...while our culture of imagination is still vibrant, the other critical factor that still differentiates countries today — and is not a commodity — is good governance, which can harness creativity. And that we may be losing. I am talking about the ability of a society’s leaders to think long term, address their problems with the optimal legislation and attract capable people into government. What I increasingly fear today is that America is only able to produce “suboptimal” responses to its biggest problems — education, debt, financial regulation, health care, energy and environment.
Why? Because at least six things have come together to fracture our public space and paralyze our ability to forge optimal solutions:
1) Money in politics has become so pervasive that lawmakers have to spend most of their time raising it, selling their souls to those who have it or defending themselves from the smallest interest groups with deep pockets that can trump the national interest.
2) The gerrymandering of political districts means politicians of each party can now choose their own voters and never have to appeal to the center.
3) The cable TV culture encourages shouting and segregating people into their own political echo chambers.
4) A permanent presidential campaign leaves little time for governing.
5) The Internet, which, at its best, provides a check on elites and establishments and opens the way for new voices and, which, at its worst provides a home for every extreme view and spawns digital lynch mobs from across the political spectrum that attack anyone who departs from their specific orthodoxy.
6) A U.S. business community that has become so globalized that it only comes to Washington to lobby for its own narrow interests; it rarely speaks out anymore in defense of national issues like health care, education and open markets.
These six factors are pushing our system, which was designed to have divided powers and to force compromises, into the realm of paralysis. To get anything big done now, we have to generate so many compromises — couched in 1,000-plus-page bills — with so many different interest groups that the solutions are totally suboptimal. We just get the sum of all interest groups.
...The standard answer is that we need better leaders. The real answer is that we need better citizens. We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay, yes, higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble. A great power that can only produce suboptimal responses to its biggest challenges will, in time, fade from being a great power — no matter how much imagination it generates.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT, November 21, 2009

- Ken McLeod, An Arrow to the Heart

Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Turns out, it was a sort of miscommunication, but the White House adds that if they had left Fox out it would be a case of "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
The version Fox has pushed all day is that the network was excluded from an interview roundtable with Feinberg yesterday, and that bureau chiefs from ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN came to Fox's defense.
TPMDC (Talking Points Memo in DC) dug into it, and here's what happened.
Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).
But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who'd asked for the interview.
The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on the list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.
Simple as that, we're told, and the networks don't want to be seen as heroes for Fox.
TPMDC spoke with a network bureau chief this afternoon familiar with the situation who was surprised that Fox was portraying the news as networks coming to its rescue.
"If any member had been excluded it would have been same thing, it has nothing to do with Fox or the White House or the substance of the issues," the bureau chief said. "It's all for one and one for all."
A Treasury spokesperson added: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."
But the White House isn't backing down from its feud with Fox.
"This White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox News from newsmaking interviews, but yesterday we did not," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

...It’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.
But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.
The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.
Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs.
But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.
How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?
The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.
Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.
The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.
The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 4, 2009

The 'public option' as a means to provide more competition in the health insurance market and to keep insurance companies honest is vastly over-rated by progressive lawmakers. If the public option is not to be a 'single payer' plan then its a sure bet that it won't produce the desired health care cost savings either.  That's been affirmed the assessments of the Congressional Budget Office.

There is an alternative that has generally been overlooked by Democrats. Maybe because its a suggestion that comes from the Republican side... granted the ideas from the loony bin have been generally without merit. Take for instance the conservative drum beat for tort reform.  After medical lawsuit punitive awards were capped at a quarter of a million dollars in the Lone Star State three years ago, it has had only a slight reduction in the cost of medical liability and has not had any affect to reduce medical costs in Texas.  Research indicates that tort reform is largely a rightwing red herring to punish trial lawyers and their clients without any real impact on inflated costs in the health care market.

On the other hand, a conservative idea to open up the health care insurance market across state lines might be worth considering.  Not so much for the reasons conservatives put forth... to increase competition and reduce premiums. Tom Daschle was on Meet the Press last week and declared a national health insurance market to be tantamount to a race to the bottom as far as insurance policy standards are concerned.  Conservatives never talk about the real reason they prefer interstate competition which is that the responsibility for regulating health insurance resides with the states. Opening up the sale of health insurance across state lines would eliminate any semblance of effective regulation and with any decrease in health insurance premiums you can bet on a concomitant reduction in insurance coverage to policy holders. That would be a tremendous windfall to insurance companies.

