"Truth" Commission proposed by Leahy

Here is a video of last night's Rachel Maddow show, on this subject. She interviewed Leahy and asked him some good questions, but didn't get the kind of answers I (and Rachel) hoped for. Personally, I want an indictment and complete trial for Bush and Cheney! I don't agree with Leahy on this mealy-mouthed proposal -- but it gives us a foothold in begging Obama to prosecute Bush/Cheney and their minions. It is humorous that Republicans say, "We can't prosecute a president" -- hmmm.....Leahy makes the point that the Republicans did exactly that for SIX YEARS when they went after Clinton. Funny how Republicans are always seeing things differently when the shoe is on the other foot.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#29129139

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Some personal thoughts on Obama and our world

In California, this winter we have mostly had Spring and Summer temps -- it's been most unusual. But we are in our 4th year of drought--and the lack of rain this season will probably make it much worse. In spite of the fact that many Republicans don't believe in global warming, it certainly seems apparent that things are changing on this planet -- and it stands to reason that the stupidity of mankind is a contributing factor. Not taking care of our planet, polluting her without conscience, greedily using up her resources, drilling, digging, plundering, and bombing (even internally!) -- did we not think it would have any consequences?

I have always thought the underground nuclear testing and the continuous pumping of oil from the earth's nether regions have much to do with earthquakes. If you think of Earth as our Mother, a living entity, it makes sense that setting off nuclear bombs in her abdomen might not be such a great idea. And building nuclear plants in earthquake-prone areas, right on top of the fault lines -- a stroke of genius (NOT)!!! The more I watch history unfold -- and read about past history in books, as I am doing now with biographies of Lincoln, the more I realize we have seemingly learned NOTHING throughout the years of recorded history. Our weapons are improved (unfortunately) -- but our over-all consciousness has stayed the same. Brutes like Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld are still voted in as leaders, even in the country that is supposedly the world leader in morality and intelligence. Even when we elect a higher consciousness individual as a leader, the low-consciousness people who surround him in Congress won't accept him and try to bring him down before he's even had a chance to try to right all the wrongs done under the previous regime. They don't care if the whole ship goes down with them, imperiling themselves and their own families. Self-centeredness and greed rule these men -- and, until a new breed is born on our planet, we are held in their clutches.

I hope a new breed has been born in the form of our children and grandchildren and that, eventually, a higher consciousness will prevail, and the killing and murdering, war and plunder will come to an end on this planet. I once read somewhere that Earth was used as a prison colony by galactic civilizations. It's not hard to believe that may very well be true, when you see the types of greed- and power-driven, blood-thirsty men who have lived and ruled here throughout history.

I hope and pray for the best...and keep calling and writing my representatives on issues that matter to me. I am glad to see Obama taking his message to the people -- his town hall meeting in Florida today and Indiana yesterday were heartening to see. This is truly a different kind of president than we have seen in many, many years. He cares about the people--and the people know it. If anyone could bring change to Washington, it is this man! When the callow, uncaring Bush spoke, we watched and cringed to see what kind of bumbling errors he would make -- but when Obama speaks, we watch with pride to see, FINALLY, a man of great intellect and wisdom at the helm of our nation. Imagine, a president who can pronounce the word "nuclear" correctly! Even that alone gives me great pleasure! The contrast between him and Bush is so great, they seem to come from different planets. Imagine a town hall meeting where anyone and everyone is welcome, regardless of party affiliation -- where questions and questioners are not pre-screened -- where the average person can speak with their president and tell him about their problem, and he actually takes an INTEREST! This is the way it is supposed to be in our country--but for Eight Long Years, it was NOT.

