Holy cow, Dick Cheney

Be the change

That's the message of the official inauguration poster. According to Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein, "The image will be available on buttons, lapel pins, stickers and t-shirts."

No kidding? I bet I get 100 e-mail offers to get it free in exchange for a contribution of one sort or another. This pay-for-play business is not reserved for the rich and powerful.

Though I remain hopeful, I'm less optimistic with each passing day.

Delayed gratification is no stimulus

President-elect Obama began to lay out his economic stimulus proposal today, and I'm worried. Isn't two weeks before inauguration a little early to begin laying down for Republicans? Apparently, tax cuts are a significant part of the package in an effort to sway the minority party -- and, I suppose, to be able to say you cut taxes. At least make them retroactive to 2008. Otherwise, sellers will get all the stimulus and the buyers will get an IOU. That's not the change I was convinced to believe in. That's not really change at all.

At this point, it's either laugh or cry

Here's what I don't get

Springfield is the capital of Illinois, right? Why is governor big hair in Chicago?

January 20th cannot arrive fast enough

by Arianna Huffington

So, $290 billion into his bailout plan, Hank Paulson is calling for a do-over. Now there is a confidence booster.

Providing "I-told-you-so" talking points to the what's-the-rush crowd, the Secretary of the Treasury announced yesterday that the government is no longer going to use any of the $700 billion Congress allocated to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to buy, well, Troubled Assets from financial institutions -- the original centerpiece of the plan.

Instead, Paulson is looking to fortify the financial industry by continuing to buy premium stock in banks (aka the Warren Buffett approach). Unfortunately, instead of sending Paulson a thank you note in the form of increased consumer lending, the banks are depositing the government checks and taking a wait and see approach. (Among the things they've seen: another $40 billion handed over to AIG.)

This is not to say that Paulson's midstream direction change is a bad thing -- indeed, the lip service he's now paying to putting the focus on consumers is encouraging -- but it shows just how uncertain official Washington is about how to keep the economy from imploding.

In the meantime, oversight of the massive bailout plan remains a mirage -- undermined by White House inaction and Congressional turf wars.

Remember all the promises that the $700 billion in taxpayer money would be closely supervised? No blank checks here, we were told. A special inspector general was going to be picked by the White House and Congress was going to hand-select an oversight panel.

But despite over a quarter of a trillion dollars having already been doled out by Paulson, so far both the inspector general position and the five Congressional Oversight Panel slots remain unfilled.

The White House appears ready to nominate New York prosecutor Neil Barofky as inspector general, though it's up in the air how quickly Congress would confirm him (if they confirm him at all). Among the looming issues, a squabble between the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committee over which would have control of the confirmation process.

"It's a mess," said Eric Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, who has been doing fill-in oversight duty until the special inspector general is confirmed. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

Bartender, another round of lack of confidence for everyone.

Unfortunately, while Paulson waffles, the White House dawdles, and Congress dithers, the economy continues to burn.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment last week -- 516,000 -- was the most since September 2001, in the wake of 9/11. And the number of people continuing to collect unemployment -- 3,897,000 -- was the highest it's been in 25 years.

"The labor market is deteriorating more rapidly than previously thought," Andrew Gledhill, economist at Moody's Economy.com, told CNNMoney.

In the past week, Ford said it would cut salaried employment costs by 10 percent, global delivery company DHL said it was cutting 9,500 jobs and financial service provider Fidelity Investment announced 1,300 job cuts. The list goes on and on: Circuit City, Pizza Hut, Morgan Stanley, Condé Nast, Yahoo, US Steel, Cesna, and QVC.

According to the Department of Labor, 240,000 jobs were lost in October, bringing the total of 2008 pink slips to 1.2 million. The unemployment rate is 6.5 percent, the highest it's been in 14 years.

On the housing front, another 84,868 homes were lost to foreclosure in October; there have been 936,439 home foreclosures since August 2007. And the housing future continues to look bleak: in October, 279,561 borrowers received at least one foreclosure-related notice, including default notices, notices of auction sales and bank repossessions, according to RealtyTrac. One in every 452 housing units received one of these. Nevada, Arizona, and Florida had the country's top three foreclosure rates.

Despite the carnage in the housing market, the White House continues to offer what the New York Times labeled "pathetic responses" and inadequate "half measures." And much-discussed legislation allowing bankrupt homeowners to rework their mortgages in court remains in a holding pattern, awaiting action from the lame duck Congress. I wouldn't hold my breath.

January 20th cannot arrive fast enough for the American people.

Crazy talk

I was shocked, nearly fell off my chair even, to read these words: "there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress." Go figure.

A Halloween Story

Fear has profoundly changed us
By LEONARD PITTS JR.

Meanwhile, back at the War on Terror . . .

You remember the War on Terror, don't you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here? Surely you recall.