A logical and necessary remedy for that would be to create a national regulatory commission to maintain standards of insurance coverage at reasonable prices. This, of course, would be strongly opposed by conservative Republicans. Charges of creating a new bureaucracy and all the other associated accusations (death panels, bureaucrats between you and your doctor, etc.) would fly. But the real impact of the loony rightwing outbursts at town hall meetings and other forums in August have so discredited the right that their arguments could be easily dismissed.

It would be okay for medical care payments to be handled by private insurance companies if those companies are regulated in a similar manner as public utilities are regulated. Inflationary increases in the costs of medical care could be controlled and many health care initiatives made to improve treatment and long term health. It would be a good compromise all the way around.  If we aren't going to rid ourselves of worthless insurance company parasites it might be better to regulate the hell out of them to achieve the desired results. Alright so we know conservative Republicans wouldn't stand for such government intrusion into their marketplace, even to implement one of their principle ideas. But, still, its worth thinking about.

         pk

Health Care or Insurance Care - Take Your Pick

The President's health care policy speech was brilliant but when you get into the details another picture emerges. Unfortunately, at this point, the proposal outlined last night is the ultimate corporate giveaway. It's not health care, it’s insurance care. As many as thirty million new customers for an insurance industry which makes money not providing health care. The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care. That is the essence of HR676, the single payer bill.

The President opened his speech speaking of how we have solved the economic crisis - how? By rewarding those who caused the crash! Is this the way we solve the health care crisis? Rewarding the insurance companies? Helping insurance and pharmaceutical stock to soar, propping up markets while skimping on health care? The very same system which caused the health care crisis is being rewarded with the guarantee of tens of millions of new customers mandated - by law - to have health care. The latest plan rewards the very companies that have denied treatment, denied care, denied drug coverage while their profits grow daily.

The only way this country will see true sustainable economic recovery is through investment in the real economy, priming the pump through job creation. The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care.

The "public option" has been relegated to insignificance. What we will now get is yet another "private option", not a public option, because single-payer is "off the table." We the people deserve better. We have been faced with general warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan - multi-trillion dollar bailouts for arms merchants, $12 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, bailouts to coal and nuclear industries, and now proposed huge subsidies for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. What's wrong with this picture? Everything!

E-mail from Rep. Dennis Kucinich

...bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated.

          read more

...as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.

Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets — especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation.

It’s much harder to say where the economics profession goes from here. But what’s almost certain is that economists will have to learn to live with messiness. That is, they will have to acknowledge the importance of irrational and often unpredictable behavior, face up to the often idiosyncratic imperfections of markets and accept that an elegant economic “theory of everything” is a long way off. In practical terms, this will translate into more cautious policy advice — and a reduced willingness to dismantle economic safeguards in the faith that markets will solve all problems.

          read more
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT Magazine, September 2, 2009

Ike’s Other Warning

IN this summer of town hall disruptions and birth-certificate controversies, a summer when it seemed as if the Republican Party had been captured by its extremist wing, it is worth recalling a now-obscure letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Although Eisenhower is commonly remembered for a farewell address that raised concerns about the “military-industrial complex,” his letter offers an equally important — and relevant — warning: to beware the danger posed by those seeking freedom from the “mental stress and burden” of democracy.

The story began in 1958, when Eisenhower received a letter from Robert Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran. Biggs told the president that he “felt from your recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty.” He added, “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth.”

Eisenhower could have discarded Biggs’s note or sent a canned response. But he didn’t. He composed a thoughtful reply. After enduring Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had smeared his old colleague Gen. George C. Marshall as a Communist sympathizer, and having guarded the Republican Party against the newly emergent radical right John Birch Society, which labeled him and much of his cabinet Soviet agents, the president perhaps welcomed the opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society.

“I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed,” Eisenhower wrote on Feb. 10, 1959. “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.”

Eisenhower also recommended a short book — “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer, a self-educated itinerant longshoreman who earned the nickname “the stevedore philosopher.” “Faith in a holy cause,” Hoffer wrote, “is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

Though Eisenhower was criticized for lacking an intellectual framework or even an interest in ideas, he was drawn to Hoffer’s insights. He explained to Biggs that Hoffer “points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society.

Alluding to Senator McCarthy and his allies, Eisenhower pointed out that cold war fears were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

It is worth noting, of course, that these Cold War exaggerations weren’t just a Republican specialty: John F. Kennedy was making a supposed “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union a key element of his presidential campaign.

In closing his letter, Eisenhower praised Biggs for his “fortitude in pondering these problems despite your deep personal adversity.” Perhaps it was the president’s sense of solidarity with a fellow soldier that prompted him to respond to Biggs with such care; and perhaps it was his experience as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe that taught him that the rise of extreme movements and authoritarianism could take root anywhere — even in a democracy.

