I’ve been hearing quite a bit of discussion about the fact President Obama is soon to appoint his first Supreme Court nomination. Of course, from right wing Republicans what we’ve heard from the first moment this opening was apparent is that they oppose the President’s nomination (they obviously have been preparing their “fight” since Obama won the election, knowing that he’s going to get at least two members on the court in just his first term). They are against the nomination of a liberal judge who will “legislate from the bench” from one source I was reading, and another said, “we oppose President Obama’s choice of another activist judge who will intrude on the rights of individual Americans.” Now, what is fascinating about both of these comments is that they came from official Republican sources and both of them were made BEFORE ANYONE WAS NOMINATED! I haven’t even tried to get the perspective of the Limbaugh’s and the Hannity’s out there – these Republicans make me sick – they’re in opposition to everything BEFORE IT EVEN HAPPENS! These comments come from the same people who supported and used the court in order to over-rule the will of the people to stop the recount in Florida in December of 2000, thereby handing the 43rd Presidency of the United States to one George W Bush. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As I’ve stated before – the part of that scenario which doesn’t bother me is that Joe Lieberman would have been Vice President had the court stayed out of it like they should have. Now, if you could ask me to name one politician out there who could possibly be as bad a Vice President as Dick Cheney, I would have to say Joe Lieberman. I can’t even remember the debates between Lieberman and Cheney, but considering what has happened since that election, they should go down in infamy. As much as I don’t like George W Bush, I believe with all my being that his Presidency would have been SO MUCH different had he chosen someone else to be his Vice President (and probably so much better for us all – history will show how many of the “culprits” to the Bush administration’s lawbreaking were Cheney appointees – and how many truly HORRIBLE decisions were Cheney decisions). Cheney, AKA Darth Vader, the man who was “lurking” in the background and either overtly or covertly running things during the first 6 years of Bush’s Presidency is showing his true colors as he continues his not so subtle attempt at “whitewashing” the historical record of his term as VP. Many of the documents he felt were essential to keep secret he now wants published, claiming they will prove that torture “works.” Today, I heard excerpts from another interview where he admits to not only authorizing torture, but ordering it to be used. He was explaining the required circumstances which had to exist for “waterboarding” to be appropriate. In essence, once again he admitted in public that he had authorized and encouraged the use of torture, and more importantly – HE IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST REMORSEFUL FOR DOING SO! And, this guy continues to go around attempting to play his part in the Republican’s strategy of undermining the Presidency of Barack Obama.

Cheney, along with Limbaugh – the apparent leader of the Republican party – Hannity, and a host of Republican congressional “leaders,” are trying to convince the American public that either waterboarding is not torture or, if it is, it’s OK for the United States to use it because, well, because…………. because we’re the United States! Wow, WHAT AN INTELLECTUALLY BANKRUPT DEFENSE. Cheney and his cohorts – meaning those who are supporting him – are busily lobbying congress and the Justice department to add fuel to the fire as far as our (the United States) abuses of the Geneva Conventions. There is apparently a justice department memo that is the result of an internal investigation, which slaps the hands of the lawyers who justified what everyone knows is a war crime – apparently using the “If the President does it, it’s not a crime” logic to their argument, that is about to be released and which is being “modified” because of lobbying from the very Bush appointees who are under investigation. That is, people like John Yoo and Jay Bybee have been able to see the results of this investigation and respond to it prior to its being made public. To me, if this is true, it’s just further evidence that this country is “GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET.”

I think the part about this that bothers me the most is that large numbers of “Christians” are supporting the position of Dick Cheney and the others on his “side.” I find this about as repulsive as it gets. All you have to do is read the Bybee memo which describes the “waterboarding” they were doing and then read the definition of torture as per the United Nations conventions WHICH WE WERE INSTRUMENTAL IN GETTING ESTABLISHED AS PART OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, to realize – in just the case of this one “technique,” AND THERE WERE MANY SEEMINGLY AS GRUESOME – the Bush administration committed torture. It is clear that not only the lawyers who “justified” waterboarding and other horrible acts as “legal” are guilty, but both George W Bush and Dick Cheney have admitted on national TV (Cheney multiple times) that they authorized what amounted to WAR CRIMES, David Addington is guilty, Alberto Gonzales is guilty, Donald Rumsfeld is guilty, Condoleeza Rice is guilty, George Tenet (the head of the CIA at the time) is guilty, Karl Rove is probably at least an accessory to the fact, and who knows who else is guilty. For my Christian brothers and sisters out there, there’s no way you can convince me that Jesus would put someone in a coffin size box with a bunch of insects and close the lid for any period of time, let alone extended periods of time – or any number of the other “techniques” in question here!

And, I’ll take it a step further. For all of the people out there who would claim someone with my perspctive is on a partisan “witch hunt” I will say right here and now that if President Obama continues his policy of “looking forward and not backward” he will become guilty. He is REQUIRED under the international law to prosecute when WAR CRIMES are committed if he has knowlege of this. EVERYONE WHO’S NOT GOT THEIR HEAD IN THE SAND IN AMERICA HAS KNOWLEDGE OF THIS! This is not a partisan witch hunt, it is a requirement under international law (not that our own laws should be applied to everyone but high government officials – they should be prosecuted under these laws as well) that War Criminals be PROSECUTED! THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION! And taking the same logic the Marines used on my son when he witnessed someone doing something they shouldn’t have been doing and didn’t report it – if there are members of Congress who knew about this – Nancy Pelosi included – they should have to go home! Charges shouldn’t be filed against them, but they should no longer be Congress men or women. As citizens, we are depending on these people – President Obama and members of Congress – more than anyone else in our country to UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION! That is the oath they take when accepting the responsibility of their office.

So, getting back to my first point this evening, when selecting a Supreme Court justice, I have several “hopes” regarding President Obama. First, I hope that he DOESN’T LISTEN TO REPUBLICANS OR TRY TO BE BIPARTISAN! Their idea of a good judge would be the five judges who voted to decide the 2000 election against the will of the people. And, if the actual vote totals ever become publicly known, EVERYONE WILL KNOW THAT Bush v Gore will go down in history as maybe the WORST decision ever made by the court (as one who firmly believes that abortion is the taking of a human life, I believe this decision is far worse than Roe v Wade for many reasons which there’s not time to get into tonight). Second, knowing the Republicans have already “panned” your choice and are geared up to fight it no matter who it is, Please Mr. Obama don’t try to compromise with them. Give them something to fight about – nominate a judge that is truly going to “get” that the government is not here for the “few” but the “many.” You have to give George W Bush credit for finding two bull-headed pro-business conservatives in Roberts and Alito who will be on the court for many years to come voting on behalf of Bush’s constituency which is largely made up of corporate heads and fundamentalist Christians (please don’t get me wrong here, I’m a Christian – I just have a different perspective on the teachings of Jesus than these guys) – President Obama, nominate a progressive judge that will be counterbalancing these guys FOR YEARS TO COME. And finally, nominate someone who will stand firmly behind the constitution – someone who will vote against the government intruding on the privacy of its citizens (I know this one will be hard for you Mr. Obama, seeing as how you’re still wiretapping us), someone who will never give away the right of habeous corpus, someone who will support three co-equal branches of government and will not tolerate ANYONE refusing to answer subpoenas – ESPECIALLY FROM CONGRESS – and someone who does not adhere to the ridiculously dangerous idea that “If the President does it, it must be legal.”

Fixing the economy is on most people’s minds right now. And, personally, I’m following what is going on in that regard probably more than I should – considering, as a sixth grade teacher, it’s getting close to the end of the year and, as they say on the farm during the hot August summer days, “There’s lots to do!” But, I’ll say this again (If you’ve been on this site before, I’m very passionate about the constitution) the economy will eventually heal no matter what the President does – the question with that is how long will it take to be in a state of “prosperity” again (at least statistically) – but these critical legal precedents, almost all of them the result of the Bush administrations abuses of our constitution, will stand for (possibly) generations to come. My son is in the process of becoming a US Marine (and what a process it is) and how are we going to defend him from being tortured by others, (God forbid) should he be captured on the field of battle, IF WE ARE JUSTIFYING TORTURE? If we don’t do the “right thing” here (and we’re depending on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to make sure that happens) we have added another chapter of SHAME to the history books of the United States. Our citizens are led to believe that we are the country in the world which stands for “HUMAN RIGHTS,” yet we have lawyers telling “interrogators” to have a doctor standing by to give detainees a tracheotomy in order to keep them from dying after being waterboarded – because DYING WOULD BE TORTURE! I honestly can’t believe I’m even feeling compelled to write about garbage like that actually being condoned by our government. The new supreme court justice should be someone who is willing to apply the laws AS THEY ARE WRITTEN to all citizens, he/she should be asked to make his/her views clear on torture and our constitutional guarantees, such as the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments to the constitution (not that other parts aren’t relevent as well), and should be someone who REALLY RILES UP THE REPUBLICANS. If President Obama nominates someone who is palatable to Limbaugh et al (that is, the Republican party) to the Supreme Court, WE ALL LOSE IN THE END!

