Time For The Hangman's Noose

Take every last dime he has and all of his property.

February 21, 2009

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, JULIE CRESWELL and CHARLIE SAVAGE

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua — When Robert Allen Stanford arrived here in the early 1990s, few locals had ever heard of the Texas financier. Today, he dominates so many aspects of life on this sun-drenched Caribbean island that some have taken to calling it “Stanford Land.”

At one point or another, he has owned an airline that many locals and visitors fly on. A local newspaper that covers their goings-on. A vast residential complex where many live. Two restaurants where they eat. And the national stadium where they go to watch cricket, the island’s favorite sport.

But the crown jewel of his domain has long been Stanford International Bank, an offshore institution that attracted billions of dollars of cash from clients around the world — and especially from Latin America — seeking a haven for their wealth.

All the while, he cultivated a comfortable relationship with Antiguan officials. The bank made loans to the Antiguan government, which often used the money to award his companies lucrative construction contracts. To clean up the nation’s image as a dodgy tax haven, the authorities installed him on a new regulatory authority to oversee its banks — including his own.

To some, it felt too cozy.

“There seemed to be a complete breakdown of the normal barriers between the regulator and the regulated,” said Jonathan Winer, who was, at the time, a deputy assistant secretary of state for the United States State Department. “The relationship between the government of Antigua’s political leaders and Stanford seemed weirdly intimate.”

Despite raised eyebrows and occasional investigations of Mr. Stanford — or Sir Allen, as he is called here since he was knighted by the Antiguan government in 2006 — his sway continued to grow. That is, until this week, when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Stanford International of orchestrating a huge fraud that may have bilked investors of some $8 billion that regulators say cannot be accounted for. The company is referring all calls to the S.E.C.

Mr. Stanford, 58, who has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, could not be reached. On Friday, his troubles mounted, as officials here took over his Antiguan bank, following seizures of his operations elsewhere in the world.

Stanford International claims it had about $8 billion in assets, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has only said it has not been able to account for that money. Most of the key players, including Mr. Stanford, failed to appear to testify after the S.E.C. issued a subpeona.

Seeking Answers

The collapse of Mr. Stanford’s empire has left many questions unresolved. What happened to investors’ money, which supposedly was put into high-quality assets? To what extent did his efforts to curry favors with politicians here — and in the United States, where he made contributions to many congressmen — help him elude serious scrutiny despite suspicions raised about his activities in the past? And what was the nature of the fraud that is being alleged — a plain-vanilla securities fraud, as the S.E.C. has charged; a Ponzi scheme; or, given the history of some offshore Caribbean banks, was money laundering also involved?

It may take months to figure out the answers. Few documents have emerged to shed light on Mr. Stanford’s business dealings, which involved high-yielding certificates of deposits sold to investors and housed in the Antigua bank — or even its exact size.

In numerous interviews with former Stanford employees, former American regulators and agency officials, and individuals who had direct dealings with Mr. Stanford over the years, a picture emerges of a man who had visions of grandeur for himself and his company and who knew the key to his success was aligning himself with politically powerful individuals.

At the same time, much of Mr. Stanford’s true background appears elusive.

Born in Mexia, Tex., a rural town of 6,600 about 85 miles southeast of Dallas, he claims to have based his company, Stanford Financial Group, on an insurance firm started by his grandfather Lodis Stanford during the Depression.

Mr. Stanford’s first foray into business, however, was far from finance. He started with a chain of body-building gyms in Waco, Tex. He later claimed to make much of his fortune in the 1980s buying distressed properties in Houston.

A former Stanford employee said that while some properties, such as ones Mr. Stanford picked up in the chic River Oaks area of Houston, made money, many others ended up as busts.

So when Mr. Stanford decided to start his first offshore bank, Guardian International Bank, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in 1986, he turned to his father, James Stanford, for about $2 million to $4 million in seed money, according to the employee, who declined to be named because he did not want to be drawn into ongoing investigations.

Guardian International sought out wealthy individuals and companies in Mexico, Venezuela and Central America, where people were eager to move money offshore because of onerous regulatory and political regimes.

Antigua-Bound

As Mr. Stanford’s small operation grew, so did his ambitions.

“He talked about wanting to build the largest financial company in the world,” the employee said.