I only ask because of a news story that broke last week to a yawn of media disinterest. The Washington Post reported on two secret White House memos explicitly endorsing the use of waterboarding -- simulated drowning -- on so-called high-value terrorism suspects. This is, says The Post, the first time the still-classified memos have been disclosed. They were written in response to requests from then-CIA Director George Tenet, who worried his agents might be hung out to dry if the practice were discovered and the people or their representatives demanded someone's head.

According to The Post, the White House issued written authorizations in 2003 and 2004. Yet in 2006, President Bush told the nation, ``The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it -- and I will not authorize it.''

Which was, of course, a lie.

You'd think the latest proof of that lie -- yet another smoking gun to stack with all the others -- would merit attention. But a computer search Thursday turned up only seven newspaper stories mentioning the memos. Searches of the CNN and FOX news websites also came up dry, though the story did appear on MSNBC's site.

If you think my point is that the media missed an important story, it isn't. No, the point is that normal is not where we thought it would be.


You remember how it was just after Sept. 11, 2001, right? Some of us vowed we would never enter a skyscraper again. Some of us didn't want to leave our houses again. The minutiae of popular culture became staggeringly unimportant. Humorists like David Letterman and my colleague, Dave Barry, wondered if they could ever return to the business of laughter.

We were scared dry. And some of us said: Get used to it. This was the new normal.

But skyscrapers did not close from lack of use. We did not become a nation of agoraphobics. We did not lose our interest in singers and movie stars. Letterman and Barry went back to work.

Fear, which had cut through us like a hot poker, became instead a low-grade fever, ambient noise, wallpaper, something you feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing.

Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys, and it's routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged, and it's commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal, and it's ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak, and it's unexceptional.

Torture is inflicted with White House approval, the president lies about it and it's just another Tuesday.

Once upon a time, Americans were fond of looking upon backward nations, upon places where law was whatever the king said it was, and noting with pride that we do things differently in our country. But that was a day long ago and a country long gone.

If we miss the one or mourn the other, you'd never know it to look at us. We live through what feels evermore like a Joe McCarthy fever dream. We feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing and do not protest what we have become.

Because this is normal now.

Change you can't believe in

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And tonight's batch was burnt.

I refer, of course to the $700 BILLION financial industry bailout bill -- which I will henceforth call Wall Street Welfare. It's not like they've never been hypocrites before.

I expected McCain's vote -- especially after he staged the white knight coming to save the day non-event. Obama's disappointed me. This was a chance for him to stand up and show that he won't be a business-as-usual president. That fear and deception will be replaced by hope and truth.

He should have listened to Michael Moore. More people should.

In case you missed it

I picked a bad night to miss David Letterman. If you're lame too, here's what we missed.

The fine print

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." -- Section 8 of the Treasury's $700 billion bail-out proposal

Just in case you'd forgotten we're still living under the Bush misadministration, here comes its parting shot: making a cataclysm worse.

Krugman. The Nation on John "Keating 5" McCain. The American Prospect.

I am a patriot and I love my country -- a welcome forwarded e-mail

I don't cotton to e-mail forwarders much. Especially don't expect me -- or threaten me -- to pass it along lest I'll suffer some unfortunate fate. Don't paint me as unpatriotic. Most of all, I'm not stupid.

After untold snopes.com reply-alls to everything imaginable -- and many things not -- my wife has learned over the years what is fair game and what isn't. So I, at least, open her forwards. This one came from a fellow Progressive Patriot for Peace (embrace the alliteration) from Iowa who now lives in Arizona. Author unknown.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight ...

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are elitist.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you've got a well-rounded education.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl (ED: actually, I think it was sports), 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a true Christian.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group until 2002 that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, that represents what America is all about.


And, while I'm at it...

What are words for?

Politics and the English language, GOP-style
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals.'' -- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

And again, ahem.


If you're a regular here, you've heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you'll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

Yes, we're all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or the Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it . . . art. Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo's David, admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

Unfortunately, some of us are too plodding and earthbound, too blind to the seductions of art, too stubbornly wedded to some vestigial notion that intellectual honesty matters, to walk past a steaming pile of bovine excreta without calling it a steaming pile of bovine excreta.

So excuse me, beg pardon, so sorry, but I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e., Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 until 2007. The judicial, i.e., the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said.

Washington is already what Romney wants to make it. Our current state of affairs, love it or loathe it, is indisputably a product of conservative governance. I wish that mattered more than it does.

That it doesn't matter much at all you can credit to conservative politicians who have, over the years, trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say ''conservative,'' and they wag their tails. Say ''liberal'' and they bare their fangs. More to the point, say either and all thinking ceases, so much so that a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the last 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there. And people hear this Orwellian doublespeak . . . and cheer. Why not? They have been taught that words mean what you need them to in a given moment.

Sadly, it has proven an easy lesson to impart. Turns out, all it requires is a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.

And all it costs us is language, the ability to have reasoned and intelligent political discourse, the idea that words do, and should, have weight, dimension and intrinsic meaning. Maybe you disagree. In which case, let me just say this:

Piffle crack eat monkey snow. Really.