As I’ve mentioned before, I really feel a bit uneasy giving President Obama “advice” which could be construed as me “pulling” my support from him. The reason I’m so uneasy about this is I don’t see another alternative besides the Republican party – which is really in a pathetic state right now. That being said, there is no doubt that I am leaning toward pulling my support from the President. I’ve been watching politics closely for over 40 years – waiting for someone to FINALLY come along who is not either afraid of or bought off by the huge corporations who have essentially taken control of our system of government. It kind of reminds me of what was called the “Jordan Rules” in the NBA a few years ago when the referrees were clearly tilted toward helping the success of the “Main man” of their league. Michael Jordan was fueling the resurgence in popularity of professional basketball and everyone basically seemed to go along with it because they all profited from the revenue generated through Jordan’s success. Just as we Americans have gone along with the “pampering” of Wall Street because its success seemed to indicate that our economy was “strong.”

We have evolved to the point where the large corporations are generating so much revenue that buying off congress persons is a cheap way to protect their respective places in whatever market they are in. In the process we have propped up corporations which have now been determined to be “too big to fail.” I’m watching the resultant “bailouts,” “rescues,” “bridge loans,” and who knows what will be next as we try to save our system which is essentially a huge bubble that is bursting. I fully understand that President Obama has assumed the highest office in the land in the absolute worst of times to be President. I believe history will determine that his challenges far exceed those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s challenges in the 1930’s. Not only does Obama have the challenge of trying to figure out how to “fix” the problems he inherited, but he has to do so with an opposition party that has no desire whatsoever to participate in the process. To make matters worse, he feels that now is the time to find a way to bridge the chasm that has developed between the two major political parties in this great nation – which, as I’ve stated several times before on this site, I believe to be his major problem.

The part that bothers me the most about what is driving my potential “defection” is that it’s due to issues that shouldn’t even come into play here. The issues of torture, illegal wiretapping, politicization of the Justice Department, lying us into war, and outing a CIA agent among others are legal issues that Obama’s Justice Department should be quietly handling in a way that clearly demonstrates to our own citizens and to the rest of the world that we are a nation of laws. Obama could discreetly direct his Attorney General (he shouldn’t even have to do that – Eric Holder should just investigate fully the allegations of wrongdoing and follow the law regardless of the results with no hesitancy to the question of prosecutions) to treat the investigation of the Bush administration in a “fair and balanced” manner and then focus totally on the “fixing” that needs to be done. He need not make any other statements than those he made during the campaign – that no one is above the law and his Justice Department will enforce our laws fairly and impartially. THAT IS NOT HAPPENING. PRESIDENT OBAMA IS LEAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT THE LAWS DON’T APPLY TO HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. THIS IS VERY BAD!

The real reason I wish he wasn’t coming up short in this regard is that he’s doing some difficult things RIGHT! HE WILL NEED THE SUPPORT OF ALL “PROGRESSIVES” TO COMPLETE SOME OF THESE TASKS! I’m a sixth grade teacher and I believe Obama should be treating these Republicans like sixth graders, which is the way they are acting. For starters, Dick Cheney should be in indefinite “lunch detention.” One of the main reasons the Justice department needs to do its job is to SHUT CHENEY UP! This guy is like the basketball coach who’s playing the refs during the game in order to sway people into thinking the gustapo type actions he was “championing” while Vice President were needed, effective, and legal. We’re all suffering from the actions of Cheney and the others in Bush’s administration and it will continue until we can get some leaders to put them where they belong – in the Prison cell next to Lindy England and the other “grunts” who took the fall for America’s torture policy. It makes me sick to my stomach that President Obama would even allow anyone to think that we will continue this policy in America that our leaders are above the law and just finding scapegoats for all their poor decisions “makes things right.” IT’S TIME FOR CHANGE – THE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!

By even allowing the question of whether or not Bush et al will face acccountability the fracture in support will possibly sidetrack other important legislation. Let me give you an example. A few days ago President Obama announced a plan to stop the offshore tax havens that many of the largest corporations in this country – with the backing of most Republican members of Congress and, I’m sure, a fair number of Democrats – have allowed and almost encouraged. The worst one that I’m aware of in supporting this – now we’re talking about a place where American corporations can shield BILLIONS of dollars in profit from taxes – was Tom Delay. Why Tom Delay is not in jail is a mystery to me and it would not surprise me if he resurfaced as a leader among Republicans (for all their “principles” they tend to support people like Delay, Gingrich, Limbaugh, and others who have terrible records both publicly and privately regarding their own personal “morals”) – I have read in several places how he was a leader in setting up the Cayman Islands as a place for corporations to create “subsidiaries” which would not be subject to American taxes. Some of the companies really abusing this would be GE, Microsoft, many of the drug companies, and probably most companies which do business overseas. I read the other day that one corporation had almost 300 subsidiaries which allowed them to shield something like 75 Billion dollars in profit from taxes! OUCHEEEE!

Cheney’s former corporation Halliburton had the audacity to bilk American taxpayers for hundreds of Billions through no-bid contracts in Iraq and Afganistan and then move its headquarters to Dubai so that it could avoid American taxes. And, of course, Limbaugh and Hannity and the other Republican water carriers will be hammering away at the “socialism” or some other ridiculous false argument to all their “sheep” as the President tries to get these companies to pay their fair share of the tax burden required for our government to function (and of course these companies receive a disproportionate share of the benefits despite their reluctance to pay for them) and it will be very difficult for President Obama to pass this legislation which should be a no-brainer – just like us citizens, corporations should share in the tax burden of this country. I’ve mentioned on this site that I have a couple friends who listen to Limbaugh and watch Fox “News” and it is unbelievable to me the words that come out of their mouths. I work with a guy who has a master’s degree and I just shake my head when I hear the exact words that have become the recent “talking points” of the Republicans as hammered home by the right wing “talkers.” It’s like they have some kind of mysterious hold on otherwise good people – who actually think they’re being informed by these guys. I mean, I listened to Rush Limbaugh the other day talking about the Chrysler auto bailout for a few minutes (that was all I could stomach – I just wanted to hear what he was saying that day) and I heard at least a half a dozen bold faced lies in less than five minutes. And, of course, at this point I couldn’t remember specifically what they were, but in the past I’ve even given proof to one of my friends about some topic we were disagreeing on and he threw it (the proof – an article that I found on the internet in less than a minute) on the ground and started making disparaging remarks about “liberals” – so I’ve just learned to not say anything to them. These people have been BRAINWASHED!

This is what President Obama is up against on everything he tries to do. People like Limbaugh, Hannity, and many others on the Republican side are not too subtle about their distaste regarding having an African descendant as our commander in chief. Remember Bill Clinton – these guys will not let up as long as Obama is President. He’s never going to be the right color for them. That is why it is so important for him to recognize that he should be trying to keep people like me “on board” before expanding the party to Republcans. I’m even OK with the reaching out to them and giving them an opportunity to compromise over legislation – IT’S JUST THAT I’VE SEEN DEMOCRATS TURN THEIR BACKS ON REPUBLICAN LAWBREAKING OVER AND OVER IN MY LIFETIME AND I WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS! I EXPECTED MORE FROM OBAMA! For all of President Obama’s intelligence and seeming wisdom he is wrong to “look forward instead of backward.” The economy will recover eventually from this crisis, but this nation may never recover if we don’t do the right thing regarding the issues of torture and illegal wiretapping. If we sacrifice our principals because of 9/11 the terrorists will have “won.”

In my last post I said “President Obama is doing a great job, but…….,” and what I was referring to was his reluctance to encourage investigations of what everyone knows was lawbreaking, en masse, by the previous administration. Sort of leaving the impression that Presidents don’t “testify” against Presidents – kind of like doctors don’t testify against doctors, lawyers don’t testify against lawyers – while the rest of us essentially get left “holding the bag.” In the instance of the reluctance to hold Bush et al accountable, the reputation of the United States belongs to ALL OF US! So, in protecting the “brethren” President Obama is willing to leave a “stain” on the rest of us that seems pretty much overwhelmingly that “WE” don’t want. I believe eventually these investigations and the truth will come out – whether there is any legal accountability is an entirely different matter. I have suggested that Obama’s reluctance to do this along with his willingness to continue the Bush wiretapping policies stand to undermine his reelection chances in four years (well, I guess it would be more accurate to say three and a half years now). I fully believe that is true.

