Teabags, Taxes and the “new” Republican Right

“Watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere. Everywhere.” – Casablanca

There is a “movement” of idiots afoot protesting President George Bush’s tax structure, though they claim they’re against President Obama’s bailouts (like TARP, which started under . . . President Bush). They’ve mistaken the stimulus package passed by President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress for something that affects them as they file their taxes for 2008. What’s more, Faux News is promoting this farce and trying to make it sound like a news story instead of a (permanent opposition to a Democratic president) publicity stunt. Fashioned after the famed Boston Tea Party, where American colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans and destroyed private property in protest of taxation without representation, today’s ‘tea baggers’ are protesting against the wrong people for the wrong reasons. However, they haven’t realized that much like the Virginia Republican Party, which was displaying softcore lesbian pornography on its website a few days ago “by mistake”, that their preferred method of protest, teabagging, is a rather vulgar masculine display of power and authority it modern parlance.

This confusion about what is good for the United States, and what is Right in the United States, and what is simply peeing into the wind is exemplified by the people who speak for the Republican Party in public. Take House Minority Whip Cantor’s comments about tax increases today.

“At a time when American families and small businesses are facing difficult challenges and financial uncertainty, Washington must not make their situations worse by imposing the largest tax increase in American history.”

His comments have absolutely nothing to do with the taxes we’re filing. He (and the teabaggers . . . giggle) are trying to link together President Obama, the economic crisis, and the fact that our government must have taxes as revenue in order to function. How did he vote on Congressional salary increases? How do the teabaggers expect that the services they depend on like police departments, fire departments and public schools to name a few, are to be paid for?

The tax structure today is lower than it was under that paragon of conservative economic virtue, President Reagan. President Obama’s tax cut for the majority of American families (including those who run small businesses) took effect in March of 2009 – which means that they affect next year’s tax returns, not today. The New Right is so wrapped up in fighting President Obama (even though they lost the election, remember) that they can’t see straight.

I’ve grown tired of the whining, the preening, the Rushing. Protest is the right of every citizen of the United States, and really the world. But you should know what you’re protesting for (or against) before you open your mouth, paint a sign, or threaten to tea bag someone.

Anti-Tax ‘Tea Party’ Protests Expected Across U.S.

The Fine Art of Teabagging

April 15th is Patriots Day

Right-wing extremism may be on rise, report says

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast bailout

The New Business of Politics

President Obama’s Inaugural Address codified his desire to set the tone in and for the United States of respect, discussion and action.  Both domestically and internationally, his actions have followed his words to the letter.  Despite the continued recalcitrance of individuals like John Boehner and Hamid Karazi who actually have some participatory relevance, and Rush Limbaugh who doesn’t, President Obama has reached not only across the aisle to listen to and engage Republicans with different ideas about how to stimulate the economy, but he’s gone all the way across the street.

It’s sad and funny at the same time, watching the GOP “leaders” deal with this new way of doing business.  I’m sure that across the nation and across the globe, part of the HOPE that was held tight like baited breath was that CHANGE would actually come to the White House.  It has.

Whether beginning his administration by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay, the forbiddance of torture, calling bumbling CEOs to account, stimulating the economy despite Republican obstacles, going to listen to the Republican obstacles, speaking for the American people directly to the Muslim and Arab and Middle Eastern populations around the world, speaking to the American people about our national attitudes toward Muslims and others around the world, President Obama is proving that he can do what Senator McCain couldn’t – walk and chew gum concurrently, I mean, do more than one thing at the same time.

And while I am loathe to frame President Obama with negatives, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that he is not what President Bush was: arrogant, ignorant, insulated, perjorative, aggressive or engaging in perfidy.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Barack Obama.”

Obama: ‘We don’t have a moment to spare’

How Al-Arabiya got the Obama interview

Obama envoy arrives for talks with Israelis

The GOP grapples with Obama’s charm offensive

Obama tells GOP no compromise on tax rebates

He kept US safe

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President Bush and his administration decided to keep the United States safe.

A little late, but a good move nonetheless.

