The Palin turkey–farm-interview outtakes.: "Someday, we may all tire of Sarah Palin, but we're nowhere near that point yet. Last Wednesday, the Alaska governor visited a turkey farm in Wasilla to grant a pre-Thanksgiving pardon to one lucky Tom. She was borrowing a White House tradition that's the equivalent of a political layup. But she managed to blow the shot.
[more ...]
(Via Slate Magazine.)
The Depression and What to do About it: "
many Americans are hoping the new administration will solve the economic problems we face. That's not likely to happen, because the economic advisors to the new President have no more understanding of how to get us out of this mess than previous administrations and Congresses understood how the crisis was brought about in the first place.
Except for a rare few, Members of Congress are unaware of Austrian Free Market economics. For the last 80 years, the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of our government have been totally influenced by Keynesian economics. If they had had any understanding of the Austrian economic explanation of the business cycle, they would have never permitted the dangerous bubbles that always lead to painful corrections.
Today, a major economic crisis is unfolding. New government programs are started daily, and future plans are being made for even more. All are based on the belief that we're in this mess because free-market capitalism and sound money failed. The obsession is with more spending, bailouts of bad investments, more debt, and further dollar debasement. Many are saying we need an international answer to our problems with the establishment of a world central bank and a single fiat reserve currency. These suggestions are merely more of the same policies that created our mess and are doomed to fail.
At least 90% of the cause for the financial crisis can be laid at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve. It is the manipulation of credit, the money supply, and interest rates that caused the various bubbles to form. Congress added fuel to the fire by various programs and institutions like the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FDIC, and HUD mandates, which were all backed up by aggressive court rulings.
The Fed has now doled out close to $2 trillion in subsidized loans to troubled banks and other financial institutions. The Federal Reserve and Treasury constantly brag about the need for 'transparency' and 'oversight,' but it's all just talk - they want none of it. They want secrecy while the privileged are rescued at the expense of the middle class.
It is unimaginable that Congress could be so derelict in its duty. It does nothing but condone the arrogance of the Fed in its refusal to tell us where the $2 trillion has gone. All Members of Congress and all Americans should be outraged that conditions could deteriorate to this degree. It's no wonder that a large and growing number of Americans are now demanding an end to the Fed.
The Federal Reserve created our problem, yet it manages to gain even more power in the socialization of the entire financial system. The whole bailout process this past year was characterized by no oversight, no limits, no concerns, no understanding, and no common sense.
Similar mistakes were made in the 1930s and ushered in the age of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society and the supply-siders who convinced conservatives that deficits didn't really matter after all, since they were anxious to finance a very expensive deficit-financed American empire.
All the programs since the Depression were meant to prevent recessions and depressions. Yet all that was done was to plant the seeds of the greatest financial bubble in all history. Because of this lack of understanding, the stage is now set for massive nationalization of the financial system and quite likely the means of production.
Although it is obvious that the Keynesians were all wrong and interventionism and central economic planning don't work, whom are we listening to for advice on getting us out of this mess? Unfortunately, it's the Keynesians, the socialists, and big-government proponents.
Who's being ignored? The Austrian free-market economists - the very ones who predicted not only the Great Depression, but the calamity we're dealing with today. If the crisis was predictable and is explainable, why did no one listen? It's because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we've heard that one before - like the philosopher's stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages.
Over and above this are those who understand that political power is controlled by those who control the money supply. Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats came to believe, as they were taught in our universities, that deficits don't matter and that Federal Reserve accommodation by monetizing debt is legitimate and never harmful. The truth is otherwise. Central economic planning is always harmful. Inflating the money supply and purposely devaluing the dollar is always painful and dangerous.
The policies of big-government proponents are running out of steam. Their policies have failed and will continue to fail. Merely doing more of what caused the crisis can hardly provide a solution.
The good news is that Austrian economists are gaining more acceptance every day and have a greater chance of influencing our future than they've had for a long time.
The basic problem is that proponents of big government require a central bank in order to surreptitiously pay bills without direct taxation. Printing needed money delays the payment. Raising taxes would reveal the true cost of big government, and the people would revolt. But the piper will be paid, and that's what this crisis is all about.