In the Bush years, if you wanted to attend a town hall meeting, you had to prove you were a Republican -- and, if you had driven into the parking lot outside in a car with a bumper sticker in any way against Bush or his policies, you were escorted out of the hall by police. Wow...and this we called a democracy! Well, it's great to be back in a world we recognize as somewhat akin to the one our forefathers envisioned when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Eight long years of a dictatorship has taken its toll on us--a dictatorship of cruelty, ineptness, and dark intents. The mess left behind by the Cheney-Bush regime is monumental! In their tenure, they took a budget surplus and ran it into the ground, adding trillions of dollars of debt to pass along to Obama. They removed habeas corpus, approved torture, invaded another country on lies, starting a war that we still haven't been able to end, invaded our privacy in ways we are still finding out about--and, in every way, they turned our country upside down and careened us over a cliff, all the while lining their own pockets and the pockets of their rich pals at KBR, Brown & Root, etc. The work that KBR performed in Iraq was so shoddy, some of our soldiers were actually electrocuted while taking showers! And yet, the Pentagon this week awarded another contract to KBR! Greed and power, power and greed -- it takes a long time to dig them out of a system that has been taken over by evil men.

Obama said yesterday he is an eternal optimist -- I am going to try to be optimistic, too, now that we have a President we can trust to care about us and our welfare.

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Obama should be listening to Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

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KBR Wins Contract Despite Criminal Probe of Deaths

And the beat goes on...shamefully, without justice.  Read all about it. The Cheney buddies are still riding high.

KBR Wins Contract Despite Criminal Probe of Deaths http://www.truthout.org/020809Z Kimberly Hefling, The Associated Press:  "Defense contractor KBR Inc. has been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two US soldiers in Iraq."               

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POPULIST RAGE IS INCREASING by Frank Rich

The American people are enraged at the entitlement of the rich and powerful at the expense of the middle class and poor. Our bailout tax money is being sat on by the banks, which are run by the lords of the ruling class who give themselves outrageous perks while the rest of us are losing our jobs, houses, and money. These guys are the pals of the Bushes and the Cheneys -- and they figure that, since they were given all the privileges and entitlements they wanted during that administration, business should continue as usual--for them. Damn the poor! Damn the middle class! What do we care about what happens to them? We've got ours and we're going to keep it! If Obama doesn't do something to stop this gang of thieves (instead of appointing their members to his cabinet), there will be another American Revolution that, in comparison, will make the first one look like a walk in the park. Read the following prescient words by columnist Frank Rich, who has observed the present Washington scene and is aghast (as are we all). Obama firmly took the reins in hand when he took office, but that firm grip is loosening and the horses are running away in all directions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html?_r=2

EXCERPT:
The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

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Good article re. Republican Conservatism: Is it Dead? or Just Dormant?

I believe Republican conservatives, fearful about losing their own wealth/gains, have misplaced their sense of right and wrong. They don't realize that their party has been usurped by idealogues with evil intentions for our country -- raising the rich to greater heights, at the expense of the middle class and poor. Of, if they realize this and agree with it (and the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter), that is even worse. Some conservatives are waking up, as evidenced by statements from them quoted in the following article.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/weekend-opinionator-dead-right/

EXCERPT:
Sam Tanenhaus [is] the editor of The Times’s Book Review and Week in Review sections and the author of an essay in this week’s New Republic titled “Conservatism Is Dead.”

Tanenhaus begins by positing that in the current political and economic climate, “movement doctrine has not only been defeated but discredited.” He continues: “even as the right begins to regroup, it is not clear that its leaders have absorbed the full implications of their defeat. They readily concede that the Democrats are in charge and, in Obama, have a leader of rare political skills. Many on the right also admit that the specific failures of the outgoing administration were legion. But what of the verdict issued on movement conservatism itself?”

To make his point, he offers his reading of Edmund Burke’s original conservatism — which he sees as being based “on distrust of all ideologies” and dedicated to the “ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions”; that is, to compromise. He also stresses that the second great conservative figure, Benjamin Disraeli, “advocated ‘just, necessary, expedient’ policies — that is, the policies the public demanded even when they contradicted his own ideological certitudes.”

In postwar America, Tanenhaus tells us, conservatives loyal to this sort of Burkean accommodation (Whittaker Chambers prime among them) have been foiled at every turn by a faction of Republican ideologues and corporatist toadies who are “committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, the restoration of America’s pre-welfare state ancient regime.” Which brings us to this endgame:

What our politics has consistently demanded of its leaders, if they are to ascend to the status of disinterested statesmen, is not the assertion but rather the renunciation of ideology. And the only ideology one can meaningfully renounce is one’s own. Liberals did this a generation ago when they shed the programmatic “New Politics” of the left and embraced instead a broad majoritarianism. Now it is time for conservatives to repudiate movement politics and recover their honorable intellectual and political tradition. At its best, conservatism has served the vital function of clarifying our shared connection to the past and of giving articulate voice to the normative beliefs Americans have striven to maintain even in the worst of times. There remains in our politics a place for an authentic conservatism — a conservatism that seeks not to destroy but to conserve.

