Saturday, November 23, 2013

5 Christian Right Delusions and Lies About History

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5 Christian Right Delusions and Lies About History

They're not just delusional about science!
 

The Christian right is most known for their denial of inconvenient science, but in many respects, they’re just as bad when it comes to the facts of history. After all, no matter what the topic, they know they can just make stuff up and their people will believe it. So why not do the same when it comes to political history? Here are five examples.
1. Joe McCarthy was a good guy. A new and extremely toxic myth is beginning to percolate in on the Christian right: Insisting that Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a paranoid alcoholic who saw communist subversives in every corner, was actually an upstanding guy fighting for God and country. In 2003, Ann Coulter published a book she claims vindicates McCarthy, but its impact wasn’t felt until 2010 when the Christian right members who stack the Texas State School Board tried to get the pro-McCarthy theories into Texas school books.
Christian right fanatics attempted to claim that McCarthy had been vindicated by something (wrongly) called the “Verona papers” (they're actually named the “Venona papers”). There is a Venona project that has reputed historians who show that the Soviets did have spies in the country, but saying that means McCarthy was right is like saying I’m right to call your mother a serial killer because there are serial killers in America. Harvey Klehr, one of the experts working on the Venona project, denounced Christian right efforts to exploit his work to vindicate McCarthy, noting that McCarthy mostly just fingered innocent people in his paranoid haze.
The new information from Russian and American archives does not vindicate McCarthy. He remains a demagogue, whose wild charges actually made the fight against communism more difficult. Like Gresham’s Law, McCarthy’s allegations marginalized the accurate claims. Because his facts were so often wrong, real spies were able to hide behind the cover of being one of his victims and even persuade well-meaning but naïve people that the whole anti-communist cause was based on inaccuracies and hysteria.
That the Soviets spied on the U.S. is neither surprising—not even to liberals—nor indicative that the communist witch hunts were an appropriate response. The Christian right’s interest in rehabilitating McCarthy probably has less to do with readjudicating the anti-communist cause and more to do with their modern-day obsession with promoting paranoid liars in the McCarthy mold to leadership positions. If they can instill the idea that McCarthy was vindicated by history, it will be easier to argue that the current crop of politically powerful right-wing nuts such as Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz will actually "be proven right by history.” But McCarthy wasn’t and neither will they be.
2. What the Founding Fathers believed. For people who downright deify our Founding Fathers, the religious right is really hostile to accepting them as they actually were, which is not particularly religious, especially by the standards of their time. But David Barton, a revisionist "historian" whose name comes up again and again in these kinds of discussions, has spread the belief far and wide in the Christian right that the Founders were, in fact, fundamentalist Christians who are quite like the ones we have today. Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas confirms this, saying that Barton “provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today.”
Barton has convinced the right to believe in their fervent wish that the Founders were religious and even theocratic with quote-mining and outright lying. He likes to whip out this John Adams quote: “There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost.” Problem? Adams was summarizing the opinion of his opponents; that wasn't Adams’ view at all.
Barton’s reputation took a hit recently. His most recent book, which tried to portray Thomas Jefferson as a “conventional Christian” who wanted a religious government, was so bad that even his Christian publisher decided to reject it.  But according to Politico, that’s just a small setback and Barton is quickly being restored to his position as an authority on history for gullible right-wingers. So that means his lies continue to grow and spread in right-wing circles—such as the completely made-up claim that the Constitution (which only mentions religion to insist the government stay out of it) is based on the Bible.
3. God’s protection. If you believe the lie that the Founders intended this to be a religious nation and that secularism is only a recent development, it’s not much of a leap to decide next that God, in his anger, has turned his back on the United States. And therefore that bad things are happening to us because he doesn’t protect us anymore.
You see this belief throughout the Christian right all the time. Every bad thing that happens is blamed on God removing his “hedge of protection” from the U.S. to punish us for turning our back on God in recent decades.School shootingsGlobal warmingHurricanes9/11.
The problem with this theory should be obvious: If God is turning away from America because we’re supposedly becoming more secular, then things were better back in the day. But when was this supposed Eden of American life supposed to have happened? During the Civil War? The Gilded Age of abusive labor practices? The Great Depression? WWI? WWII? Bad things are always happening, so the notion that they can only be blamed on God’s irritation with us sinners now makes no sense at all.
4. Roman civilization. The Christian right doesn’t just like to lie about our own history; they lie about other nations, too. A popular theory on the right is that the Roman Empire “collapsed” because growing decadence and liberalism caused people to, I don’t know, be too busy screwing to govern. It’s always a little hazy, but the formula is standard: Romans started having a bunch of sex, stuff fell apart, warning for America. Not a day goes by that you don’t hear this theory floated.
The problem with that theory is it makes no kind of sense. It’s not really right to suggest there was some kind decline in “moral values,” by which the Christian right means sexual prudishness, at all. Romans were pretty uptight.The rumors that they turned all perverted and debauched were made up by Christians trying to smear pagan culture. Rome didn’t really “fall” in the sense the Christian pundits mean, anyway. It was more a gradual decline of centralized power.
Anyway, the decline coincided with the rise of Christianity, which under the “God’s protection” theory means that God was punishing Rome for dropping paganism and adopting monotheism.
5. French revolution. One problem with characterizing the American revolution as Christian instead of secular is that there was another one shortly thereafter, built on the same basic ideals, that was undeniably secular due to the aggressive attacks on Catholic power. If the French were so secular, how could the Americans not be? The answer to the conundrum is to lie and claim there was some kind of gulf between the ideals of the French Revolution and the American Revolution.
Rick Santorum floated this theory at the 2013 Values Voters Summit, where he claimed the French revolutionaries were bad because they believed that rights and democracy stem from the social contract, instead of being handed down from God. Fair enough, though really the “reason” is probably closer to how they would have described it at the time, but where he goes off the rails is to insinuate that they were rejecting the values laid out by their fellow revolutionaries in America when they did this. In reality, the arguments of French and American revolutionaries are nearly identical, echoing philosophers like John Locke who were trying to construct an ideal of rights and freedoms that is frankly secularist in nature.