There are limits. A country cannot forever depend on a central bank to keep the economy afloat and the currency functionable through constant acceleration of money supply growth. Eventually the laws of economics will overrule the politicians, the bureaucrats and the central bankers. The system will fail to respond unless the excess debt and mal-investment is liquidated. If it goes too far and the wild extravagance is not arrested, runaway inflation will result, and an entirely new currency will be required to restore growth and reasonable political stability.
The choice we face is ominous: We either accept world-wide authoritarian government holding together a flawed system, OR we restore the principles of the Constitution, limit government power, restore commodity money without a Federal Reserve system, reject world government, and promote the cause of peace by protecting liberty equally for all persons. Freedom is the answer.
Technorati Tags: Economy, Austrian Economics, Recession, Inflation, Depression, Ron PaulRon Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.
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Turley: By Refusing To Pardon Torture Officials, Bush Is Allowing Democrats To Repair His Legacy: "
Last night on MSNBC Rachel Maddow highlighted a report from the Wall Street Journal that said that President Bush is unlikely to pardon any officials involved in engineering or executing the Bush administration’s torture program. According to the Wall Street Journal report, the White House believes that the Justice Department’s torture memos give the officials all the legal cover they need.
Maddow’s guest, constitutional legal scholar Jonathan Turley, said that he also believes that Bush is unlikely to pardon his torture officials, but for reasons that have little to do with the torture memos:
TURLEY: What the administration is doing is they know that the people that want him to pardon our torture program is primarily the Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democratic leadership would love to have a pardon so they could go to their supporters and say, ‘Look, there’s really nothing we could do.’
Well, the Bush administration is calling their bluff. They know that the Democratic leadership will not allow criminal investigations or indictments.
Turley explained that without the pardons, Bush is clearing the way for Democrats to repair the president’s torture legacy. Bush will be ‘able to say there’s nothing stopping indictments or prosecutions but a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House didn’t think there was any basis for it,’ Turley said.
(Via Think Progress.)
Get ready for corporate America's favorite game: blame the victim. As pundits address the various reasons for the American auto industry's problems a frequent target won't be bloated CEO salaries, a lack of executive accountability or a flawed business plan. The target will be the men and women who go to work every day doing the best job they can.
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Today in The Nation: Return of the Wall Street Hustlers: "Robert Scheer Obama, who promised change, has put the same old Wall Street hustlers on his economic team. Maybe Ralph Nader was right.
(Via The Nation: Top Stories.)
Yoni Applebaum explains:
Keeping Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense was the most dramatic signal
Barack Obama could have sent that he intends to implement major changes
in defense policy. That may sound counterintuitive, but it has the
virtue of being true.
As Josh noted this morning, 'cabinet appointees execute policy. They
work for the president.' So if Gates is tasked to take us out of Iraq
and to redouble our efforts in Afghanistan, we can expect him to carry
out both tasks with the same degree of competence he's exhibited thus
far in his tenure. In a properly functioning administration, the
Secretary of Defense is one of several key voices advising the
president on where and how to exercise military force. But he possesses
primary responsibility for deciding how that force should be
structured, staffed, equipped, and supplied. Those are decisions the
president largely delegates, and thus where the secretary exercises his
greatest degree of autonomy. And it is in those realms of defense
policy that Gates has most distinguished himself. In retaining Gates,
Obama is sending a clear signal to the Pentagon bureaucracy that their
usual strategy of stalling and out-lasting civilian appointees is going
to fail; that he intends to pursue Gates' key reforms. And that's a
decision which should make us all stand and cheer.'
The Car of the Future -- but at What Cost? - washingtonpost.com: "'Will the U.S. auto industry ever be as profitable as it was from mid-90s to the early part of this decade?' asks automobile expert Keller. Those days were 'magic. It was like printing money for everybody. Everybody from Toyota and GM to Ford and Nissan were feasting on our desire to drive around in those giant vehicles.'
But the industry has gone from feast to famine. Auto industry experts say that the basic problem is that the U.S. industry geared up to make 18 million cars and light trucks a year and that it will be lucky to sell 11 million this year. How far sales will climb back -- and when -- is anybody's guess."