Prominent conservative Andrew Sullivan says:
In contemporary America, the right is now in an almost parodic state of ideology. There isn’t just a rigid set of beliefs, indifferent to any time or place (e.g. tax cuts are right in a boom and a recession, in surplus and debt); it is supported by a full-fledged organization or “movement”; this “movement” generates journals and magazines and blogs designed fundamentally to buttress the cause; and the most salient distinction discussed in these circles is between those who are for the cause and those against it (with particular scorn for any dissidents). There is, for good measure, always an enemies list, to maintain morale: the dreaded libruls! New leaders emerge because small groups of the ideological intelligentsia select them on the grounds of their conformance with the ideology — Palin and Jindal spring to mind. Or previously rational figures have to convert to full obedience to the tenets of the new faith if they are to become proper “conservatives” — McCain, Romney, two otherwise capable figures turned into hollow shells by the need to kowtow to fanatics. The final phase of this ghastly cycle is the Limbaugh-Coulter phase, in which nothing is left of the conservative cat, except a preening narcissism-as-entertainment grin.

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PLAYING WITH FIRE by Bob Herbert

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07herbert.html?em

EXCERPT:
It’s been clear for years that the G.O.P. is a party without a heart. But its pointless obstructionism, its overall lack of any serious response to what is a clear national economic emergency, seems to indicate it’s also a party without a brain. Republicans in Washington have behaved like a milling crowd standing in the way of firefighters trying to respond to a devastating blaze. The best that can be said for the party is that a few senators seem to have been able part the crowd enough to let the rescuers begin to inch forward.

The Republicans still don’t get it. Most act as if they don’t understand that in this radical economic downturn the demand for goods and services has fallen off a cliff, and that government spending is needed — and needed quickly — to replace a large portion of that lost demand.The goal is twofold: to alleviate some of the enormous suffering (something that is easily understood if you have a heart), and to revive the battered economy (equally easy to understand by anyone with a brain).

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2-minute video on how things work in our world: More disappearing technology

In our world today, greed and power rule -- and that is why there will be NO bipartisanship in Congress, no matter how earnest and honest a president we may have. And why our world will have to fall apart completely before things like long-lasting car batteries and cars that use water for fuel will be allowed to rise to the surface of our consciousness. Geniuses like Nikola Tesla died in poverty, their inventions and discoveries hidden from us all--because they wanted to give us FREE electricity, FREE energy -- and that could never be allowed by those who rule us through power and money. J.P. Morgan kept Tesla's discoveries from the world in the early part of the 20th century -- and others just like Morgan are here today in our present-day world, doing the same thing to this generation. If something is discovered to benefit our planet and its people--and it might take away profits from the ruling class, be assured we will never hear of it! No doubt you saw the earnings of the big oil companies for last year -- and you've probably noticed that, even though the price of a barrel of oil is down to $40 as of yesterday, the prices at the pumps are steadily rising again. Hmmm.... You may be interested in the following short video (a little over 2 minutes):

What if a battery existed that allowed
you to drive your car for 300 miles
on a single charge?

That would easily take care of most
people's daily commuting needs.

Unfortunately, we're years away from
having a battery like this right?

Wrong.

It exists, or rather it existed.

GM acquired the company that owned
the technology -- in producing, not
on the drawing board - and then GM
sold it to Chevron.

Now it's gone.

Details:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/553.html

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ON THE EDGE by Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize Winner for Economics)

Who Will the Republicans Listen to, if not to someone of the stature and knowledge of Paul Krugman? No One, that's Who. They are obstructionists of the worst order, willing to take the country down with them in their hatred of the Democrats. Obama reached his hand out to them, and they bit him...hard!