Of course, having failed to do so on September 10 was irrelevant.  The briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” was forgotten or ignored.  So the United States invaded Afghanistan, failed to capture or kill the ringleader of the attacks, partially destroyed a repressive, Islamo-fascist group called the Taliban, and then moved on to invade Iraq under the auspices of being the military backup for the United Nations, an organization so respected by our government that we were the largest debtor nation, owing dues of close to half a billion dollars.  But they’ve kept us safe . . .

What we did find in Afghanistan were informants who turned in other people they knew, some terrorists, most not, to our armed forces in exchange for money.  And those unfortunates were thrown in dark holes called detention centers, which President Bush on his magical history tour claimed “kept us safe.”

He and his people authorized torture in order to “keep us safe.”

They deviated from the moral high ground that our country has always espoused (not necessarily lived up to, but espoused nonetheless) to keep US safe.

But, according to the CIA, some of the people treated to Bush/Cheney hospitality and then released actually didn’t like the United States when they left, so they took up arms against our country.  Imaging that.  People were kidnapped, held, “interrogated”, released, and they had some aggression toward their captors.  That doesn’t sound too safe . . .

Turned in by someone I know to a foreign army for $5000.  Taken away from home, and held without charges or opportunity to confront my accusers for a couple of years.  Released and exported like cattle, dropped off in a country where people hate my captors, and given the opportunity for payback.

I’d be fighting, too.  And those people wouldn’t be safe at all.

Now the same people who supported the camps like Gitmo are claiming that President Obama is doing the wrong thing by shutting it down.  Actually behaving as if we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that reflect the values we hold dear and espouse as a nation is considered unsafe?

The noises they’re making about, “if we’re attacked, it’s his fault,” totally fail to take into account two obvious facts:

1.     There are already people who were held and released back on the front lines attacking us; and

2.     The innocent people who have been held without trial and interrogated now have a pretty good reason to hate us.

From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, the lack of moral leadership and the authorization of torture by the Bush Administration recruited terrorists for the “far flung networks of hatred and violence,” that President Obama and his administration are left to deal with, and put some of our troops and intelligence operatives on pretty shaky ground.

But president bush kept us safe . . .

What’s next for Gitmo detainees?

Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in US

U.S. uses dues to push reform

Obama orders Gitmo closed.  Now the hard part.

Security experts skeptical on Gitmo detainee report

What’s next for Guantanamo Bay detainees?

Bush: I would have done some things differently

Detainee went from Gitmo to al Qaeda

From the Back of the Bus

Roland Burris is now the junior Senator from the state of Illinois.  For better or for worse, that’s what the Illinois Supreme Court and House of Representatives and Governor (and former junior Senator) have orchestrated in the last few weeks since the CHANGE was made real.  That’s not what this post is about, though.

In the jim crow era, segregation was the law of the land in the south, and the law of life in the north.  Black people and white people did not congregate in the same locations, with few exceptions.  And poll taxes, literacy tests, and other impediments were used to insure that the franchise was exclusive property.  The problem with this as a democratic political entity, though, is that it meant there were no black people in the halls of Congress, on the Supreme Court, or in the White House (unless they were serving dinner, or driving carriages).

In the last two weeks, we’ve seen the only black Senator resign his seat, to be filled with the only black Senator currently in the United States Senate.  That’s one percent.  That percentage indicates failure to me, both on the part of the dominant community, and on black folk.

Much is taken for granted in the MSM – that because President-elect Obama is black, systemic racism has been eradicated.  This is an absolute falsehood.  And despite Congressman Rush’s inappropriate language and assertions when Senator Burris was appointed, the nerves that he was dancing on were still raw because the underlying question is valid:

Are black folk still at the back of the bus?

My great grandmother was the daughter of a slave.  My maternal grandparents were born in the segregated South before the Great Depression (the first one, that is.)  My mother and father found each other while watching people their own age be beaten, murdered, lynched, sprayed, and while they were putting themselves in harm’s way for justice’s sake.  I do take much for granted, that I can do whatever I want to do in this country and this world, regardless of the color of my skin.  My children will be even more free, watching a black man take the oath of office before they hit the third and fourth grades.

But what of the young man “accidentally” shot by an Oakland police officer ringing in the new year?  Update:  The police officer has been charged with murder. What of the staggering number of black and brown youth failing out, dropping out, being pushed out of schools – from elementary through secondary and at the university level?  Why is the struggle to find positive black role models off the field of play so difficult?  Why do black people with an education lack authenticity in the public perception?  Why is learning considered acting white?