By MAX BLUMENTHAL
NYT Op Ed, 3 Sept 2009
Max Blumenthal is the author of “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party.”

There are two procedures by which to get a simple majority vote on a bill in the Senate, neither one is likely to end up with a public option included in a bill for initial consideration. It is therefore very interesting that, of the two procedures available, the Senate seems determined to choose the more extraordinary of the two--the one most likely to prevent the public option from ever being included a bill for final consideration: Budget Reconciliation procedures. Sadly, liberal grassroots networks like this one are actively complicit in this effort.
Normally, the Senate would initially consider and pass by a simple majority a bill containing whatever provisions are acceptable to avoid a filibuster--in this case, a bill without a public option. The House would consider and pass its version of a bill, presumably including a public option. House and Senate negotiators would then resolve the differences between the two versions of the bill and, presumably, include the public plan in a final version to be voted on by simple majorities of both chambers--there being no provision for filibustering or amending bills reported out of conference.
This is the most common practice, routinely employed for any bill of a controversial nature. Though passing a bill is never easy, it is by far the easier of the two procedures.
On the other hand, Budget Reconciliation procedures will essentially require demonstrating a budget savings for every component of the bill within a five-year time-frame, rather than the ten-year scope of the current bill. Provisions of the bill that cant meet those standards would have to be pared from the bill. That five-year requirement alone would significantly reduce the bill's scope, since estimated savings are unlikely to be realized in such a shortened time-frame. Worse still, there is simply no way to demonstrate a budget savings for, for instance, the provision making Medicaid available to everyone at the threshold of 150% of poverty. And once that thread is pulled the whole thing begins to unravel.
The result is almost certain to be splitting the bill into several smaller bills of limited component parts, passing first the least controversial provisions (containing those most profitable to industry and what the the industry has already agreed to), with the pledge to continue working on the more difficult ones later.
So, either way, the Senate won't initially pass a bill containing a public option. But if Budget Reconciliation procedures are used, the bill will only include candy for the industry with none of the constraints.
This will present an interesting dilemma for the House because, in order to go to a conference with the Senate, it must first reject the Senate bill and insist on the provisions of its bill. At that point, the entire debate dynamic will change. Republicans and Blue Dogs will finally have something to be For and will demand passage of the Senate bill as a "compromise". No one has to say "no" to anything, the more difficult provisions will simply require more time to resolve. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." etc.
Far be it from me to impugn the motives of our esteemed political class but if one sees a long line of track, it's probably a railroad. For my money, the best way for liberals to keep from being rolled is for them to tell their Senators to use the regular order and pass the worst bill imaginable, then apply heavy pressure to clean it up in conference.

         http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/who-are-the-13-senate-democrats-holding-out-on-the-public-option.php

Rage the Left Should Use
By Robert Kuttner
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Where are the liberal protesters?
Wall Street and the abuses of corporate America crashed the economy, leaving regular people anxious and financially insecure. Yet the far right, not the reformist left, is getting the political windfall.
Something is severely off when economically stressed Americans confront members of Congress about "death panels" in the Obama health plan. The rumors, fanned by talk radio with a little help from Republicans, are false and even delusional. Yet the anger, if misdirected, is genuine.
People should be plenty angry about their jobs and their mortgages and their health insurance. With health care, however, virtually all of the fears attributed to the Obama health reform efforts more accurately describe the existing private system.
It is private insurance companies that ration care by deciding what is covered and what is not. Private plans limit which doctor and hospital you can use, define "preexisting conditions" and make insurance unaffordable for tens of millions. For many, all this can cause suffering and sometimes even death. Our one oasis of socialized medicine, Medicare, has the most choice and the least exclusion.
The misdirected citizen anger at the Obama health reform efforts is a surrogate for broader, entirely legitimate, popular economic backlash.

          ...read more

Name the five members of the Simpson family.     Answer

Name the five freedoms specified in the First Amendment.     Answer

I bet you get more of the Simpsons.

Health Care/Insurance Reform Most Conservatives and Insurance Companies Reject
8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage
--Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
---Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
--Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
--Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
--Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
--Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
--Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
--Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.
Learn more and get details: http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/

          ...read more

          read more

More Is Less
The evidence of the past four or five decades is fairly conclusive that a 'for profit' healthcare system falls short of our needs in many ways. Could it be that this systemic characteristic (free market ideology) is the principle reason that the United States healthcare system is ranked 37th among nations in the world? High costs and limited access are just the most obvious deficiencies. Now this report in the New Yorker Magazine shows that a profit driven competitive zeal among medical providers is also hazardous to our health. Read the article and listen to the audio.

