Five days left in the eight year illegal occupation of the White House

Washington D.C.--And so, it's ending, and not with a whimper (except from Georgie boy). President-elect Barack Obama is going to do his darndest not to prosecute these bastards, trying to make us think that Congress can't do likewise. It's all just bait-and-switch, the oldest game there is aside from the shell game.

Demand, demand, demand the appointment of a Special Prosecutor armed with subpoena power and the immense resources that it's going to take to unravel the mess left by yet another criminally-inept Republican presidential administration and era.

This will happen again otherwise--if we're even able to emerge from this man-made economic crisis intact. Indeed, we all own our little part of this mess, but George W. Bush and his administration and a Republican Congress created the lion's share of the corporate crime wave we've been living under since 2000. Truth be known, it's been much longer in duration, stretching-back decades. That's how big this is, it's literally the end of an era and possibly of an order.

My hunch is that Obama and the rest of them in Washington are going to try to do things as they've always done, attempting to save a rotten barrel. When that doesn't work, they're going to keep fighting the reality that market capitalism is really and truly over, waste valuable time they could be finding constructive solutions, and drive us further down into a mess that's going to dwarf the Great Depression. Congress will also lend-a-hand in creating this catastrophe.

But there's a alternative: mount a massive and aggressive prosecution on the soon-to-be former Bush II administration's most obvious offenders. There must also be the formation of prosecution units to take-on Wall Street offenders, and there must be prosecutions, there must be accountability. No accountability means no renewal of faith in the financial and political system, and the evidence criminality will be found where it ran riot in government under the Republicans and in the private sector.

But we have to quit fooling ourselves. It's also going to be found in the ranks of Congress itself, the reason why there's no will to prosecute the outgoing Bush II administration. They were complicit with them, and they compromised themselves.

If President-elect Obama is the political hack that I suspect he is, he's in as much trouble as Alberto Gonzales already, which is saying a lot considering the fact that no law firm in North America will hire the disgraced former Attorney General. We don't need any repeats from the last eight years, America cannot survive it and remain America. Hope is great, but false hope is just cynicism by another name.

Obama: "Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law."

Fox News Universe--Just moments ago, Fox News reported the opposite of the above statement with the byline, "Obama: 'We're not going to prosecute Bush administration officials.' "

Whenever I want my sci-fiction and fantasy needs met, I don't go to the Sci-Fi Network™--no, no. I go to Fox News for the fantastical, the bizarre, and the outright fictional. It's true, literature has a hard time competing with the scions of the right-wing.

That they're strange is a given. That they lie is a given. But to believe one's own lies means mental illness, which has become the only thing that makes sense about them. Yet, like in all propaganda, there's that tiny kernel of truth in there. President-elect Obama's voting behavior on constitutional issues really is unimpressive. This is troubling for someone who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago for twelve years, off-and-on, someone considered a professor of it.

Obama knows full-well that if the laws broken by the Bush II aren't investigated and prosecuted, that they stand as precedents. For those who value their personal liberties, that's alarming, to put it mildly. But, as I wrote to Rawstory's Larisa Alexandrovna, we're seeing a system in crisis rather than a mere "coup" that she and Naomi Wolf, Michael Moore, and others suggested was taking-place with the Wall Street bailout. It was a belated observation. But this is all really beside the point: Congress should be doing most of the heavy-lifting here, and cries of partisanship from the Republicans isn't going to matter in-the-face of an independent truth commission and the economic crisis they midwifed.

As they did with the Church Commission in the 1970s, the Democrats are standing down and doing very little to hold anyone accountable.

Excuses, excuses. The GOP in Congress has no other option but to cooperate in reconstructing the economy along with Democrats and Independents because their very survival depends on it. Democrats can--and will continue to--enable them and make as many excuses for inaction as they want predicated on the straw man arguments for "bipartisanship," but the reality is that Republican incumbents are already greatly disempowered and back in their minority-status where they belong for good. They are extremely vulnerable.

It's true that the Obama administration and Congress are going to have their hands full for some time, but they won't have to do the work of an independent commission--that's why you form one in the first place. With a new majority in the judicial and executive branches, excuses are going to be all congressional Democrats have when they don't act substantially to hold the Bush II administration accountable for crimes we all know were committed, there's no mystery to it. Only the scope is unknown.