Mr. Stanford, who showed at times a charming demeanor as well as a fiery temper (a former employee said he once threw a glass ash tray against the wall in a fit of anger), began to see himself in more grandiose ways. He came up with a shiny new logo for his company, a Golden Eagle, which he described as a knight’s shield and required all employees to wear.

In the early 1990s, the government of Montserrat cracked down on a number of offshore banks. Guardian was out.

Quickly, Mr. Stanford set his sights on territory he would soon call home, Antigua. His presence on the tiny island, population 85,000, began taking shape when Lester Bird, then the prime minister, saw him as a can-do American with ample cash who could help solve Antigua’s myriad problems. When the local, Bank of Antigua ran into difficulties, for example, Mr. Stanford stepped in in 1990 to take it over.

And when the United States began pressuring the Bird government in the late 1990s to take a firmer hand on alleged money laundering, Prime Minister Bird again asked Mr. Stanford to help.

The government formed a banking advisory board and put Mr. Stanford on it, a move that alarmed American authorities scrutinizing Antigua, who saw an inherent conflict of interest since the board also oversaw Mr. Stanford’s bank. The project was paid for by the Antiguan government by money either lent or granted by Mr. Stanford.

Various United States regulators and agencies were already uneasy about Mr. Stanford. Around 1998, he sent a letter to Jeanette Hyde, then the United States ambassador to Antigua, in which he said he had been investigated by numerous agencies over the years. None of them had turned up anything, he claimed, a vindication he said showed he was a law-abiding citizen.

If anything, the concerns about Antigua and Mr. Stanford’s presence there grew. In 1999, he gave the Drug Enforcement Agency a $3.1 million cashier’s check from Stanford Financial in Antigua after the bank found that a former Mexican drug lord had hid or laundered money there. The same year, however, the American Treasury Department placed Antigua on its money-laundering watch list.

Around the same time, Mr. Stanford and his Houston-based company, Stanford Financial Group, burst onto the scene as players in federal politics. The White House was pushing legislation to make banks crack down on money laundering, so Stanford Financial hired a Washington lobbying firm and began donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and Democrats alike.

Suspicions Grow

The sudden rush of money drew the attention of Public Citizen, which singled out Stanford as a case study of the influence of campaign donations in shaping legislation. Public Citizen concluded that it was “clear” that the Stanford contributions “were aimed at killing the bills,” although broader help turned out to be unnecessary because Texas Republicans simply blocked it from receiving a vote in both chambers. (After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress revived and passed the money-laundering proposals. Antigua’s government, meanwhile, had recreated the reform panel and rewrote its banking regulations to Washington’s satisfaction, allowing its name to be stricken from the watch list that same year.)

Still, Mr. Stanford kept his outreach to Washington going. From 1999 to 2008, Stanford Financial dispensed some $4.8 million on lobbying activities — spending $2.2 million of that in 2008 alone — and its employees and its political action committee have given $2.4 million to federal candidates since 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Stanford also wooed lawmakers and their staff with plane rides and “fact-finding” trips to vacation destinations. Many were paid for by the Inter-American Economic Council, a nonprofit organization that he supported.

In recent days, some lawmakers have sought to distance themselves from Mr. Stanford. Among them is Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, who received more money from Mr. Stanford and his employees than any other lawmaker: $45,900, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Nelson’s office said he was donating the money to charity.

Another lawmaker, Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, received $41,375 in such donations. He also went on two council trips, totaling more than $10,000 in expenses, according to Legistorm, a group that tracks lawmaker travel disclosure forms.

Mr. Sessions’s spokeswoman, Emily Davis, told Bloomberg News this week that Mr. Sessions did not know Mr. Stanford personally. But that account was called into question when the Web site Talking Points Memo published a photograph showing the two men talking during a trip to Antigua. (Ms. Davis declined to comment on Friday.)

But Mr. Stanford’s ties to key lawmakers did not completely shield him from the wary eyes of regulators. A routine S.E.C. examination of Stanford’s broker-dealer operations in Houston revealed a major problem — the firm was in violation of net capital requirements, resulting in the company paying a fine of $20,000 in 2007.

In 2006, the agency opened an investigation, but halted it abruptly at the behest of another unnamed agency. The inquiry was reopened late last year, after the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme involving Bernard L. Madoff came to light. It is unclear why these and other investigations, including by various law enforcement agencies, appeared to have stalled over the years.