          ...read and hear more

See also The Grim Picture Of Obama's Middle East

Recent Chomsky Videos

• Chomsky: Health Care
• Chomsky: Economy & Democracy
• Chomsky: US Imperialism 1/7
• Chomsky: Gaza 5/6
• Chomsky: Gaza 6/6
• All Chomsky Videos

2.  Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."

3.  Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri, remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban.
There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

4.  Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."

5.  Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.
He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.
The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow, who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.

6.  Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri, who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi, whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002. While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida, which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.

7.  Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.
"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."
However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA, which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.

8.  Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005, that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri, from Macedonia in January 2004.
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania.
In January 2007, the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.

9.  Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.
The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007, interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo."

10.  Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida, a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President (George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad, at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida.

11.  Former Vice President Cheney claimed never to have attributed any connection between Saddam and 9/11.
President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 I think it's not surprising that people make that connection between Saddam and 9/11- with no evidence to back up his claim.
"There was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda." - Vice President Cheney, 9/14/03
"There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there was an established relationship there." - Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04

FOLLOWING 9/11, PRESIDENT BUSH AND SEVEN TOP OFFICIALS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION WAGED A CAREFULLY ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGN OF MISINFORMATION ABOUT THE THREAT POSED BY SADDAM HUSSEIN'S IRAQ.         - read more

          - McClatchy News Service

...the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.
Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.
On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.
The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

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 ...the question of what Pelosi knew or didn’t, or when she did or didn’t know, is irrelevant to how W. and Cheney broke the law and authorized torture.
Philip Zelikow, who was State Department counselor for Condi Rice and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, testified last week before Congress that torture was “a collective failure and it was a mistake,” perhaps “a disastrous one.”
After 9/11, he recalled, “the tough, gritty world of ‘the field’ worked its way into the consciousness of the nation’s leaders,” adding that the cultural “divide between the world of secretive, bearded operators in the field coming from their 3 a.m. meetings at safe houses, and the world of Washington policy makers in their wood-paneled suites” led the policy makers to become too deferential to C.I.A. operatives, and miss the fact that even the operatives disagreed among themselves about torture.
Ali Soufan, the ex-F.B.I. agent who flatly calls torture “ineffective,” helped get valuable information from Abu Zubaydah, an important Al Qaeda prisoner, simply by outwitting him. Torture, he told Congress, is designed to force the subject to submit “through humiliation and cruelty” and “see the interrogator as the master who controls his pain.”
It’s a good description of the bullying approach Cheney and Rummy applied to the globe, and the Arab world. But as Soufan noted, when you try to force compliance rather than elicit cooperation, it’s prone to backfire.
The more telling news last week was yet another suggestion about Cheney’s reverse-engineering the Iraq war. Robert Windrem, a former NBC News investigative producer, reported on The Daily Beast that in April 2003, after the invasion of Baghdad, the U.S. arrested a top officer in Saddam’s security force. Even though this man was an old-fashioned P.O.W., someone in Vice’s orbit reportedly suggested that the interrogations were too gentle and that waterboarding might elicit information about the fantasized connection between Osama and Saddam.
In The Washington Note, a political and foreign policy blog, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff at State, wrote that the “harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 ... was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Qaeda.”
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future briefing about some future secret technique that is “uniquely” designed to protect us, it will be worth it.

          ...read more

Just two weeks ago, the Obama Pentagon revealed that a major cover-up of corruption had taken place at the Bush Pentagon on Jan. 14 of this year — just six days before Bush left office. This strange incident — reported in The Times but largely ignored by Washington correspondents preparing for their annual dinner — deserves far more attention and follow-up.

What happened on Jan. 14 was the release of a report from the Pentagon’s internal watchdog, the inspector general. It had been ordered up in response to a scandal uncovered last year by David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times. Barstow had found that the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.” Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these “analysts” appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

When Barstow’s story broke, more than 45 members of Congress demanded an inquiry. The Pentagon’s inspector general went to work, and its Jan. 14 report was the result. It found no wrongdoing by the Pentagon. Indeed, when Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize last month, Rumsfeld’s current spokesman cited the inspector general’s “exoneration” to attack the Times articles as fiction.

But the Pentagon took another look at this exoneration, and announced on May 5 that the inspector general’s report, not The Times’s reporting, was fiction. The report, it turns out, was riddled with factual errors and included little actual investigation of Barstow’s charges. The inspector general’s office had barely glanced at the 8,000 pages of e-mail that Barstow had used as evidence, and interviewed only seven of the 70 disputed analysts. In other words, the report was a whitewash. The Obama Pentagon officially rescinded it — an almost unprecedented step — and even removed it from its Web site.