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

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Time to leave the obstructionist GOP behind

It's business as usual (obstruction) for the Republicans. If only they could be deported to another planet! The next best thing is for us to completely ignore them and support our Democratic representatives as they try to keep us from entering the black hole of another Great Depression!

Krugman: GOP Trying to Push Country Over the Edge of Catastrophe

By Susie Madrak Friday Feb 06, 2009 2:00pm

It's been surreal, watching this whole stimulus battle play out like a train wreck in slow motion. The pointless and naive attempts by Obama to find moderate Republican support (I'd think the main lesson of the last three decades is that there are no moderate Republicans - they just play them on TV!), the usual gang of right-wing radio hacks whipping listeners up into an anti-stimulus frenzy, the predictable inability of Democrats to recognize and constructively channel that populist anger - it would be nice to just pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep for another ten years or so. (Oh, if only!)

The important point Krugman makes in today's column is that rapid, massive stimulus is necessary to keep the country out of a deflation trap.

Why is deflation such a disaster? Because falling demand and prices leads to a vicious circle (the so-called "trap"): wages and jobs are cut, leading to steep drops in demand and prices while the real value of debt rises, leading to a rising tide of corporate and household defaults that will only amplify the credit losses of financial institutions. The problems cycle, over and over. This will truly be the end of the American middle class as we've come to know it.

So this is why Krugman is so anxious:

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

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Asking for help: Phone your representatives! OPERATION ZERO CRED.

See full article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/operation-zero-cred_b_164377.html

OPERATION ZERO CRED.

...There's no debating the Republican record on the economy. Their allegiance to Reaganomics and free market deregulation have led us to the brink of, well, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria.

Nevertheless, there they are on cable news and the Sunday shows acting as if they know something. At the same time, they've proved themselves to be dishonest, bad-faith actors in this thing. They've spread lies about fake CBO reports, while also ignoring an actual CBO report on the Senate bill indicating that it would, in fact, succeed in stimulating economic growth. They've spread lies about nonexistent ACORN line items in the bill -- line items that only exist inside of Michelle Malkin's twisted dome. I mean, they met with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. Joe the Plumber. About the economy. Because they're very serious people who ought to be taken very seriously.

And so they should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.

The Republicans have zero cred.

And that's the message we can unify around: ZERO CRED.

Operation Zero Cred.

From there, considering the unprecedented dollar amount of the recovery bill, it might be impossible to herd every cat. But perhaps, in the process, we'll at least marginalize the Republicans just a little more. And that will surely mean a larger, more robust recovery bill.

So as the saying goes: We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.

Don't write or send e-mails. Written screeds can be conveniently lost, deleted or shredded. Telephones, on the other hand, make loud beeping and ringing noises and you'll know right away that there's a real life human being on the other end of the line who has to listen to what you have to say.

Phone numbers for your senators here. Phone numbers for your congress member here.

The message:

"The Republicans have zero credibility on the economy."

Paraphrase President Obama:

"Please reject the Republican theories that got us into this mess in the first place."

Feel free to toss in the following:

"Make the Republicans stand and filibuster if they want to filibuster. No cloture votes!"

Don't get into specific details of the bill. Our message needs to be consistent and unified: Zero Cred. The Republicans have zero credibility. We reject their ideas and we reject their theories.

Let's do this.

BobCesca.com

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If you're driving toward a cliff, you have to change direction: Obama

EXCERPT:

Oh, how I agree with the following quote from John Cole! The Republicans who are still wanting to continue neocon principles (there's an oxymoron for you) and are trying to obstruct Obama's plans to try to right the terrible wrongs of the Bush/Cheney regime are INSANE. There is no use trying to negotiate anything with them. They are INSANE. Like Rush Limbaugh, their leader, they are all talking gibberish nonsense, hoping Obama fails, so we can all crash together. You can't reason with people like this--and you'll never win them over to a sensible understanding of anything. You just have to ignore their ramblings and find the few--the very few--among the Congressional Republicans who have retained their sanity--and speak only to them.

I think John Cole has it about right:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

OBAMA SAYS WE NEED TO CHANGE DIRECTION--OR HEAD OFF A CLIFF
by David Niewert (www.crooksandliars.com)

Barack Obama delivered a rousing speech to House Democrats last night:

"I welcome this debate, but, come on, we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled our national debt, and threw our economy into a tail spin '' Obama said, with a passion unseen in public since the campaign trail. "We can't embrace the same old formula that says only tax cuts will address the problems we face.''

