POLL: Who Will Be Indicted First?

Added a poll to the right column of this blogger template, who in the Bush Administration will be indicted first?

Your choices are George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and Condi Rice. So many to pick from, it was tough limiting it to 5 people.

Be sure to vote.

Bush Never Met A Fraud He Didn't Like

The Bush Administration turned a blind eye towards corruption for 8 years and we all paid for it. I won't even mention honorary Bush Cabinet member  Ken Lay and Enron:

"Federal officials are bringing far fewer prosecutions as a result of fraudulent stock schemes than they did eight years ago, according to new data, raising further questions about whether the Bush administration has been too lax in policing Wall Street."

It's like we learn nothing from our previous mistakes when Republicans are in charge, greed always wins out.

"At a time when the financial news is being dominated by the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that Bernard L. Madoff is accused of running, federal officials are on pace this year to bring the fewest prosecutions for securities fraud since at least 1991, according to the data, compiled by a Syracuse University research group using Justice Department figures."

Lowest since 1991? I wonder who was President back then?

Source: NYT

Healthcare For All And To All A Good Year

Let the re-booting of America begin.

In Canada, the universal health care system is simply called medicare -- and that's what it should be in the U.S. And instead of the 1342-page proposal Hillary Clinton put together that was a politically jerry-rigged, confusing plan -- or the Obama proposal that would leave insurance companies pretty much intact (whose goal is to make money by reducing care as much as possible) -- it would be the simplest and boldest political move to simply propose to Congress this sentence to become law: "All Americans under the age of 65 will be covered by Medicare Part 'E.'"

This is far from solving all the problems with pharmaceuticals and lobbyists, not to mention cynicism, but this is the direction we need to be heading.

Critics always point out the flaws in otter countries' universal healthcare, why do you think we'll make the same mistakes here, why assume the negative?

Read on: Source: BuzzFlash

Waterboarding Or Waterbeds?

This is how you win the hearts and minds of the Afghans.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills.

Thinking "out of the box" has become "get into the box" thinking.

All that waterboarding when all you needed was a waterbed.

Next up, Gillette razors for the ladies.

Source: Washington Monthly

Bah Humbug To Retail Sales

Deflation: why buy now when you can buy later at a cheaper cost? Not really a big story on CNBC or the MSM, the cheaper prices arer good for consumers, but not so great for earnings. I wonder why it's a buried story? *wink*

Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday.

Despite a flurry of last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.'s SpendingPulse unit.

[C]onsidering individual sectors, "This will go down as the one of the worst holiday sales seasons on record," said Mary Delk, a director in the retail practice at consulting firm Deloitte LLP. 

"Retailers went from 'Ho-ho' to 'Uh-oh' to 'Oh-no.'"

Will be interesting to see the retail landscape in March and April. Lots of lay-offs and store closings.



Source: WSJ

Obama: My Only Real Gift

The only thing I wished for I got.

Happy Festivus

Happy Festivus [for the rest of us] A brief History. As told by George Costanza.

Meanings Behind Christmas Traditions

What's behind Christmas traditions – and just how traditional are they? Should be good dinner table fodder amongst the traditionalists, the neo-gnostics, the secularists and the strict consumerists.

Just one of the UK-centric examples:

Why is Christmas Day on 25 December?

The Bible offers no date for the birth of Jesus, which probably was not in the year 1AD, but a few years earlier, and may or may not have been in December. The celebration of the birth of Christ on 25 December dates back to the fifth century, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The date was chosen to coincide with the winter solstice and the Roman festivals associated with the shortest day of the year, which falls between 22 December and 25 December. This was seen as the day when the Romans celebrated Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – "the birthday of the unconquered sun". It was also Jupiter's birthday and, further back, the birthday of his Greek equivalent, Zeus. In Eastern Europe, the various Orthodox churches – the Russian, Greek, Armenian, Serbian et al, follow the old Gregorian calendar, and in which Christmas Day is 7 January There is no Santa Claus in the Gospels.

Source: Independent UK

Holidaze Greetings

From me to you.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck's 25 Most Annoying Moments Of 2008

The IQ of a small stone.



Source: Jezebel

Christmas Personified

Christmas greetings from the GOP. Probably shot last week in Arkansas. Maybe Wasilla?

Henrietta and Merna. Classic



Source: BoingBoing

Cheney Arrogance Should Lead To Investigations

Investigative reporting still exists! The War Criminal exposed:

"Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work."

The small picture is the timing of the outing. Did Dick Armitage actually out Plame some will argue. The big picture is Cheney stops at nothing to get his wars started. Not the Geneva Convention, not the Constitution. Rule of Law was stymied.

Seems Cheney is slipping in his final days, a need to talk to explain his evil just like a common criminal. From authorizing the waterboarding of KSM, to expressing his support for torture, and now this: the ego, the arrogance.

Christmas pardon?

