the common people in government and replaced it with a de facto plutocracy.

Re:Wait

[khallow]

If there is a perception that by either imprisoning or killing a person will significantly increase a corporation's profits, and a realistic possibility that they can get away with it, most corporations would do either without much hesitation. Oh and under some circumstances "Big Brother" could just as easily be a corporate oligarchy.

Why would there be such a "perception"? The premise of the original poster was that if government wasn't doing some bad thing, then some private entity would do something at least as bad. So that implies if Nazi Germany weren't invading Russia or gas six million Jews, then some private enterprise would do something at least as bad. Believe me, the perception is not there.

The main problem that I have with people like you is that while being honestly skeptical of the government is all well and good, you don't seem to think corporations are an appreciable threat to individual rights. The exact nature of the threat may differ, but the magnitude is at least as great. Not matter its source, power and influence can be abused! I'll leave you with some links about of how a group of economic interests stripped an entire ethnic group their voting rights, as well as many others that didn't meet arbitrary standards, and ultimately destroyed a sovereign nation with significant participation of the common people in government and replaced it with a de facto plutocracy.

Who said that? I don't believe that a private business, whether it be a corporation or some other type of business, can be, much less is, a threat on on the scale of government (unless it so happens to be a government). But it's obvious that businesses can be a threat to individual rights.

Let's consider examples. There are four examples of some group killing 10 million or more people. All of these are governments (USSR, Communist China, Nazi Germany, and Nationalist China). There are eleven organizations thought to have killed more than a million people. All but one were a government (and the Chinese Communists later became a government that killed tens of millions). Rwanda isn't listed and might not have met the million death threshold, but they were a government as well. In fact, of the largest mass murders and genocides of history, only one is a corporation, the Congo Free State (though a corporation run by the head of state of Belgium). It happens to demonstrate that a corporate state need not be even a whit better than any other form of government.

It boggles me that anyone can consider business as big as threat as government. You'd have to completely ignore who has been doing the killing for the past century and more.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a perception that by either imprisoning or killing a person will significantly increase a corporation's profits, and a realistic possibility that they can get away with it, most corporations would do either without much hesitation. Oh and under some circumstances "Big Brother" could just as easily be a corporate oligarchy.

Why would there be such a "perception"? The premise of the original poster was that if government wasn't doing some bad thing, then some private entity would do something at least as bad. So that implies if Nazi Germany weren't invading Russia or gas six million Jews, then some private enterprise would do something at least as bad. Believe me, the perception is not there.

Granted private industry is hasn't gassed as many innocent people as the Nazis, but then again your comparison is using one of the most murderous governments that existed in the last few hundred years. However, I agree that it is highly unlikely a corporation would have invaded Russia or committed genocide, such things aren't profitable to most corporations. Yet, aren't workers who have been killed in preventable industrial accidents or bystanders fatally poisoned by toxic waste any less dead than the victims of the Nazis? Poor workplace safety and dumping of known hazardous materials is often rationalized by the perpetrators because it makes their businesses more profitable. Of course, if you really believe someone has to be killed by a thug with a gun and a uniform for their death to count, there are modern corporations based around that concept.

The main problem that I have with people like you is that while being honestly skeptical of the government is all well and good, you don't seem to think corporations are an appreciable threat to individual rights. The exact nature of the threat may differ, but the magnitude is at least as great. Not matter its source, power and influence can be abused! I'll leave you with some links about of how a group of economic interests stripped an entire ethnic group their voting rights, as well as many others that didn't meet arbitrary standards, and ultimately destroyed a sovereign nation with significant participation of the common people in government and replaced it with a de facto plutocracy.

Who said that? I don't believe that a private business, whether it be a corporation or some other type of business, can be, much less is, a threat on on the scale of government (unless it so happens to be a government). But it's obvious that businesses can be a threat to individual rights.

Did you bother to read my links at all? If not I'll summarize, the Committee for Public Safety was a sham political organization created by the local agricultural oligopoly which seized control of the government of Hawaii (which at the time was a constitutional Monarchy with a parliament and other forms of voter representation) and later entirely remade it based on predetermined goals. It's not like these well-intentioned plantation owners were corrupted after finding themselves in control of Hawaii, they plotted to disenfranchise most of the population well before they had political power!

Let's consider examples. There are four examples of some group killing 10 million or more people. All of these are governments (USSR, Communist China, Nazi Germany, and Nationalist China). There are eleven organizations thought to have killed more than a million people. All but one were a government (and the Chinese Communists later became a government that killed tens of millions). Rwanda isn't listed and might not have met the million death threshold, but they were a government as well.

I read some of your link and it appears that the author(s) of this work

Re:Wait

[khallow]

I can consider business to be as big a threat as government because I believe even a long life of economic serfdom is as much a violation of a persons rights as outright murder. Even if I didn't, the case can be made that businesses have caused similar levels of death and destruction as governments, the only real difference is they generally do it by more subtle and insidious means. Mass murder is bad for business, but overtime the death toll from treating people like disposable resources adds up all the same.

You would be wrong, but yes, you can make these two cases. First, I see no physical condition corresponding to "economic serfdom" especially in the developed world. It looks more to me like an attitude of the worker. Sure there are a small number of people in the developed who due to a combination of lack of skill, bad luck, and too many kids, can't do much more than run in place. For everyone else, there's a simple strategy that prevents so-called "economic serfdom", namely, save money. Even if one looks at historical examples, most are a result of workers choosing to take it on the chin rather than move out.

Second, we have in the 20th Century, hundreds of millions documented deaths weighted against some vague treatment of people as disposable resources. I just don't buy it. We have plenty of examples of governments turning in to totalitarian monstrosities that control your every thought, get into wars of vast dimensions, and today even threaten the very existence of the human race with nuclear weapons and other things. Yet somehow corporations are supposed to be as bad? No way.