#GopDontCare about anything else other than trashing #Obamacare

University of Minnesota Scientist Drops Bombshell About Walker: Says He Fathered Child at Marquette

Lounsbury's blog

University of Minnesota Scientist Drops Bombshell About Walker: Says He Fathered Child at Marquette

Friday, November 22, 2013

Jesus Ate a $95,000 Truffle: The Evangelical GOP Worships Wealth, So Kiss Jesus, Justice, Fairness and America Goodbye

Jesus Ate a $95,000 Truffle: The Evangelical GOP Worships Wealth, So Kiss Jesus, Justice, Fairness and America Goodbye

Just how nuts has the wealth-to-middle class disparity has gotten? Read this while thinking about how the evangelicals — who once said they follow Jesus — have become the bedrock of GOP/Ayn Rand GREED-IS-GOOD “policy” to cut government help for the poor and middle class and fight health care reform to give the poor medical care, while lowering taxes and regulations on the super wealthy.
To the extent that the GOP/wealth alliance depends on the evangelicals like Ted Cruz and the Tea Party to survive, the conclusion is inescapable: Evangelicals hate Jesus. As I show in my book And God Said, “Billy!American evangelicals have entirely bought into the super wealthy/corporate definition of “success.”
So…
PLEASE Read this article, and find out just what it is that the GOP and the Evangelicals really stand for when they help the GOP win…