Opponents say the plan is not a stimulus bill, it's a spending bill, he said. "What do you think stimulus is?'' Obama said, with visible frustration. "That's the point!''

The president's appeal marks a sharply accelerated drive for an economic stimulus that Republicans are criticizing and some members of his own party are starting to question as the Senate debates a plan that cleared the House with unanimous opposition from the GOP. Obama plans a prime-time news conference Monday night to take the same case to the American public, but they are unlikely to see the campaign-styled passion that Obama rolled out for his party at its retreat tonight.

"I don't care if you're driving a hybrid or SUV. If you're driving toward a cliff, you have to change direction,'' Obama told his party, applauding the words of their new president at the start of a weekend retreat. "That's what the American people called for."

Politico has more, including this quip:

“When you start hearing arguments, on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things,” he said. “No. 1, when they say, ‘Well, why are we spending $800 billion [when] we’ve got this huge deficit?’ – first of all, I found this deficit when I showed up, No. 1.

“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”

How long before the wingnuts and their Village enablers all simultaneously fall to their fainting couches? Ah, poor sweet Bipartisanship, foully struck low in the bloom of youth!

I think John Cole has it about right:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

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The whole world seems to be in awe of a president who can admit mistakes

Sad, isn't it, that this is what we have come to -- expecting and accepting presidents like Bush who was so low in consciousness he couldn't even admit making errors, even though he made hundreds of terrible ones in the EIGHT LONG YEARS! he was in the White House. We are so used to such low standards that when we finally get a man in office who is a responsible adult and does what most of us have been taught by our parents to do, we look at his words and actions with reverence and praise. No wonder! We've been without role models like this for a LONG, LONG time!!! There is a great story about a Minnesota Vikings football player in the following essay...and what he learned by making a mistake:

A President Who Actually Admits Mistakes

By Steve Young,

Philadelphia Inquirer (2/5/09)

Every time a leading sports figure gets caught up in some questionable circumstance, there is instant talk-show clamor over the dearth of role models. If there is one person outside the family who is well-positioned to give children a standard of proper behavior, it would have to be the president of the United States.

Unfortunately, for most of his eight years in office, George W. Bush set a poor example in that he would not - or could not - comprehend the possibility of his making a mistake. If President Obama wants change, he can ensure it by continuing to take direct responsibility for things that go wrong.

And they certainly will, as this week’s botched nominations showed. No one’s perfect. Not every decision is the right one. Far from being an indication of weakness, though, conceding a mistake can be a powerful move toward proficiency.

You can’t begin to learn from failure until you acknowledge that you have failed. To help make it a precept we can all learn from, it might not be a bad idea for our new president to redefine failure, especially for the children watching him, as being an important stepping-stone toward success.

Bush did finally admit an error - the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner - in his final news conference as president. But that was years after his administration had blamed Navy sailors for the error.

And Bush framed his other blunders, for the most part, as mere “disappointments.” He was disappointed, for example, that the predicted weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq. But disappointment is far from admitting a mistake. In fact, it distances a person from a mistake.

We can change by learning from our mistakes and failures. Disappointment is only a feeling, and you don’t feel your way into real change. Why would Bush correct his handling of emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina, for instance, if he couldn’t admit the response was too slow?

Accepting our mistakes is far harder than making them. If it weren’t, the lessons wouldn’t be of much value.

Our children need role models who aren’t afraid to admit their imperfections and learn from them. There are countless real examples of how this works. One was, believe it or not, a professional athlete.

In what may have been the single most embarrassing moment in the history of professional sports, Minnesota Vikings rookie Jim Marshall picked up a fumbled football just before halftime and ran for the goal line - the wrong goal line. He ended up scoring for San Francisco, the wrong team, in front a sold-out stadium and on national television.

Marshall virtually crawled into the locker room amid jeers. He didn’t want to come out for the second half, but he remembered what his father had taught him: If you make a mistake, you have to make it right. “I realized I had a choice,” Marshall told me. “I could sit in my misery, or I could do something about it.”