However, there are other areas which might “undermine” Obama’s Presidency. Of course, he came into office with the most challenging “docket” possibly ever. And, as long as the opposition is today’s version of the Republican party, he will probably be OK. But, I still have an awful feeling about Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. Geithner, if you haven’t been paying attention, is the Secretary of the Treasury and Summers is Obama’s “chief” economic advisor. Geithner devised the “amended” version of the TARP bailout program that was originally put in place by Henry Paulsen of the Bush fiasco. This is the program that took the position that our major banks are “too big to fail” and that their failure would lead to a collapse of our economic system. I was never in favor of this bailout and I’m less in favor of the revised version as I understand it. I keep thinking of the saying “Don’t throw good money after bad.” I know from my own personal experience (on a much smaller scale, of course) this is a very bad predicament to find yourself in. And that, to me, is what is happening with our government regarding the big Wall Street banks whose gambling habits caused this financial mess in the first place.

You could argue, and many have – somewhat convincingly, that the crux of the problem was the removal – over a period of about 25 years – of many Depression era regulations which would have prevented this banking crisis. And, for you Democrats out there, the worst part of that argument is that the repeal of the Glass-Stegall act was a bill signed by Bill Clinton, and at least partially championed by Larry Summers and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin – who used the freedom’s granted by the repeal of this and other regulations to lead CitiCorp into virtual bankruptcy following his tenure in the Clinton administration. Yes, Phil Graham was the co-author of the legislation but there is no denying the part the Clinton people played in the process. With the removal of that regulation, along with others, and combined with the Bush administration’s tendency to ignore regulations that were still in place, we ended up with Wall Street gambling other people’s money away like a runaway train.

That has led to the TARP program which Geithner seems to have modified into a potential major “boon” for private investors (presumably the hedge funds that have been TOTALLY UNREGULATED and that control billions of dollars worth of America’s wealth) where they stand to make huge gains with miniscule investments. The same leveraging of your money theory that got us into this mess in the first place, only the government – ie taxpayers – are guaranteeing that if the losses are significant, they will bear the burden and the “private investors” have a small risk. I believe the private investors put up something like 7.5% of the investment and get 50% of the gain. That may be a great idea, it just sounds “fishy” to me, and considering that both Geithner and Summers have close connections to all the parties on Wall Street who were imploding, I’m not sure President Obama is making a wise choice here. Again, I believe this is one of those things that could “blow up in his face.” Once they have modified this program, then they have ownership of it. And, the American people tend to have a short memory about these things, and something around 50 million Americans voted for a ticket that had Sarah Palin and John McCain on it – so you know that anything is possible here. (I honestly can’t imagine them running this government)

The Republicans look like a thing of the past, and rightfully so, but President Obama needs to remember who’s side he’s on and I’m not sure about this plan to save the Wall Street banks. From what I’ve been able to find out there are still two crises we haven’t dealt with yet. First, there is a credit card crisis looming that could rival the mortgage meltdown, and secondly, there is a significant number of commercial real estate loans that are apparently headed in the same direction as all the sub-prime loans that supposedly were the cause of the present economic crisis. Should that be the case, it appears to me that the government will be out of “bullets” to bail out these banks that seem to have completely lost their “heads” – no pun intended – unfortunately most of their “heads” are still in place – that is, there has to be a limit on how much money the taxpayers can give these guys before we realize they are insolvent. I believe that in the end we’ll find out it would have been cheaper to let them fail, take them over, and once they are functioning again, put them back into private hands – only with new “leaders” and with regulations in place that would prevent a recurrance of their excesses. I’m suspicious of the earnings reported by the banks that suggested they’re making record profits in the middle of this deep recession, and I believe the banking crisis is in no way “behind us.” President Obama would be wise to reconsider having Tim Geithner and Larry Summers on his economic “team.”

Two nights in a row, I’m going to try to keep it short. I got home tonight in time to watch President Obama’s news conference apparently celebrating his first 100 days in office. And I have to say, this was the first time in my adult life that I felt reassured after listening to our President at a news conference. Maybe it’s just the stark difference from the previous President who would have had a difficult time gaining a top grade in my 6th grade English class based on how he butchered the language on a regular basis (especially when he had to “ad-lib”). Obama took all questions, his answers were very thoughtful, and he demonstrated clearly that HE IS IN CHARGE. All reassuring! That all being said, as the late Paul Harvey would have added, “now, for the rest of the story.”

A couple thoughts about what President Obama did (or didn’t) say, while I was listening – forgive me if he talked about this before I turned on the tube. He was concluding what was apparently a barrage of questions about torture and explaining why the United States will not torture in the future and why we shouldn’t have done so in the previous 8 years (I believe the dirty little secret that no one is talking about is that our CIA has been involved in this type of stuff since the 70’s – at least according to Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine”). What President Obama didn’t do was address the question (at least directly) that many have about the accountability “factor” that seems to be missing from much of his innuendo. That is probably by design, and probably wise, but I believe that Obama knows full well there’s going to be accountability for the use of torture and more importantly for the authorization of it right from the President’s desk, whether he wants this or not. If our own Justice department doesn’t take up the “torch” so to speak, some other Justice department will. According to the Geneva Conventions, any country that is a signatore to the Conventions is obligated to seek prosecution in any case where there is clear evidence that torture has been committed. So, while I believe that is going to happen, I just – at this point, as I stated a couple months ago on this site – hope we intend to show the entire world that we will hold our own accountable without help from the Spanish, or anyone else.

There was another interesting “tidbit.” No one asked President Obama about the reality that he is continuing the warrantless wiretapping policy of the Bush administration and that he has stealthily let it be known that he “doesn’t want to give up that power.” Again, as I’ve stated before, THAT IS A POWER THAT HE DOESN’T HAVE!!! The question posed asked Obama about the use of the “State Secrets” defense regarding impending lawsuits, a couple of which involved the Bush use of illegal wiretapping. President Obama neatly sidestepped the issue by saying that Attorney General Eric Holder and his White House Counsel were reworking the State Secrets policy (I’m not sure if that’s the appropriate word) so that it can be less of a hindrance to legitimate lawsuits. Unfortunately, the subject of the FISA law that President Obama promised to “redo” or “fix” once in office never came up, and he now has the defense of “There’s a lot on my plate” to allow him to inconspicuously keep this terrible intrusion on our right to privacy in effect.

Please don’t get me wrong – for the most part I believe Obama is doing a wonderful job as President – maybe I just got used to complaining when President Bush was in office. But, I believe with all my heart that because Bush was so wrong about so many things, and we have a group of Republicans who are running around essentially claiming we should still be doing those things, that we need to make sure we CLARIFY THIS IS A COUNTRY “RULED BY LAWS AND NOT MEN!” The idea we have publicized what happened and have promised it won’t happen again means NOTHING to these people. If you don’t believe me, just take a moment or two to listen to Dick Cheney as he runs from one Fox “news” show to another defending all that was wrong with the Bush administration. And you’ve got the Hannity’s, the Limbaugh’s, the Boehner’s, and a bunch more falling in line (like Republicans have a tendency of doing). If the lawbreakers of the Bush administration are not punished – through legal prosecutions where appropriate – THESE GUYS WILL BE BACK! (each time this group comes back it is worse than the previous time) President Obama himself warned about “writing off” the Republican party – which some are doing now that Arlen Specter has given the Democrats an imaginary 60 vote majority in the Senate. I totally agree with him which leads me to my thought of the day: President Obama’s doing a great job, but we can’t move forward without looking backward!

I wasn’t going to write tonight, but I got home from school and I saw on the TV that Arlen Specter had “jumped” from the Republican party to the Democratic party – thereby bringing joy to the Democrats in anticipation of having the so-called filibuster proof majority in Congress. I just had to comment on this before all the giddiness settles down. And, before I do, I need to remind anyone who might happen by this way that I’m no “fan” of the Republicans. In fact, I’ve been suggesting for several months now that maybe it’s time for another “party” to emerge as the challengers to the Democrats – because I fully believe that we need two parties to make this system work. It’s just that the Republicans have backed themselves into such a “marginalized” corner that I’m not sure they are anything more than a bunch of whiners anymore. Getting back to Spector’s move “to the left.”