Source: Murray Waas

Hollywood's Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara

Before there was one named stars like Oprah, Bono and Madonna, there was Che.

Che's revolution forced conformity on Cuba as he signed death warrants for independent artists and writers, ordered hunted down by the secret police.

So why the ubiquitous t-shirts? Ironic veneration of tyrants?

Mao but not Hitler?



Source: reason.tv

Al Gore's New Video

Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and the “Reality” coalition have a new ad out today on the myth of “clean coal.”



Good thing Bush and Cheney are getting lumps of coal for Christmas.

Source: http://www.thisisreality.org/

Obama To Use Lincoln Bible

President-elect Obama will take the oath of office using the same Bible upon which President Lincoln was sworn in at his first inauguration, according to the Inaugural Committee.

Though there is no constitutional requirement for the use of a Bible during the swearing-in, Presidents have traditionally used Bibles for the ceremony, choosing a volume with personal or historical significance. President-elect Obama will be the first President sworn in using the Lincoln Bible since its initial use in 1861.

2008 Greek Riots In Pictures

The death of 15-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos in Athens on December 6, 2008, has not been covered that much in the US. These pictures tell quite a massive story.



37 more photos at the link below.

Source: Boston Globe

Putin Brings Holiday Cheer, Russian-Style

Putin, right on time, with that Christmas spirit:

"The era of cheap gas is coming to an end, Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has told ministers from the world's major gas-exporting countries. Mr Putin said the cost of extracting gas was rising sharply, therefore 'the era of cheap energy resources, of cheap gas, is of course coming to an end'."

Russia is the world's largest exporter of gas, so Putin's warning carries weight. The good thing is, Bush looked into his eyes and saw a good man. So we have that going for us.

With oil prices tanking, it will be interesting to see how the world's suppliers scramble to make fake quotas, try to drive up price, then navigate around them. Can they all keep tabs on each other? We're talking Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Me thinks greed will win out.

Source: BBC

iBoobs: Rejected

Nerds need love too.

An application that lets iPhone users jiggle a pair of animated boobs was rejected by Apple, because of some “objectionable content”.

Games where you kill people are OK, shaking some babylons is bad?

The internet would be nowhere if it were not for illicit activities pushing speed, storage and overall usage. Napster made a generation get high-speed cable modems and bigger hard drives. Now think about what porn and gambling did. Vice is nice.

Keith Olbermann's Favorite People Of 2008

Keith Olbermann ran down a list of his favorite people of 2008 Monday night on "Countdown."

Barack Obama:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sarah Palin:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

4 more videos at the link below.

Source: MSNBC

Obama An Elusive Target For GOP

With Obama competently running the country in lieu of Bush the past 2 months, Republicans are finding it hard to be douche bags, raging with hypocrisy.

"Two months after Barack Obama’s election, Republicans are struggling to figure out how — or even whether — to challenge or criticize him as he prepares to assume the presidency."

The GOP knows they have it in them, the ability to pull a 180 and say the opposite of what they used to say to Bush. Support the President, he's our leader, will now be dissent is key, he has to be held accountable. They are pretty much becoming Democrats in their desire for oversight and real leadership.

The only blip on the map has been Rick Warren and the fading moral majority have no problem with out-of-step religious leaders.

Partisan politics will always be, but now we have a leader avoiding strict ideology and making sound decisions and putting quality people in place. Bush divided this country like no other President, Obama is putting it back together.

Before they start targeting Obama, conservatives and Republicans have to figure out who they are. McCain and Palin were defeated, Hannity and Limbaugh are tired, old, worried men, Bush and neo-conservatism is dead.

The GOP is a broken old record: taxes, abortion, guns, identity politics and malice. They need an entirely new philosophy. Maybe read the Constitution for some ideas.

Source: NYT

Palin's Biggest Mistake

Idiot. So much ambition, so little ability.

"The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen... But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message out to the electorate." -Sarah Palin

Every time you opened your pie hole you made anyone with a 70+ IQ wince. Your base was well insulated so you never noticed. Just because you can produce run-on sentences does not mean you are saying anything.

But she really is the ideal Republican: mentally unspectacular, totally out of touch, all surface, no substance, rewriting favorable history hoping no one else catches on.

The last line about talking to reporters helps get your message out. No shit. Thanks for that, Sarah. You rival John Madden in blatant observations and obvious statements.

Continuing on that note of spreading the message, talking to your kid about sex education helps prevent unwanted pregnancies. Same goes for your future in-laws and narcotics. Let them know it's illegal.

Source: Human Events

Republican Capitalism Is Dead

Trickle-down economics is a myth, a fraud, and it's dead. Arianna Huffington seconds that emotion.

"The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil."

Let's end what Ronald Reagan started and Bush finished us off with. Arianna continues:

"It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.

We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame.

In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.

"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."

But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.

