Buh Bye

Thanks to Tom Tomorrow.

Refreshing Change

Dennis C. Blair, retired admiral and President Obama's choice as top intelligence official is a refreshing departure from the psychopathic lackeys employed by the previous administration. On the disturbing surveillance activities previously supported Blair said:

I do not and will not support any surveillance activities that circumvent established processes for their lawful authorization. I believe in the importance of independent monitoring, including by Congress, to prevent abuses and protect civil liberties.

Ah, civil liberties. And regarding these and basic human rights, you know those things that America has been respected for upholding in past times, Blair said:

The intelligence agencies of the United States must respect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people, and they must adhere to the rule of law.

He added that torture is “not moral, legal or effective” and said any interrogation program would have to comply with the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture and the Constitution.

And lastly, what impressed me most was Blair will not simply sugarcoat his message and try to please the president by providing intelligence he thinks the president wants to hear. Instead, he said:

There is an obligation to speak truth to power.

He added that he would honestly present “unpleasant” facts to the president.

This sort of openness and honesty is going to dismay the incurious crowd.

At Least There Were Times He Made Us Laugh

With the "End of an Error" nearly upon us, I thought it appropriate to look back and review some of the pearls of wisdom [inadvertantly] provided for our entertainment by the appointed King of Comedy (he was not elected) -- George W. Bush.

The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.

No senior citizen should ever have to choose between prescription drugs and medicine.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

The future will be better tomorrow.

We're going to have the best educated American people in the world.

One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures. (during an education photo-op)

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.

You know what's even more amusing? Conservatives wanted to elect a person even less comprehensible than Bush -- Sarah Palin.

So What!

Erica Heller's comments regarding George Bush were sent to me by that worthy mom-of-mine and they are reproduced below.

Into yesterday's daily meat grinder of news went a little bit of everything, the Madoff debacle, the shoes tossed at Bush, Caroline Kennedy's political aspirations, the already by now daily dump on Obama & Co., the Iago Blago, and what a recipe it was. But hello? Seemingly lost in the proverbial shuffle, but for Keith and Rachel, the two worthiest guardians at the gates of our collective conscience, and what knocked the very wind out of me, were just two little words petulantly uttered by Bush to the ever-formidable Martha Raddatz in this lame duck's lamest, latest cheesy attempt at anthropomorphism: "So what?' said the man in charge of the free world, when asked about whether or not Al-Qaeda was in Iraq before we were. So what? Huh? Were chillier, crueler, more cavalier words ever spoken? Somehow, this seems to be lost in the news today but my brain refuses to flush it. Perhaps because my blood is still boiling.

It seems to me that with those two extraordinary, positively barbaric words, we finally got to see the true Bush, without artifice, without the smug, sneering frozen mask of pre-prepared, freeze-dried answers to questions, which he always seemed so infuriated at having to answer.

Indeed, he is the very epitome of a So What President. So what if the Katrina victims rot? So what if the world hates us? So what if our actions resonate everywhere with dire, catastrophic consequences? So what if people are starving and have no health care in one of the richest nations in the world. And so what if we leaped into an unnecessary war with manipulated "evidence", in which thousands have perished, utterly pointlessly? After all, we are not permitted to see the caskets anyway, right? And so what if the veterans come home to outrageously disgraceful medical care as well as, at best, precarious financial circumstances? There is no end to the list and no end to the "So whats", because this is a person who checked out years ago, if indeed he ever checked in. The difference now is that with only 35 interminably long days left to this hideous sham, he no longer has to even attempt to try to seem concerned, involved, present.

And I am left to wonder for all 35 of them, and surely way, way beyond, how this imposter can possibly be headed off, untroubled, unfettered, into the sunset, bound for a cushy life in Dallas, instead of a brutal trial in The Hague. I mean, is anyone accountable here? Responsible? Officially culpable?

Or will history's inevitable response to all this be just more of the same?

Will it also whisper: "So what"?

Isn't it the truth?