Ha, Ha! If there’s anyone out there reading this who’s following politics lately you fully realize that Arlen Specter didn’t move anywhere. He just made a calculated political decision based on the realities of his position in his own party. This guy is no “principalled” politician who’s had enough of the garbage of the right wing. It is true that he’s always been more on the moderate side of things, but the guy has proven over and over, at least while I’ve been watching, that his rhetoric will sometimes make sense, but in the end he votes with the whackos on the right. He did this over torture, wiretapping, and many other issues of importance that came before the judicial committee of the Senate – when you could tell that he didn’t agree with his party – but voted with them anyway. However, the Republicans expect you to walk in “lockstep” 100% of the time, and when Spector voted for President Obama’s stimulus package – that was it for their “right wing” (which, if you’ve been paying attention is in control and is destroying the party as I used to know it). It was kind of funny to hear Michael Steele criticize Specter for his “liberal voting record,” as he was trying to put a good face on this from the Republican point of view (this Steele dude is a real “piece of work”).

Steele’s comments were as absurd as Specter’s as he tried to explain what he was doing. And the joy among Democrats, I’m predicting here and now, will be shortlived. I believe Specter will be a good Democrat on the lines of one Joe Lieberman. For once, I find myself in agreement with the bulk of the Republicans in Congress. Specter’s decision was TOTALLY A PENNSYLVANIA decision! And, personally, I hope it backfires on him. He wants to be re-elected to a 7th term in the Senate and HAS NO CHANCE TO WIN THE PRIMARY AS A REPUBLICAN! Now the Democrats have welcomed him with open arms and are making all kinds of promises to “campaign for him.” This makes me a bit sick to my stomach. Pennsylvania is a large and good state. Somehow, I believe they can come up with a better candidate on the “left” than Arlen Specter. Talk about your political gamesmanship. The guy sees that he’s going to face an uphill battle in the Republican primary (because he voted for the stimulus package – which he must not have too much confidence in or he would be willing to run on that vote as a vote that helped Pennsylvania out of the recession) and he makes the switch – trading his principals (if he had any) for having Democrats promise to campaign for him in the Pennsylvania primary in 2010.

And, I have to say that – while I understand what a dirty “game” politics is – I was disappointed that President Obama was leading the charge about saying he would campaign for Specter. This is the kind of “crap” that goes on in Washington DC that keeps these guys in office until they need walkers to get from their apartments to work. Specter’s got to be in his mid to late 70’s AND IT’S TIME FOR “NEW BLOOD.” I really hope the Democrats rethink their “joy” here. Don’t expect this guy to fall in line and get you that 60th vote everytime you need it. He is going to do whatever he thinks is best for Arlen Specter at the time he makes his decisions – that is his “track record” and I don’t see any reason for it to change. I realize that Democrats feel that some of the “landmark” legislation needs to get passed THIS YEAR if it’s going to be passed at all, but I believe that is faulty thinking. And, I hope all the hub bub over this doesn’t get the national attention off of what it should be on which is making things right regarding the illegal activities (not only torture, but wiretapping, outing a CIA agent, politicizing the justice department, refusing congressional subpoenas, and lying in front of Congress – to name some of them) of the Bush administration. Arlen Specter aside, this nation will not be whole again until there’s accountability for Bush/Cheney et al! And that will not happen if Democrats get side-tracked!

This past weekend I started to think that 125 posts was plenty and that I should just start listening to a mellow music station when I’m driving around in my car and stop watching and reading the news in order to stop being so upset by what our leaders are doing. Then, it was like a strike from heaven, I remembered my granddaughter, thought about my grandson who’s invitro, thought about my beautiful daughters and my son who is soon to graduate from Marine boot camp, and I remembered that is what I did from about 1970 until my first granddaughter was born. I just looked the other way as one US administration after another was purging this nation of the very values that most of us had come to take for granted. And they’ve been doing it in such a way as to make it almost unnoticeable. Kind of like as winter comes on each day gets a degree or so colder until when the dead of winter finally hits, it’s not pleasant, but you’ve been prepared and you don’t notice the cold as much. You’re kind of used to it. As you can see, I’m going to continue writing!

The one thing that is very clear to me is that the government problems have been created in a bipartisan manner. I am no fan of Bill Clinton, I often think that if it was my daughter that was an intern and ………… well, I won’t go there, but let me just say that I don’t appreciate the guy. The last President that I have any respect for was Jimmy Carter, and if you’re like some of the people I know who get their information from Rush Limbaugh and those of his ilk, you probably think Carter was a terrible President. I believe he was a good President among a bunch of terribly greedy self-serving people. And Washington hasn’t changed much since then. Carter was followed by Reagan and I could go on and on about Reagan, but the point for tonight is that, in my view, the tremendous “stripping” of government regulation began under Reagan. And, don’t forget, Reagan needed a lot of Democratic votes to get his agenda passed. I don’t believe he was the staunch “conservative” today’s Republicans would like to remember him as, but he instituted the philososphy that “government is the problem.” George HW Bush followed him and didn’t change much – at least in the sense that he pushed us farther into debt and participated in the deregulation of government “movement” albeit, at least as I remember it, to a lesser degree.

Then came Clinton, and while I was happy to see the federal government reach a place of surplus during his years, the stripping of government regulation accelerated during his term in the 1990’s. This included the incredibly stupid move of reversing the Glass-Stegall act of 1933. The result of the Clinton years – in conjunction with the height of Alan Greenspan’s term as head of the Federal Reserve – was a nation that was finding creative ways to lead its people into debt, both publically and privately. Many of the credit schemes that brought us down during the past couple of years were spawned during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. You couple that with a government that was cutting taxes while sending American troops into “harms way” in multiple places and the table was “set” for what could still become the worst financial disaster in our history. I know that many people think we’ve hit the “bottom,” and I surely hope they are correct, but I have grave concerns about this. And, if we go into another tailspin on Wall Street, it could be like someone not taking enough anti-biotics to cure a virus. When it comes back the second time it comes back much fiercer than the original “version.”

On top of all that George W Bush put one person after another into leadership roles of government agencies with the clear agenda to undermine the very agency they were heading. The result was one disaster piled on top of another, one failure after another, until the system essentially was coming apart at the seems when President Obama stepped in. I, for one, have great hope that President Obama succeeds and ends up one of our great Presidents. When he took office I felt fairly confident that he would. It was apparent that the opportunity was (is) there and he has the intellectual capacity to do so. And I’m still hoping and I still believe it may happen. However, (OK, I know what you’re thinking – here comes more whining) – I can’t think of a better way to say this but, here comes more whining! I’m very concerned for President Obama and I don’t see his first 100 days as such a success as his staunchest supporters. I believe it is important that we don’t fall into the same trap that Republicans did under GW Bush and just rubber stamp everything – in an attempt to make it look like they didn’t make any mistakes. At least with Obama, I’ve already heard him say that he makes mistakes – refreshing – but there are some directions he’s leading the government that look too much like “deja vu all over again” to me, that is of major concern.

Let me take the economy, for example. I’m VERY CONCERNED that we’re going back to “business as usual” already. First of all, I’m very skeptical that the same banks that led us into this financial “meltdown” are now reporting record profits – in the face of an economy that is still clearly in the “tank.” These financial institutions have been allowed to get way too big, way too powerful, and WAY TOO “IMPORTANT” for the good of all of us. And to think that the executives of these corporations are worth multi-million dollar salaries on top of multi-million dollar bonuses is just clear evidence of what the deregulation of the past 25 years has done to our economy and our nation. I fully realize that some Republicans think that anyone who doesn’t believe these guys should get “whatever they can” are “socialists.” In fact, a couple posts ago, I mentioned that I have a good friend who I can’t even talk to anymore who listens to Limbaugh everyday, is a true “blue collar” guy, and who will defend these excessive, greedy, salaries at the expense of a friendship – because he’s “sick of the liberals who believe in class warfare!” The Republicans have brainwashed the very people who are damaged by this agenda of greed to support it – passionately.

When I listen to these Republicans who believe that people like me are socialists (I might be, haven’t thought about it that much) two things strike me as very interesting. First, they HATE Barrack Obama (I suspect because he’s Black, but I can’t prove that) and second, they don’t see his policies as anything resembling those of George W Bush. Well, in some ways I guess that’s obvious, but in regards to Wall Street and the financial markets, I’m not sure I’m seeing that much difference. Timothy Geithner, as I understand it, was right in the middle of the Wall Street collapse as the head of the New York Fed during the last five years of GW Bush’s administration. And Larry Summers, Obama’s “economic advisor” was right in the middle of the Clinton deregulation policy and has some serious “baggage” regarding the very financial markets that they’re trying to return to “health.” What I’m trying to get to here is that I don’t feel too good about the Obama economic policies vis-a’-vis the Wall Street institutions which have led us to the brink of national bankruptcy. My fear is that the government “bailouts” will prop up Wall Street allowing the very people who created this crisis to continue as if nothing happened (I understand that the bailouts were originated via Bush/Paulsen, but I don’t see much difference with Obama/Geithner).