The Fox story is wishful thinking in a way, because they understand that while they cannot be pushed into recognizing the public will very often, the Democrats can. They also know that the charges will stick if things go far enough, making for a one-two punch to an already embattled and criminal GOP. This is exactly what should and can happen, but the missing-ingredient--once again--is the American public, their outrage, and their thoughtful action. The factors of anger and action are growing exponentially every day as once cherished values of the marketplace are shown to be the hollow theories they always were. This is because, "It doesn't affect me, so I don't care," is no longer a reality.

Both parties embraced these notions of the marketplace and force-fed them to the public for almost an entire generation. At least two generations have been ruined by this, their minds poisoned with the drivel of the Chamber of Commerce and all the rest of the right's literary output. Systems have a way of playing-out, it's an immutable fact of human history, yet they're still going to try to save their rotten barrel, repeating the actions of all tyrants in all eras. This is the reason behind the president-elect's seeming apathy in prosecuting George W. Bush and his fellow travelers.

This peculiar apathy towards holding the Bush II administration is only going to engender a well-earned cynicism in his direction, and he's going to feel tempted to abuse these new powers of the executive when the going gets tough. If he does utilize them, he's going to be letting not just Black Americans down, but the rest of the world and himself. There will be no transcendent or transformative moment except in the negative, and history will record he was just another ass holding power in another era.

We've already had enough of that, but the choice is his and Congress's to make, a choice between honor and ignominy, of being thought of warmly by future generations, or having one's name spat-out by them as George W. Bush is going to be (we haven't had to wait on that one). What Obama and Congress don't want to admit to the rest of us is that it's implicit to uncover as many of the crimes of the Bush II administration as humanly possible to fix the mess we're in right now, but they're busy trying to save the rotten barrel that produced that mess, all the ingredients for a failure that could grow into a catastrophe.

It was never about George W. Bush. Protecting him and his co-conspirators is protecting a bad system whose time has come. Again, that missing-ingredient is the public. Get angrier, get louder, and start demanding a truth commission, but be good. Let those in power break the law, as it's their wont to do; it makes them more vulnerable than you think.

The real exchange between George Stephanopoulas and Barack Obama: http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/obama-leaves-do.html

A suggestion to President-elect Barack Obama for a Sec. of Commerce replacement

Washington D.C.--Now that New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson is out--Ralph Nader, and for every reason you might imagine. Vetting Nader? You wouldn't even have to, he's cleaner than the busboys in the nation's capital, never mind the congressional pages.

The man is more than qualified, honest, incredibly disciplined and can handle the workload. Ralph Nader has done more good for the American public than any single politician in our history without being one, and because he's definitely not going to be in the pockets of Wall Street, the banks, the business sector, and so on.

He's your man, which is why I know you're never, ever going to pick him, sad.

Goodbye, 2008

And so comes the death of another month and another year. It was a year of incredible revelations and stunning inaction from Congress, a time when a woman--among many other defendants, I presume--was run to her death by federal prosecutors and the Court, and warrantless surveillance was legalized allowing 60s radicals to say, "We told you so, we weren't paranoid."

It was a year when the economy began crashing as it would inevitably do under the GOP, and we can thank whatever deities we worship that it hit on their watch. Curiously, Americans never blamed the Bush II administration for its failure to prevent 9/11, but that's just too complicated for most folks to understand, I guess.

2008 was also the year that Alex Constantine made peculiar legal threats towards me after calling me a liar several times on his own site, not giving him very solid ground to stand on, and a year when I angered a few thousand readers and subjects (often the same thing!) with my writing. This is ironic, considering the number of liars and barracudas I've encountered in the whole Palfrey saga, it didn't paint a pretty picture of most of them. Somehow, I'm not supposed to have opinions on such things, at least according to some out there. Too bad for them, because I'm not going away anytime soon.

What's interesting is this: they're just my opinions, ostensibly my right as an American. I got a right.

Have hope, we're about to be freed from the shackles of consumerism and overwork, my strong belief of what's to come. It won't just happen, however. We have to make it happen with demands, very strident ones. I believe Obama is going to be an improvement only because there's nowhere else to go but up.

America is being pushed very far leftward by events birthed by very right-wing individuals and institutions who have wrecked their own blessed "market economy." This pleases me to no end: the GOP has potentially pushed us closer to being a socialist economy than FDR or LBJ ever could have.