The last thing we need is a Clinton in charge of foreign policy.: "It was apt in a small way that the first endorser of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state should have been Henry Kissinger. The last time he was nominated for any position of responsibility—the chairmanship of the 9/11 commission—he accepted with many florid words about the great honor and responsibility, and then he withdrew when it became clear that he would have to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates. (See, for the article that began this embarrassing process for him, my Slate column 'The Latest Kissinger Outrage.')
[more ...]
(Via Slate Magazine.)
Allison Kilkenny: Where is the Economic Team of Rivals?: "In Obama's economic team, only the voice of Bob Rubin's 'Rubinomics' is represented: balance the budget, deregulate, and expand free trade. Those appointees and advisors such as Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and Peter Orszag are all Rubin disciples, and therefore represent a similar position on the economy. They are hardly rivals. The appointments of men who share a common philosophical umbrella is unwise enough, but Obama is so enamored with Rubin that he went a step further and hired the man's spawn, James Rubin, as a headhunter."
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Fortune's Stanley Bing: In Which I Come Face-to-Face with the American Investor: "At this point I believe that Wall Street and our entire stockholder-centric culture is killing American business. What's good for investors is not always good for the companies and the workers who have to live in the system, not just feed off it after paying a small price for admission. Is it possible, that at some time in the future, the welfare of the companies we serve could be divorced from the fear, the greed, the feral hysteria of the securities marketplace?"
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Chris Weigant: A Response To Rep. Elijah Cummings: "In the past few weeks, we've heard story after story of corporate excess, often in admonishments toward corporate executives from various congressional committees. CEOs on private planes! Gasp! Outrageous compensation packages and bonuses for executives! Who knew? Posh conferences in luxury resorts! Golly! Taxpayer dollars may pay hundreds of millions in stadium naming rights! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Jane Hamsher: Is Robert Rubin "Competent" Enough To Guide Team Obama?: "
There is an article in the New York Times on the fall of Citibank that has some startling admissions, but none more shocking than this:
Citigroup's risk models never accounted for the possibility of a national housing downturn, this person said, and the prospect that millions of homeowners could default on their mortgages. Such a downturn did come, of course, with disastrous consequences for Citigroup and its rivals on Wall Street.
They never factored that housing prices would drop?' Really?
[W]hile Mr. Rubin certainly did not have direct responsibility for a Citigroup unit, he was an architect of the bank's strategy.
In 2005, as Citigroup began its effort to expand from within, Mr. Rubin peppered his colleagues with questions as they formulated the plan. According to current and former colleagues, he believed that Citigroup was falling behind rivals like Morgan Stanley and Goldman, and he pushed to bulk up the bank's high-growth fixed-income trading, including the C.D.O. business.
Former colleagues said Mr. Rubin also encouraged Mr. Prince to broaden the bank's appetite for risk, provided that it also upgraded oversight -- though the Federal Reserve later would conclude that the bank's oversight remained inadequate.
Once the strategy was outlined, Mr. Rubin helped Mr. Prince gain the board's confidence that it would work.
After that, the bank moved even more aggressively into C.D.O.'s. It added to its trading operations and snagged crucial people from competitors.
No wonder Wall Street media is standing there with pitchforks and torches calling for Rubin's head this morning.' A WSJ op-ed wonders 'Why are Robert Rubin and other directors still employed?'' New York Post says 'Citi of Fools:' Negligent bank board must quit.'
Yes, it's incredible that nobody required Rubin and the board to resign as a condition of the Citibank bailout.' But I tend to look at these final days as the BushCo crooks holding their final heist, taking advantage of the fact that something must be done immediately to keep the economy from hurling into a ditch.' They have the ability to impede anything from happening, and they're holding us all hostage and demanding the right to steal as the price of their acquiescence.' What's Obama supposed to do?' If he calls bullshit, the fragile markets could tumble.' He's in a position where he really has to just do what he can.