It has been reported that many of the banks are raising the salaries of their executives already. These are people who produce one scheme after another as to how to make money by gambling with other people’s money. They figure out how to take borrowed money and use it to borrow more money, and it gets into a cycle that has produced one “bubble” after another for the bulk of my adult life – basically the past 25-30 years. I can tell you that when I was a young man in the 60’s and 70’s it was not uncommon for the President of the local bank to live on the same street as the guy who worked at the Paper Mill. Banks loaned money to people for the purpose of running a business, buying a car, or buying a home – among other things. People actually paid off their homes and put money in the bank when they got paid. I don’t remember credit cards. Now, I’m kind of backward, but the credit card phenomenom seems to me to have “mushroomed” in the past 10-15 years. I got my first credit card when I was 45 years old and now I have several cards that I haven’t even called the number which is required to activate them because I’ve figured out that I got “sucked in” to the 0% scams of the past 8 or 10 years which has left me with at least a half a dozen credit card accounts (this is a bit embarrassing, but fortunately I can say that they all have zero balances) which I have no intention of using. My point is that these banks have used the deregulated markets to “push” their products into many places where they don’t belong. I’m very fortunate to have paid off all of the cards I got before this crisis hit, but I know people who had balances which went to 30% interest at the whim of the credit card company. And with the blessing of the government.

Credit Card companies make about a third of their profits from late fees and penalties and the federal government, during the Bush years and with the blessing of Democrats, passed a bankruptcy bill that prevents consumers from being able to “zero out” their debts when declaring bankruptcy. Now, I’m not supporting the idea that people should be able to run up huge credit card debt and then just declare bankruptcy and it is all wiped away – but I can tell you, if they could, you’d see a lot more discipline on the part of the credit card companies when they issue the cards. I’M STRAYING FROM MY POINT – so I’ll try to gather myself. What I’m trying to say is that I fear that Obama is leading us right back to where we were. Like maybe trying to relive the “Clinton years” – from an economic perspective. I, FOR ONE, DON’T WANT TO GO BACK THERE! I would much prefer that we “buck up” and work our way out of this mess without allowing these Wall Street firms to escape accountability for their excesses and without trying to return to the “Clinton economy.”

Keep in mind, Robert Rubin was Clinton’s treasury secretary – he led CitiCorp right into the tank – Geithner, as mentioned above, was right in the middle of the Wall Street meltdown, as was Summers. Hiring these guys to “fix” Wall Street’s problems is like hiring the Fox to fix the henhouse or hiring a druglord to keep watch over the evidence room at the police station. It’s looking like people are starting down the “slippery slope” of measuring our economy’s health by the Dow Jones Industrial average AGAIN – and, we’re not hearing nearly enough about the travails of the middle class working families which are the true backbone of this nation. I have stated in previous posts my disagreement with President Obama regarding his continuance of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping, his reluctance to prosecute clear violations of our laws by members of the Bush administration, his hesitancy in bringing troops home from Iraq (it’s 100 days and I haven’t heard of one troop reduction yet), his apparent continuation of the Bush policies in Afganistan, and now, I’m disagreeing with his continued “propping up” of the Wall Street banks (while apparently leading Chrysler and General Motors into bankruptcy). As I said earlier, I believe President Obama has the opportunity to be a great president, but at the same time, if a lot of this stuff “blows up in his face” the opposite could be true. Make no mistake, Osama bin Laden is not hoping for Obama’s success. If he see’s an opportunity to further destroy America he will jump on it. We have responded to him for seven years in the stupidest way possible and it will take courageous leadership to get us going on what all the polls I’m asked to give my opinion to call “the right track.” I don’t believe we are yet on the “right track” and I believe this country is EXTREMELY fragile and vulnerable at this point in time. Our best interest will not be served by continuing the policies that got us to this place. I don’t know how President Obama can change course at this point, but it feels like to me that “Business as usual” on Wall Street, would be a HUGE mistake!

First off tonight, I have to say once again that I’m really hoping President Obama succeeds. And the more I listen to Republicans, the more I think he’ll succeed, if for no other reason, these Republicans are getting scarier and scarier. Tonight, for example, as he was defending the torture pracitces of the United States, I saw a clip of Rush Limbaugh actually slapping himself in the face and saying something like, “There, I’m torturing myself.” As if the torture techniques that have been in the news lately amount to a little slap in the face. These Republicans would be laughable, if it wasn’t so disgusting what we all, as a nation, are going through because of them. They had the opportunity to blame this stuff on Bush/Cheney and take the “high road,” but they’ve chosen to “fight” no matter how absurd their position is. I mean, these guys (meaning the remaining Republicans in “power”) are pathetic!

That all being said, I’m still feeling the urge to give President Obama some advice. Now, I know how presumptuous that is and I know that there is no chance that he’s going to even hear my advice let alone listen to it. However, I’m expecting it to make me feel better just giving it to him, and basically, that’s my purpose for writing in the first place. My previous couple of posts were essentially aimed at the reported decision by the Obama administration to “look forward and not back,” thus allowing the torturers of the Bush administration to “scate” and avoid anykind of accountability for clear violations of international law. The worse part of that plan, to me, was the fact that these are laws that state right in them that choosing not to prosecute isn’t an option. That is to say, if and when a country is aware of illegal torturing they are obligated to prosecute the offenders. That is why the judge in Spain was preparing to indict several of the Americans who were responsible for authorizing this heinous program. Oh yes, and by the way, if you think – as Limbaugh apparently does – that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” in question amounted to a slap in the face, then you haven’t read any part of the available information that has come out.

If you’ve seen the pictures that surfaced from Abu Ghraib in Iraq during the early part of the Iraq occupation, you have a better idea of what we’re talking about (and I’m still curious why these Republicans seem to be OK with a small number of Army “grunts” sitting in military brigs for Abu Ghraib, while the men who ordered them to do it are walking free). As disgusting as those pictures were, much of what is in the news now is far worse from the point of view of the “health” of the victim (I hate to call some of these people victims because some of them are genuinely criminals of the worse kind – but our CIA and those in the Bush administration that perpetrated this horrible scheme have effectively turned them into victims). There have been reports that some of the people “interrogated” have died, which turn the interrogators into murderers – should all this end up in an impartial courtroom. I believe what the Republicans are trying to do at this point is make sure that there is no possibility of an impartial courtroom as one way to get people like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Judge Bybee, George Tenet, and others (possibly including President Bush himself) off. So, essentially what I’m saying here is that President Obama doesn’t have the legal “right” to “excuse” these international crimes, in fact just the opposite – he’s compelled to seek justice for the people who have been tortured.

Evidently, President Obama is beginning to come to his senses. Yesterday, I heard reports – and listened to comments from the President – that implied he’s going to “allow” his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to decide where this investigation should go. Of course, that is where this should have been right from the start. Obama should have stayed completely out of this, at least publicly, while in private urging Holder to do the right thing. And, at this point, I don’t believe our government has any option but to have a thorough investigation of all the allegations which I believe will ultimately end up with some members of the Bush administration facing prosecution. Additionally, I understand why President Obama went to the CIA and assured them that anyone who “followed these orders” will not be prosecuted, but I totally disagree with what he did. As I stated in an earlier post that is a VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE! Were the Germans who “just followed orders” at Auschwitz innocent? Was the Japanese soldier that was prosecuted after WW II for waterboarding Americans innocent because he was “just following orders?” I could go on with the examples of why this is a totally wrong position for Obama to take. WHAT HE NEEDS TO DO IS GET OUT OF THE WAY AND LET THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM NO MATTER HOW IT TURNS OUT!

If I was talking to President Obama right now I would say to him almost exactly what he said at the CIA – something like “It’s alright to acknowledge mistakes, that’s how we learn.” OK, Mr. Obama, you’ve made some pretty egregious mistakes here, especially for a constitutional law expert. Please stop worrying about whether everyone’s happy or not. With every decision you make someone’s going to be unhappy. What we need to see from you is CONSISTENCY! AND YOU WERE ELECTED AS A PROGRESSIVE – YOU NEED TO ACT LIKE A PROGRESSIVE! It is obvious you’re trying to take a “pragmatic” approach to everything – and there’s some instance where that is appropriate – but not with our constitution and our legal system. THAT IS WHAT REALLY BROUGHT DOWN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION! Don’t continue to do this, or you will be having similar problems. Get away from all of this stuff publicly, and privately encourage your AG to regain the confidence of the American people in the Justice Department by demonstrating that – as you have said – IN AMERICA, NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! That would be change that we could all (well, except Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Cheney, etc.) believe in!