Even more sinister is the Federal Reserve. While unregulated markets will tear themselves limb from limb, the Fed sets up the bubbles to acerbate the pain. Throughout history, from the 1929 crash, to 1980s stagflation, to the S&L scandals of the 1990s to Greenspan's sub-prime scam we're living though now, the Fed is at the bottom of it.

Remember, the Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express and was set up as the central bank in 1913 by the banks themselves. Maybe it's time we start looking at changing those 90 year-old institutions.

Source: HuffPo

Jim Cramer: "Where's The Reporting?"

Jim Cramer was on Hardball on Monday. Pretty entertaining to see tragedy up front. We have a class of banking, financial and government officials who are outright criminal.

"Where's the reporting?" asks Cramer, then goes to town on Citigroup's Bob Rubin, reveals that the AIG money went mostly to bailout foreign banks, and finally stands up for auto unions. Is this too little too late for Cramer's new "character" in this bailout fiasco?

He suggests getting the Justice Department out of the Commerce Department [where Bush put it] to actually independently investigate these crimes. The New York Times has given a blueprint on who to go after.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

United States Of Amnesia

Some people have to chill, take a long look at our current situation and try to put the pessimism and cynicism of the past 8 years behind them. Division was Bush's method. We're looking forward now. We're coming together.

"Two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, "Government's not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government's working for me. I feel like it's accountable. I feel like it's transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient." Those are some of the intangibles that I hope people two years from now can claim."

- Barack Obama, president-elect.

2 Pillars Of Bush Adminstration

The two biggest legacies of the Bush Administration:

1. Bush had to destroy free market principles to save the Free Market.

2. Bush [and Cheney] had to destroy the principles of the Constitution in order to protect it, per his oath of office.

via Wikipedia:

"Cognitive dissonance" is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.

A powerful cause of dissonance is when an idea conflicts with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." This can lead to rationalization when a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice. It can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of disconfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.

Alaska: Not Just For Meth

Alaska: It's not just for crystal meth.



People move to Alaska for a reason,they don't care for the lower 48. It is what it is. Not all people are bad, but as Governor, Palin should be looking at her own family and stop palling around with a drug dealers before she starts her "real America" speeches.

Cheney As Snake In The Garden Of Eden

No love lost between these two:

"It's presumptuous to feel sorry for another man. But I feel somewhat -- I feel somewhat badly for him... I think that President Bush and, unlike Vice President Cheney, is, upon reflection beginning to acknowledge some of the serious, if not mistakes, misjudgments that he made."

-- Vice President-elect Joe Biden

Bush was always the Zoolander of the bunch, just a nice face to front the real evil being pushed by Cheney and his counsel. Never asked questions, just did as he was told.

Just remember the Bible story about the snake in the Garden of Eden. His punishment for screwing up the whole paradise situation Adam and Eve had was to walk his remaining years on his belly. A snake already does this!

The moral being true evil just gets to be true evil, no real punishment, everyone else pays the price. Cheney will just live out his days in Wyoming while we toil the Earth.

Quote Of The Day: Gary Ackerman

"Rembrandt was a great artist. His brother Murray, on the other hand, Murray Rembrandt wouldn't paint a house."

-- Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), on Face the Nation, making the case against dynasty politics and appointing Caroline Kennedy to the U.S. Senate.

Obama Appoints Global Warming Experts

NYT Op-ed on Obama's respect for science, a massive departure from Bush's ideology.

"Mr. Obama’s earlier appointments — in particular Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, to run the Department of Energy — these choices solidly affirm Mr. Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.

The broader point, though, is what they say about his appreciation for the processes of science. That was not much in evidence in the Bush administration, some of whose appointees edited and suppressed scientific documents to serve the administration’s political agenda.

As Ms. Lubchenco observes, identifying a problem is not synonymous with solving it. But Mr. Obama has at least surrounded himself with serious scholars of some of the most critical issues of our times."

By just appointing a global warming expert, Obama has already done more for climate change then Bush did in past eight years.

Source: NYT

A Real US Car Ad

2008 Daily Dish Awards

Andrew Sullivan has announced his 2008 Daily Dish Awards.



"Click the links and you can vote for the 2008 Malkin Award, Moore Award, Von Hoffmann Award, Yglesias Award, and Poseur Alert. Also - for the first time - the Hewitt Award and the 'Mental Health Break Of The Year' are on the ballot."

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Cheney: Best Moment Was 9/11

During their contrived interview, host Chris Wallace asks Darth Cheney what was the highlight, the "highest moment", of the last 8 years.

Cheney's answer? 9/11



The best and worst moment was 9/11? Dicky Boy sure had a lot of great moments to choose from, so many of his sterling policies to ponder. Even shooting someone in the face didn't make he list. To be fair he did say it was the most "important" moment, but it was in response to being asked to name his highest moment.

via Daily Kos:

"[I]t tells you something about the darkness of Cheney's mind that this was the first thing to come to his mind when looking for bright spots over the past eight years was 9/11."

Source: Washington Monthly