What I'm more concerned about is the key place Rubin still occupies in Team Obama:
How The Pentagon Bankrupts America: "
Fallow highly recommends reading 'America's Defense Meltdown' (pdf). Here's a bit from Chapter 11: Understand, Then Contain America's Out-Of-Control Defense Budget:
...it is not that the defense budget adequately supports our irrelevant, even counterproductive forces. For that to be the case would be a significant improvement. Instead, to promote armed forces that fight the wrong type of war in the wrong places – liberals, moderates and conservatives in the Pentagon, Congress, think tanks and the White House have over time constructed an edifice that makes our forces smaller, older and less ready to fight, all at dramatically increasing cost. And, we have done so with a system that, quite literally, does not know – or apparently care – what it is doing.
There are 271 more pages where that came from. It's just as well we face no serious global rival, isn't it? Fallows says, ' Read these between football games over the weekend. You won't be sorry.
No Way. No How. No Brennan.: "
Marc reports the Republican, former chief-of-staff for George Tenet (who authorized war crimes as CIA head), admirer of Dick Cheney, CEO of the company one of whose contract employees improperly accessed Obama's and McCain's passports, and defender of renditions and 'enhanced interrogations' is still Obama's front-runner pick to head the CIA. No, I'm not making this up. Brennan was high up in the agency during the run-up to the Iraq war and has since conceded this about the intelligence he was in part responsible for:
Looking back on it now, as we put pieces together, it probably is
apparent to some, including Paul, that it was much more politicized
than in fact we realized.
So Brennan was complicit and naive in the run-up to the Iraq war. And Obama wants to reward him? Brennan is also a believer in Cheney's term 'the dark side,' wishing merely to have some limits within it. He clearly has a mindset that has far more in common with the war crimes of his former boss than with the clear, and indisputable beliefs of the Obama movement. Listen to the ambivalence about torture here:
I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was
that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who
are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not
be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed
by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other
things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice
review.
But at the same time, there is a question about how aggressive you
want to be against terrorism in terms of, what does it mean to take the
gloves off? There was a real debate within the agency, including today,
about what are the minimum standards that you want to stoop to and
beyond where you're not going to go, because we don't want to stoop to
using the same types of standards that terrorists use. We are in this
business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect
freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.When it comes to individuals who are determined to destroy our
nation, though, we have to make sure that we take every possible
measure. It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really
needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic
spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They
can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society
have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be
eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are
either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to
go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?Hopefully, that 'dark side' is not going to be something that's
going to forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad and that
we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things
that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values. ...Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there
need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're
not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to
be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So
the dark side has its limits.
The simple answer to the question - what length do we want to go? - is to abide by the rule of law. Why is that so hard to understand? And yet Brennan and Tenet didn't. They authorized clear torture sessions. Why is such a man even considered for the post under Obama? This man cannot end the taint of Bush-Cheney. He was Bush-Cheney. In fact, if Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals. It would be an acknowledgment that Tenet himself is not a war criminal, while the facts indisputably prove that he was.
In fact, I'd like to see much more evidence of whether Brennan himself is implicated in the war crimes and unlawfulness of the past eight years. If nominated, the Senate should find out. Whatever his qualities, Brennan is not change.
He has even used Tenet's disgusting adoption of the Gestapo euphemism
'enhanced interrogation.' Here he is arguing against change earlier this year:
Even though people may criticize what has happened during the two Bush
administrations, there has been a fair amount of continuity. A new
administration, be it Republican or Democrat -- you're going to have a
fairly significant change of people involved at the senior-most levels.
And I would argue for continuity in those early stages. You don't
want to whipsaw the [intelligence] community. You don't want to presume
knowledge about how things fit together and why things are being done
the way they are being done. And you have to understand the
implication, then, of making any major changes or redirecting things.
I'm hoping there will be a number of professionals coming in who have
an understanding of the evolution of the capabilities in the community
over the past six years, because there is a method to how things have
changed and adapted.
It's
fine not to uproot the entire agency and to have some continuity. But
for Obama to appoint a Bush-Cheney apologist to the CIA? How on earth
did this idea get this far?
It may be that Brennan will stop torture under any euphemism. But
the trouble with this area of policy is that it is necessarily secret
and so trusting the people running the CIA is essential. I don't trust
Brennan. On the question of torture, it is absolutely vital that there
be a clean break with Bush-Cheney at the top of the agency. Many CIA
staffers have been implicated in war crimes, and their cover-up. If you were to de-Cheneyize the entire place after eight years of entrenchment, you'd have few people with real skills left. So
the top leadership is vital. It needs to signal that there is no longer
any doubt that the US is abiding by Geneva, including Article 3, in all
its branches of government.
The least we know is that Brennan is ambivalent about this. Ambivalence on this matter is unacceptable. We
haven't fought for decency and reform and a return to American values
for so long to be turned back now. We didn't work our butts off to
elect Obama only to get Bush another four years at CIA. If Brennan
emerges as the pick, those of us against the continuation of war crimes
and the prosecution of war criminals will have to oppose him
strenuously in the nomination process. We will, in fact, have to go to
war with Obama before he even takes office.
And if Obama doubts our seriousness, I have three words for him. Yes we can.
(Photo: John Brennan by Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)
Ron Paul on what he expects from the new administration:
I don’t expect many good things. I do expect a lot of spending and even more debt. To really cut spending and balance our budget, we need to change foreign policy. Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy is better than what we have gotten recently, but don’t expect any real change.
He may be more likely to wind things down in Iraq, but he’s still
planning on keeping troops there for a least 16 more months. He wants
money for Georgia and more troops in Afghanistan. He isn’t going to
bring home our 30,000 troops from Korea or our 50,000 soldiers in
Germany, and he won’t close any of our 700 foreign bases. At the same
time, he is planning even bigger spending here at home. I hope I’m
wrong, but if this spending and debt continue, the dollar is going to
crash and we will see the middle class in this country take a grave hit.
Report: U.S. Power Will Fade By 2025, National Intelligence Council Predicts Scarce Resources, Loose Nukes, A Rising China - CBS News: "(CBS/AP) Analysts gazing into what amounts to an intelligence-based crystal ball see a future world marked by dwindling resources, more people and diminished power for the United States, as CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports.
"
Today in The Nation: Waxman's Big Win: "John Nichols Rep. Henry Waxman has won leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a sign that Obama and Pelosi will be setting the agenda in Washington. In a showdown of the sort rarely seen in recent decades, the caucus voted Thursday morning to remove the current chair and long-time definitional player on the committee, Michigan Congressman John Dingell. The vote was close – 137 for Waxman, 122 for Dingell – but that does not make it any less significant as an indicator of the direction Congress is likely to take in a period when Democrats will control the executive and legislative branches of a federal government that Waxman thinks should be far more activist in its approach to environmental issues and the regulation of corporations.
(Via The Nation: Top Stories.)
Obama's first gamble: Clinton at State: "Obama takes a big risk, but the payoff could be worth it. Throughout his political career, Obama has had a tendency to “go big,” as his aides say, with dramatic moves and giant spectacles punctuating his run for president — his head-on race speech, his presidential-style tour of the Middle East and Europe, an acceptance speech held in a football stadium.
The Clinton move, like those, marries an arguably practical choice with lofty symbolism: He’s enlarging his own administration by bringing in one of the leading figures in American politics, and delivering on a promise of a new politics that doesn’t play favorites or hold grudges. See also: Bill can forego income"
(Via Politico.com: Politics '08.)
Nike, Starbucks Demand Congress To Act On Climate Change : Red, Green, and Blue: "Five leading companies joined Ceres today to announce a business coalition demanding stronger U.S. climate and energy legislation as early as 2009. The team includes Nike, Starbucks, Levi Strauss, Sun Microsystems, Timberland And Ceres and is going by the moniker BICEP - I am thinking Nike had something to do with that one."
Dean Baker: Will Henry Paulson Sink Detroit?: "Henry Paulson's main claim to fame is getting just about everything wrong in his tenure as Treasury secretary. However, he now stands to gain lasting notoriety as the person who destroyed the domestic U.S. auto industry, and the economies of the Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana along with them.
The story is that the big three automakers are struggling with record sales declines. This collapse in car sales in turn is the fallout from the collapse of the Greenspan-Bernanke housing bubble. While the domestic automakers have been hit hardest, all manufacturers have seen sharp drops in sales. Toyota's sales were down 23.0 percent compared with its year ago levels. Honda's sales were down 25.2 percent, and Nissan's sales fell 33.0 percent.
These huge plunges in year over year sales by the world's top car manufacturers can't be blamed on the industry. Responsibility for this plunge lies with Mr. Paulson and other economic policy makers, and their Wall Street friends."
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Jane Hamsher: Waxman Defeats Dingall, Blue Dogs Get Spanked: "
In a stinging rebuke of the Blue Dog caucus, Henry Waxman has defeated John Dingell for Chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Why, it seems like only yesterday the conservative Blue Dogs were sniffing that the Steering Committee which recommended Waxman were a bunch of unrepentant hippies who didn't reflect the overall makeup of the Democratic caucus. (In fact, it was.)
This is a huge defeat for the Blue Dogs, who have become the primary recipients of the massive corporate donations which used to flow to the Republicans. They were were hoping to use Dingell as a roadblock to keep any meaningful change from happening with regard to issues under the Committee's jurisdiction -- telecommunications and health care, energy and environmental protection, interstate commerce and consumer protection.
Though she never took a public position, nobody has any doubts that Nancy Pelosi orchestrated this.
This week the Senate voted to remain an exclusive club of self-protection and entitlement by letting the corrupt Bush enabler Joe Lieberman keep his gavel, but the House voted for progress.
Anyone who thinks that other members of the House aren't soiling themselves over this huge blow to the traditional system of seniority and entitlement hasn't been paying attention.
Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake.com. Oh Heavenly Day video by Patrick Dwyer courtesy Howie Klein.
(Via Huffington Blog.)
The Crisis Has Hardly Begun: "Massive US trade deficits have been financed by giving up US assets to foreigners, who now own the income flows as well. Budget deficits from 6 years of pointless wars and from unsustainable levels of military spending have helped to flood the world with dollars and to drive down the dollar's exchange value. Consumers themselves are drowning in debt and can provide no lift to the economy. Millions of the best jobs have been moved offshore, and research, design, and innovation have followed them. Considering America's dependency on imports, part of any stimulus package that reaches the consumer will bleed off to foreign countries."
(Via Populist Party .)
When China Will Be Able To Pwn The US: "When China has a large internal market which has reached takeoff, it can sell mostly to itself, and will no longer need the US as much. Neither will any other country, since they can sell to China, with a much larger market. Sure, everyone'll be happy to sell to the US, but they won't need to. At that point, when the US has a financial crisis (and it will, unless things are cleaned up) China doesn't have to keep buying up treasuries or see its own economy crash out. It can say 'no thanks'. It can even start offloading all the crap securities it has. If it, or other countries do so, the US dollar crashes the floor."
(Via Firedoglake.)
Mitchell Bard: The Meaning of Change Will Be Tested by the Auto Industry Bailout: "Didn't we just have a presidential election that was built on the idea of change?
This country faces an energy crisis that will have a profound effect on our future fortunes in myriad ways. Economically, the swings in the oil market can wreak havoc on the day-to-day fiances of average Americans, as we saw when gas prices soared to more than $4 a gallon. From a foreign policy standpoint, our dependence on oil from the Middle East has forced us to engage in the region in ways that have not served our national interests. And from the point of view of global warming, if we don't do something to lower the level of carbon that we release into the atmosphere, all of the other problems we're facing could become moot if the very habitability of the planet is called into question.
Simply put, after 35 years of sticking our heads in the sand, it's time to address the overall energy situation, rather than running to address crisis after crisis resulting from a lack of a sound energy policy. Or, as Barack Obama put it on 60 Minutes last night, 'We go from shock to trance' when gas prices go up and down, and that kind of approach has to stop. (You can read the transcript of the interview, or watch it, by clicking here.)"
(Via Huffington Blog.)
Zapping the Volt: "Bloomberg reports that a General Motors failure would cost the federal government $200 billion. And the Center for Automotive Research concludes that if the Big Three fail, it will mean the loss of 3 million jobs in the first year of collapse.
As Naomi Klein has writen, proponents of unfettered capitalism are always looking for these 'clean slates' where other people pay the price in misery for their philosophical experiments. But as Paul Krugman noted on This Week when he ate George Will for a mid-morning snack, expecting the economy to absorb that kind of impact right now would be extraordinarily risky. "
(Via Firedoglake.)
Raymond J. Learsy: Detroit's Rebirth as the "Arsenal for America's Future": "Detroit and the American auto industry's business is at the lowest ebb in years, with U.S.-based automakers share of their home market dropping to only 48% of cars sold. What a boon it would be to have a renaissance of our historic 'Detroit Arsenal,' with our government and the automobile industry working together once again on a program critical to the nation's well-being. Together, to begin replacing our gas guzzling toxic spewing cars with their electric-powered counterparts on a massive national scale, bringing us back to the spirit of FDR and the 'greatest generation'!"
(Via Huffington Blog.)
John Brennan: Change We Cannot Believe In: "Brennan's long association George Tenet and with the CIA during the first few years of the Bush administration may give civil liberties advocates and Congressional Democrats some pause; it is not clear to what degree Brennan participated in or was read into many of the intelligence community's controversial post 9/11 /Iraq programs, including extraordinary renditions and orders that sanctioned coercive interrogation techniques."
Charles Bremner reports on an exchange between Sarkozy and Putin:
With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia, Mr Levitte said.
'I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,' Mr Putin replied.
Mr Sarkozy responded: 'Hang him?'
'Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein,' said Mr Putin.
Mr Sarkozy replied, using the familiar 'tu': 'Yes but do you want to end up like (President) Bush?'
Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: 'Ah, you have scored a point there.'
(Hat tip: Massie)
(Via Huffington Blog.)
If you haven't seen the just released film 'Terrorizing Dissent', please take two minutes to at least watch the trailer. The juxtaposition of McCain's phoney speech-making inside the Republican National Convention with the violent reality that was unfolding outside is quite eye-opening, isn't it? (The fact that TV and other main stream media only carried what went on inside the RNC and not outside contributed to creating the public approval 'bump' for the Republican ticket -- certainly not unexpected following such televised extravagant displays but which was critical in 2008 for McCain-Palin to have any chance after Bush's eight disastrous years.)
Latest Transition Team List Shows More K Street Connections: "The latest batch of Obama-Biden transition team members shows more—and possibly closer– ties to K Street.
The first list came out earlier this week. The latest, released Friday, includes a number of transition team members with recent lobbyist registrations. The Obama-Biden transition-team rules bar practicing lobbyists from transition work and those who have lobbied in the past 12 months “are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.”"
Transition Team Bios Skip Stints at Fannie Mae: "Tom Donilon’s listing as a co-leader of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team for the State Department caught our eye.
The brief biography mentions that he’s a partner at law firm O’Melveny & Myers, and had held high positions at the State Department during the Clinton administration. It doesn’t include his tenure at mortgage giant Fannie Mae, an early casualty of the financial crisis that has been taken over by the government. Donilon was Fannie’s general counsel and executive vice president for law and policy from 1999 until the spring of 2005, a period during which the company was rocked by accounting problems.
Donilon’s co-leader for the State Department review, Wendy Sherman, also has ties to Fannie Mae that weren’t mentioned in her Obama-Biden Web site bio. A fellow veteran of the Clinton State Department, Sherman headed up Fannie Mae’s charitable foundation from 1996-1997. The short bio covers her time with the Albright group, an international advisory firm, and her stint as a special adviser to the secretary of state."
Jacob Heilbrunn: Obama's Team of Rivals: "If Barack Obama asks Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State, it would be a brilliantly audacious political move. Choosing Clinton would elate her fans, soothing any lingering bruised feelings, and bring some major star power to the State Department. Clinton would possess real clout and, like Obama, serve as a kind of ambassador to the world. It would also show that Obama, like Abraham Lincoln, who, as the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin showed in her book 'Team of Rivals,' is unafraid of tapping powerful cabinet members."
(Via Huffington Blog.)