THIS CHANGE (letting AG Holder investigate the wrongdoing) NEEDS TO HAPPEN FORTHWITH! Mr. President, trust me on this one – there is a whole bunch of more “stuff” that is going to be coming out about the Bush administration. Ultimately, we are going to be hearing the truth about Cheney “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson – now, you might not think that’s so important – but if you want to help the CIA out, that would be a good place to start. THAT IS AN UNBELIEVABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE PRECEDENT. We don’t hear much of an “uproar” over that anymore, but that, as you know Mr. Obama, was a treasonous act. CIA agents feeling like politicians will disclose their identities if they don’t “agree” with them is a far more dangerous precedent than a few agents being prosecuted because they committed war crimes that they clearly understood were illegal – to the point that they actually requested the phony legal documents “justifying” their actions. Also, I’ve mentioned my dissatisfaction many times with the continuation of the warrantless wiretapping policies. THIS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED! It is only a matter of time until this becomes a major issue, possibly on the same magnitude of the torturing. When sufficient numbers of Americans realize that you, President Obama, are allowing their phone calls to be monitered – THEY ARE GOING TO BE VERY UNHAPPY. And this is a potential issue that the Republicans could turn right around in your face after prosecutions for the torturing. PRESIDENT OBAMA, GET AWAY FROM THE WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING AS WELL.

There is a lot more that we’re going to find out besides the stuff I’ve mentioned tonight and have been talking about for a couple months now (if that sounds like me patting myself on the back, well, I believe it is – now that I give it a smidgeon of thought). However, the news in this realm isn’t all bad. There hasn’t been much discussion about the FBI in all this, but they could come out of this “saga” as the “bright spot” regarding our government. If you don’t remember who Robert Meuller is, he was the FBI director during the “reign of Bush.” He was the man who went with Assistant Attorney General Comey to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft when Alberto Gonzales and Bush’s chief of staff (his name escapes me at the moment – more evidence that I should keep my day job :o) tried to get Ashcroft to sign a document giving legal justification to the illegal wiretapping that the Bush administration was doing. He showed then that he was (is) a man of courage and conviction and he did the same regarding the torture issue. Some of his agents questioned the “tactics” being used early on by the CIA and Pentagon interrogators – and he orderred them to leave the room, basically, while this stuff was going on. ESSENTIALLY, HE REFUSED TO PARTICIPATE OR ALLOW HIS AGENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. He set the example of why the “I’m just following orders” excuse is a bunch of “bull.” These guys all knew what they were doing was against international law – and they did it anyway. So, getting back to my advice to President Obama: Just run the government, work to pass the historic legislation that’s “on the table,” and let Eric Holder and the Justice department investigate the Bush administration with no preconceived agenda. And, let the investigations of the torturing, illegal wiretapping, and the other actions of the Bush administration which were in violation of the law be guided by a strict adherance to our legal principles. Prove once and for all that “In America, no one, not even the President, is above the law!”

If you’ve read any of my recent posts you’ll know that I’m not too happy with President Obama, despite the fact I sent him money periodically during the 2008 election campaign. This is making me very uneasy, because I don’t like adding to the criticism – which includes an unending supply of ridiculous criticism from the Republicans who so much are disgusting to me. And, it’s not that I don’t think a vibrant Republican party is important, it’s just that until they totally repudiate the “platform” they’ve been operating under for the past 30 years, I am hoping they go the way of the dinosaurs. However, we need a strong party to stand in opposition to the Democrats and I’d be OK with it being called the Republican party if people like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin weren’t the national face of it. There used to be Republicans, at least this is how I remember it, who stood for (REALLY) family values, balanced budgets, law and order, and a peaceful foreign policy (ie Dwight D Eisenhower to name one). Richard Nixon “muddied” the waters with his organized crime attitude, and it hasn’t changed much since. The part that really bugs me about the Republican party is how they started a calculated propaganda campaign during the Reagan years and haven’t let up since.

This has created a (thank God) shrinking base who listen to the likes of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others who I can’t name because I got sick of listening to Limbaugh long, long ago and once I realized they were part of the Republican caucus and operating on the priciple that if they say the lie over and over enough with enough different mouths saying it, a sufficient number of people will believe what they are saying is true and they will then develop what they envisioned as the “Permanent Republican majority.” And they would have pulled it off had they come up with someone other than George W Bush as their “color bearer” in 2000. I’m sure, at this point, that they feel they picked the wrong Bush and I’m just as sure that they’ve got Jeb Bush sitting in the “wings” ready to go as soon as the collective memory of the American people has forgotten GW. Personally, I hope that day never comes, but I believe it is the most likely scenario of a Republican return to the White House – and then a continuation of their original plan. I recently had lunch with a friend (probably former friend at this point) who has been listening to Limbaugh for years. This guy’s a professed Christian, yet he has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Limbaugh view of things. I can no longer even stand to talk to him, because our conversations always stray onto politics, and the garbage they’re spewing just makes me sick to my stomach.

I started writing on this blog because I was so frustrated with things the Bush administration was doing – and time and time again, much to my dismay, being justified by Limbaugh, Hannity, and the paid mouthpieces of the Republican party – and according to their plan further justified by people like my friend who believe they are informed by listening to this crap. I guess what bothers me almost as much is that when you have people who are on the public airwaves spewing propaganda that comes right out of the caucus of a political party, you are endangering the republic itself. And the people listening to it don’t get it and you can’t even talk to them. I have another friend who I teach with who watches Fox “News” and listens to Limbaugh, this guy is a teacher for God’s sake, and he is so sucked in that he can’t see the problem with what they’re doing. When I was much younger, it was my impression that you couldn’t put partisan rhetoric on the public airwaves if it was affiliated with a political candidate or party in any way. What these guys will say is that “There’s ‘liberal’ pundits on the airwaves as well, which is true – but, as far as I know, none of the ones I listen to are participating in the Democratic caucuses. If they are, they are just as wrong as Limbaugh and the other “right wing talkers.”

The progressive “talkers” I’ve listened to are up front about their bias, they don’t claim to be “news” reporters, and they don’t follow the “company line” of the Democratic party. It should be a bit disconcerting to every American when Republican politicians are cowering down to Limbaugh when they let something slip about how vile he is, and then when he attacks them on the air, you see them running to his show to apologize like a dog running with its tail between its legs. How did the Republican party, the party of Eisenhower, Dirksen, Goldwater, Hatfield, and Gerald Ford – among others – get to the point that they are answering to a radio talk show host who has been openly racist, who illegally used drugs, who has had numerous failed marriages (between him, Gingrich, and Guiliani they’re approaching double figures)? And I’m not trying to stand in judgement of any of these men as individuals (although I’m sure it sounds that way) – but think of the criticism these guys have put out about Bill Clinton and others about their personal “habits.” I just feel the Republican party is hurting if these are their leaders – and I know that they are going to criticize President Obama for EVERYTHING he does NO MATTER WHAT! They are trying to undermine his presidency because if he succeeds, they are going to be the minority party, AT BEST (I still think there is a chance, with the irrational behavior they are putting forth, for another party to emerge) for the next generation, and possibly longer. The Republican party needs A COMPLETE SLATE OF NEW LEADERSHIP and they need to repudiate the actions of the Bush “regime,” and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others. These people have made a fortune as the Republican “water carriers” for the past 25 years or so, and the result is a nation that is near bankruptcy, mired in two unwinnable occupations, and despised by almost the entire rest of the world. And these guys could care less, because they believe that our nuclear arsenal is enough to keep us in power indefinitely, ughhhh!

Ok, why am I saying all this? Well, despite the fact that these Republicans are, and are going to be, in President Obama’s face – I believe we still have an obligation to avoid doing the same thing they did in reverse. Republicans allowed President Bush to do whatever Dick Cheney wanted, carte blanche, during the six years they held the majority in both houses of Congress – while he cut taxes during wartime (a first in American history), initiated war with a country which had not attacked us (another first in American history), threw away billions of taxpayer dollars on no-bid contracts in Iraq to companies that Cheney and Rumsfeld were CEO’s of prior to their terms in the Bush administration, outed a covert CIA agent, attempted to destroy one federal bureau after another, and – among other things – warrantlessly wiretapped US citizens and practiced heinous torture techniques in the NAME OF ALL OF US! I just can’t see taking the same approach with President Obama – and I don’t think others are either. I’ve already seen one “Special Comment” from Keith Olberman aimed directly at President Obama, and I’ve heard other Democrats criticizing him – in fact, some of President Obama’s loftiest aims could get derailed by Democrats in Congress. However, President Obama is so much of an improvement over GW Bush that I just feel awkward criticizing him and, in one post, suggesting that he is showing weakness in dealing with Republicans (I even used the word cowardice).