Network news operations ignored the unmasking of this last-minute Bush Pentagon cover-up, as they had the original Barstow articles — surely not because they had been patsies for the Bush P.R. machine. But the story is actually far larger than this one particular incident. If the Pentagon inspector general’s office could whitewash this scandal, what else did it whitewash?

          -- read more

         -- read more at Slate.com

Excerpt from The Predator State
by James K. Galbraith
Mother Jones, May/June 2006 Issue

Prelude to the G-20

Everyone in the world...except virtually brain dead American Republicans, acknowledge the importance of 'economic stimulus' in the current worldwide financial crises. The often repeated references to false historical examples of 'failed fiscal policy' have been systematically refuted and almost come to a whimpering, discredited end.

The last bastions of predatory capitalism, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have mounted a desperate charge that some European governments, primarily, Germany and Spain disagree with the US which believes that fiscal policies - public spending and tax cuts - can help dig their economies out of recession. It is remarkable that nearly forty years after Richard Nixon conceded that "We are all Keynesians now" that there are so many 'diehards' holding out in the caves of of rightwing anti-intellectualism.

It is true that in Germany and France, stimulus plans have been less ambitious and are set to rely more heavily on public sector investment, especially in infrastructure, with little support to consumption. The contrasting rhetoric, however, is more exaggerated than the reality of the differing positions. In gung-ho Britain and France, for example, the planned fiscal stimulus is no bigger than in reluctant Germany. And in all three countries, reduced tax revenues and higher welfare state payments will contribute the vast majority of prospective higher budget deficits, not the discretionary measures introduced in recent months.

The US stimulus package appears to dwarf the European efforts. But any fiscal stimulus has to be larger in the US to have a similar effect because more generous European social safety nets guarantee higher payments to the unemployed. Those "automatic stabilizers . . . have perhaps twice as much influence . . . as a percentage of GDP in the euro area as compared with the US.

The very real danger is, of course, that the not so bold approach of the Obama administration is inadequate and that by not having demonstrated sufficient positive impact on the economy that the lack of political will will make it impossible to follow up with what is really needed.

Geithner Bailout Program
Excerpts from 21st Century Politics
23 March 2009

Wall Street has liked the program whereas most of the ‘blog sphere’ - both Left and Right - is sour on that program. Of course in this world even after bankrupting America, it is the Wall Street which rules. Even one of the most progressive leaders of America is also not immune to the gravitational pull of ‘money’ and we see President Obama essentially fallen for these Wall Street bankers.

Based on Sec. Geithner’s PPIP program fact sheet, around $100 Billion will be poured as the core capital which will come from TARP II fund pool. For the ‘legacy loan program’ FDIC will be on hook for the implicit guarantees it would offer. Ball park figure for such guarantees after subtracting asset value (say priced at 40% of the face value) seems around $200 Billion. So we are talking here upwards of $300 Billion on the expense ledger of the Fed budget."

Most of the blog sphere is lamenting about the extraordinary subsidy which is there for private parties in these programs. Indeed all these programs (there 2 – one for loans on the books of the bank and another for CDOs) are designed so as to make private participation extremely lucrative without much of down side whereas taxpayer loss potential is quite high but upside is limited.

As a principle of governance Obama Administration is wrong here – it is essentially wooing the same Wall Street Bankers who are culprit in all this mess. This is because Obama Administration firmly believes that for America’s prosperity these bankers (who are saddled with toxic assets because of their own carelessness) need to start lending again.

President Obama’s dependence on Wall Street bankers is disgusting and in the end betrayal to Americans. This is because with the same $300 Billion or so ($100 Billion cash and $200 Billion as guarantees for uncovered asset prices); Obama Administration could have started ‘direct lending’ to American people via ‘new start up banks’ or existing banks (local credit unions for example) which are not saddled with toxic assets.

All in all this obsession, as Krugman aptly describes, of trying to ‘improve’ balance sheets of existing banks has blindsided Obama Administration from any new creative initiatives at the same cost which would have solved America’s problem directly. What a shame.

President Bush wasted more than half Trillion dollars on Iraq War. President Obama, looks like, intend to waste another half Trillion dollars potentially in favoring Wall Street. What is with these White House Occupants? Why do they cost so much to Americans? It is sad.

Bailouts, Bonuses and American Morality

An outcry of indignation is being heard across the land. One can enter almost any venue and overhear some crude, mostly ignorant remark about the ineptitude or corruption of politicians and greedy minions of Wall Street. Don't misunderstand, its not that popular anger is so misplaced. Opportunistic politicians and media have done their job of focusing and whipping up national rage against those who would handout and/or accept the proceeds directed by some incredible contractual obligations made by AIG. A national dialog is taking place and people have responded with an overwhelming consensus of opinion and outrage that is not frequently seen in America.