The second half ended up being one of Marshall’s best. He hurried the opposing passer into three interceptions and caused the fumble that Hall of Famer Carl Eller picked up and ran in for the winning touchdown. Afterward, Marshall acknowledged his mistake and his shame to reporters.

Soon, thousands of calls and letters started coming in from people Marshall had never met. They told him of their own embarrassments. Most of them said they had never told another person about a mistake, but what Marshall had done gave them the courage to do so. It freed them from their secrets, and they felt better for it. “My mistake had actually helped others,” Marshall said. “What a gift.”

After his playing days were over, Marshall made what he had learned his life’s mission, opening community centers to help youths, senior citizens and immigrants. “We reveal the mistakes, show them how to become responsible citizens, and allow them to make it right,” Marshall said. Now that’s a role model.

Seemingly fearful of getting anything wrong, Bush and his admirers have defended his presidency by saying history will prove he was right about most things, including Iraq. My guess is that history will prove that he never learned a thing from history.

This week, in reference to his ill-advised nomination of Tom Daschle for secretary of health and human services, Obama said to reporters: “Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely, and I’m willing to take my lumps. You know, that’s part of the job here.”

Let’s hope learning from his mistakes is also part of the job. That’s what role models do.

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Chris Wallace thinks he may be in trouble at FOX for being gracious to Obama

I love Obama's style!!! So wonderfully different from the narcissistic, self-defensive Idiot who preceded him in the presidency. Isn't it great to have an obviously super-intelligent president who admits his mistakes and who can articulate so clearly in conversation and in speeches? I feel like I have died and gone to heaven! It's interesting, too, that even a FOX News ("fair and balanced" in your dreams!) reporter is admitting the truth about that cable "news" (Rupert Murdoch's views) station?

from www.crooksandliars.com

It was said in jest, sure, but does anyone here really doubt that treating Barack Obama (and his family) with a modicum of respect and fairness -- rather than, say, accusing them of being secret Muslin terrorists -- gets you some dirty looks in the FOX News break room? I mean, every good night for Obama throughout the campaign practically transformed the mood of the station into a funeral.

Wallace: You were widely quoted when you met with the House GOP caucus saying, "go ahead, feel free to whack me. I'll watch FOX News and feel bad about myself."

Obama: That one I did say.

Wallace: Perhaps, let me raise the possibility: Are you a trifle thin-skinned?

Obama: I said it in good humor. I think everyone understood that was a joke.

I think it's fair to say that I don't always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but that's part of how a democracy is supposed to work. We're not all supposed to be in lock step here.

And you've always been very gracious to me.

Wallace: I don't know if that improves or hurts my stock at FOX News.

Obama: It may hurt it.

You can catch the entire interview here.

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Righting the Bush wrongs -- there are SO MANY -- Here's just one

Yet another example of "compassionate conservatism" during the Bush regime.

DOJ Rehires Attorney Fired in Bush Administration for Allegedly Being a Lesbian

Here's another Bush-era reversal we can all be proud of. Something tells me Monica Goodling's fingerprints are all over this one.

NPR:

On Monday, the Justice Department undid a small part of the damage that top officials caused in a scandal of politicized hiring and firing during the Bush administration. The department rehired an attorney who was improperly removed from her job because she was rumored to be a lesbian.

NPR first broke the story of Leslie Hagen's dismissal last April, and the Justice Department's inspector general later corroborated the report. Now, Hagen has returned to her post at the department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys' committee on Native American affairs. The chairman of that committee, Tom Heffelfinger, described Hagen to NPR last year as "the best qualified person in the nation to fill that job." Hagen's performance evaluations had the highest possible ratings — "outstanding" in each of five categories.

The job came up for renewal every year. After the first year, Hagen was surprised to hear that she would have to move on.

from www.crooksandliars.com

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Did you ever think you'd see the day????.....