This gives me a great deal of hope. Why? Because if we had kept going down the road we were before our economic problems began, we'd truly be doomed--there would be no hope at the end of that. Additionally, economic and political elites are now going to be forced to deliver on the promises of prosperity and a reaffirmation of the social contract. They know the options are few and more unpleasant.

On that note, have a happier new year, and make a new friend, someone who has your back for real. If they don't, they aren't a friend.

--Matt Janovic

"Obama bristles as the bubble closes in" --Politco.com

"Journalism is the one solitary respectable profession which honors theft (when committed in the pecuniary interest of a journal,) & admires the thief...However, these same journals combat despicable crimes quite valiantly--when committed in other quarters."
--Mark Twain, 1880.

WWW--Can you blame Obama? Is it really necessary for the press to come along every time the presidential motorcade goes out on a jaunt for an ice cream cone, or when the president-elect/president wants to take his kids to a park? Is it really relevant at all, is it newsworthy? Of course not, and the press are taking umbrage at President-elect Barack Obama for suggesting otherwise.

Yes, it's more about that ugly little troll in the room (not the GOP), the Holy of Holies, "access." Sounds lewd--I know--but there it is.

Yet, they've done very little bickering over following the most powerful man in America besides Karl Rove (whose constant whereabouts never concerned them much during his unfortunate tenure-by-appointment in the White House) these last eight years: that would be Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been hiding in "undisclosed locations" more often than not.

After ordering a tuna melt on 12-grain bread, Obama approached reporters and placed his hand on the shoulder of pool reporter Philip Rucker of The Washington Post, who was scribbling away in his notebook.

“You don't really need to write all that down,” Obama said.

All presidents and would-be presidents struggle with “the bubble” – the security detail and the always-there reporters that impose barriers to any spontaneous interaction with the outside world. ("Obama bristles as the bubble closes in," Politico.com, 12.28.2008)

Right, this is the most important thing in the world, getting down exactly what the president-elect ordered at a Chicago deli, that's wonderful and a great example of cutting-edge journalism. But what do you expect from a publication that did its best to protect George W. Bush and his administration as much as it humanly could for "access"?

"Press gaggle" has a derisive ring to it that's inevitably earned, and there are valid reasons (like the above and aforementioned) why the public invariably hates the press and journalists. This is because they're human, vulnerable to pressure from established power (making most of them traditional appendages of someone else's agenda), and because they tend to get their facts wrong, often knowingly.

A wonderful local example should do: A past acquaintance of mine was sleeping in the basement of his parent's home when a fire started, trapping him for a time, but he managed to escape the flames. Somehow, his dog also escaped on its own. Eventually, the fire trucks and the press belatedly arrived--the firemen extinguishing the blaze, while creatively took their notes. The next day we all sat reading the story that contended he had "run into the house to heroically rescue the family dog."

The problem? Nothing of the sort ever happened--not ever--and he hadn't even mentioned anything resembling the newspaper account to the journalist. He got out of the house and the dog was found wandering around by a fireman (they tend frequently to smoke pot and like hookers, just an FYI). The journalist and their editors just thought a rescue would read as more interesting, giving those blessed column inches that added "human element", ostensibly to sell more papers with ad-space. I could go on and on. When you cry wolf too often, people stop listening and reading, which they're doing-in-droves with the newspapers. Very soon, they will be gone and they won't be missed.

This harping over President-elect Obama wanting his own personal space implies that this desire somehow has sinister implications to it, which is a pretty silly reaction to someone asking logical questions--watch him when it counts. If only the same attention had been paid to the Bush II administration, although it's not as though Congress or the Courts were going to do anything, we already know this. No, get close to "inside sources," cultivate them, and act like we actually have a "Fourth Estate," a myth of that peculiar religion of journalism that worships falsehood with enough of a smidgen-of-truth so that they can sleep better at night. Adversarialism with the political class? Get real.

Look: monitor any given president's activities on the Hill, in the Oval office, in his choice of appointments, in the legality of his policies and his behaviors, but don't tell me he had a tuna sandwich on 12-grain bread. Nobody but the senile or the emotionally retarded care about that particular piece-of-information.

You can take your "access" and shove it. Journalism should never have become a profession, and today, it's a joke on the rest of us.

"Obama bristles as the bubble closes in," Politico.com, 12.28.2008: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081228/pl_politico/16882

Happy Holidays! Have hope!

