Duhbya is desperate for immunity for the telecoms who rolled-over for him. Only they don’t even care. They’re actually insulted he things they need immunity. peace, mjh

Think Progress » Communications trade group opposes retroactive immunity.

In a letter to Congress late last week, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — which represents groups such as Google and Microsoft — said that it “strongly” opposes retroactive immunity for firms that cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping. CCIA President and CEO Edward Black writes:

CCIA dismisses with contempt the manufactured hysteria that industry will not aid the United States Government when the law is clear. As a representative of industry, I find that suggestion insulting. To imply that our industry would refuse assistance under established law is an affront to the civic integrity of businesses that have consistently cooperated unquestioningly with legal requests for information. This also conflates the separate questions of blanket retroactive immunity for violations of law, and prospective immunity, the latter of which we strongly support.

Think Progress » Communications trade group opposes retroactive immunity.

In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the “burn” rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with “best-case” and “realistic-moderate” scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

Authors: U.S. economy could fall casualty to wars – CNN.com

Think Progress » 452: Number of days President Bush has spent at his ranch in Crawford, TX. His stay there this past weekend with the the Danish prime minister marked Bush’s 70th visit as president. President Ronald Reagan, one of the modern presidency’s most “famous vacationer[s],” spent just 335 days at his ranch in Santa Barbara, CA.

Think Progress » 452:

Think Progress » Bush incoherently praises Odierno for ’snatching defeat.’

President Bush thanked Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who until recently served as the No. 2 commander in Iraq, for his service in Iraq. In attempting to apply the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Bush offered this nonsensical praise for Odierno:

I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us in Iraq.

Think Progress » Bush incoherently praises Odierno for ’snatching defeat.’

Think Progress » KBR Dodges $500 Million In Social Security And Medicare Taxes In Cheney-Backed Scheme

No private contractor has financially profited from the Iraq war more than Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which until last year was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm currently has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq, and between 2004 and 2006, received more than $16 billion in government contracts — far more than any other corporation.

Yet KBR hasn’t been passing on these enormous profits to American taxpayers or even its own employees, thanks to a plan that Vice President Cheney helped establish. Today, the Boston Globe reports that KBR has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands. …

KBR’s practices are extreme, even compared to its competitors. Other top Iraq war contractors — including Bechtel and Parsons — pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their employees.

The Bush administration has aided this tax dodging. One of KBR’s shell companies is Overseas Administrative Services, which was set up two months after Cheney became Halliburtion’s CEO in 1995. Since at least 2004, the Pentagon has known about KBR’s practices, but chosen to ignore the issue.

Of course, KBR is more than happy to claim workers as its own in one instance: when seeking “legal immunity extended to employers working in Iraq.”

Think Progress » KBR Dodges $500 Million In Social Security And Medicare Taxes In Cheney-Backed Scheme

Two Three more examples of Duhbya’s fecklessness. He doesn’t know irony when it spews from his own mouth. peace, mjh

Bush Condemns Leaders Who ‘Sit Down At The Table’ And ‘Have Pictures Taken’ With ‘Tyrants’

In yesterday’s news conference, President Bush sharply attacked Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) argument that the president “should never fear to negotiate” with America’s enemies. Bush told reporters:

It will send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It will give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity. […]

Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, look at me, I’m now recognized by the President of the United States.

Perhaps Bush forgot all the times that he sat down and had his picture taken with leaders of questionable human rights credentials:

Think Progress » Bush Condemns Leaders Who ‘Sit Down At The Table’ And ‘Have Pictures Taken’ With ‘Tyrants’

Bush urges Turks to end offensive in Iraq quickly – Yahoo! News

“The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objective and get out,” Bush told a White House news conference. …

Turkey’s military General Staff General Yasar Buyukanit was quoted by Turkish television as saying: “A short time is a relative concept, it could be one day or one year.”

Bush urges Turks to end offensive in Iraq quickly – Yahoo! News

‘U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders,’

Bush told Bob Geldof in a new Time interview. Geldof noted that if the President happened to apply this thought to Iraq, it “would have profound implications on the man’s understanding of how the world functions.” During the interview, Bush also insisted, “I think history will prove me right,” regarding his efforts to rid the world of “tyranny.”

Think Progress » ‘U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders,’