Having said that, you do give good examples of what happens when corporations and other businesses become the government. The East India Trade company is a good example of the corporate state in action. As is the overthrow of the Hawaii monarchy. I certainly would not want to be ruled by my employer. Especially given these historical examples, it's pretty obvious that government by business will be far worse than government by democracy or democratic republic.

But here's the thing, most businesses aren't governments and never will be. Exaggerating the evils of business compared to government is foolhardy. Businesses today simply aren't in the same class of power or ability to fuck up your life. They have restrictions on their existence. They have to make money to exist. If you break or take their assets, they go away. Governments don't have that problem.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I can consider business to be as big a threat as government because I believe even a long life of economic serfdom is as much a violation of a persons rights as outright murder. Even if I didn't, the case can be made that businesses have caused similar levels of death and destruction as governments, the only real difference is they generally do it by more subtle and insidious means. Mass murder is bad for business, but overtime the death toll from treating people like disposable resources adds up all the same.

You would be wrong, but yes, you can make these two cases. First, I see no physical condition corresponding to "economic serfdom" especially in the developed world. It looks more to me like an attitude of the worker. Sure there are a small number of people in the developed who due to a combination of lack of skill, bad luck, and too many kids, can't do much more than run in place. For everyone else, there's a simple strategy that prevents so-called "economic serfdom", namely, save money.

Are you aware that the median annual personnel income for all earners in the US is less than $25,000? If it was closer to $50,000 or $75,000 your remarks might have some basis in fact, but even if you aren't drowning in consumer-debt due to poor choices $25,000 or even $30,000 a year doesn't give you much to either save or invest with!

Even if one looks at historical examples, most are a result of workers choosing to take it on the chin rather than move out.

Well I wasn't going to go there, but since you brought it up I'll give you historical examples

of what past employers have done to employees that didn't take it on the chin.

Second, we have in the 20th Century, hundreds of millions documented deaths weighted against some vague treatment of people as disposable resources. I just don't buy it. We have plenty of examples of governments turning in to totalitarian monstrosities that control your every thought, get into wars of vast dimensions, and today even threaten the very existence of the human race with nuclear weapons and other things. Yet somehow corporations are supposed to be as bad? No way.

Alright, tell me honestly were most plantations in the USA owned by the government or private economic concerns (i.e. businesses)? If businesses, do you actually believe plantation owners never killed their slaves? More importantly, nearly all the American and European slave traders were independent merchants, and it's estimated 2.2 million Africans died during transit and up to 5 million died in so called "seasoning camps" before being sold. That's a 12.5% and 33% mortality rate, respectively, that was tolerated by private business, even though the "product" here was live human beings for physical labor. There are many more situations where businesses caused death, most without actual slavery involved. Enough that if an accurate accounting was available, like it is to a large extent for government actions, it would show that businesses are in the same league as governments are in causing death. Like I stated at the start of this exchange, businesses will imprison and kill people if they see profit it and think they can get away with it!

Having said that, you do give good examples of what happens when corporations and other businesses become the government. The East India Trade company is a good example of the corporate state in action. As is the overthrow of the Hawaii monarchy. I certainly would not want to be ruled by my employer. Especially given these historical examples, it's

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware that the median annual personnel income for all earners in the US is less than $25,000? If it was closer to $50,000 or $75,000 your remarks might have some basis in fact, but even if you aren't drowning in consumer-debt due to poor choices $25,000 or even $30,000 a year doesn't give you much to either save or invest with!

Sorry I forgot to provide a citation for dollar amount mentioned in my post, the information on median annual personnel income can be found here. The data they use is from 2005, and the peak for the average income per earner was in 2000 (which was still below $25,000). From 2000 to 2005 the trend was actually a slight decrease.

Mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they know what that lump in the carpet was.

Now the truth will come out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Laura and Tiger have been lovers since '03!

If they were "Lost" then they were "Found"

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably just took this long for a large group of monkeys to re-create the same volume of "mail"

Re:If they were "Lost" then they were "Found"

[sexconker]

Oh how I miss the days of being able to compare Presidents to monkeys and chimps.

The Ones I'm looking for:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

From: Dick Cheney
We need to destroy freedom to save it. I want to track everything. I want to track every keystroke on every computer ever. We will all feel safer when ther eis no safety from our snooping.

From: George W. Bush
I think my mind is a terrible fool thing again, hey what was that song by the Who?

From: ATT
Dear Mr President - it is all set up. Just pick up your phone reciever and press STAR 6 6 6. This will allow you to instantly listen to conversations by REAL LIVE TERRORISTS. It might SOUND like someone ordering pizza, but really, THEY ARE ORDERING OUR DESTRUCTION! Ask Cheney - he'll tell ya.

Re:The Ones I'm looking for:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I want to track every keystroke on every computer ever."

I thought that was Bill Clinton and Carnivore? So Nineties...

Standard IT issues

[TheDarkener]

"The liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive litigate for sport, distort the facts and have consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues" - Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel

Yeah, those stupid liberal groups are just out to hodgepodge the truth again. All we did was violate 2 federal laws by not keeping records of our communications, and had insanely incompetent I.T. staff at this, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What a bunch of baloney. Just an honest mistake. Tens of millions of e-mails, big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

Re:Standard IT issues

[amiga3D]

It's not beyond belief that the e-mails were mislabeled when they were archived. That kind of thing happens often enough in more than one business....civil service being what it is I think it highly likely it actually happened the way they say. If Bush and company really wanted the e-mails gone I doubt they would have ever turned up again. It's far too easy to dispose of data...hell....it's difficult to keep it.