Is this surprising? Not especially. At least, not until one pauses, takes a deep breath and tries to remember when the last 'national outrage' occurred to cause such hostility and indignation. When was the last time you could walk into, say, a bowling alley, and hear a topic mentioned in such emotional and mutually agreed upon vehemence? Well, correct me if I am wrong, but my recollection is that, aside from 9/11, it was when Billy accidentally stained Monica's blue dress.

So, there we have it...the boundaries of behavior that, if violated, will bring about such a rise of popular sentiment in America that it will cause everyone in the world to understand that the outer limits of American morality have been breached and everyone must know that "This will not stand!"

I shudder as I contemplate what lies inside those boundaries, absent of such public American anger, insufficient as a catalyst of popular consensus and condemnation. To think of a just a few events in the past decade or so,  I've come up with...
the projection of global American power in the form of air strikes against civilian targets in Serbia, the Sudan and elsewhere, economic/military embargoes causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, unjustified military invasions, unlawful detention and rendition, obvious torture and abuse of prisoners, unlawful wiretapping, malfeasance in office rendering the most capable government in the world unable to respond reasonably to natural disaster, thousands of deaths and millions of families destroyed because of inadequate healthcare, frequent and various events of food poisonings caused by an unwilling or unable government to conduct proper inspections, the near collapse of a national and world economy due largely to an unwillingness in America to regulate, and on, and on, and on.

How many times in the past decade, or for that matter, in our lifetime have we asked in that tone of unmistakable incredulity, "Where is the outrage?" Well, sadly perhaps, we now know.
pk

Careful where you point that thing...
There is righteous indignation of many Americans and msm pundits over AIG execs walking away with 165 million in bonuses while their corporation has been the recipient of 170 billion dollars in bail out funds. Ironic that so many of these outraged citizens were the ones that railed against the role of government in regulating and interfering with the magic mechanism of the free market. Fact is, its too late to be angry. At least its too late to do anything about it other than to insight a riot or, if you are an economic idiot (i.e., a Republican, conservative,  libertarian, or other right wing ideologue) to impede the injection of funds into the financial system and the creation of a reasonable regulatory regimen. 
pk

The Looting of America’s Coffers
By DAVID LEONHARDT
NYT, 11 March 2009
Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: “Looting.”
The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize, and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses.
In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.
The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote. “They were right.”
          read more

Extreme Right Wing Israeli Groups Still Dominate US Politics
Freeman speaks out on his exit
Retired Amb. Chas Freeman, who said today that he no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has just sent this message:
"You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.
I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country."
          read more

SEE ALSO:
Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post
By MARK MAZZETTI and HELENE COOPER
NYT, 12 March 2009
WASHINGTON — When Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, announced that he would install Charles W. Freeman Jr. in a top intelligence post, the decision surprised some in the White House who worried that the selection could be controversial and an unnecessary distraction, according to administration officials.
Just how controversial the choice would be became clear on Tuesday, when Mr. Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush, angrily withdrew his name from consideration and charged that he had been the victim of a concerted campaign by what he called “the Israel lobby.”

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors
From Frank Schaeffer (A Former Republican)
You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush's misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama's strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home -- if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters -- "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

Frank Schaeffer
Author of CRAZY FOR GOD

Obama Video

 'Same old distractions'

Still Just Word Games from Conservatives -- Clearly Not 'Stimulus'
Politico.com, 6 February 2009

List of spending "cuts" in Senate bill
A list of programs cut (actually reduced proposed allocations) from the House/Obama bill by Senate negotiators, put together by a Republican leadership aide:

$40 billion State Fiscal Stabilization
$16 billion School Construction
$1.25 billion project based rental
$2.25 Neighborhood Stabilization (Eliminate)
$1.2 billion in Retrofiting Project 8 Housing
$7.5 billion of State Incentive Grants
$3.5 billion Higher Ed Construction (Eliminated)
$ 100 million FSA modernization
$50 million CSERES Research
$65 million Watershed Rehab
$30 million SD Salaries
$100 million Distance Learning
$98 million School Nutrition
$50 million aquaculture
$2 billion broadband
$1 billion Head Start/Early Start
$5.8 billion Health Prevention Activity.
$2 billion HIT Grants
$1 billion Energy Loan Guarantees
$4.5 billion GSA
$3.5 billion Federal Bldgs Greening