5 Signs the Rich Have Way Too Much Money

By Dave Johnson





Here’s something to read after you get done trying to figure out how to make the mortgage or the rent or the car payment this month. It’s a little story about how the other half lives. Well, maybe not the other half, exactly. More like the obscenely wealthy .01%.
What do you do when you just have too darn much money? Let’s say you already have your mansion(s), your jet, your yacht, your cars, your $5,000 watches, and you’ve still got too much money left over. (Yes, this really is a problem some people have.) While many, many Americans are struggling to get by, and a very few ultra-wealthy have too much money, here are five signs that the rich are just too rich.
1) You can eat a $95,000 truffle. The restaurant Nello, a Wall Streeter hangout in New York, offers a truffle for $95,000. A Russian billionaire named Vladimir Potanin recently ate one. Keep in mind that $95,000 is to a billion as 95 cents is to $10,000. If $10,000 is an amount you find too much to fathom, it’s like 9.5 cents to $1000. (PS, enjoy the terrible reviews the place gets on Yelp.)
2) You can get a $5,000 hamburger for lunch. The Fleur de Lys restaurant in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay offers the “Fleurburger 5000″ for $5,000. The burger consists of a Kobe beef patty “topped with a rich truffle sauce and served on a brioche truffle bun. And this burger comes with its own beverage, a bottle of 1990 Chateau Petrus that is served in Ichendorf Brunello stemware that you get to keep.”
3) You can get a $500 milkshake to go with your $5,000 hamburger. The Powder Room restaurant in Los Angeles is selling a milkshake for $500. For your money you get “special stuff: edible gold, Belgian chocolate, and a crystal ring.”
What Next?
A lunch with a $95,000 truffle, a $5000 hamburger and a $500 milkshake doesn’t even add up to pocket change. So how about a bottle of wine? Of course, you can’t just swill down any bottle of wine—life is too short. So let’s go for it.
4) A bottle of 1811 Chateau d’Yquem sold at auction for $117,000. If you want a larger bottle of wine, the Le Clos wine shop in Dubai International Airport is offering three 12-liter bottles of 2009 Château Margaux for $195,000 each.
What do you look at while you are eating and drinking your awesome, and awesomely expensive, luxury?
5) A piece by Francis Bacon sold for $142 million at an art auction. Three other pieces sold for more than $50 million; 11 for more than $20 million; and 16 sold for more than $10 million. An Andy Warhol piece sold for almost $60 million.
Too Much In The Hands Of Too Few
This really is all about too much money in the hands of too few people. Agustino Fontevecchia at Forbes writes in “The Reason Why Francis Bacon’s ‘Lucian Freud’ Is Worth $142 Million“:
As the ultra-wealthy become even wealthier, the top-end of the art market, along with real estate and other luxury sectors, have experienced an incredible surge as cash is being channeled into alternative investments.
Fontevecchia explains,
“The final, and possibly most important factor is the rise of the mega-rich. “Since the recession, the wealthy appear to be becoming even wealthier, while middle-class wages are more stagnant,” said Galbraith, who notes this is apparent in the art market where the high-end is experiencing more activity. “The ultra high net worth and the newly wealthy are looking to get into the art market,” said Markley, who notes contemporary art is accessible and acts well as a status symbol. If the Forbes 400 is any indication, the wealthy are getting wealthier, with the 400 richest Americans now worth a cumulative $2 trillion, up $300 billion from a year ago and with an average net worth of a record $5 billion, an $800 million increase from a year ago.”
So what if a very few people have such enormous sums? These expensive excesses of food, wine and art don’t really affect regular people like you and me. But it turns out that the distortions caused by the excesses of the ultra-wealthy affect all of us a lot.
Take the housing market. You may have noticed headlines like the following: Hedge funds crowd first-time buyers out of housing market or How Big Institutional Money Distorts Housing Prices. If you live in certain areas of the country, like the San Francisco Bay Area, rents are soaring and it is unimaginable that you might ever purchase a place to live. The ultra-wealthy are purchasing houses by the hundreds to be rented out.
Then, of course, comes the usual next step when the ultra-wealthy are involved: they use their wealth and power to get things the rest of us can’t. One frequent example is demands for tax cuts. In cash-strapped Dayton, Ohio, this story: Hedge Fund Turned Property Owner Seeks Large Tax Cuts:
“Magnetar Capital LLC, investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its housing bets leading up to the property crash, acquired a rental business in January with about 1,900 properties from Charles H. Huber’s widow. In April, its management company applied for the largest cut to property tax assessments in the county’s history. The move could curb funding for public schools, the police and fire departments and services to the disabled, said Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith.”
A terrible, wealth-worshiping philosophy has taken hold among many of our conservative policymakers. A couple of months ago a piece in Forbes, Give Back? Yes, It’s Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%, spelled out this conservative philosophy:
“The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person—a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.
“[. . .] Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
The Forbes piece says that profit—no matter how attained—is the true measure of value in society. According to one example used by the author, Goldman Sachs has “done infinitely more for mankind” than people like Mother Teresa. The author knows this is true because of Goldman Sachs’ “billions in profits.”
You may remember reading that Goldman Sachs was accused of working with a hedge fund to sell “designed-to-fail” investments to customers like pension funds, so the hedge fund could profit from betting that the investments would fail. According to this conservative philosophy, Goldman Sachs’ profits are a measure of the “value created” by the “mental effort” that Goldman and the hedge fund put into developing this scheme.
The ultra-wealth of a few may be directly related to the way many people find themselves trying to figure out how to make their mortgage/rent, car payments, etc. Four hundred Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined, and just the six Walton heirs have more wealth than a third of all Americans combined. Yet companies like Walmart pays its employees so little that many of them have to turn to the taxpayers for assistance like food stamps just to get by….
TO READ THE REST CLICK HERE
Other pieces by  Dave Johnson may be found HERE
Dave Johnson is a fellow at Campaign for America’s Future and a senior fellow at Renew California.

Michele Bachmann: ‘If God Wanted Everyone To Have Insurance, Why Did He Invent Miracles?’


Michele Bachmann: ‘If God Wanted Everyone To Have Insurance, Why Did He Invent Miracles?’

images-1WASHINGTON, D.C. – Michele Bachmann, after complaining to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that her insurance had been cancelled because of Obamacare, was asked later in the day about the people who have been uninsured and would now have insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. She was much less sympathetic toward them.
“It’s obvious that God put two types of people in this world,” said Bachmann. “There are hardworking Americans like myself, who have never taken a dime of taxpayer money and there are the people who should just hold their hands out to God.”
“If God wanted everyone to have health insurance, he wouldn’t have made those wonderful things called, ‘miracles,’” Bachmann continued. “He gave me the good fortune to have health insurance, for now, but even I’ll be losing it, thanks to Obamacare.”
When informed that the majority of the uninsured are working people and self-employed people, Bachmann said, “that’s terrific, but if they were truly hardworking, like I am, they would have insurance. But I don’t judge. That’s up to God and he told me that he’s going to get to work performing miracles for the luckiest of those people. You never know. Maybe He’ll heal a wart. Maybe  He will heal a poor person’s dandruff. Maybe He will even cure some cancer.”
When asked if perhaps it was God’s will that she would be losing insurance, Bachmann replied, “no, that’s Obamacare. It’s all Obamacare. He’s the anti-christ, you know. Oh, wait, I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud.”
“Anyway,” Bachmann continued, “God has granted me my miracles for my life. He gave me my Marcus and you’d better believe he left his share of broken hearts before I managed to snag him.”