Re:Standard IT issues

[Svartalfar]

Maybe Bush thought by running our economy into the ground we couldn't use the richest and most powerful country in the world argument. Which exonerates his supposedly terrible IT staff.

Re:Standard IT issues

[Lord Kano]

Yeah, those stupid liberal groups are just out to hodgepodge the truth again. All we did was violate 2 federal laws by not keeping records of our communications, and had insanely incompetent I.T. staff at this, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What a bunch of baloney. Just an honest mistake. Tens of millions of e-mails, big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

If this wasn't purely about politics, where were their fucking lawsuits when the Clinton-Gore administration lost emails?

LK

Re:Standard IT issues

[dogmatixpsych]

I'm sorry but I cannot believe that some people on Slashdot still think Pres. Bush is responsible for our country's economic problems. His fiscal policies did not help (unless you are a Keynesian economist; in that case him starting two wars and increasing government spending {technically Congress started the wars and increased the spending, but we'll ignore that fact like many liberals conveniently do} actually helped the economy) but our economic problems were not caused by Pres. Bush any more than they were caused by FDR or JFK or Nixon or Reagan or Clinton. If you blame anyone, blame Congress but I think we the people are the most to blame for our unreasonable spending.

Re:Standard IT issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you been to the recovery.gov site to look over their useless (GIGO) data?

Re:Standard IT issues

[zeroduck]

If this wasn't purely about politics, where were their fucking lawsuits when the Clinton-Gore administration lost emails?

At least according to their Wikipedia page, they were founded in 2003.

I certainly hope they don't just fold because another party is in charge now. It seems like they've done good work so far, hopefully they'll watch the Obama administration as they did the Bush administration.

Re:Standard IT issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Bush had nothing to do with anything. He didn't say you're either with us or against us. Or that Iraq was going to attack America any moment now with WMD. Or that terrorist would attack again any minute unless we attacked Iraq and Afghanistan. And all these things he didn't say definitely didn't energize the Republican (and liberal) majority of cowards.

We have unreasonable spending because our Government told us we'd all die from terrorist attacks if we didn't. We're scared. Well, some of us are. Unfortunately that some is most. Bush led the charge and actively pushed that fear to get his way. His major fault was not giving a shit about anything except making everyone afraid so he could do what he wanted. His friends got rich, we're still in two wars with no end in sight and you blame Obama. Obama deserves plenty of blame for not actually doing anything to change the matter, but to say Bush did nothing is stupid.

Re:Standard IT issues

[Onymous Coward]

I'm not really up on economics, to be honest. But when I google for "Change in National Debt as % of GNP" I get the impression that each administration has significant impact on economics.

And saying "technically Congress started the wars" is like saying "technically the bull started the bullfight". I recommend reading up on the Bush administration's pre-9-11 interests in Iraq.

Lesson learned for the Bush regime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time, do: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

So some of it is still missing?

[AdmiralXyz]

I'm guessing those are the "location of Iraq's WMDs" e-mails.

20 million? Hard to believe!

[bogaboga]

It's hard to believe that the former Bush Administration edited 22 million emails.

That would mean at least 7,500 emails per day including weekends and holidays; and at least 5 emails per minute.

Now, just tell me who in Bush's administration was spewing such an amount of email.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[amicusNYCL]

Do you assume it's one person? What if it was 10 people? What if it was 100? What if it was 1000?

If you work a 40-hour work week, there are 2080 hours per year when you work. Over 8 years, one person working a full-time job with no overtime works 16,640 hours. If you've got 100 people working full-time for 8 years, that equates to 13 emails per hour per person. Now imagine if they work 60 hour weeks, or 80 hour weeks. 5-10 emails per hour doesn't seem all that outlandish when you're helping run a country.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[wizardforce]

Just think of how many people would be considered to be part of the Bush administration and multiply that by the number of emails per day and any duplicates and it becomes fairly easy to see how this many emails could be sent.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[MTO_B.]

I'd guess incoming email also counts, so that figure even looks low to me when I personally might be getting half a million spam messages per day. I guess at least they did have some spam filter or the number would be much higher.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[GasparGMSwordsman]

It's hard to believe that the former Bush Administration edited 22 million emails.

That would mean at least 7,500 emails per day including weekends and holidays; and at least 5 emails per minute.

Now, just tell me who in Bush's administration was spewing such an amount of email.

There are approx. 1,700 White House staff. This is not counting OEOB staff that works across the street or other Executive branch personnel that most likely would have there email grouped with the White House archives.

If you use your figures (approx. 7,500 emails per day) then with just the White House staff that is about 4.5 emails per person per day that were lost.

Now my understanding is that these emails were "lost" in only a couple years and not over the whole 8 years so the above figures would be a higher per person per day count than that. I do think you will agree that 5 emails per day is relatively easy to write/receive/edit/delete or what ever else you want to do.

Having said all that, I think that most likely issue here is that the IT staff were incompetent and didn't know A) where the emails were being stored, B) how to access them.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[SpaceLifeForm]

That happens when you change from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange.

It is amazing that this many were recoverable at all.

Perhaps someone in IT considered the possibility that the
migration to Exchange would fail, and kept feeding all of the
e-mails to another set of servers for, you know, safekeeping.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[varmittang]

Don't forget CC emails probably count as multiples. So say one person sends an email and CCs 9 others, that 10 emails in total. Then you possibly need to include the Sent folder, so add another email on top of that. Making 11 emails in total for just one sent email in this situation.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[Chris Burke]

I find it hard to believe you spent more time typing out that post than the amount of time it would have taken to think up the answer on your own. And yet, here we are.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[jbengt]

If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
I remember reading something about a Bush official talking about how terrible and obsolete the old Lotus system was and how they had modernized the system by going Outlook and Exchange. (ouch)
On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine that these particular "mislabeled" emails were lost for other reasons, inadvertant or otherwise.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

I've got to agree. Exchange is definitely not built for organizations and institutions that need archiving and compliance components.