Folks,

I'm not going to lie: it's not going to be a better year in 2009. Things are going to get much, much worse. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that's all of us. It's not the ruling class that's going to do it, it's not Congress, and it's not Obama. We can fix the mess that Wall Street and the politicians in Washington D.C. made for all of us, and we can even turn the tide in a direction that benefits us, the average people in America.

But that means dropping the greed and selfishness. It means accepting that the market model is done and must be radically reformed. It's going to mean a very pointed return to progressive taxation of the rich. Consumerism is ending, jobs are evaporating everywhere, at all levels of society, and it boggles the mind. It doesn't matter. What matters is each individual recognizing what they can contribute to helping others and pressuring for change.

How will you know what to do and when? You'll know when it comes, but hear me out--the average person has, and always will be, the real "corrector" when the powerful have wrecked civilization. We're the people who clean-up their messes, yes, but out of that must come demands. Demand a better life. Resolve yourself that nothing comes from power without demands, and our lives will improve.

This doesn't mean going unprovoked out and beating-the-crap out of cops, although it will mean defending ourselves when we're met by illegal violence from the private sector and her allies within the State. Americans are going to learn what the term "togetherness" means once again, because we're all going to be hitting the streets soon enough, and the confrontations are coming. Discipline and a wariness for violence will be crucial.

Creativity in civil disobedience will be one of the keys.

We must hold to the law just as the Republic Windows and Doors folks did. President-elect Barack Obama endorsed the validity and legality of the sit-in at Republic, which is a good sign for his administration. Other signs aren't so reassuring, which is why we must all demand, and demand loudly that the system meet our basic human needs when things inevitably become worse.

There will be riots. There will be general strikes, and there will be the natural response of repression. History is back and the stagnation is ending.

Demands get results, but patience and wisdom are going to be necessary as well, and we must show lawful restraint. Let the protectors of this failed system do the law-breaking, then we can take care of them in the courts. Right now, there are more important things: Spend time with your loved ones. Make a real friend. Treasure what's valuable, which is the warmth and kindness of friends (real ones) and family. Demand peace, and demand justice where there is none. Demand investigations into the Bush II administration until we finally know everything that they did so we can really clean up this mess he's left us. He didn't do it alone. Congress enabled, encouraged, and defended him. So did the mainstream media. Their time is coming as well.

Happy Holidays, Matt Janovic

"Speak Out For A Special Prosecutor For Bush/Cheney At The Obama Change Site" by the Pen

We Were Promised Change, And Change Is What We Will Hold Our New

President To

Of all the things that must change, the FIRST thing that must change

now is that the rule of law and respect for the Constitution must be

fully restored. Obama has set up a site where he professes to want to

know what his priorities should be. Therefore let us all go there and

make the number one idea this one.

Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush

Administration

The direct link is rather longish, so we have set up a special action

page that will open up a new window and forward you directly (or else

look for the link at the very top) to the page where you can vote for

this most critical idea.

Special Prosecutor Voting Link:

http://www.usalone.com/special_prosecutor.php

Important: To cast a vote, when you get to the voting site, click on

the box with the current number count to the left of the main header

for the idea, NOT on the widget on the right hand side of the page

lower down, which just reloads the same page.

President-elect Obama recently said, "If I found out that there were

high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws,

engaged in cover-ups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I

think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law."

Attorney General-designate Eric Holder recently said top Bush

Administration officials "authorized the use of torture, approved of

secret electronic surveillance of American citizens, secretly

detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the

Writ of Habeas Corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants, and

authorized the use of procedures that both violate international law

and the United States Constitution."

We must now hold them to honor their words of accountability.

The Bush administration has refused to investigate its own crimes and

President Bush may issue blanket pardons before he leaves, indeed we

fully expect him to even try to pardon himself. But that is all the

more reason why we must keep as much heat as possible on the

potential for real post inauguration prosecutions. No pardon could

possibly be broad enough to exonerate the entire litany of the crimes

of the outgoing White House without itself raising serious

constitutional questions.

President Obama must appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick

Fitzgerald - to fully investigate these crimes and prosecute those

responsible to demonstrate that we are truly a Nation of Laws and no

one - including the President - is above the law. And you can make

sure that happens by going to this link and helping to make the

appointment of a special prosecutor the number one idea on the Obama

"change" site by a very large and dramatic margin.