And before the critics and the naysayers begin to howl, riddle me this, Batman – why was there considerable conversation, inside the black community with chagrin and outside the black community with relief, that Barack wasn’t “really black” or “black enough”?

Because we are still at the back of the bus.

We are voluntarily paying our fare, getting off, and reentering through the back door.  For the second generation of integrated education, we have fallen off considerably. And there is a growing divide between the talented tenth and the rest.  Ernest Green succeeded because he had to deal with the reality of Central High School.  His education was valuable to him.  As it was and is to Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Colin Powell,Condoleeza Rice, Susan Rice and a host of others who grew up without the guarantee or assumption that they were going to be given anything for free, let alone an education.

This partial observation (there are many threads leading in and out of this train of thought) evokes a variety of questions, but chief among them are two:  Who is responsible for this status?  What can we do about it?

Different people are asking these questions in different ways in light of President-elect Obama’s victory in November, and his impending inauguration eleven days from now.  And other communities are asking the question for themselves as well.  Arianna Huffington asked it a few days ago on the HuffPost.  Bill Cosby will be on Meet the Press Sunday morning asking it.  And more than a few of us are asking it, answering it, and sharing our answers with the world.

I started this post with an observation that there is only one black Senator in a group of one hundred elected Senators representing the United States of America.  That’s one percent.  Literally.  Since more than one out of every hundred people is black in this country, I think there’s a problem with that, both on the country’s part, and on black folk.  The question is:

When are we going to move to the front of the bus?

Slaves helped build White House

Burris appointment valid, Illinois high court says

Obama isn’t the only one being inaugurated on January 20th

Congressman sleeps on cot to save cash

High Court to decide key voting rights challenge

Blu Phi!  You Know!

Powell endorses Obama service initiative

Little Rock Nine set foundation for Obama, students say

Ex-officer charged with murder in BART shooting

A bad habit

Cannibalism is a bad thing. Period. While I am a meat eater, I eat the meat of different animal species – not my own. I wish that the Democratic Party would follow my eating habits. It seems that with every electoral victory, Democratic elected officials begin carping about what Democratic elected officials are doing wrong.

Barack Obama won a historic election in November. Since then he has been working on appointing a team of leaders to help guide the United States and the world back on to firmer economic, political and social footing. But the Democratic Leadership seems intent on nitpicking him like they are field marshals for the Republican Party! They are literally trying to eat their own. He’s not even President yet, and with the current President working as hard as he can to make things difficult, President-elect Obama has to deal with the Democrats, too?

Here’s the list of cannibals:

Senator Harry Reid – “I don’t work for President Elect Obama, I work with him”

Senators Diane Feinstein and John D. Rockefeller – “Leon Panetta isn’t qualified.”

Representative John Conyers – “Obama should not nominate Sanjay Gupta.”

Senators John Kerry and Kent Conrad – “I’m not that excited about [Obama’s] tax proposals”

And these are just the quotes from this week! This bending over backwards to prove to Republicans how non-partisan and equally critical of their own that Democrats continue to do is ridiculous! Where was all this backbone from Reid and Feinstein on the invasion of Iraq? On FISA? During the Bush Administration? Don’t try to stand up straight and earn your bona fides by feasting on the decisions made by the Leader of the Democratic Party and the next President of the United States! You should have stood up during the last eight years! That would have been nice.

Next time they get hungry for someone to feast on, they should remember the Alaskan nightmare is never far away, or the reality of the situation could be much, much worse.

O-bummer

Key Democrats blast Obama stimulus plan

Do Congressional Dems need intervention?

Harry Reid: I don’t work for Obama

Obama calls for dramatic action

Obama appointee to face bruising confirmation fight

Panetta a surprise pick to run the CIA

Obama should not nominate Sanjay Gupta

Key Senate Democrats blast Obama’s tax proposals

Bush delivers final policy speech with few watching

It could be President McCain in 12 days

Obama names CIA, national intelligence directors

Consumer confidence called key to combating economic meltdown

The schedule of confirmation hearings

Update:  Now President-elect Obama is in on the feeding?