Meanwhile, relatively unfettered, Mr. Stanford and his companies continued to attract money to their Antigua-based bank, particularly from Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Venezuelan regulators estimate investors there may have put $2.5 billion into C.D.’s issued by the Antigua-based bank.

Mr. Stanford was quick to offer flights to prospective investors to Antigua on his private jets and maybe a breezy trip through Antigua’s quiet bays on his yacht.

The richest prospective investors would be put up for a few days at Jumby Bay, a 300-acre secluded private island with cottage guest rooms and a nature preserve.

“He’s an ‘everything is big in Texas’ kind of man,” said Winston Derrick, a radio show host and publisher of The Antigua Observer newspaper, the competitor of Mr. Stanford’s own newspaper. “Everything he does is first class.”

Now, Antigua is reeling. Senior government officials declined to comment on their relationships with Mr. Stanford. Many met behind closed doors Friday with executives of several local Stanford companies to gauge how far the Stanford empire would be impacted. “What we are concerned about is the fallout,” said Attorney General Justin Simon. “Although it is only one bank, we need to ensure that the local assets are protected for depositors.”

Clifford Krauss reported from St. John’s, Julie Creswell from New York and Charlie Savage from Washington. Simon Romero contributed from Caracas, Venezuela.

Let The Sun Shine In......

....And The Crusades Continue...

When will the Enlightenment come to the U.S.? Oh, that's right, it did, over 40 years ago, and it caused the religious right to go bonkers.


U.S. Christian Evangelicals planted in Kurdish Iraq
By Bill Berkowitz, 2009-02-22 12:58:37


Building Empires: U.S. Evangelical Christians' Kurdish Crusade While most
Talk2Action readers are familiar with the growing influence of Christian
Zionists and their close relationship with Israel, you may not be aware of
the penetration of American evangelicals into Northern Iraq. I recently
had the opportunity to interview Mike Reynolds, a longtime investigative
reporter who through his research uncovered the special relationship
between Iraqi Kurds and a group of American evangelicals that practices
"spiritual warfare," harbors a deep animosity toward Islam, and views the
region as the evangelistic final frontier. Reynolds: In September 2003,
four months after US forces defeated Saddam Hussein, 350 evangelical
pastors and church leaders assembled in Kirkuk, welcomed by Kurdistan
Regional Government President Massoud Barzani. During the gathering,
George Grant, the American director of the Classical School of The Medes,
declared that `Jesus Christ is Lord over all things; He is Lord over every
Mullah, every Ayatollah, every Imam, and every Mahdi pretender; He is Lord
over the whole of the earth, even Iraq!' You can read the complete
interview at Religion Dispatches:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1134/med
dling_evangelicals/


Let The Sun Shine In......

Fox News Justifies A Coming Civil War In the U.S.

Admittedly, we have suggested that the U.S. has been in a cold civil war for decades and that governance and mean-spirited political media, during the past decade in particular, has made the divisions in this country so deep and broad that a hot civil war is not out of the realm of possibility.

It is one of the saddest thoughts I, personally, have had in a very long time.

However, it was not a financial meltdown, nationwide let alone global, or global that caused the last civil war in the U.S.. It was racism and one region's fear of a financial meltdown if slavery was outlawed in the Western states. That region was the old South.

Our parents/grandparents did not square off against each other during the Great Depression. Instead, Americans pulled together and, with the help of great leadership, rebuilt the U.S. as a more modernized, compassionate nation.

We have come upon another such time, except this time our situation if far worse.

We all know how much easier it is to spend money than it is to earn it, especially when the guys at the top are robbing the rest of us blind. The officers of big business has had a drunken bash for over 8 long years and nothing has been said or done to stop it by the last administration. Small investors and workers have gotten the shaft over and over while corporate officers have walked away with billions. Corporations have moved jobs off-shore and their official corporate offices into mail boxes in countries known to be tax shelters.

Billions of dollars have simply been lost by the DOD in Iraq. No one can account for any of it. Then there were the no-bid contracts that went to Bush/Cheney cronies overseas and in disaster areas at home, like New Orleans and the northern Gulf Coast for example.

Still, Republicans, both in office and on radio and teevee, are doing all in their power to drive wedges between Americans just when we need cooperation, charitable action and compassion.

Some of us are still playing dangerous political games in this dire time for our country, not to mention the rest of the world. If violence breaks out in this country, people like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, most of the comedians at Faux Noise and others who use our radio airwaves to stir hatred and feelings of victimization among their followers will have only themselves to blame...and believe me, we will blame them!