Special Prosecutor Voting Link:

http://www.usalone.com/special_prosecutor.php

And then after you vote, if you haven't requested your "Impeach

Both!!!" cap yet (we just shipped out another 1000 this week), if you

want to go back and get one the page left behind by the link above

will allow you to do that. Because anyone who thinks that the Bush

administration has even now finished committing high crimes has

greatly misunderestimated their depth of incorrigible malfeasance.

Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. Our new

president has asked us to be involved in telling him what to do. Let

us find out if that was for real or not, by continuing to speak out,

in greater numbers than ever before.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed

to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

Michael Moore's plan to save the auto industry

WWW--Michael Moore's proposal makes sense--nationalize the auto industry, make it create mass transit, and get us off of oil entirely. Very good, I endore this one.

Sign if you agree: http://bravenewfilms.org/petitions/show/32-support-michael-moore-s-plan-to-save-the-big-3

Here's the plan:

Friends,

I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:

My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.

More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.

And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.

But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used to be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,
Michael Moore

AP: Bush administration eased lending regulations under lobbying "pressure"

Washington D.C.--No kidding? Really? I wasn't aware of this, and neither were all the firms that pushed for it...then crashed, went bankrupt, and are either asking for a hand-out from the government or no longer exist anymore (the latter being the best).

It seems that no matter what this administration does, nobody has any will or desire to hold them accountable. That's because it isn't all about them.

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of a philosophy that trusted market forces and discounted the need for government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

"We're going to be feeling the effects of the regulators' failure to address these mortgages for the next several years," said Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who warned regulators to tighten lending rules before it was too late. ("AP IMPACT: Under pressure, US eased lending rules," AP, 12.01.2008)

Yes, it's a good thing we have AP and the rest of the soon-to-be former scions of this order to tell us this. Notably, it was Allen Greenspan who advocated much of this deregulation--you remember him, the man everyone listened raptly to just a year ago, genuflecting to every utterance he made. They love you when you're making them rich, but they'll think less of you when yours and their ideas don't work anymore.

These are the rewards of getting your way almost every time. The temporal universe has a way of correcting any organism (or institution) when it's running amok, and we're seeing this writ large now in the developed world. Like emotions, stupidity and delusion are highly-contagious in human society.

When people are riding high and making so much money, they falsely presume what they're doing is correct because it benefits them. Academic join-in on this game, playing along and keeping the horrible truths from us as much as they humanly can. We didn't need them to tell us what they're telling us today: "The NBER says its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began in December 2007." ("Panel says US has been in recession since December 2007," AP, 12.01.2008)

Who could have told them that a pre-1929 approach to the American economy would result in a collapse? Besides the few ten-year-olds I know as neighbors, nearly anyone with a clue. But most Americans don't know their history, and the general attitude is that it's irrelevant, unimportant, and--most importantly--a lot of work and boring to explore. Additionally, there is the contention that it's "worthless knowledge." How worthless is it today, and how much would it have saved the public had we all been more informed and vigilant? More than $1 trillion USD.

Is understanding the last Depression so "worthless" today? It took us almost eighty years to forget what led to the last collapse. How long will it take next time? Probably not very long, since we're bound to keep doing the same things that led to this problem, which works for me.

At that point, history isn't going to let us repeat the same mistakes any longer and this order will be permanently dead. Market rule will be over for good. There are forces stronger than the human race, and we should be glad for it. In sum, whether we learn from it this time is irrelevant: the world trumps the powerful and the groundswell is coming, the general strikes are coming, and modest reforms aren't going to cut it.

In that sense, we have little to worry about with President-elect Barack Obama (at least he's qualified and actually won the election legally), because he's not going to have any choice but to create change with substance in America. That doesn't mean we won't be pushing him--we will--but events have a way of pushing everyone out of the narcotized inaction we've all been in for far too long. Now things affect those who always said, "If it doesn't affect me, I don't care." The fun is over, even for the comfortable these days.

Now things affect those who always said, "If it doesn't affect me, I don't care." The fun is over, even for the comfortable these days. Of course the Bush II administration went well beyond deregulation. They told the business and financial sectors that they could do whatever they wanted to, that nobody was watching.

Today is just a corroboration of what we all knew. Regardless of how many exposes, breaking stories, and general revelations of misconduct, nobody's going to seriously go after the members of the lame duck Bush II administration when they're just as guilty, the problems are systemic. Watch--with glee--as the whores run for cover, even when there ultimately won't be anywhere to run.