A new low . . . and that’s saying something

  

i lied. again.

Insecurity is a sad personality trait for anyone to possess.  As a teacher, I am often forced to confront the residue of lies told to children by well-intentioned adults, who fail to challenge kids because they simply want to make them feel better, rather than actually challenging them and helping them to meet those challenges, thereby alleviating those insecurities by allowing a child to succeed in a task that is while difficult, also manageable.  The results of these lied-to children are often adults, like our forty-third president, who meander through life without true purpose, seeking to shore up those insecurities by creating false demons and imagining that they’ve defeated the giants when they’re actually tilting windmills.

The other problem with these adults, who are still insecure, but on a grander scale because the resulting detritus of their life reflects the lack of determination, purpose, application and success which results when you don’t have the courage to fail so you allow others to make decisions and then take credit when they are successful and have plausible deniability when they aren’t, is that they are truly spiteful, jealous and petty when they find themselves in proximity of secure people, who are succeeding on their merits, and who, in short, believe in themselves.

president bush lied about Blair House being occupied when President-elect Obama asked if he and his family could move in early so that his daughters could start their new school before their daddy started his new job.  President Bush (through his Chief of Protocol) claimed that Blair House was going to be in use.  His petty machinations of forcing the next First Family to live in a (very nice) hotel for two weeks simply because he could, and for no other reason, are a new low for the worst president in United States’ history.  This is a smooth transition?

And when I was cheeky enough, in this and other blogs, to ask if the Obamas were being snubbed because they were black, I was called a “hate-minded bigot.”  I was also told that the President was just doing it because “Obama is a Democrat.”  But I was working under the assumption that there were actually residents of Blair House scheduled, that there were actually activities planned that the president just wouldn’t move.

The truth is worse.

Blair House is vacant.

Of 119 rooms, only one is being used.  For one night.  By a former Australian prime minister that president bush invited so that someone would be staying there to give truth to his lie.

president bush just didn’t want the darkies to stay there.  he’s upset that the new negro-in-chief is more popular, more accomplished, more capable. . . simply more than he is.

He’s just an insecure arse, and this was how he could raise his middle finger to Barack Obama.  Fourteen days and counting.  A new village in Texas will get an idiot.

Blair House Not Booked

Obama to tap new position, meet with predecessors

Obama to make case for ‘urgent action’ on economic recovery plan

A Paradoxical Act of Poetic Justice

Crispus Attucks was told, as he stood at the front of a crowd of unruly citizens harassing British soldiers in Boston Massachusetts, “this ain’t none of your affair.” When the soldiers opened fire, he was the first to die. Barack Obama, as President-elect of the United States of America, while dealing with Israel’s current air strikes against Hamas, is also being told, in musical verse, that he’s “a magic negro.”

Over the course of two hundred nineteen years, many gains have been made in terms of granting full equality to all citizens of the United States. Black folk have attained the right to vote. Women have attained the right to vote. Segregation by race is no longer legal. Japanese American citizens can live wherever they want. People from China are allowed to immigrate to the United States. Slavery has been outlawed. That none of these issues should really have been contested is moot. But the marginalization of numerical minority groups is rooted in the American landscape as surely as the ideals we aspire to. And full equality has yet to be achieved in some areas still.

So while I celebrate President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s rise to the highest office in the land, I am also cognizant that Jim Clark’s spirit is alive and well today. I am cognizant that I had to send my young black, Chicano, Chilean children to school on November 5^th armed against their second and third grade classmates’ “innocent ignorance” when they commented that “Obama won just because he’s black.” I am cognizant that Rush Limbaugh (who said Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was “all about race”), Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and their ilk and followers who may or may not believe that black people are inferior use their rhetoric and their megaphones to continue the oppressive racism of Andrew Jackson and John Wilkes Booth, of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Kanye West’s statement that “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” in the wake of the President’s inaction when the levies broke, and my brother the teacher’s latest experience of being pulled over by the police after the officer watched three other (white) drivers make the same left turn, and the assassination plots and attempts constantly monitored against this President-elect remind me that much as things CHANGE, the more they stay the same.