...when Brit Hume at FOX News would praise OBAMA? It's a once-in-a-lifetime happening (click on the link below to see the video) -- but I notice Brit didn't say anything about Bush and Cheney's umpteen refusals to EVER admit a mistake or error in judgment. It seems that's something on which the FOX reporters would rather not focus their listeners' attention.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/foxs-brit-hume-praises-ob_n_163951.html

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Stephen Colbert -- on Rush Limbaugh

Don't miss this one -- it is GREAT!

http://crooksandliars.com/media/play/wmv/7255/25737

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The rich: too busy to pay taxes

It's only the little guys -- the middle class folks (who are fast disappearing into the poor class) who pay their taxes, while the rich think they can get away with anything. Three (THREE!) of Obama's nominess have now been revealed to be tax dodgers. What a disappointment for those of us who were hoping for something more than "business as usual" from our federal government "servants." Democrats or Republicans, the rich politicians all seem to be the same -- greed-driven, power-lusting, law-scoffing hypocrites. I am DISGUSTED with them all! But my disappointment is reserved for the Democrats, from whom I expected something better. After 8 years of Cheney/Bush, I already know Republicans can't be trusted in any way, shape, or form.
Taxes? Too Busy, Busy, Busy!

By Emily Yoffe
Tuesday, February 3, 2009; A15

Like many Americans whose steady, reliable job has suddenly disappeared, Thomas Daschle cobbled together a bunch of gigs when he was laid off in 2004 by the people of South Dakota after more than two decades of representing them in Congress.

There was the day job at the law firm Alston & Bird that must have been blessedly free of the kind of dull legal minutiae that make up many a billable hour, since Daschle is not a lawyer. That paid $2.1 million over the past two years. The consulting position at InterMedia Advisors, a private equity firm, paid him $1 million a year. A senior partner there told The Post that Daschle did "a lot of helpful work," which he declined to enumerate. A stream of speeches to businesses that had business with the government earned Daschle $500,000 during the past two years. There were directorships on several boards -- BP Corp. alone paid him $250,000. As practitioners of Bokononism, the religion created by Kurt Vonnegut in the book "Cat's Cradle," like to say when contemplating the complicated machinery of life: "Busy, busy, busy."

So busy must Daschle have been dashing from one job to another -- understandable to anyone who has to moonlight after the day shift ends -- it must have merely seemed like a sensible efficiency to say yes when the founder of InterMedia put a Cadillac and a driver at his disposal. It's easy to understand how natural such a gift must have seemed. At a farewell party in his honor after he left the Senate, The Post reports, Daschle told a joke about how on the way to the party both he and his wife got into the car and sat and sat until she said to him, "If this car is going to get us there, you better get in the driver's seat." Of the InterMedia-funded car and driver, Daschle's spokeswoman told The Post that Daschle "naively" believed "it was nothing more than a generous offer from a friend."

When someone earns more per week than the U.S. median yearly household income, we naively assume that person has more sophistication about money than the rest of us. But maybe the IRS, in an effort to find scofflaws, should have every American nominated to a Cabinet post, given the salutary effect it seems to have on one's memory of taxes unpaid -- witness the taxable-income confession of our new Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner.

Now Daschle, nominee to be secretary of health and human services, will go through the "mistakes were made" ritual -- in addition to belatedly recognizing that maybe he should have declared the limousine service, there was also some unreported consulting income and some irregularities with his charitable deductions. We will all end up finding out more than will ever be useful to us about the tax implications of gifts of luxury cars and chauffeurs. And the really interesting question that arises from all this -- What in the world did Tom Daschle do to earn all that money? -- will probably be left unanswered.

His spokeswoman says that for InterMedia, Daschle did "extensive work . . . raising funds." Did he spend hours shaking money out of the people in his BlackBerry like some highly paid telemarketer? The Alston & Bird Web site says that he focused "on advising the firm's clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy." Did that mean slogging through endless meetings explaining the intricacies of how to bend the legislative process to the clients' will? Did he make the right calls to get this done? Or was most of his value to these firms the simpler fact that on their payroll was Tom Daschle -- once one of the most powerful people in Washington, and with everything breaking the Democrats' way, likely to be so again?