House Speaker John Boehner successfully enrolled in Obamacare


House Speaker John Boehner successfully enrolled in Obamacare

November 21, 2013
By
Congratulations House Speaker John Boehner for successfully enrolling in the Affordable Care Act; Aka: Obamacare.
It was about an hour after Boehner’s office said he couldn’t sign up for Obamacare coverage on the District of Columbia’s exchange, that his office said, he had officially enrolled.
Boehner







Boehner’s office wrote, “Kept at it, and called the DC Health Link help line. They called back a few hours later, and after restarting the process on the website two more times, I just heard from DC Health Link that I have been successfully enrolled.”
Politico reports:
 Responding to Boehner’s earlier failed attempts to sign up for coverage, the District’s exchange — known as DC Health Link — said it recently identified some system errors after enrollment.
“We recently discovered the fact that after enrollment, some users have been receiving a random error message,” DC Health Link communications director Richard Sorian wrote in an email. “Despite the message, these individuals have been enrolled. Our call center has been able to quickly resolve these matters. We are working on a system-wide update that will eliminate this soon. Users will be able to verify their enrollment in their secure, online account.”
Boehner’s office on Thursday afternoon said he originally received an error screen when he tried to sign up for coverage. “Guess I’ll just have to keep trying…” his office wrote at the time.
I plan to enroll too, but I’m not a ‘shop on Black Friday’ kind of person. I’ve been waiting for things to settle down. After I enroll, it will be like Boehner and I are BFFs. Isn’t that exciting?
Stuff not covered: How long did it take to enroll for coverage by an insurance company before Obamacare?

STUDY: Nearly Three-Quarters Of Americans With Individual Plans Qualify For Obamacare Subsidies

STUDY: Nearly Three-Quarters Of Americans With Individual Plans Qualify For Obamacare Subsidies

By Sy Mukherjee on November 21, 2013 at 1:11 pm
"STUDY: Nearly Three-Quarters Of Americans With Individual Plans Qualify For Obamacare Subsidies"

Health Overhaul Applying For Coverage
CREDIT: AP Photo/J. David Ake
Over 70 percent of Americans under age 65 who buy insurance through the individual market will either qualify for Obamacare subsidies or the health law’s expansion of Medicaid in the states that accept it, according to a new study by Families USA.
Obamacare provides insurance subsidies to Americans making up to 400 percent of the poverty level — about $94,200 for a family of four — who enroll in plans through the health law’s statewide marketplaces. The new study finds that 71 percent of current individual policyholders have annual incomes that fall below this threshold. Earlier estimates by groups like the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimated that just under half of these Americans could qualify for subsidies.
Families USA’s study also confirms earlier reports that the current individual market burdens consumers with uncertainty. For instance, a full “64.5 percent of consumers with individual market insurance kept that insurance for a year or less” irrespective of income, according to study authors. Many of these plans also skimp on the types of benefits that Americans actually need when they get sick, such as maternity, mental health, prescription drug, and even hospitalization coverage, while placing annual and lifetime caps on coverage. The health law has far more robust minimum coverage requirements, outlaws benefit caps, and doesn’t allow insurers to drop customers or raise their premiums based on health status.
Researchers also noted that just a fraction of a percent of all non-elderly Americans have individual plans that they keep for more than a year but won’t qualify for a government subsidy when they go out to buy new plans through the Obamacare marketplaces.
“[U]nder the ACA, only 0.6 percent of Americans under age 65 will be at risk of losing their current individual market plan and will not be income-eligible for financial assistance that will make their new insurance plan more affordable,” concluded the authors. “Even among this 0.6 percent, some have insurers who will not or cannot cancel their plans. Others will decide that they are better off with higher-value plans in the new insurance marketplaces.”

The Real Fox News

The Real Fox News

 Topics mentioned include Keystone XL pipeline & G.W. Bush, Republican sex versus Democratic & Liberal sex. How GOP makes love. Sarah Palin, dumbest woman alive? 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This

Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This


gettysburgI love how the right-wing media blatantly treats conservative voters like idiots, knowing that they’ll eat it right up.  See, while liberals like myself often call Republicans ignorant, the right-wing media seems to feel the same way.  How else could they deliberately create “outrage” over events they know to be completely inaccurate?
Because they know conservative voters are just dumb enough to fall for it.  The right-wing media knows that they can simply make up almost anything they want, “report” it to the masses of conservatives just itching to find something new to hate President Obama for, and Republican voters will believe practically anything they say.
A few months ago it was “Umbrellagate” that caused conservatives to spit their venom toward the president.  Then more recently it was Michelle Obama encouraging children to drink more water that seemed to offend conservatives to their very core.  Now it’s President Obama not going to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, and during his reading of that very same Gettysburg Address he didn’t utter the words “under God.”
First, let’s address his lack of attendance on the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg.  Here’s a fun fact for conservatives: No president since William Howard Taft, who went in 1909, has attended Gettysburg on its anniversary.  Not even their hero Ronald Reagan.  Who, by the way, never visited Gettysburg while he was president.
Aww, too bad.  So much for that pointless conspiracy the right-wing media blatantly made up and millions of ignorant conservatives took off and ran with.

Then on to an issue many conservatives have throw an even bigger fit about — President Obama reading the Gettysburg Address without saying the words “under God.”
It’s true, in Lincoln’s speech he did say the words, “under God.”  But they weren’t actually written in the original speech — which is what was given to President Obama by Civil War scholar Ken Burns.  Burns gave him a version of the speech called a “Nicolay Copy.”  A “Nicolay Copy” is in reference to John Nicolay, the White House staffer who preserved the speech.
Darn, strike two for made up right-wing conspiracies.
But they are a perfect 2-0 in this for proving that they are absolutely terrible at knowing United States history.
Oh, and just for good measure, our Pledge of Allegiance originally never contained the words “one nation under God” either.  In fact, our pledge was written by a Christian socialist and the words “under God” weren’t added until 1954.
This “outrage” has just been another perfect example of conservatives manufacturing fake stories to use in a pathetic attempt to attack President Obama.  Just more of the same from the people whose careers depend on the abject stupidity of the average conservative.

About Allen Clifton
Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, and author of the popular Right Off A Cliff column. He is also the founder of the Right Off A Cliff facebook page, on which he routinely voices his opinions and stirs the pot for the Progressive movement. Follow Allen on Twitter as well, @Allen_Clifton.



School officials threatened to be ‘lined up and shot’ after Fox News ‘misreporting’

School officials threatened to be ‘lined up and shot’ after Fox News ‘misreporting’ (via Raw Story )
A school board member in South Dakota is calling on Fox News to apologize because he says an erroneous report led to threats that officials be “lined up and shot” over the Pledge of Allegiance. Sioux Falls School Board member Kent Alberty told KSFY…

Senator Harry Reid – Speech on Filibuster Reform 11/21/2013




 Senator Harry Reid – Speech on Filibuster Reform 11/21/2013

Via: News Genius

The American people believe Congress is broken. The American people believe the Senate is broken. And I believe the American people are right.
During this Congress – the 113th Congress – the United States Senate has wasted an unprecedented amount of time on procedural hurdles and partisan obstruction. As a result, the work of this country goes undone. Congress should be passing legislation that strengthens our economy and protects American families. Instead we’re burning wasted hours and wasted days between filibusters.
Even one of the Senate’s most basic duties – confirmation of presidential nominees – has become completely unworkable. For the first time in history, Republicans have routinely used the filibuster to prevent President Obama from appointing his executive team or confirming judges.
It is a troubling trend that Republicans are willing to block executive branch nominees even when they have no objection to the qualifications of the nominee. Instead, they block qualified executive branch nominees to circumvent the legislative process. They block qualified executive branch nominees to force wholesale changes to laws. They block qualified executive branch nominees to restructure entire executive branch departments. And they block qualified judicial nominees because they don’t want President Obama to appoint any judges to certain courts.
The need for change is obvious. In the history of the Republic, there have been 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations. Half of them have occurred during the Obama Administration – during the last four and a half years. These nominees deserve at least an up-or-down vote. But Republican filibusters deny them a fair vote and deny the President his team.
This gridlock has consequences. Terrible consequences. It is not only bad for President Obama and bad for the United States Senate; it’s bad for our country. It is bad for our national security and for our economic security.
That’s why it’s time to get the Senate working again – not for the good of the current Democratic majority or some future Republican majority, but for the good of the country. It’s time to change the Senate, before this institution becomes obsolete.
At the beginning of this Congress, the Republican Leader pledged that, quote, “this Congress should be more bipartisan than the last Congress.” We’re told in scripture that, “When a man makes a vow... he must not break his word.” Numbers 30-2. In January, Republicans promised to work with the majority to process nominations… in a timely manner by unanimous consent, except in extraordinary circumstances.
Exactly three weeks later, Republicans mounted a first-in-history filibuster of a highly qualified nominee for Secretary of Defense. Despite being a former Republican Senator and a decorated war hero, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s nomination was pending in the Senate for a record 34 days, more than three times the previous average. Remember, our country was at war. Republicans have blocked executive branch nominees like Secretary Hagel not because they object to the qualifications of the nominee, but simply because they seek to undermine the very government in which they were elected to serve.
Take the nomination of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There was no doubt about Mr. Cordray’s ability to do the job. But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren – went for more than two years without a leader, because Republicans refused to accept the law of the land – because they wanted to roll back a law that protects consumers from the greed of big Wall Street banks. I say to my Republican colleagues, you don’t have to like the laws of the land. But you do have to respect those laws, acknowledge them and abide them.
Similar obstruction continued unabated for seven more months, until Democrats threatened to change Senate rules to allow up-or-down votes on executive nominees. In July, after obstructing dozens of executive nominees for months, and some for years, Republicans once again promised that they would end their unprecedented obstruction.
One look at the Senate’s Executive Calendar shows nothing has changed since July. Republicans have continued their record obstruction as if no agreement had ever been reached. Republicans have continued their record obstruction as if no vow had ever been made. There are currently 75 executive branch nominees ready to be confirmed by the Senate that have been waiting an average of 140 days for confirmation. One executive nominee to the agency that safeguards the water our children and grandchildren drink and the air they breathe has waited more than 800 days for confirmation.
We agreed in July that the Senate should be confirming nominees to ensure the proper functioning of government. But consistent and unprecedented obstruction by the Republican Caucus has turned “advise and consent” into “deny and obstruct.”
In addition to filibustering a nominee for Secretary of Defense for the first time in history, Senate Republicans also blocked a sitting member of Congress from an Administration position for the first time since 1843. As a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, Congressman Mel Watt’s understanding of the mistakes that led to the housing crisis made him uniquely qualified to serve as administrator of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Senate Republicans simply don’t like the consumer protections Congressman Watt was nominated to develop and implement. So they denied a fellow member of Congress and a graduate of Yale Law School even the courtesy of an up-or-down vote.
In the last three weeks alone, Republicans have blocked up-or-down votes on three highly qualified nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered by many to be the second highest court in the land. Republicans have blocked four of President Obama’s five nominees to the D.C. Circuit, whereas Democrats approved four of President Bush’s six nominees to this important court. Today, 25 percent of the D.C. Circuit Court is vacant. There isn’t a single legitimate objection to the qualifications of any of these nominees. Yet Republicans refused to give them an up-or-down vote – a simple yes-or-no vote. Republicans simply don’t want President Obama to make any appointments at all to this vital court.
Further, only 23 district court nominees have been filibustered in the entire history of this country. Twenty of them were nominated by President Obama. With one out of every 10 federal judgeships vacant, millions of Americans who rely on courts that are overworked and understaffed are being denied the justice they rightly deserve. More than half the nation’s population lives in a part of the country that’s been declared a “judicial emergency.”
The American people are fed up with this kind of obstruction and gridlock. The American people – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – are fed up with this kind of obstruction and gridlock. The American people want Washington to work for American families once again.
I am on their side, which is why I propose an important change to the rules of the United States Senate. The present Republican Leader himself said, “The Senate has repeatedly changed its rules as circumstances dictate.” He is right. In fact, the Senate has changed its rules 18 times by sustaining or overturning the ruling of the presiding officer in the last 36 years, during the tenures of both Republican and Democratic majorities.
The change we propose today would ensure executive and judicial nominees get an up-or-down vote on confirmation – yes or no. This rule change will make cloture for all nominations other than Supreme Court nominees a majority threshold vote – yes or no.
The Senate is a living thing. And to survive, it must change. To the average American, adapting the rules to make Congress work again is just common sense. This is not about Democrats versus Republicans. This is about making Washington work – regardless of who’s in the White House or who controls the Senate. To remain relevant and effective as an institution, The Senate must evolve to meet the challenges of a modern era.
I have no doubt my Republican colleague will argue the fault lies with Democrats. I can say from experience that no one’s hands are entirely clean on this issue. But today the important distinction is not between Democrats and Republicans. It is between those who are willing to help break the gridlock in Washington and those who defend the status quo.
Today Democrats and Independents are saying enough is enough. This change to the rules regarding presidential nominees will apply equally to both parties. When Republicans are in power, these changes will apply to them as well. That’s simple fairness. And it’s something both sides should be willing to live with to make Washington work again.

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Latest Koch Brothers Trickery: Actress Fakes Testimonial in Anti-Obamacare Ad

Latest Koch Brothers Trickery: Actress Fakes Testimonial in Anti-Obamacare Ad 

Not that false advertising bother the rabidly right-wing billionaire brothers.

November 21, 2013    
Koch Brothers ad fake Alaskan.
Americans for Prosperity, the arch-conservative advocacy group backed largely by the Koch Brothers, released their latest attack ad against Obamacare on Wednesday, criticizing Alaskan Democratic Senator Mark Begich for his support of the Affordable Care Act. 
The commercial in question appears to feature an unidentified Alaskan voter, who complains about the betrayal at the hands of both Begich and Obama, while walking leisurely around her kitchen with a cup of coffee. But Connie Bowman, the woman in the video was interviewed  by the New York Times, and she said she's “just an actress,” with a fairly prolific voice-over and commercial career.
And she doesn't live anywhere near Alaska. She lives in Maryland.
“Today’s misleading ad from the Koch brothers is just more evidence that even billions of dollars can’t buy integrity,” Begich spokeswoman Rachel Barinbaum said in a statement. 
The ad comes days after the billionaire brothers announced their $4 million anti-Obamacare advertising campaign, sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity, which plans to target six congressional democrats who supported the Affordable Care Act. Begich is just the first.
Begich, who is currently up for reelection in the red state, described his plans on Tuesday for legislation that calls for creating a new category of insurance plans within Obamacare that would offer citizens lower premiums with higher out-of-pocket costs. 

Rod Bastanmehr is a freelance writer in New York City with a passion for music, film and culture. Follow him on Twitter @rodb.

Fox News Pundit Says End Of Judicial Filibuster Could Lead To ‘Military Coup’

Fox News Pundit Says End Of Judicial Filibuster Could Lead To ‘Military Coup’

By Hayes Brown on November 21, 2013 at 3:41 pm
"Fox News Pundit Says End Of Judicial Filibuster Could Lead To ‘Military Coup’"

tank
CREDIT: Shutterstock

Fox News commentator Charles W. Cooke on Thursday warned that the recent move from the Senate to end filibusters on judicial nominees could lead to a “military coup.”
Cooke, who is also a National Review columnist, was speaking to Fox News host Gretchen Carlson on Thursday afternoon when he made the leap of logic. “I think it is fairly clear they want to distract from the Obamacare disaster, but this is something they wanted to do for awhile,” Cooke said of the decision to allow for a simple majority to pass nominees through the Senate. “They are very frustrated that Republicans have been blocking their nominations as they blocked Republican nominees when Bush was president.”
After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pulled the trigger on the so-called “nuclear option,” President Obama addressed the press to defend the Democrats’ choice. “Over the past five years we’ve seen an unprecedented pattern of obstruction in Congress that’s prevented too much of the American people’s business from getting done,” Obama said. The result, Obama continued, is that his nominees have languished in the Senate two and a half times as long as those put forward under the George W. Bush’s administration.
Cooke did not take Obama’s comments well, paraphrasing the president as having said “the American business is far too important for the rules.” “Well, how far do you take that?” Cooke pondered aloud. “You could just ignore the House. You could have a military coup, you could have anything at the end of this.”
Watch his comments here:
In reality, the change to the filibuster’s sixty-vote threshold was one that is narrowly tailored and will not lead to tanks rolling through the streets of Washington. As ThinkProgress earlier pointed out, the number of times where cloture had to be filed to overcome a filibuster has skyrocketed since Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took over as Senate Minority leader. In total, nearly 3 in 10 cloture motions in the history of the Senate have been invoked since then.
The new rule put into place through the nuclear option doesn’t affect legislation, instead only being relegated to nominees for federal positions and courts. This leaves it impossible that the House’s opinion will ever need to be ignored, as only the Senate has the advice and consent power under debate at present, meaning that further changes would be required to allow before it would come into play. While further changes to the filibuster are possible, ignoring the House or Obama colluding with his generals to usurp over democracy — unlike reforming the filibuster — would also violate the Constitution, making it unlikely for either scenario to come from today’s actions. (HT: Eric Boehlert)

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

 
Thursday, November, 21st, 2013, 3:27 pm
rand-paul-cnn

The crying has only just begun now that Republicans won’t be able to hold up judicial and executive branch nominees (the filibuster rule changes do not apply to SCOTUS nominees or legislation). Mitch McConnell’s spokesperson inaccurately accused Obama of court packing, and now Rand Paul started a whine fest on CNN during which he complained that Republicans need an anti-bullying ordinance to protect them from “dictator” Harry Reid.
Video:


Senator Rand Paul said on CNN, “I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. I mean, now we’ve got a big bully, Harry Reid says he’s just going to break the rules and make new rules. Never been done this way before.”
“He’s gotta have everything his way, he’s gotta control everything. This is more about them trying to control the agenda and shift it away from Obamacare than it is about anything else. Basically, he’s become the dictator of the Senate. He’s going to bend and break the rules to get his way.”
Rand Paul has been one of the main sources of Republican obstruction in the Senate, so it isn’t a surprise that he would cry a river over the fact that he has lost a critical tool that he has used both to gum up the works and call attention to himself.

Harry Reid’s rule change will make it a lot more difficult for look at me 2016 Republican wannabes like Paul and Ted Cruz to use obstructing the Senate to further their presidential ambitions. Obstruction of nominees will no longer be a prime PR tool for Sen. Paul as he daydreams about a presidency that may never be.
The root problem is that Rand Paul rejects the purpose of the Senate. Sen. Paul doesn’t believe in passing laws. Rand Paul thinks he is in the Senate to prevent progress. If Paul can’t obstruct, he serves no purpose in the Senate.
Sen. Paul is throwing a tantrum because he had his favorite toy taken away. Instead of looking like a visionary leader for America’s future, Rand Paul is stomping his feet because Republicans are no longer going to get their obstructionist way on everything.
Mostly though, Rand Paul is upset because he lost a vehicle to promote Rand Paul.
Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully was written by Jason Easley and Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Nov 21st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

Fox News Chastises People For Giving To The Homeless: ‘You’re An Enabler’

Fox News Chastises People For Giving To The Homeless: ‘You’re An Enabler’

By Scott Keyes on November 21, 2013 at 2:23 pm

According to Fox News, this woman is likely a scammer, alcoholic, or addict who doesn't deserve your help.
According to Fox News, this woman is likely a scammer,
alcoholic, or addict who doesn’t deserve your help.
CREDIT: AP
I don’t throw around the term “hero” lightly, but it takes a special kind of person to look at a homeless man on the street — with no home to stay warm in, little access to a shower or clean clothes, and few possessions — and decide that he’s got it too good. But Fox Business host John Stossel bravely took up that mantle Thursday morning during a guest appearance on Fox & Friends, warning viewers about the perniciousness of giving money to the poor.
Donning a fake beard, Stossel sat on a New York City sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking people for help. “I just begged for an hour but I did well,” he said. “If I did this for an eight-hour day I would’ve made 90 bucks. Twenty-three thou for a year. Tax-free.”
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who recently purchased a $4 million home in Greenwich, gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year. Some people asking for money “are actually scammers,” Hasselbeck warned, seemingly unaware of the irony that the only panhandling “scammer” Fox News identified was Stossel.
Because he was able to successfully convince good-hearted pedestrians that he was poor, Stossel went on to chastise people who gave the homeless money because, in his view, “most are not…for real.”
He implored viewers to stop giving money to poor people because if you do, “you’re an enabler.”
Watch the segment:
There are a multitude of incorrect claims and assumptions in this short segment: $23,000 per year: Stossel spent a single hour on the streets and was given approximately $11 by people who wanted to help out someone in need. Therefore, Stossel assumes he would make $23,000 per year. (That figure is actually a steep drop from Stossel’s claims in the past, that he knew of beggars who made $80,000 per year panhandling.) There are a multitude of false assumptions here. First, one of the only scientific surveys of panhandlers found that the vast majority made $25 per day or less, annualized at just over $9,000. Second, $9,000 — or even $23,000 — is difficult to survive on, especially in a city like New York where the median apartment rents for more than $3,000 in Manhattan and more than $2,500 in Brooklyn. Third, spending 8 hours a day asking for money is time that can’t be spent going to classes, gaining skills, picking up diapers for a crying child, or interviewing for a job. Homeless people “are actually scammers”: Hasselbeck noted that “scammers” were rife among beggars, implying that panhandling is some get-rich-quick scheme engaged in by hucksters. Stossel agreed, saying that most beggars were not “for real.” Their only evidence for this claim? The fact that Stossel spent an hour undercover as a homeless person and was able to fool people into believing he was needy. An actual study of beggars, on the other hand, found that 82 percent were homeless, two in three were disabled, most earned less than $25 per day, and nearly all used the money for food. If Stossel and Hasselbeck truly do believe there is a scourge of well-off people acting as though they’re impoverished so they can successfully panhandle — nobody’s idea of a fun time — what would Stossel have people do? Ask beggars for a tax return before giving them a buck? Drugs and alcohol: Stossel cautions that well-intentioned people are actually enabling bad behavior because poor people will just use the money for drugs and alcohol. But that’s not what the data shows. While some do use the money for drugs and alcohol, most don’t. What did a survey find 94 percent of panhandlers used the money for? Food. Chastising beggars is an annual tradition for Stossel: Pretending to be poor and homeless is becoming an annual tradition for Stossel. Here’s his 2011 segment, his 2012 segment, and now his 2013 segment. Some journalists use their perch to give voice to the voiceless. Stossel’s hobby horse, on the other hand, is apparently to convince Fox viewers that poor people are too well off. Privilege: “I felt foolish and uncomfortable,” Stossel said of the experience, right after imploring viewers not to give poor people the dignity of believing they are actually poor instead of drunks, addicts, or scammers. Watching four wealthy white people sit in a New York television studio and banter about the evils of giving money to homeless people is like waking up the day after your 21st birthday: it’s not surprising, but still painful. Only Stossel would be capable of benefiting from people’s generosity, and then deciding that they were rubes with too much holiday spirit and we should really all be grinches who are suspicious of one another. War on Christmas, indeed.

Hasselbeck: Oprah shouldn’t call out racists because it ‘undermines racism’

Hasselbeck: Oprah shouldn’t call out racists because it ‘undermines racism’ (via Raw Story )

Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Thursday warned Oprah Winfrey that she “undermines racism” by pointing out that some of President Barack Obama’s critics disliked him because of the color of his skin. “There is a level of disrespect for…

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Biography

Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.