The reality is that my frustration was with the political process in this nation – one that is top-heavy in lobbyists for large corporations and politicians who have taken what amounts, in my mind, to bribes from one corporation after another – disguised as campaign “donations.” (and, believe me, I fully understand that this “bribery” is one thing in our system that is bi-partisan) My disagreement with my friend was spurred when he essentially called me a socialist (which really wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t framed in the Limbaugh rhetoric) because I believe that corporate heads taking salaries in the range of $50 million/year is absurd – and worse than that, paying multi-million dollar bonuses to bankers who have caused Billions in losses which not only affect the solvency of their banks, but threatens the financial health of our nation is just plain wrong in my view (and these guys get really worked up when they use the word “liberal” to criticize someone like me – again, buying into the Limbaugh et al hate message). I just don’t think these people (the CEO’s and other execs) are worth it, and I don’t believe the “trickle down” theory that my friend and millions of other “ditto heads” have bought into has done anything more than literally ruin our economy while putting us, as a nation, into incredible debt. And he’s a “blue collar” guy – yet so gullible as to believe that our economy works best with a very few earning a disproportionate amount of the “pie.”

So, while the Republicans criticize President Obama for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, for trying to “fix” the economy that was virtually ruined by George W Bush (and boy, in talking to my friend, I can see that these Republicans are really struggling with taking ownership of this economic collapse – I saw the writing on the wall when they were blaming the recession on Obama a couple months before he took office – they always can find someone besides themselves to blame for the disastrous state we find ourselves in – no matter how absurd their claims are – I believe they continue to do this because they know they have a significant number of their “base” who will believe anything they say without seeking corroboration) I will continue to criticize President Obama as long as he continues the Bush policies I expected him to change when I supported him. The continuation of the warrantless wiretapping should be, in my mind, an area where peole like my friend and I could come to agreement. As I stated in a previous post, the Republicans will stop at nothing to support the NRA position that American families should have the right to have an arsenal of assault weapons at their disposal while looking the other way while we give up our right to privacy clearly guaranteed by the fourth amendment to the constitution. It is very frustrating for me to feel that both the Republican party and sufficient numbers of the Democratic party woiuld stand by and watch this guarantee undermined.

And then there is the torture issue. I can tell you that I just won’t be able to support President Obama again if he stands by his decision that torture is legal in the United States. It is beyond my belief that he would say we’re not going to hold those accountable who practiced it (keep in mind that today it was announced that the CIA waterboarded two “enemy combatants” a total of 266 times in the period of a month – for one of them it was like 6 times per day – AND THIS IS OK, BECAUSE “THE CIA IS KEEPING US SAFE!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Everyone in the whole wide world knows what we have done – and believe me, it’s not helping to keep us safe. There are a whole bunch of people who REALLY HATE US because of the actions of our CIA (and, of course, the Bush administration which authorized and encouraged this behavior). My son is a member of the US Marines and is likely to be put into harms way during his term of duty. Should he get captured and tortured, can you imagine the international reaction when President Obama demands justice for someone committing a war crime? Despite my sincere hope that Obama succeeds, I just can’t go along with this decision. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that we know what these people did (remember the pictures from Abu Ghraib? Do you really think that was an isolated incident? If you do, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you!), the fact that we know it violated our own laws as well as international laws, and the worst part is that President Obama is a constitutional law scholar – this makes President Obama an accesory as far as I’m concerned. I don’t believe he has the legal right to just say “We’re not going to prosecute these atrocities – we’re just not going to do ithem anymore.” He is a very intelligent man, but that is short sighted thinking to the absurd level. By tackling this problem as he has, what he is really saying is that we DO TORTURE! We’re just not going to do it for the next four or eight years while I’m President. The next President will have the option to do it, because in essence President Obama has set the precedent that keeping the CIA happy is more important than the legal system that has held this nation together for over 200 years. So, as much as I hate to be criticizing President Obama, regarding torture and warrantless wiretapping, he deserves it!

Tonight I’m hoping to write the shortest post of the (in my mind amazing number of) 120+ previous posts. As I’ve mentioned a few times, when I started to write, I expected a few – at the most. I didn’t expect anyone to find this place in the “web universe” and have been amazed that there’s usually about 20 of you reading this each night (listen to me, all personal and such, as if I have any clue as to who you are – maybe some day someone will register and make a comment! :o). Please, if you read this post and haven’t read the previous one, read it. I was really charged up as I wrote it, and I believe we (assuming you’re of the progressive – didn’t we use to call it liberal? – mindset that is apparently mine) somehow need to get through to President Obama before it’s too late. Tonight I had a horrible thought. I’ve always pictured the idea of Sarah Palin as President as ludicrous. However, if Obama turns off enough progressives – and it could happen, quickly I might add, despite his seemingly high poll numbers (remember, Bush was close to 90% after 9/11) the alternative is scary. Can’t you just imagine Sarah Palin representing us all trying to “fix” our economy, or dialoguing with world leaders at places like the G-20 Summit? I can tell you, the thought of that makes me feel like I’m going to ……. well, I’ll let you figure that out on your own.

Here’s what’s bothering me tonight. I’m a school teacher and have been for several years. I teach 6th grade in a small city’s version of an “inner city” school. Now, if you’ve never been in a small room with 25-30 11 year old kids, many of whom are running things at home and could care less about an education, you’ll just have to try to imagine what it’s like. I won’t go into a lot of details, but I think there’s one important point I’ve learned that would serve President Obama well as he’s trying to “deal” with Republicans. The NUMBER ONE MISTAKE that I’ve seen teachers make, over and over, during my years in the classroom, is trying to be “friends” with the students. IT IS A SURE RECIPE FOR DISASTER! When my students say things like “you’re mean” or “you give too much homework” or “that’s not fair” I think, “hmmmm, maybe I’m doing something right.” I’ve learned that when I make the hard choices, I’m clear and honest with them, and I “stick to my guns” with my decisionmaking – not worrying about whether they like my decisions or not – the end result is that I gain their respect. Gaining their respect is NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS in the classroom!

This is the best analogy that I can come up with for what I believe is wrong with what President Obama is doing in his “first 100 days.” He seems to be trying to please the Republicans. In the process he’s going to alienate his own base and he will lose any chance he had of gaining the respect of these Republicans. They really remind me of the sixth graders I deal with on a daily basis. CONSTANTLY PUSHING BOUNDARIES – TRYING TO GET WHAT THEY WANT WITHOUT REGARD TO ANYONE ELSE! President Obama, in my view, is making huge blunder after huge blunder (I wrote him about this, and, not surprising, have not received a response – I don’t think he wants to hear his “own” criticizing him). He has really brought this to a head in his decision to announce that torture is not against the law in America (even though he’s promised that we won’t do it anymore). What he’s failing to realize is that he’s only going to be President for 4 or 8 years (looking more like 4 to me every day) – and if he allows the Republicans to reserect themselves due to his weak kneed decisionmaking – these guys will be torturing again as soon as they are able. By not prosecuting the guilty parties, I REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE THINKING BEHIND THAT DECISION FROM A CONSTITUTIONAL LAW TEACHER, he’s allowing a precedent that will surely be repeated sometime in the future. The end result is that our CIA will have the stigma from the rest of the world that the KGB had from the old Soviet Union. In fact, our country stands in shame in front of the rest of the world because, by not prosecuting war crimes, we are condoning them – THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO LOOK AT THIS.

So, I hope there are others who will try to talk some sense into our 44th President. I was very excited the night he was inaugurated, and I really was filled with hope. I was very thankful that the “reign of Bush” had come to an end (his term was the longest, most painful years of my life as an American citizen – because, despite the fact these memos were supposedly “secret” everyone in the world knew what had happened – there was actually no new information on them – just confirmation and individual identification of who did what) and I trusted Obama that he would make it “right.” Unfortunately, in my view, there is no way it can be “right” if the perpetrators of all the lawbreaking are allowed “off the hook” because we don’t want to “lay blame by looking back” on what happened. This is frustrating, absurd, and DOWNRIGHT DISAPPOINTING! Please help me (I’m writing letters to him) convince President Obama that the only way to gain the respect of these Republicans is to do what is right, whether they like it or not. President Obama, being friends with Republicans won’t gain you their respect!