They just do not seem to understand that the "times, they are changin'.

People from every region of this country are sick and tired of voodoo economics, corruption and cronyism. We are all more and more aware of the super over-class and we have had about all we can take of ostentatious wealth and people who make more in one year than most of us could spend in a life-time while running their businesses off a cliff and taking the American economy along with them.

If, indeed, the people of this nation are leaning left, seeing socialism as not all that bad at times and in certain sectors of the economy, it is because they had a terrifying look into the abyss of fascism and they did not like what they saw.

FOX News Suggests America is Doomed, Civil War May Be Justified

The America lovers at FOX News sure have a funny way of showing their esteem sometimes. Take, for example, Glenn Beck's February 20, 2009 show in which he did his darnedest to scare viewers into thinking that the country is on the road to Apocalypse. In a paranoid fantasy spun out over several segments, Beck and a series of guests set forth a number of dire “worst-case scenarios” for the United States in 2014. During each segment, Beck gave viewers the disclaimer that the apocalyptic visions he and his guests presented were not predictions of what would happen but merely what could happen. And yet Beck and his guests spoke as though the doomsday scenarios, including civil war, were a likelihood, if not a fait accompli. With video.

In “Worst-Case Scenario” No. 1, Beck and his experts imagined the impact of a complete financial meltdown. In this scenario, as Beck described it, all the banks were nationalized, the Dow was at 2800, unemployment at 12%, the commericial real estate market collapsed, the USA's credit rating was downgraded and government and unions control most businesses.

It was a given to the host and both guests that the nationalized banks would be part of this picture instead of, say, helping to avert such a catastrophe. Ditto for unions “controlling” most business.

Guest Gerald Celente, a “trends forecaster,” made it clear he thought the situation was less a “what if” and more a what will be. “New York City looks like Mexico City,” he asserted in the present tense, where anyone who appears to have money is a target for kidnapping.

The other guest, Stephen Moore, of the Wall Street Journal, also segued from “then” to “now.” “You don't have to think about these wild 'buts.' We've seen this happen to other countries... all consumed by government, all do-goodism that led to the decline of their civilizations,” he said, naming Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina Zimbabwe and Russia as examples.

Moore also warned that even if the government pays out Social Security benefits, the dollars may be worthless due to hyper-inflation.

Scenario No. 2: Global civil unrest

The banner on the screen read: “Beck's War Room experts imagine what would happen if the U.S. no longer played world policeman.”

In this scenario, Mexico has been taken over by narco-gangs; oil and gas pipelines have been “targeted and destroyed;” tourism “non-existant;” 50 million people are unemployed and there are “riots in the streets.”

Again, the guests bumped up “maybe” to “likely.” Former CIA officer Bob Baer described the “probability” scenarios as “prolonged depression,” and warned of trouble with Iran. According to Baer, the Gulf countries would suffer and Iran therefore would “move into the Gulf and take it. We have a hostile regime in control of our resources. That is not that far away (my emphasis).”

With Netanyahu now in power in Israel, Baer said (speaking about the present) that the Pentagon estimates the chances of war in the Middle East are likely 55%.

Beck complained that “what's happening” in the Middle East is also tied in with Europe. “Europe, itself, is teetering with Muslim extremists, as well (Beck seemed to be referring to the present). How does the world stand without America standing there and being prepared to deal with it?”

Novelist and former member of the Department of Homeland Security Brad Thor (who once advocated installing jailed former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in Iraq as a solution to the war there) said that it would be just like when a teacher leaves the classroom. “A lot of these people go wild and I'm talking in particular in the Muslim world.”

Worst-Case Scenario 3 was “anger and discontent at home.” What they meant was gangs and civil war.

The tax rate would be “80, 90, perhaps even 95%... just to pay for what we've already spent money on,” said Moore. Celente predicted violent tax revolts. “The cities are gonna look like Dodge City. They're gonna be uncontrollable. You're gonna have gangs in control, motorcycle maurauders... just like Mexico.”

Note the lack of the word “may” or “might” or “possibly.”