"He's the gold standard for integrity in government," said a former aide to Daschle, Andrea LaRue, herself now a lobbyist. In recent months, as the economy has melted down, we have all learned about the art of monetization -- of turning things such as bad home equity loans into arcane derivatives and how there's lots of money to be made out of monetization (until sometimes the money disappears). Even if we don't know what Daschle did to earn all his money, we do know that when you monetize the job of Senate majority leader, as Daschle's financial disclosure forms reveal, you come up with almost $5.3 million in two years. Gold standard, indeed.

Emily Yoffe is a contributing writer to Slate.com.

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Federal Judge Rules Bush is a Felon (ABOUT TIME!)

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2008/07/federal-judge-ruling-george-w-bush-is.html

EXCERPT:
 Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the US District Court in California has ruled that President George W. Bush is a felon. The ruling stems from the case of Al-Harmain Islamic Foundation Inc. v Bush, a case which will now be remembered as making it official that Bush's program of 'warrantless spying' is illegal.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously -- at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics -- to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.--Suing George W. Bush: A bizarre and troubling tale

The complete story at Sott.net outlines the sorry history of how the Bush administration has defined the law of this nation as well as the laws of common sense and decency to carry out a program that would have made even Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover blush.

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Memo to Conservative Republican Ditto-heads

CONSERVATIVES' PROFOUNDEST FEAR: THAT OBAMA WILL SUCCEED
by David Neiwert

Memo to Conservatives: You failed and are now irrelevant.

OK, I expect you'll ignore this memo like our previous ones. Nate Silver is right: Republicans are caught in a death spiral, and it's going to be awhile yet before they hit bottom.

Nowhere is it more self-evident than in the broad acknowledgment this week that the GOP is being led by a bilious radio talk-show host, and the ongoing fact that its most popular politician is a wingnutty, malinformed Alaska governor.

The unanimous refusal of House Republicans to vote in favor of Obama's stimulus plan may raised a cheer from the Dittoheads, but all it really demonstrated was the utter impotence of Conservatives to have any say in how we proceed with fixing the economy.

And there's one real reason for that: They broke it. Their philosophy of governance, especially their feverish laissez-faire demolition of regulatory oversight, and their obscene enrich-the-rich approach to taxation, were the two overarching reasons for our current economic debacle. Of course they still want to blame minority lending for the plunge, but no one with serious money is bothering to listen any longer, because they know what the story is. And so do most Americans.

So Rush Limbaugh can pen all the worthless split-the-baby-in-two proposals for economic stimulus he likes, and House Republicans can toss out all the tax-cut-heavy alternatives they like. And no one will take them seriously, because we've heard these proposals before -- for the past eight years, in fact. They've been nothing but a recipe for failure and disaster. Why would anyone want to take that course now?

What's worse for Republicans is that not only have they not yet figured out how irrelevant they've become, they are even further from understanding the reasons for their irrelevance. They're in deep denial about the direct relationship between their philosophy and the current economic debacle, and even more so the extent to which the public is finding their pugnacious, vicious, attacking style of politics increasingly repellent. (AMEN!)

So Neil Cavuto is right when he defends Limbaugh by saying that of course, ideologically speaking, conservatives will naturally as a matter of principle oppose Obama's policies. We understand that Limbaugh and other conservatives believes that Obama's policies will fail and will vote and speak accordingly.

But he completely overlooks the problem with Limbaugh when he openly hopes Obama will fail: It's one thing to believe a policy will fail and oppose it accordingly. It's quite another to openly hope for it.

Most liberals, by way of contrast, believed George W. Bush would fail, and many predicted it; but it's hard to find any of them, particularly leading Democrats, who were out there saying that they hoped he -- and by extension, the nation -- would fail after 9/11 because his policies were "fascist." They opposed these policies in principle. Anyone who openly hoped for our military failure in Iraq, for instance, was in a tiny minority; but there were millions of us who opposed the war because we believed it was not only wrongheaded but doomed to fail. And we were proved right.

In fact, all this shouting is just cover for Republicans' greatest and deepest fear: That Obama in fact will succeed. That progressive "socialism" (as they call it) actually will make people's lives better, heal the economy, and get the nation back on its feet. That the nation's working people will finally get a clear view of which side is on their side. That the public will finally see that not only is Conservatism an abject failure, it's a fraud.

In the end, they are such deeply invested ideologues that they would rather see the nation fail than see that reality reach fruition.

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