Crispus Attucks was the first man to die in the struggle for American independence. The paradoxical nature of an enslaved/escaped black man dying for the freedom and creation of a country in which he was considered less than human by the legal framework that defined it should be lost on no one. The same way that the poetic justice of a man whose father was a black Kenyan and whose mother was a white Kansan, who is African American by nationality as well as visage and life experience being elected to lead that same country should be lost on no one.

In speaking with my sister-in-law and her parents on Christmas Eve, I asked, “do you realize what it means, to have him elected to be President of these United States?” Forty years ago, black people were being killed for wanting to register to vote. Forty years ago, one man was shot for encouraging black people to dream of equality. Forty years ago, Barack Obama was seven years old.

As we look forward to the changes President Obama will enact both inside and outside of our country, it is important that we take a look back as well to understand the moment that we are standing in, the moments others have worked for, and the legacy that we are heirs to and guardians of for the next generation.

Happy New Year!

Obama, Rice discuss Gaza strikes

RNC chairman condemns controversial Obama song

You’re Likeable Enough, Gay People

Neo-Nazis charged over Obama ‘assassination plot’

Forced to pass on a front seat to history

blog.i.verse

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the blog

Laced with insight and pithiness

Words cut through the fog

 

While Barack and Michelle

Played in holiday sun

We typed, read and quoted

To get the job done

 

On blago and cheney

And kennedy, too

There was so much to say

There was so much to do

 

As Tamryn recited

Words meant for Keith

My thoughts drifted back

To soldiers and students laying a wreath

 

For with all of our arguments

About what’s right and what’s wrong

The occupation still lumbers

There’s no fat lady’s song

 

So our work yet continues

Still we read, quote and write

But more in the morning

And for now, a good night.

His back must hurt

Barack Obama was the perfect candidate to win the 2008 election.  But apparently, he’s not the same person we all voted for, because every time he opens his mouth, people are jumping on his back.  It seems that although he’s appointed one of the most diverse cabinets in history, he’s making everyone angry.  He started with the Republicans, because he slapped their hopes of victory into twenty-twelve with his landslide victory, and now he’s not being inclusive enough to appoint more than one or two to his cabinet.  Then it was Latinos, who said that Bill Richardson wasn’t getting a fair shake, and there weren’t enough Spanish-speakers at the table in the first three appointments.  Then it was the Gay and Lesbian community, with Rick Warren.  Now it’s women.  From Campbell Brown to NOW, he’s either not being forthcoming enough, or else he hasn’t done any better in appointing his cabinet than George Bush.  And apparently, black lawmakers aren’t happy with him, either.

While I am disappointed that Rick Warren is getting such a prominent symbolic role in the inaugural festivities, I’ve already said that I trust the President-elect to do what needs to be done.  And a friend of mine linked me to an article that tried to talk me down by pointing out Rev. Joseph Lowery’s role as a counterpoint to Warren.  A couple of the comments struck me:

by: Lev Raphael @ Fri Dec 19, 2008 at 07:45:58 AM CST

Has anyone noticed (3.50 / 4)

that Barack Obama does things that cause people to howl in protest, yet he does not respond. Then he completes the project, turns to his accusers and says “What is it you were upset about?”

It is his style. He did it during the debates – remember how we howled for him to land a knock-out punch, but he went deliberately along and won his own race, thank you very much?

This is more of the same. My gut says that this guy thinks and behaves longer-term than either the press or the American people are accustomed to. We respond/react instantaneously to each piece of the plan instead of waiting to see the whole plan and judging that.

Just my second-cup-of-coffee thoughts this morning. 
 

by: Dawn in Maine @ Fri Dec 19, 2008 at 08:41:06 AM CST

you may be right (3.33 / 3)

I’m being forced to confront my own fantasies that he would do every single thing I would wish could happen… some kinda superman. There is absolutely no way he can make everyone happy. The Warren choice infuriates me (so does choosing Vilsack), while other choices delight me, and some are just blah.

 I do feel it is literally impossible for a U.S. President to please anyone 100 percent of the time.  

 

And it doesn’t matter your political persuasion – Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, liberal, conservative, male, female, black, white, brown, mixed-up – President-elect Obama is not going to do everything that you or I want him to do.  But he is going to do what is best for the United States, and he is going to do his best to help out the citizens of this country.  So let’s all cut him some slack.  The whining on the nightly news is getting old.