But of course the White House doesn't need any of those things.

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[SnarfQuest]

Most of them started

I am the son of the President of the United states, and I have acquired the sum of 40,000,000,000 (Forty Billion Dollars) through various nefarious deals, and would like your assistance in transferring this sum to a foreign country...

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[TheSync]

It's hard to believe that the former Bush Administration edited 22 million emails.

The Executive Office of the President has about 2000 employees, and the Office of the Vice President has another 200. Over a year period, that is just ~30 per day per person. I wish I only got 30 emails per day at work!

"The Administration" may also include cabinet members who are Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General. Who knows how much email these people and their staff get!

Re:20 million? Hard to believe!

[Anonymous Coward]

They received mostly viagra advertisements and enlarge your whatever types of stuff...

"Found"

[daveime]

Options :-

1 - They were down the back of the Oval Office sofa the whole time.

2 - They were hidden in some storage area, possibly the fifty-first area, which of course, doesn't exist in our universe for large percentages of the time.

3 - They were stored under the water-boarding rig at Gitmo, and they had to wait for them all to dry out.

I mean, really, is it any wonder that conspiracy theories are born, when a simple archive of data can mysteriously "disappear" and then even more mysteriously "reappear" after a couple of years.

Re:"Found"

[nog_lorp]

Makes me curious what happened to those tapes in the meantime...
Maybe there is a gap or two a la the watergate tapes.

Re:"Found"

[kbob88]

No, no. They were uploaded to AT&T's 3G network (sort of an online backup, y'know), and it took all year to download them again via an iPhone!

Fundraiser?

[cashman73]

Why doesn't the government try and make some money off of this? I mean, they could sell all the White House emails to Google -- $1/email -- and then google could set up a search engine for them. Something like, whitehouseemails.google.com, and we can search through them? Of course, they'd have to go through a security screen first, but still, I bet all the pundits on the right AND the left would go nuts over having access to something like this? =)

Re:Fundraiser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why try some scheme like that to make money? The government can just print up more money anytime they want!

Never really missing...

[tomhath]

The tapes were all turned over to the National Archives, the existence of them has been known for over two years. It was just a matter of sorting through the sixty thousand or so to find the backups mentioned in the article. It doesn't appear any attempt was ever made to hide or destroy anything, just sloppy record-keeping. Will be interesting to see if anything significant is found, but I predict the conspiracy theorists are going to be very disappointed.

Re:Never really missing...

[zippyspringboard]

I predict the conspiracy theorists are going to be very disappointed.

An easy prediction. If they are wrong we are not having the wool pulled over our eyes by a conspiring govt. If they are right then said govt wouldn't dare release the incriminating evidence!

Re:Never really missing...

[gmhowell]

Conspiracy theorists are NEVER disappointed. If they find the evidence, that is proof of the conspiracy. If they find NO evidence, that is proof that the conspiracy runs even deeper than suspected.

Re:Never really missing...

[SnarfQuest]

You know, that's just what one of those conspirators would say...

Re:Never really missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it has the word conspiracy involved, doesn't mean the threat is any less real. They ARE depending on you to think its all silly and impossible. Thats how "They" get away with it.

Re:Never really missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Though it's not these emails specifically, the Bush White House had plenty of reason to want emails to disappear. As we all know, they almost never really disappear.

http://www.gregpalast.com/amy-goodman-and-greg-palast-moms-day-broadcast/

Re:Never really missing...

[shambalagoon]

I agree that people like that live in a troubling tautology. But there's another thing at work here, and probably the most important and successful conspiracy working today - and that is the conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theorists. The popular opinion today is that conspiracy theorists are nutters, and that's a real boon to anyone involved in a conspiracy. If they're being investigated, there's already a prejudice to dismiss the investigator as crazy. How wonderfully useful.

A conspiracy is when two or more people enter into a secret agreement to do something illegal. This happens ALL THE TIME. No doubt everybody here has been involved in at least one conspiracy. You can barely get through adolescence without it. That everyone now has a knee-jerk reaction to think of anyone talking conspiracy is crazy is a coup for corruption.

Re:Never really missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who had control of all the really incriminating emails died a month before Bush left office in a mysterious plane crash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connell

The problem is that Bush's story creates a wonderfully consistent narrative which we are missing large parts of the evidence for, but what we do have matches perfectly with a number of conspiracy theories.

It's not credible to deny that the administration didn't take advantage of 9/11 for all it was worth, that it wasn't prepared to do so, that it hadn't planned to do so since long before the election, that it didn't NEED 9/11 to enact many of its ideological goals? Suggest that we were in any way complicit, though, and they call you a monster or an idiot. No, there is no hard evidence, only conjecture that is more plausible for some, via Occam's Razor, than the assertion that it all happened by chance.

Re:Never really missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sloppy record-keeping absolutely could be an attempt to hide something. The question is whether they purposely failed to keep records, or whether it was done through negligence.

Re:Never really missing...

[lawpoop]

Conspiracy theorists are NEVER disappointed... If they find NO evidence, that is proof that the conspiracy runs even deeper than suspected.

But there's another thing at work here, and probably the most important and successful conspiracy working today - and that is the conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theorists.

Man... it goes even deeper than I thought!

It's not all of them

[thetoadwarrior]

The thing is that it's not all of them. I would guess the emails people really want to see won't be found.

Re:It's not all of them

[amRadioHed]

Any really damning stuff would not be in emails to begin with. Cheney learned a lot during his time in the Nixon White House.