The result, according to the experts, would be a rise of “bubba” militias. CSM Tim Strong (ret) predicted that the government would start arresting the good guys who were trying to protect their property. He said (using words of certainty), “The problem you have, Glenn, is you've got people that are gonna do the right thing, that truly protect the interests of the United States, to include their own, but they're the ones that are gonna be apprehended for it because they did something to somebody that was not in compliance with what the US government – 'cause it's easy to arrest a guy who's gonna be orderly and conduct himself accordingly because that's what our society breeds.” He predicted that “bubbas” would hunker down and start being anti-government as a result.

Beck dropped his “just wild and crazy brainstorming” pretense. With his trademark “golly gee” astonishment, he said average people “feel that the government – or they will in this scenario, and I think we're on this road (my emphasis) – the government has betrayed the Constitution and so they will see themselves as people who are standing up for the Constitution... How long do we have before this becomes a crazy real scenario? ...This is a scenario that would tear this country apart and, and, and, and spiral us into something that maybe we have never even seen before, including the Civil War.”

Retired CIA analyst Michael Scheuer even suggested that he approved of any ensuing Civil War. “I don't think the founders ever considered that there would be a tyranny of incompetence but I think that's what we're facing. And ultimately, that's the right of the American.”

As Glenn Greenwald noted in his excellent discussion of this show, “If someone like (Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Pajamas Media) thinks that FOX News is being irresponsibly, even dangerously inflammatory, then that's a pretty compelling sign of how far over the line they actually are."

Amen, Greenwald! I couldn't have said it better myself.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Ridge: We were wrong to torture

I believe the word, Mr. Ridge, is criminal. This sounds like another one of those non-apology apologies.

America's first homeland security secretary has accepted some criticisms of the US "war on terror" made in a recent report by legal experts.

Tom Ridge told the BBC that the report's attacks on extended detention and torture were justified.

But he also said the US had been dealing with a new kind of threat.

The report the International Commission of Jurists said anti-terror measures worldwide had seriously undermined international human rights law.

After a three-year global study, the ICJ said many states had used the public's fear of terrorism to introduce measures including detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture.

It said the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks was robust and effective, but had been actively undermined by the US and the UK.

“ When you are taking upon [yourself] the responsibility to prevent acts I think you do need to engage in slightly different tactics in order to ensure that it happens ”

Tom Ridge, former US homeland security secretary

Mr Ridge, who was appointed to the new post of homeland security secretary after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the US, said the ICJ was on "solid ground" in its commentary "with regard to torture and sustained detention without due process".

In an interview with the BBC's World Today programme he said that regardless of what terrorism suspects had done, the US still needed "to afford them some sense of due process."

"It has taken a while for us to get to that point but we are certainly there now," he said.

He added that there was now a consensus in the US and beyond that water-boarding - a harsh interrogation technique that simulates drowning - was torture, saying there had been no allegations of its use since 2003.

'Dealing with it'

However, Mr Ridge also defended US policy, saying counter-terrorism work was now about detaining people before they were able to commit terrorist acts.

"The criminal justice system is about prosecution and counter-terrorism is about prevention," he said.

"When you are taking upon [yourself] the responsibility to prevent acts I think you do need to engage in slightly different tactics in order to ensure that it happens."

Mr Ridge said the US and other countries had had to deal with a new kind of enemy - "individuals who sought to kill innocent civilians, accepted a belief system that the end justified the means."

Many suspects had "embraced an ideology, a belief system, that said it's perfectly all right in order to advance a cause to kill innocents along the way", he said.

"They had no loyalty to a country so they're not the traditional prisoner of war, they don't wear the uniform of a country so we can't treat them as we have done in previous wars."

Mr Ridge added: "How we dealt with them in terms of returning them to their potential country of origin was a difficult issue that not only the United States but other countries have had to deal with.

"So, we're in the process of dealing with it."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2009/02/21 15:40:46 GMT

© BBC MMIX

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Richard Perle: Neoconservatives Don't Exist

If Only..............

But they do exist and have, at least, since the Reagan administration. We know who they are and strongly support their imprisonment, if and when they are found to be involved in the war crimes and crimes against the constitution by members of the Bush administration.

Prince of Darkness Denies His own Existence

By Dana Milbank
Friday, February 20, 2009; A03

Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.

In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday's forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:

1. Perle is not a neoconservative.

2. Neoconservatives do not exist.

3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.

"There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."

So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy? "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group," Perle explained. "I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."

Mm-hmm. And the two letters to the president, signed by Perle, giving a "moral" basis to Middle East policy and demanding military means to remove Saddam Hussein? "I don't have the letters in front of me," Perle replied.