And his legions of admirers and enablers are just as hideously guilty. They checked out of the human race 14 years ago when Gingrich and pals, playing upon fears and anger, first rode to power. Since then they've plundered the economy, created more fear and anger based on ignorance, unleashed an unnecessary war, and set back foreign relations 60 years.

A generation from now I hope we will be able to look back and be thankful that most of the damage has been undone. I hope I'll be able to say when I hear a conservative lament that the Bush years are unfairly treated by historians – So what!

Alternative Universe?

The way we wished it had been, just with different characters. Think about how much the Republicans/conservatives blew it. They had a cowed media and an intimidated Democratic party to deal with. It should have been easy. All they had to figure out was how to govern and get their message across without the division, intolerance and hate.

Sadly, the country suffered for their lack of vision.

Thanks to Tom Tomorrow.

Campaigning for Re-Election on the Backs of the Poor

I don't claim to be an expert about the current economic crisis, but this piece, taken from the comment section at Media Matters does explain the situation well.

Flashback: In 2004 Bush Campaigned For Re-Election On The Backs Of Subprime Mortgages

During the 2004 campaign, President Bush declared his pride in making America what he called “an ownership society.” He promoted expanding home-ownership as the best way to ensure a strong economy, campaigning constantly on the idea:

5/6/04: “Thanks to being the most productive workforce in America, and I might say, thanks to good policies, this economy is strong and it’s getting stronger. … Home sales were the highest ever recently. That’s exciting news for the country.”

8/28/04: See, I love an ownership society. It’s a hopeful society. It’s a society that provides stability in times of change.

8/9/04: If you own your own home, and building equity in your own home, and you’re changing from job to job, it provides great security and relief.

8/6/04: Home ownership is at an all-time high now in America. That’s fantastic news. Isn’t it wonderful to have somebody for the first time be able to say: welcome to my home; I’m glad you’re here at my piece of property.

Of course, what the current enormous crisis — rooted in subprime mortgages — proves is that promoting home ownership without regulatory safeguards is inherently risky. As economist Paul Krugman explained, “[B]orrowing to buy a home is like buying stocks on margin: if the market value of the house falls, the buyer can easily lose his or her entire stake.” And that’s just what happened: More homeowners now owe more money than their homes are actually worth, while foreclosure filings in August rose 12 percent from July — and represented a 27 percent increase from Aug. 2007.

Further, the quest for an all-encompassing ownership society led to the policies that have created the crisis. From dramatically low interest rates to ignoring the warnings about predatory lending to quashing state regulations that would have helped prevent such massive Wall Street investment in subprime loans, Bush and his allies built an economy on a house of cards that was bound to collapse.

Today, Bush declared, “There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem.” That debate will need to focus on his own failed promise of an “ownership society” as an economic panacea.

Where's the Beef?

I've been listening to the speeches at the Dem Convention the last two nights. Not all the time, after all the Brewers are in a pennant race. I do have priorities. Anyway, as I listened I found myself becoming excited about our chances in November. The governor from Montana (what's his name?) was quirky in his delivery, but said all the right things. Hillary actually moved me with her speech. I like Hillary, but her speechifying has never impressed me. I missed President Clinton's talk, but Joe Biden was damn good -- I especially liked his denunciation of John McCain's ("his friend") stances and his all too willingness to continue the Bush legacy.

But there was something missing. I couldn't put a finger on it, so I went back to my game, later putting the kids to bed and then myself.

Today's been busy with household chores. My mother is coming to visit from Arkansas. I'm very happy to have her with us for two weeks. As I cleaned and picked up, I couldn't help but continue to wonder what it was that was bothering me about the convention. I took a timeout and jumped around some of my featured sites and lo -- one can always count on Greenwald.

I have got to get back to work, but here are a couple of paragraphs from his opinion piece today that hit the target dead center on what has been missing (followed by a link).

First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.

Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast, one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any of those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely approach conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.

More here. Thanks, Glenn.

Very Funny Video

While I could do without the Nazi references, the rest of this song and video is right on concerning the fat slob, Rush Limbaugh. Most conservatives won't like it; not because of the content but because there is no violence.