Re:It's not all of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton learned even more from Hillary's time as a lawyer with the Watergate investigative committee.

Strangely enough

[NaCh0]

The emails were found in Sandy Berger's underpants.

An all-time lawsuit low...

[geekmux]

"...two groups that had filed a lawsuit — which has now been dropped — over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record-keeping system.

what exactly is the fucking point over a lawsuit to prove that one of the most secretive components of our Government actually saved data that is very well likely to be CLASSIFIED to begin with? Did these groups or the lawyers actually think they were going to be allowed to see the "hard evidence" of this? Give me a fucking break.

Regardless of how you may feel about Bush and the job that Administration did, this is an utterly pointless lawsuit that reeks of bashing one(of many) "rough" Administrations. Not to mention the fact that the current Administration sure as hell was opposed to this kind of lawsuit setting ANY sort of precedent, which obviously goes to show you that no matter who is in charge or their political affiliation, NOBODY wants this information out on ANY Administration.

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[HistoryNerd]

Actually there is a huge point even if some of the emails actually are classified. (Normally for most of them there will simply be delay until the public can see them but they actually won't be classified.)

The key is that over time classified documents do become declassified, with this often occurring 25 years after the fact, and a large portion of such records becoming declassified after 50 years. (While a favorable Presidential administration might potentially hold off declassifying for dubious reasons, sooner or later a Presidential administration with different views is going to come along and reverse that decision.) This means eventually historians and others can get access to these emails and come to their own judgments about the Bush administration. In other words this provides the threat to future Presidential administrations that they will eventually be shamed by the unfavorable judgement of future historians and others for their misconduct. (It also will provide information which can be flat out useful for general future research by historians period.)

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[PhxBlue]

what exactly is the fucking point over a lawsuit to prove that one of the most secretive components of our Government actually saved data that is very well likely to be CLASSIFIED to begin with? Did these groups or the lawyers actually think they were going to be allowed to see the "hard evidence" of this? Give me a fucking break.

Your post, sir/ma'am, is full of fail.

If we were talking about e-mails on a classified network, then the data would be gone. The process for cleaning a hard drive of classified information is to randomly overwrite the HDD with random bits no fewer than five times ... and then degauss the son of a bitch.

Now, if we were talking about classified information on an unclassified system, that's practically a cyber-oil spill, and I imagine the press would have been all over it.

So, no. We're talking about information that's maybe For Official Use Only or Law Enforcement Sensitive. And the more of it the American public gets to see, the better.

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[HistoryNerd]

To be clear here, without this lawsuit there was a real question whether these emails would actually be saved for posterity at all. While they apparently are currently in a state where they could be recovered, if they were just left abandoned or outright thrown out, they would never be viewable at that point. While there may be limited short term payoff, there is the long term issue of eventual public accountability. (With emails becoming public after 7 years for instance potentially having actual consequences for former members of the Bush administration.)

It should be noted that there are genuine emails it probably is in the interests of the US as a whole to restrict from public access for awhile. I.E. where we have spies placed in North Korea and Iran, or simply pretty insulting sentiments about specific leaders of other countries. (If you knew the moment an administration left office such a view on the leader would be made public, you would be reluctant in many cases to give an honest opinion via email period.)

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[geekmux]

what exactly is the fucking point over a lawsuit to prove that one of the most secretive components of our Government actually saved data that is very well likely to be CLASSIFIED to begin with? Did these groups or the lawyers actually think they were going to be allowed to see the "hard evidence" of this? Give me a fucking break.

Your post, sir/ma'am, is full of fail.

If we were talking about e-mails on a classified network, then the data would be gone. The process for cleaning a hard drive of classified information is to randomly overwrite the HDD with random bits no fewer than five times ... and then degauss the son of a bitch.

Now, if we were talking about classified information on an unclassified system, that's practically a cyber-oil spill, and I imagine the press would have been all over it.

So, no. We're talking about information that's maybe For Official Use Only or Law Enforcement Sensitive. And the more of it the American public gets to see, the better.

Actually, the latest procedures do not allow for formatting and degaussing anymore, it must be destroyed. Furthermore, I was also referring to FOUO classified levels as well, which it is very well likely that we will not be privy to for another couple of decades, which by then, another 2 or 3 Administrations from now will make the Bush era look golden by comparison...IF our economy and the dollar last that long.

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[intheshelter]

Actually a LOT of people want this information, just not the people in the administration that seemed to break the law almost daily.

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[T.E.D.]

what exactly is the fucking point over a lawsuit to prove that one of the most secretive components of our Government actually saved data that is very well likely to be CLASSIFIED to begin with?

Bullshit. You do not, I repeat not send classified information through email. Anybody doing that should have their clearance revoked immediately, and could quite possibly go up on criminal charges.

Re:An all-time lawsuit low...

[MattSausage]

Actually, the latest procedures do not allow for formatting and degaussing anymore, it must be destroyed. Furthermore, I was also referring to FOUO classified levels as well, which it is very well likely that we will not be privy to for another couple of decades, which by then, another 2 or 3 Administrations from now will make the Bush era look golden by comparison...IF our economy and the dollar last that long.

By your last bit there, I'm guessing you are of the impression that if our economy collapses then we won't have 2 or 3 administrations at all?

Do you really think America will more or less collapse into anarchy in the next decade or two? How old are you? People have been saying that every decade since the 1700s, and we survived a Revolutionary War, Civil War, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, and any number of corrupt and inept Presidencies. America is plenty resilient, as I think the Bush years taught us.

Torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

torrent plz?