Right. And the Bush administration National Security Strategy, enshrining the neoconservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom? "I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."

The Prince of Darkness -- so dubbed during his days opposing arms control in the Reagan Pentagon -- was not about to let details get in the way of his argument that "50 million conspiracy theorists have it wrong," as the subtitle of his article for National Interest put it. "I see a number of people here who believe and have expressed themselves abundantly that there is a neoconservative foreign policy and it was the policy that dominated the Bush administration, and they ascribe to it responsibility for the deplorable state of the world," Perle told the foreign policy luminaries at yesterday's lunch. "None of that is true, of course."

Of course.

He had been a leading cheerleader for the Iraq war, predicting that the effort would take few troops and last only a few days, and that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction. Perle was chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board -- and the president clearly took the advice of Perle and his fellow neocons. And Perle, in turn, said back then that Bush "knows exactly what he's doing."

Yesterday, however, Perle said Bush's foreign policy had "no philosophical underpinnings and certainly nothing like the demonic influence of neoconservatives that is alleged." He also took issue with the common view that neocons favored using American might to spread democratic values. "There's no documentation!" he argued. "I can't find a single example of a neoconservative supposed to have influence over the Bush administration arguing that we should impose democracy by force."

Those in the room were skeptical of Perle's efforts to recast himself as a pragmatist.

Richard Burt, who clashed with Perle in the Reagan administration, took issue with "this argument that neoconservatism maybe actually doesn't exist." He reminded Perle of the longtime rift between foreign policy realists and neoconservative interventionists. "You've got to kind of acknowledge there is a neoconservative school of thought," Burt challenged.

"I don't accept the approach, not at all," the Prince of Darkness replied.

Jacob Heilbrunn of National Interest asked Perle to square his newfound realism with the rather idealistic title of his book, "An End to Evil."

"We had a publisher who chose the title," Perle claimed, adding: "There's hardly an ideology in that book." (An excerpt: "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.")

Regardless of the title, Heilbrunn pursued, how could so many people -- including lapsed neoconservative Francis Fukuyama -- all be so wrong about what neoconservatives represent?

"It's not surprising that a lot of people get something wrong," Perle reasoned.

At times, the Prince of Darkness turned on his questioners. Fielding a question from the Financial Times, he said that the newspaper "propagated this myth of neoconservative influence." He informed Stefan Halper of Cambridge University that "you have contributed significantly to this mythology."

"There are some 5,000 footnotes," Halper replied. "Documents that you've signed."

But documents did not deter denials. "I've never advocated attacking Iran," he said, to a few chuckles. "Regime change does not imply military force, at least not when I use the term," he said, to raised eyebrows. Accusations that neoconservatives manipulated intelligence on Iraq? "There's no truth to it." At one point, he argued that the word "neoconservative" has been used as an anti-Semitic slur, just moments after complaining that prominent figures such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld -- Christians both -- had been grouped in with the neoconservatives.

"I don't know that I persuaded anyone," Perle speculated when the session ended.

No worries, said the moderator. "You certainly kept us all entertained."

Let The Sun Shine In......

Web pages mocking Bush rank higher than his library site in online search results.

Last December, the Bush Library foundation paid a cybersquatter $35,000 for the rights to the web domain name www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com. A web development company originally paid less than $10 for the rights to the site. However, since the purchase, the library’s website is having trouble getting noticed on internet search engines:

The Web site for George W. Bush’s presidential library foundation – GeorgeWBushLibrary .com – is falling behind in online search results for “Bush library.”

The guy who’s beating him: his own dad. Even pages mocking the former president rank higher.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, an industry blog said the site is “below average” for building web traffic and “probably failing” in efforts to raise money because of its low ranking.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Darkness of Movement Conservatism

These people may seem like clowns and idiots to most of us. Adolph Hitler seemed a silly little man to the Germans before he became der Furher. These people are, quite frankly dangerous with their hate speech and out-right lies. While they may not do much but run their hateful, idiotic mouths, quite a few of their listeners are active psychotics, not just blabbers.

If the sclerotic humbug I heard come out of the voluble mouth of Rush Limbaugh yesterday was an authentic reflection of movement conservatism's determined pathology, then Barack Obama could be in for a grievous four years from which this country will emerge more polarized, more tribally hostile and poorer in spirit than ever.