Much to talk about. There’s a bunch of wierdo’s running around throwing tea bags at things because they evidently just figured out that in America we all have to pay taxes for the services we take for granted. There’s two wars (that’s the term I keep hearing in the news – to me they should be called occupations because I don’t think we have a clue as to the enemy in either place), the economy’s in the tank, and I could go on – but, in my mind, the big news is that the President that I helped to elect (OK, my couple hundred dollars over the course of the campaign didn’t really do much, I just like to think it did because I’ve never sent money before) doesn’t have the guts to face the Right Wing Republicans head on when it comes to all the MISERABLE DEEDS they did in the NAME OF ALL OF US during the administration of one George W Bush! This isn’t pragmatism, as far as I’m concerned, this is cowardice!

OK, some may argue that we actually should “Look forward instead of backward” and that it would not serve a purpose to lay blame for the misdeeds done IN OUR NAME while Bush was President. Well, I would tell you that it DOES serve a major purpose to “Look forward instead of backward” and that would UNFORTUNATELY be to almost guarantee we will be having this conversation again – PROBABLY SOONER RATHER THAN LATER! If not us, then our children or our grandchildren. This, in my view, is EXTREMELY shallow thinking on the part of Obama. You might think I’m being a bit extreme myself when I use the word “cowardice” in my description. However, I honestly can’t put my finger (or, I guess, more appropriately, my mind) on a better word. President Obama has been courting Republicans, who are acting like complete whackos since he took office, almost more than he’s courting his own “base,” that is the people responsible for getting him elected. And believe me, I’m one who wants him to succeed – MAJORLY! But this seeming bent to appease Republicans has been very annoying, and then today President Obama came out with some decisions – attributed directly to him – that as far as I’m concerned are disgusting.

If you’ve been reading any of my posts you know that I have been first predicting, and now deriding, President Obama’s continuance of the Bush illegal wiretapping program and, worse than that, his unwillingness to allow the legal system to rule on the program – continuing (and actually expanding on) Bush’s ridiculous claim of “States Secrets” as the reason the courts can’t decide whether or not the government is intruding into our privacy by wiretapping without warrants. This in itself is over the edge to me. If “We the People” can’t get this unacceptable decision overturned we are virtually guaranteeing our children and grandchildren of the reality of “Big Brother” listening to their conversations and reading their emails in the future. Should there ever come a time when they really need their privacy from the government they will have us to thank for standing by while this guarantee was wiped away from our constitution. Now, It’s getting worse – AND FAST!

Supposedly, we elected Barrack Obama for “Change we can believe in.” He has said, during the campaign, that he would “fix” the FISA legislation once in office – an apparent lie – he has said that “No one is above the law in this country” and yet he’s allowing the illegal wiretapping to continue and now, today, said that there will be no prosecution of those responsible for the reprehensible torturing that took place under George W Bush’s regime – so, apparently another lie. And, as you can see, I’m going to call it what it is. I’m sick and tired of making excuses for people in public office when what they are doing is lying. And this one is as egregious, if not more so, than the warrantless wiretapping lie. If you didn’t see or hear the news today, another four “memos” from the Bush White House were released (thanks to the ACLU – for all you ACLU haters out there) that comfirm the worse fears of all of us who have been disgusted with the idea that the United States government would not only condone torture, but would authorize it – and by “it” I mean torture in the worse sense of my imagination.

Tonight, as I was listening to the published details of the memos, I tried to picture myself being put into a box the size of a coffin and I started to get clostrophobic just thinking about it. Now, I know what it feels like to be clostrophobic because I’ve had a couple of MRI’s, and even though both ends of the machine were open, I was unable to breathe until they gave me a sedative before going in. To picture being in the coffin size box and then having them put insects in there – all I can say is WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? (keep in mind that EVERY expert on gaining information from detainees says that torture doesn’t work) There was much more on the list that was distributed, and thinking back to John Yoo’s reluctance to say that burying someone alive is torture (his caveat was that as long as you dig them up before they die, well, then he’s not sure that would be considered torture – UGHHHHHHH!) These people are SICKOS! And then, Barrack Obama does the unthinkable, after the release of the memos(I guess we can be thankful, at least, that he did that), and says that those who participated in this CLEARLY ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR would not be prosecuted because they were “Just following orders!”

Based on that enabling excuse ALL THE GERMANS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE GERMAN INTERNMENT CAMPS JUST BECAME INNOCENT! You’ve got to be kidding me Barrack Obama! Where did you get your law degree – from the same university as John Yoo? What are you thinking? Let me give you a bit more advice (OK, I know that Barrack Obama is not going to read this post – he didn’t read the 3500 word “letter” I wrote him expressing my disgust with his continuance of the warrantless wiretapping) – the people who committed these ILLEGAL ACTS were holdovers, to a large extent, from the people who perpetrated the last great infringement on the American people – THE WATERGATE BREAKINS OF THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION – and of course, Gerald Ford chose to “look forward instead of laying blame” as you put it – and then 30 years later people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld resurface and “Here we go again.” Mr. President – do you really think that your generosity to these criminal thugs will be the last we hear of this kind of garbage? Let me tell you, if “We the People” can’t get through to you, and fast, and cause you to fix the error of your thinking – someone involved in this will resurface and we’ll see a repeat, and – like this compared to Watergate – it will probably be worse.

And the idea that this will be too divisive, to me, is pure cowardice. WE HAVE LAWS IN THIS NATION THAT HAVE SERVED US WELL FOR OVER 200 YEARS. The idea that you can selectively enforce them, as the head enforcer, and expect me as a sixth grade teacher to be effective in teaching 11 year old kids that they must follow the rules, IS LUDICROUS! What on earth are you thinking??? In fact, with all respect Mr. President, ARE YOU THINKING AT ALL? Or are you so afraid of the wrath of these Republicans that you think they will ultimately be thankful that you “let them off” and then, miraculously, start becoming rational patriots? GIVE ME A BREAK Mr. President! This is a VERY BAD SIGN! I actually thought that this nation was on the road to recovery. What I’m beginning to think is that you believe if we can just prop up Wall Street – people will be happy because the economic news is brighter and we can just go on believing we are the World’s only “Supre Power.” I can tell you that I’m disgusted with what I’m seeing – and the problem is there’s no place for people like me to go. There’s no way I will fall in line with the Right Wing Whackos who are going to be in your face no matter what (the sad reality is that when enough of your supporters get disgusted like me and decide not to vote at all, we will end up with more whacko Republicans in office and the cycle will repeat itself, ughhhhh! again!). It appears that the only recourse is back to that place of apathy, thinking that it doesn’t matter who gets elected in this country, you can’t trust them to “DO WHAT’S RIGHT!” And, in the case of our leaders condoning these horrific forms of torture, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS THIS WAS NOT RIGHT! Here’s the hypocritical truth about this – we (the United States of America) had Japanese soldiers “who were just following orders” prosecuted after World War II for doing what you are looking the other way from! THIS IS DISGUSTING BEYOND MY BELIEF!

Here’s what really bugs me (well, actually, it all really bugs me) – thinking about “supporting our troops.” Lindy England and about 6 or seven other “grunts” who were “just following orders” at Abu Ghraib are sitting in some military prison somewhere as the only indication that “the United States does not torture” – as you say Mr. Obama. Now, how disgusting is that? Lindy England, if I remember correctly was a private first class, and possibly a member of some Army reserve unit that was woefully undertrained for the mission she, and her compatriots, were given. THIS MAKES ME SICK TO MY STOMACH JUST THINKING ABOUT IT! And Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George Bush are all going to spend the rest of their lives enjoying the wealth they gained from putting private England and the others in that spot – and believe me, they have not the slightest bit of remorse for this! THESE PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS and they should be standing in a court of law defending themselves for their actions. If a jury says they are innocent, then that is the end of the problem – THAT IS HOW WE DO IT IN THIS COUNTRY! If you, President Obama, allow these thugs to bypass that process you are doing every decent law abiding American citizen a disservice. You are saying loud and clear exactly what President Nixon got wrong prior to his impeachment that “If the President does it, it must be legal.” Let me tell you this President Obama, just because someone is elected President, that doesn’t mean they are not a criminal! My disgust is turning to anger as I’m writing this post, so I will draw it to a close – please if you read this and you agree with what I’m saying, email it to others in the hope that more people will express their disgust with our President openly refusing to enforce our laws – this should be a BIPARTISAN concern!