I knew this was coming

[modemboy]

I knew this was coming when I first heard about the White House scrapping their previous GroupWise based email archiving system, as they were switching to Exchange, and deciding to roll their own archiving system.
Thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, email archiving is big business now and you can buy enterprise ready solution from the likes of EMC.
Instead they decided to have a private contractor roll a custom system, spent a couple hundred million and 2 years, and then scrapped it for not working right (scrapped by the White House CIO).
In the end they implemented an EMC solution, right before Bush left office.
They can pull the wool over non technical peoples eyes, but I have no doubt they purposely FUBAR'ed this, there was no reason not to go with an industry standard solution from the get go unless they were up to no good.
Supporting facts: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080417/chron.htm

Re:I knew this was coming

[feepness]

They can pull the wool over non technical peoples eyes, but I have no doubt they purposely FUBAR'ed this, there was no reason not to go with an industry standard solution from the get go unless they were up to no good.

You ever worked with a government contractor, or even a huge corporation?

I'm sure the OTS solution was unacceptable because it wasn't using legacy 3.5" single sided floppies formatted for 937.73K each running on a CP/M terminal accessible by thirteen different departments in nine different ways each by thirty-five untrained secretaries with a five second response time that of course would never be used by any of them. And also the servers had to be the proper shade of green.

The government has zero incentive for either doing things right or cheap. Why would you pay for something cheap off the shelf when you could spend a couple hundred million for a few years and fail with no consequences?

Re:I knew this was coming

[ThrowAwaySociety]

GroupWise based email archiving system, as they were switching to Exchange.

Per your link (and my recollection) it was Lotus Notes that was replaced with Exchange.

The only person here who's not an asstard

[Anonymous Coward]

The only person on this website who's not an asstard just responded with the only post that isn't fucking uninformed, stupid and wrong. Thank you.

This is excellent!

[filesiteguy]

When the next FOI act is enabled, we'll FINALLY determine what - exactly - the intern working on December 14th 2003 - ordered for lunch from his buddy who'd emaied five minutes previously.

Thank the maker!

How many are for Viagra?

[Kral_Blbec]

Just wonderin...

Re:How many are for Viagra?

[McFly777]

Actually, with some of the data retention rules caused by SOX, etc. I have often wondered how much storing the volume of spam that must be received by a corporate mailserver is costing the economy. Unless there is some loophole that allows "spam" that is presumedly filterend and never delivered to not be archived.

Re:How many are for Viagra?

[Kral_Blbec]

I seriously would not be surprised if the vast majority of these emails were stuff like "hey, wanna go to arby's/mcdonalds/taco bell for lunch", "incre4se y0ur manh00d", or "Dear sir, I am the prime minister of Nigeria".

Including them does allow inflating the numbers though, 22 million missing emails sounds ominous.

Re:How many are for Viagra?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering whether any of the Nigerian royalty emails to the White House might be legit. Also, Viagra ads would be more amusing when addressed to the Clinton White House than the Bush one.

Re:How many are for Viagra?

[ndogg]

You people are so mean. These kinds of things are of a personal nature between Cheney and his wife. /sarc

Re:How many are for Viagra?

[DarthVain]

With the amount of people Bush screwed I would have to say all of 'em!

Badda Boom Ding... I will be here all week, try the veal!

Love the incompetence

[Nyckname]

They couldn't even destroy the evidence effectively. At least Reagan could run a paper shredder.

To call Cheney "stupid" or "inept" is,well,foolish

[circletimessquare]

yes

the word is "evil"

And now...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that now all emails and communications on things like the health reform bills are wide open to the public and....o wait....never mind.

Re:And now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that is out in the public? Didn't you hear Obama say that he let the media into the events? Doesn't that count as transparency? We got robbed.

How Muslim?

[tepples]

Obama is well on his way, apparently, to turn the US into a Muslim country

How? Which planks of his platform are directly aligned with the Qur'an, especially with the differences between the Qur'an and the Christian Bible?

Congratulations KDawson!

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen this many misinformed, misguided and biased comments/moderation since Obama got elected into office. You certainly know how to fuck with the users for no good reason.

Fucking sack of dog shit.

oh come on guys there's a logical explanation

[commodoresloat]

Cheney left the emails in his other pants.

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[Anonymous Coward]

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OFFICE # Raleigh Durham (919)341 1911 Winston Salem Greensboro (336)3383882
triangleplumbing.net

Why Choose Triangle Plumbing?
Have you ever been truly satisfied with a home service company you used? Probably not! Could you still see dirty fingerprints, greasy parts, or areas that should have been cleaned up? Did you have to waste most of a day because they were late or didn't show up at all? Did they charge you a high price and need to come back to finish or do it over again? We guarantee to provide you with the most efficient and reasonably priced plumbing solutions for any predicament.
Tankless Water Heater Specialists
Click here to learn how to qualify for a $1500 tax credit and save up to 40% off your utility bill!
Residential
We strive to meet all your plumbing needs as large or small they might be.
Our highly trained fully equipped mechanics are standing by for your call. Trust us to address and solve your problem, saving you time and money.
Our professional, friendly technicians offer a wide range of services:
Water heating systems- conventional and tankless
Repair/ replace/ install any plumbing fixture
Drains
Troubleshooting leaks and clogs in sinks, toilets, faucets, bath tubs, sewers, pipes
Garbage disposals
Video inspections
High pressure jetting
Boiler installation / repair / troubleshooting
Gas leak repair
Commercial
Most industrial and business places require the help of an experienced plumbing company in order to tackle their plumbing and heating emergency problems. Our skilled and dedicated plumbers are fully equipped with state of the art technology in order to take care of your plumbing emergencies without disrupting the flow of your business.
Water line replacement
Sewer and drain cleaning
Federal sump pump install / repair / replace/ clean
Code violation removal & resolution
Annual inspection
General plumbing
All industrial plumbing appliances and fixtures
Repair clogged or leaking sinks, bathtubs, faucets, sewers, drains and/or pipes
Placing gas lines and repairing gas leaks
Water filter replacement / installation
New roughing for new construction and existing buildings
Backflow Installation and Certification
Triangle Plumbing & Backflow specializes in the installation, removal, repair, and certification of Backflow Prevention Devices. We are a certified and approved tester for all of North Carolina. Our testers work on all types and sizes of valves. They are all certified to test/repair Domestic, Fire, and Irrigation assemblies. When it comes to backflow valve work we set the pricing standard for the industry. We offer discounts on installation and annual testing of backflow valves through our 5-year service contract. Due to our constant contact with every local cross-connection administrator and innovative, computer driven, paperwork processing methods we are able to provide all of the necessary forms to you and the city inspectors very shortly after completion of a job. We keep these forms on file in our computers to ensure that they are available should any other copy become lost.
24/7 Emergency Plumbing
We have plumbers on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to service your unexpected emergencies.

Our contractors happily serve the following suburbs and zip codes: Aleigh, Angier, Apex, Asbury, Auburn, Bailey, B

very Muslim indeed!

[commodoresloat]

This quotation from his platform is directly taken from the Qur'an:

"Whooosh shall be the sound entered into record when obvious attempts at sarcasm, humor, or hyperbole are completely missed or obtusely ignored by any child of Allah."

Re:very Muslim indeed!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Lolz, pbuh!

USAF.... really??

[purpleraison]

If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.

If I can reformat a drive to DoD 5225-22 M and find someone to destructively dispose of a disk, you don't think the USAF folks in charge of White House communications can if they were ordered too? Same goes for civilians working at the White House. If the Bush administration really wanted emails to "get lost", they would have.

Having experience with this stuff, I can say with 100% certainty that the USAF folks are not NEARLY as masterful at their craft as you believe! In fact, most USAF actions are mired in political 'ass-covering' by 'good-'ol-boy' USAF officers who truly should never have been put in a position that requires integrity, honesty, and 'doing the right thing' as values.

Now, if only the Obama administration would tenaciously pursue prosecution of the people who ordered the deletion of these emails all would be right in my world.

22 Million

[got2liv4him]

viagra ads.... don't we have something else to worry about...

Don't forget the use of private email

[GodfatherofSoul]

We also know that the Bush administration purposefully pushed conversations out to private email accounts to hide what they were up to. We have email messages where correspondents say to take conversations off the record.

If they had really wanted to lose them.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have sent the backups with Cheney on a hunting trip! :)

So where are they?

[m_number4]

Do we have a link?

Re:So where are they?

[SnarfQuest]

They are stored in the safest place the Democrats have found so far. Sandy Burgers underpants.

Just HOW smart?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were collectively extremely smart at getting the nation to think a war of choice was a necessity...

The sad fact remains that it wasn't a difficult sell. Most Americans are drooling imbeciles who wanted an excuse to blow up teh dirty Evil foreigners.

What I consider interesting is that the majority of people in nations outside the USA thought the planned "war" was a very stupid thing to do, and knew that the justifications being put forward were completely bogus.

Not really -- I'm no fan of theirs.....

[CFD339]

....even as much as I am apposed to nearly everything that administration did, I can't go along with your assumption.

If you're deleting data, then you're breaking the law. That, by definition, means you can't just call up DARPA and ask for their top data deletion boffins to come up and clean the place out. You have to do it yourself or rely on as few people as possible what their own level of expertise, and do it in a way that looks accidental.

Plenty of room to screw the pooch on that one.

Laura Crabtree Strikes AGAIN !!

[Kay in PA]

Sounds to me that Homeland 'Security' has REHIRED LAURA CRABTREE !! She knew that important emails were missing, threatened those under her with dismissal if they told. Eventually, it came out, and court investigation dished out her punishment: A 6-month PAID 'VACATION' on a 3-digit salary!! After she was rested (NOT a-rested) and banked that tidy sum, it was THEN that she was 'let go'. But I bet she retains her pension rights. She was a slick one, for sure. (I knew her when she was a GS-5) Yup, no doubt she's been re-hired, and paid a fabulous sum to FIND missing EMAILS !!!

Re:Laura Crabtree Strikes AGAIN !!

[bennomatic]

A 3-digit salary? I could earn that collecting soda cans.

Re:Laura Crabtree Strikes AGAIN !!

[bennomatic]

Oh, and it's funny, I'm probably related to her, at some distance, via my wife. The Crabtrees in the US apparently all come from one lineage, and the closest one is something like a great-great grandparent. Through them, we're also connected to the Grammars ("Frasier"), again, at some distance.

We've got some portraits on the wall of a pair of Crabtrees who are apparently also ancestors of "Frasier". Not a handsome people, them. The portraits are given out as a wedding gift from the geneologist of the family to the newly-wed, and so are hung proudly--and referred to as "The Gruesomes" in dozens of homes around this fair country of ours.

Re:Laura Crabtree Strikes AGAIN !!

[Kay in PA]

Ummmmm wanna make that a 6-digit salary, as in over $230,000. Crime still pays.

How quickly you forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/efg/ethics/papers/ASEE02.pdf

(There is much more information on it, if you get off your couch and look for it...)

22M "We Hate Bush Emails??

[dila813]

Aren't these just the 22M Hate Emails that were sent to Bush through the Web site? Why will anyone care? No wonder these were misplaced. Seems like a pretty weak scandal.

fuck off and die raghead

[Shturmovik]

prolly a eurotrash socialist.

Hmmm..

[LogicalError]

Don't get me wrong, I actually like Obama, but isn't it somewhat... suspicious?.. that these emails where found a year after Obama's administration took office.. right around the time when his ratings are at an all time low?

Re:Hmmm..