Or not. I don't know, it's hard to say. I'm not a regular Limbaugh listener -- it had been roughly a year since I last heard him -- or group psychopathology. For all I know, what he was preaching yesterday could have been an aberration of the extreme -- or the familiar; plus a good number of his listeners may chuckle and guffaw or just sit in stunned stupefaction at his bottomless drivel, as I did.

I kid you not, Limbaugh's rants were, at times, so childishly vacuous or borderline psychotic, I couldn't quite tell if he was kidding. There were moments when I was sure he was -- moments when I figured, Oh, this must be that Rush Limbaugh I've read about; Limbaugh the Entertainer, Limbaugh the Clown, Limbaugh the Court Jester who makes no pretensions at Limbaugh the Conservative Intellectual, an epithet which, I have also read, the unenumerated genuine Dittoheads accept unquestioningly.

But each time I suspected this, each time he cranked up the deafening irrationalities to the point at which a professional clown would yell "Gotcha! -- you didn't really believe that tommyrot, did you?" then he would go all quiet and somber, then repeat said irrationality with a grave and sorry solemnity, and then slide to a commercial break, during which, I gathered, we were all supposed to sadly absorb his gallant disgust.

To the particulars.

There was of course the matter of race, the matter of Limbaugh the color-blind equal opportunist who only wants us to get along, which naturally we would, if it weren't for, say, the Eric Holders of this otherwise fairest of lands always talking about race, which Limbaugh proceeded to do for at least one uninterrupted programming block.

Here, we were treated to Limbaugh the Fearless. He'll take 'em on one at a time -- all those liberally intimidating totalitarians who wish to crush your color-blind spirit and have, indeed, already managed to do so by and large. But they'll never, never break Rush's. He shall overcome.

Was this tinted by the comedic? The suggestively self-parodic? I thought so. And as I was thinking this I was also wondering how many others among us reported 20 or even 30 million listeners were thinking the very same thing; thinking, Rush, you knowing windbag you, you sure know how to tweak the absurd.

It is statistically, demographically impossible that I could be laughing at all this, while 19,999,999 others, to a man and woman, were swallowing it wholesale.

Yet, other segments were even better than that; better, that is, if Colbertlike entertainment was the goal, which it may have been. I don't know. Because I also can't read the mind of psychotics, if earnest he was.

For instance he opened his show by frothing that Barack Obama isn't bailing anyone out, that his stimulus and banking plans are all an immense hoax, designed, in cahoots with Nancy Pelosi, to "destroy this economy," which, Limbaugh added, they had already accomplished "in only 30 days." (Please don't ask me to explain why, in Limbaugh's opinion, Obama & Pelosi Inc. wished to assassinate our economic well-being. He never quite got around to that.)

By the second hour, however, Limbaugh was frothing that Mr. Obama is bailing everyone out, although true Americans -- the ones not being bailed out, despite everyone being bailed out (again, don't ask, it was all rather confusing) -- won't stand for it. Still, these noble many are, for now, staying quiet, silently, ominously "keeping score."

Whatever the hell did that mean? Ah, here was the best part -- that peculiar intersection at which the psychotic, hyperbolic right meets the psychotic, hyperbolic left. Bellowed Rush: A revolution is coming! -- a People's Revolution, a boiling over of simmering rage at Obama's unspecified crimes and sinister plots.

Yes, that's what he said, and he said it again, and again.

The subtlest of parody? Pure entertainment? An easy way to kill three hours and boost the next day's ratings? Or ... conviction? You got me.

But, to repeat, I was less meditative about Limbaugh's eccentricities than their vast reception, which perhaps isn't that vast after all. We have in our history suffered through the ravings of many a political Elmer Gantry only to find that, when push came to shove, their congregations weren't really that large or similarly motivated. Many were only hanging around for a good chuckle, or to marvel at the glibness, or to ponder that rare well-made point, and then move on.

If that's not the case with Limbaugh's wireless auditors, and far worse, if increasingly troubled economic times were to cause his seeming psychosis to metastasize, then things could get exceptionally ugly. But I have my doubts. I suspect the lop-sided mother lode of Americans will always see Rush Limbaugh as the three-ring circus clown he is, alongside the hysterical Rick Santelli and his "loser"-barking in ring two, and Alan Keyes and his "radical communist" derangements in ring three.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......