President-elect Obama defends inviting Pastor Rick Warren to speak at Inauguration

Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue

Campbell Brown has another temper tantrum

Why some women’s groups are miffed at Obama

Black Lawmakers not happy with Obama Cabinet Picks

It may be Rick Warren’s neighborhood, but it isn’t Rick Warren’s world

He Hasn’t Got Any Clothes On

The 43^rd President of the United States, George Walker Bush, is leading a procession of fools.  And like the people lining the parade admiring the Emperor’s New Clothes, we are all staring and staring without saying anything.  When the President is in Iraq, a country he authorized and ordered invaded, and gets shoes thrown at his head, his response is “I don’t know why he did that.”  Really, Mr. President?  How about the invasion of his country by a foreign power?  How about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war dead?  How about the failure to stop the looting of Iraq by American companies with ties to your Vice-President?  How about Guantamo?  How about Abu Ghraib?  Are you sure, Mr. President, that you don’t know why he did that?

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney don’t seem to realize that they are “governing” in the age of YouTube and bloggers.  This magical history tour that they are taking, wandering the globe and the teleshpere lying about what they’ve said and done over the last eight years, acknowledging that they’ve approved and condoned torture, re-writing their words, actions, motivations, inactions, invasions, deregulations and evil doings needs to catch up to them quickly.  They don’t seem to realize that the world is moving on without them, in spite of them, in order to correct their violently malicious actions.

And it doesn’t appear that the mainstream media (MSM) is about to be the ones asking hard questions.  CNN’s Candy Crowley let President Bush sit there and say, “so what [if Al-Qaeda] moved to Iraq after we invaded?”  Vice-President Cheney actually lied (again) and said that he never corroborated the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq publicly in support of the invasion, and that he thought water-boarding was an appropriate form of interrogation, despite the fact that it is torture, and torture is against United States’ and international law. Update:  And Condoleeza Rice is now dancing to the same tune.

Watching the news night after night, I feel like the people on the camera and the people behind the camera have very little to do with what has actually happened in the world in the last eight years.  They are spinning tops, talking heads, not really asking questions to find truth and report it, but merely playing with words coming out of their mouths to continue garnering advertising dollars.  So, I’ll say it:

President Bush, you lied to the United States in the wake of a horrible tragedy on our shores in order to further an economic agenda which depends on disaster and hid under a blanket of moral superiority made of cloth your couldn’t see.  You have lurched from tragedy to tragedy, cloaking yourself in biblical terms without having understood that the message is one of personal responsibility and communal accountability.  You have failed as a leader, and no amount of smiling and snickering in interviews as your presidency draws down will shield you from the war crimes trial you should face, and the judgement your surely will.

Vice-President Cheney, you have over the course of your career been building to the treacherous and murderous pillaging of the planet beginning with Iraq, and continuing with Hurricane Katrina, burrowing through the financial “meltdown” into parts hitherto unknown and best left that way.  You have hidden in a hole, and like Kronos, sought to manipulate others to do your evil works and dastardly deeds, only to reemerge and spew more venom with a smile.

Citizens of the United States, Citizens of the World, don’t fall down the memory hole.  Democracy looks different when viewed close up.  We must remain cognizant, remember what has gone before in order to guard against the amnesia that time inflicts upon the group consciousness.  It is our responsibility, as we enjoy our rights to continually insure that the privileged few never again usurp the collective good.  ”Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

But among the crowds a little child suddenly gasped out, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” And the people began to whisper to one another what the child had said. “He hasn’t got anything on.” “There’s a little child saying he hasn’t got anything on.” Till everyone was saying, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” The Emperor himself had the uncomfortable feeling that what they were whispering was only too true. 

The Emperor Hasn’t Got Any Clothes On.

Iraqi reporter throws shoes at Bush in Baghdad

Bush shoe-thrower elicits editorial reactions

Condoleeza Rice talks success, failures of the last 8 years

How many Iraqis have died since the US invasion in 2003?

Bush on auto bailout, the war in Iraq, shoe-throwing reporter

Cheney: Uncut and Uncompromising

British troops to leave Iraq by July

Obama picks ex-Iowa governor, Colorado Senator for cabinet

Vice-President for Torture