[Uberbah]

Right, which is why Obama has blocked torture prosecutions, and continued Bush's absurd claims of executive privilege to quash lawsuits...like this one.

So where's the wikileaks archive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely, some patriotic anonymous coward will be horrified to find that a large USB key, filled with these recovered emails, has fallen into his/her pocket, totally by accident, and that it somehow ended up on wikileaks after he/she tripped in front of his/her home PC and the key flew into an empty USB port, and Microsoft's autorun feature just insisted on uploading it all before anyone could hit the power switch?

Emails aren't mp3

[SharpFang]

The problem with emails is that they aren't merely stored like some mp3 files. They are transferred over the net.
DoD 5225-22 M merely defines how to safely delete local copy. Not how to find and delete whatever copies there are on automated backup servers, on transparent proxies snooping on the net, on backup servers of the mail server, on the NSA-hosted country-wide email monitoring system, on sender's computer, on print server backups, in working copies prior and after encryption and decryption, on secret wiretaps planted by spies of foreign countries, and a thousand other places the email goes before and after it is read.

You are smoking crack.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you will take the time to read the Constitution, you will learn that it is not the executive branch at all that controls the economy, but the legislative branch.

The president appoints the Fed chairman. And the Fed sets interest rates, which to a major degree "controls the economy".

So blaming Bush/Cheney or Obama/Biden really just shows ignorance.

Actually, your fourth-grade summation of how the economy works shows ignorance.

I don't know if you old enough to remember, but just a few years ago, the economy was going gang-busters.

It certainly was NOT. It was in a MASSIVE BUBBLE. But not just any bubble-- it was a bubble in which jobs creation stagnated, and those jobs that were created were poor-paying jobs. It was also a bubble in which the primary beneficiaries were the very, very rich.

The entire "gang-buster" economy was revealed to be entirely illusory-- a fantasy economy which was built on lies, fraud, greed, and a lack of regulation enforcement from the industry-corrupted executive branch. (oh, there's that executive branch involvement again!)

When Bush took over, there was a slight recession, 9-11 made it worse, then one hell of a boom. The economy was going so well that the US government took in record tax receipts even *after* Bush's"tax cuts to the rich" (I got a tax cut. I had no idea that 50k/yr made you rich!)

Golly Gee Whiz! You got a tax cut! I got a tax cut! He got a tax cut! She got a tax cut! Everyone gets tax cuts. Woohoo! Money for everyone! Since Republicans are very concerned about the deficits, I wonder how these cuts were paid for? What's that? They weren't? 1.3 trillion paid for... not at all? Just like everything else Bush crammed through congress... Sweet. Oh, and we had a budget surplus at the time-- you know, something we need to pay off the deficit in the first place.

Well those went right out the window. See, the executive branch proposed a series of budgets (and a few wars) that also fucked our economy in the ass.

Then the economy tanked. What changed?

The bubble had been building during Bush's entire administration. It was created by the Fed after the previous bubble popped. It was facilitated by wall street and the administrations "ownership society" fantasy. The bubble was well-known to exist by most saltwater economists and warnings were rampant. But the free marketers didn't listen.

Alan Greenspan himself has acknowledged his role and misguided libertarian philosophy.

As others have pointed out, this bubble had to do with Congress only insofar as they removed every legal barrier and regulation that was designed to prevent such abuse of the system from happening. The laws that protected the economy were hollowed out throughout the 80s and 90s, but by Bush's 2000s, the now sick, rotten economy was allowed to fester and bubble and finally collapsed under its own weight.

Here's another hint, it rhymes with congress. The same party that took over congress then is still in control, and what do you know... the economy is still in the tank.

Here's a hint for you: You're an ignorant douche. The Democratic Congress and Bernanke SAVED the economy. Barely, but they saved it. This year's stimulus was too small and had too many tax cuts to support a strong comeback, but it did keep the economy from turning into 1933. You can thank Keynes for that as much as Bernanke.

How the hell anyone marked you as informative is beyond me.

Re:You are smoking crack.

[thelexx]

Undoing mod.

When did Clinton/Gore invade another country?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Clinton/Gore invade another country? That, IMHO, is much worse than getting a BJ from a homely intern.

Re:When did Clinton/Gore invade another country?

[Lord Kano]

When did Clinton/Gore invade another country?

I guess you forgot about the indiscriminate bombing in Yugoslavia. The Clinton administration killed civilians, clergy and even friendly foreign nationals in their attempt to move grand jury testimony off of the front page.

LK

Gonna be a blame bonanza

[Shivetya]

I cannot wait for the leaks, figure we can have yet another year of "see, it was Bush's fault and here is the email to prove it, not that we leaked it"

Considering that every administration has problem with records perhaps it needs to be outsourced.

Biden asked "whats that lump in my chair cushion?"

[peter303]

Its the tape of the 22 million missing emails, and
the letter in Cheney's handwriting outing Ms. Plume, and
crumpled CIA reports say they couldnt find any WMP in Iraq, and
Clarke's Aug 6, 2001 memo titled "Bin Laden intends to attack the United States".

Dick was such a pack-rat.

Re:Hmmm... Indeed...

[HeckRuler]

Don't get me wrong, I actually like the sun, but isn't it somewhat... suspicious?.. that these solar flares have started up.. right around the time when global warming is threatening to kill us all?

Sneaky SysAdmins

[not_hylas( )]

I never get any credit - so insightful, I CAN tell the future!
Really, a no brainer, there HAD to be ONE pack-rat SysAdmin like me.

Trying To Find White House Missing E-mails

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1092423&cid=26461257

Re:and had insanely incompetent I.T. staff

[ibsteve2u]

They were incompetent; after all, the emails were found, eh?

How much did we pay for that goose chase?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even worth having them. The past is past.