$100 million NIST
$100 million NOAA
$100 million Law Enforcement Wireless
$50 million Detention Trustee
$25 million Marshalls Construction
$100 million FBI Construction
$300 million Federal Prisons
$300 million BYRNE Formula
$140 million BYRNE Competitive
$10 million State and Local Law Enforcement
$50 million NASA
$50 million Aeronautics
$50 million Exploration
$50 million Cross Agency Support
$200 million NSF
$100 million Science
$89 million GSA Operations
$300 million Fed Hybrid Vehicles
$50 million from DHS
$200 million TSA
$122 million for Coast Guard Cutters, modifies use
$25 million Fish and Wildlife
$55 million Historic Preservation
$20 million working capital fund
$200 million Superfund
$165 million Forest Svc Capital Improvement
$90 million State & Private Wildlife Fire Management
$75 million Smithsonian
$600 million Title I (NCLB)

Rejecting Bush Era, Reclaiming Values
NYT, 21 January 2009
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address on Tuesday was a stark repudiation of the era of George W. Bush and the ideological certainties that surrounded it, wrapped in his pledge to drive the United States into “a new age” by reclaiming the values of an older one.
It was a delicate task, with Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney sitting feet from him as Mr. Obama, only minutes into his term as president, described the false turns and the roads not taken.
To read his words literally, Mr. Obama blamed no one other than the country itself, critiquing “our collective failure to make hard choices” and a willingness to suspend national ideals “for expedience’s sake” — a clear reference to the cascade of decisions ranging from interrogation policies to wiretapping to the invasion of Iraq.
Yet not since 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a “restoration” of American ethics and “action, and action now” as Herbert Hoover sat and seethed, has a new president so publicly rejected the essence of his predecessor’s path.
          read more

Transcript and Audio of Obama's Inauguration Speech

Survival...maybe
20 January 2009
A few hours remain before the departure of of Bush-Cheney and it appears that those of us still standing are indeed survivors. That T-shirt must be out there somewhere...

I Survived Bush
41 and 43!

As for the survival of "the republic," we are still uncertain. Suspicions that its wounds are mortal lurk behind this joyful inauguration day. The capacity of the Americans to be cajoled into placing trust and power into the hands of some future charismatic-enough, pseudo-intelligent, ideologically bent sociopath remains undiminished. The fragile state of this 'government of law and not of men' has to be a primary concern and consideration. If repair is neglected and placed in some category of political rather than legal determination then, fearfully, a constitutional democratic republic likely will slip from our grasp. National elections must not be relied upon to be the only recourse to thwart obviously subversive acts by a chief executive that undermine constitutional checks and balances. Legal precedent and specificity should carry the burden of constraining those in high office between elections. If such a framework of law is not erected in response to the last eight years then this nation will be condemned to experience periodic episodes, if not a permanent loss of fundamental constitutional protections.
This, unmistakably, is Obama's greatest challenge.
pk

Fighting Off Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT Op-Ed, 4 January 2009
...News reports say that Democrats hope to pass an economic plan with broad bipartisan support. Good luck with that.
In reality, the political posturing has already started, with Republican leaders setting up roadblocks to stimulus legislation while posing as the champions of careful Congressional deliberation — which is pretty rich considering their party’s behavior over the past eight years.
More broadly, after decades of declaring that government is the problem, not the solution, not to mention reviling both Keynesian economics and the New Deal, most Republicans aren’t going to accept the need for a big-spending, F.D.R.-type solution to the economic crisis.
The biggest problem facing the Obama plan, however, is likely to be the demand of many politicians for proof that the benefits of the proposed public spending justify its costs — a burden of proof never imposed on proposals for tax cuts.
This is a problem with which Keynes was familiar: giving money away, he pointed out, tends to be met with fewer objections than plans for public investment “which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.” What gets lost in such discussions is the key argument for economic stimulus — namely, that under current conditions, a surge in public spending would employ Americans who would otherwise be unemployed and money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put both to work producing something useful.
...Here’s my nightmare scenario: It takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. As a result, the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy — well, you can see where this is going.
So this is our moment of truth. Will we in fact do what’s necessary to prevent Great Depression II?
          read more

The End of the Financial World as We Know It
By MICHAEL LEWIS and DAVID EINHORN
NYT Op-Ed, 4 January  2009
AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.
...OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.
...How does this happen? How can the person in charge of assessing Wall Street firms not have the tools to understand them? Is the S.E.C. that inept? Perhaps, but the problem inside the commission is far worse — because inept people can be replaced. The problem is systemic. The new director of risk assessment was no more likely to grasp the risk of Bernard Madoff than the old director of risk assessment because the new guy’s thoughts and beliefs were guided by the same incentives: the need to curry favor with the politically influential and the desire to keep sweet the Wall Street elite.
And here’s the most incredible thing of all: 18 months into the most spectacular man-made financial calamity in modern experience, nothing has been done to change that, or any of the other bad incentives that led us here in the first place.
          read more