We're a strange species, but at least we're beginning to confront power again. Welcome to the end of Reaganism.

"Panel says US has been in recession since December 2007," AP, 12.01.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20081201/49336f50_3ca6_15526200812011563214544

"AP IMPACT: Under pressure, US eased lending rules," AP, 12.01.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/bus?guid=20081201/49336f50_3ca6_1552620081201459265956

Bush II administration officially ends, Obama de facto President of the United States

Washington D.C.--It might say "Office of the President-Elect of the United States"on the podium, but Barack Obama and his economic team have already begun taking action as an active and operational presidential administration.

Alongside this there has been the parallel inaction and obstruction of the dead administration of George W. Bush and its inability to think outside the obsolete box of the "market economy" ideology. This week, reality handed them their ass, and now they're being far more cooperative.

This disintegration of the Bush II administration isn't being announced anywhere, but it's unprecedented in our history, it's real. George W. Bush's inability to lead and govern collapsed long ago, but it's now completely played-out and he has nothing left to offer to a situation that he helped birth through earlier negligence and criminal inaction.

My intuition is that the meeting between President-elect Obama and the outgoing President Bush yielded the belated cooperation, finally, because there was nothing left for them to do. They wanted help and they wanted someone to guide them, to hold their hand. You can imagine they also said, "Don't hurt us," in so many words.

The bailout of Citigroup (of whom vice president-elect Joe Biden has connections) is likely a concession on-the-part of Bush in-exchange for economic advice. A promise of amnesty might have been part of the deal as well. Why would Bush and his administration know how to fix the mess he helped create? How would they do it without implicating themselves? You can just feel that Barack Obama is already president due to the grave nature of things at this historical moment.

The GOP is doctrinally and politically paralyzed within the executive branch. Send in the new guy:

Remarkably for a president-elect, he said he wanted Congress to act "right away" on a stimulus measure that would blend spending and tax cuts. Asked for details, he said without elaboration that he wanted a measure "of a size and scope that is necessary to get this economy back on track."

Democratic officials in Congress said the stimulus plan could include aid to cash-strapped states to provide health care to the poor, along with road and bridge funding. More money for food stamps is also likely, they said.

Obama renewed his campaign-long call for middle class tax cuts but said he would let his advisers make a recommendation on whether to roll back Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. ("Obama urges Congress to pass costly stimulus bill," AP, 11.24.2008)

Bush and Obama spoke together on the phone today, and one can imagine why. There was no choice. Leadership in the White House has collapsed and illuminated what we--the critics of the administration--have contended all along: George W. Bush is not a leader in any sense, he is incompetent, and he has broken the law knowingly and unknowingly because of these fundamental facts.

Bush is also a very compromised man, and now Congress and the "incoming" Obama administration has begun bypassing the White House in addressing the economic crisis. This has never happened in the entire political history of the United States.

This is not hyperbole. This is not the grandstanding of Alex Jones or Naomi Klein, or even Arianna Huffington. The Bush administration ended last week. There is the possibility that the formality of impeachment might not be such a bad idea after all. What political party would want to lay claim to George W. Bush after the last year? Not even the GOP.

Expect some belated actions towards impeachment that could even occur after Bush and his cohorts leave office in January, and expect Obama to be a disappointment. But events have a way of forcing hands...

There is no statute of limitations on war crimes, and the economy might just be all the impetus they need in Congress to act in apprehending the worst band of criminals to hold high office in our history. General strikes and a groundswell have a way of making politicians behave.

This era promises to be as dramatic as the 1930s, if not more so. How often have you ever heard a president-elect urge Congress to act on anything before they've taken office? I'm not saying it's improper given the circumstances, but it's new, and it underscores that the Bush II administration is completely inept and has finally ossified into total inaction.

Yet Obama and his advisers are already talking about deficit-spending when they should be making-it-plain that Bush's 2001 tax-cuts on the wealthiest cannot survive after January 2009.

"Obama urges Congress to pass costly stimulus bill," AP, 11.24.2008:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20081124/492a34d0_3ca6_15526200811241080860600

[Ed., 11.25.2008--If you don't get that there is no two party system, but just a one party one masquerading as a two party one, you've probably had fork-marks on face your entire life, and always will.]