A President Forgotten but Not Gone
By FRANK RICH
NYT Op-Ed, 4 January 2009
...Another, far more elaborate example of legacy spin can be downloaded from the White House Web site: a booklet recounting “highlights” of the administration’s “accomplishments and results.” With big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled “Did You Know?” and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, its 52 pages require a reading level closer to “My Pet Goat” than “The Stranger.”
This document is the literary correlative to “Mission Accomplished.” Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).
If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist.
But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews.
The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can’t.
          read more
 

Bigger Than Bush
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT Op-Ed, 2 January 2009
...Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”
Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers.
...Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
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CONSERVATISM: FLAWED BY DESIGN
Inherent ideological flaws cripple the ability of conservatives to govern:
Disdain for Government
Free Market Fundamentalism
Miscast Morality
Security Racket
Ends Justify The Means
           read more

The Five Freedoms specified in the First Amendment

Speech, Religion, Press, Assembly, and Petition for redress of grievances

A Second Wave of Home Mortgage Foreclosures
60 Minutes, 14 December 2008

"The trouble now is that the insanity didn't end with sub-primes. There were two other kinds of exotic mortgages that became popular, called "Alt-A" and "option ARM." The option ARMs, in particular, lured borrowers in with low initial interest rates - so-called teaser rates - sometimes as low as one percent. But after two, three or five years those rates "reset." They went up. And so did the monthly payment. A mortgage of $800 dollars a month could easily jump to $1,500.
Now the Alt-A and option ARM loans made back in the heyday are starting to reset, causing the mortgage payments to go up and homeowners to default.
'The defaults right now are incredibly high. At unprecedented levels. And there’s no evidence that the default rate is tapering off. Those defaults almost inevitably are leading to foreclosures, and homes being auctioned, and home prices continuing to fall...'"

These financial wizards of Wall Street also leveraged out securities on credit card debt, auto loans and other consumer debt.  Defaults on that debt will ripple through the market in the coming months and years. And on top of all that, we haven't even begun to feel the effects of commercial loans collapsing in a similar fashion. And very soon hedge funds will begin to fall.
Turns out that the images of the terrorist attack on the WTC will also be a lasting symbol of what the true believers of unfettered free markets have done to the world financial system.
   see the video

The Cost of Conservatism

My friends, I'm mad as hell and won't take your foolish lies anymore. Where do you conservative Republicans get off saying  its socialist to believe that the same people who own the damn country would prefer to run it as well. It would be awfully naive to think otherwise. Class warfare indeed!

And then there's that pervasive willful ignorance being spouted with regard to the financial crises. Blaming the whole mess on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Democrats blocking some Republican legislation to regulate them is absurd on its face. The size of this crises is over fifty trillion dollars (which is why its a worldwide problem) and these federally chartered companies needed only a hundred billion to be made solvent. Talk about a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Come-on you guys... Its been known forever that the best way to rob a bank is to own one!

Why do conservatives disregard the truth about almost everything?

Much has been written about the differences between conservatism today and the conservatism of forty years ago.  Well, having been an enthusiastic participant in the conservatism of the early sixties, I have noted a strikingly clear similarity present then that is with us today, albeit in a more highly developed and pure form.  It is the manipulation of political discourse into a simple form of schoolhouse argumentation and debate. If you've ever been on a debate team you will immediately recognize this.  Methods of debate preparation and argumentation have absolutely nothing to do with an attempt to discover truth. You research and collect argumentation points. If your side presents more points in an allotted time, you win. Sell your point as being meaningful and substantial and you win. Its the appearance of a fact being true that really matters. Its not about the actual truth of anything.

I always figured that the political right in America talked with such disregard for the truth because that way of thinking was integral to a Christian upbringing. A true believing Christian has to carefully select and interpret what is true in the "Word of God."  It seems such a natural method for developing a personal political philosophy, as well. Its a real problem to decide what to believe and then attempt to make it appear rational... but it turns out that some people come to a solution more easily than others. It was harder for me. I had to quit college debate, rightwing politics and Christianity, too.

Incidentally, if you too experience discomfort with the principles of 'debate' or 'faith,' you may also have a distinct uneasiness with the adversarial system of American jurisprudence. Guilt or innocence doesn't seem to matter much in that process either.

Maybe next we should examine the 'free market' or, perhaps, the financial industry?

Simpson Family members:

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie