Truly Jones

2011-03-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

The words of Thomas Merton in "I Will Trust You Always" reflect the current condition of my spirit...

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that 1 am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

I encourage you to learn more about Thomas Merton and his insightful observations of faith, religion, social justice and life in general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

2011-03-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

In the Eyes of a Child…

A few years ago I was chatting with one of our wish kids, Xavier Morris, about his wish to visit Walt Disney World^® Resort. He shared some wonderful stories about his experiences with his family, all the great rides, the hospitality of everyone at Give Kids the World^®, and how he forgot for one week that he was sick. As he was leaving our office, Xavier turned to me and said with a smile on his face, “That is the way the whole world should be.” Xavier’s words have never left me because they were so innocent, yet profoundly true. In the eyes of a child the world is unbounded, beautiful, filled with echoes of laughter and a place where heartfelt wishes come true.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Mississippi lives in a world of functional expense ratios, performance metrics, annual audits, compliance visits and legal liabilities; but, we live in that world so we can create a world of hope, strength, and joy for children with life-threatening medical conditions. With every wish granted, I am reminded that our job is not to be perfect on paper; it is to remain dedicated to making every eligible child’s wish come true.

I think what the world needs most right now is the hope, spirit, creativity, and passion of a child, like Xavier. Carl Jung, a famed psychiatrist, saw a glimpse of this when he spoke, “If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.” I am not arguing for a change to childishness, but I am advocating for a lot more childlikeness!

So, what world would you rather live in…the not-so-real “real” world or the world as seen through the eyes of a child? You have the opportunity right now to begin changing the world, one child’s life at a time. Be filled with childlike hope, strength, and joy by serving and caring for children in Mississippi whose lives are in jeopardy because of a serious illness.

The Greek philosopher, Socrates, said, “An honest man is always a child.” I believe that Xavier Morris would have made Socrates a very proud man.

Peace and best wishes...

SCOTUS Strongly Affirms Free Speech...Even If (Especially If) I Disagree with the Message

2011-03-02T19:51:00.001-08:00

Wow, this is some good stuff! Turley's concluding comment really caught my eye, "We do not need the first amendment to protect popular speech. It is there to protect those who speak against the majority — those viewed as brutal and obnoxious by people like Alito." That is the underlying premise of our civil liberties...to protect those who are willing to speak against the majority and those who are willing to speak truth to power!

Originally Published: March 1, 2011

In an important reaffirmation of the free speech, the Supreme Court
has ruled 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church. Westboro is
infamous for its deranged, homophobic protests at funerals of falled
U.S. troops. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court
refused to allow the universal disgust at Westboro’s views influence its
decision. Only Justice Samuel Alito was willing to radically curtail
free speech to punish Westboro.

The father of a fallen Marine sued the small church under claims of
harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress. I have
previously written that such lawsuits are a direct threat to free
speech, though I had serious problems with the awarding of costs to the
church in a prior column.

Roberts held that the distasteful message cannot influence the
message: “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to
tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great
pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing
the speaker.” Roberts further noted that “Westboro believes that
America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about
Westboro. Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its
contribution to public discourse may be negligible. As a nation we have
chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public
issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

The Court in cases like New York Times v. Sullivan have long
limited tort law where it would undermine the first amendment. In this
case, the Court continues that line of cases — rejecting the highly
subjective approach espoused by Alito in his dissent:

Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a
matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special
protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted
simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a
bedrock principle underly- ing the First Amendment, it is that the
government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because
society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v.
Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989). Indeed, “the point of all speech
protection . . . is to shield just those choices of content that in
someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley v. Irish-American
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 574
(1995).

The jury here was instructed that it could hold Westboro liable for
intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a finding that
Westboro’s picketing was “outrageous.” “Outrageousness,” however, is a
highly malleable standard with “an inherent subjectiveness about it
which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’
tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a
particular expression.” Hustler, 485 U. S., at 55 (internal quotation
marks omitted). In a case such as this, a jury is “unlikely to be
neutral with respect to the content of [the] speech,” posing “a real
danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of . . . ‘vehement,
caustic, and some- times unpleasan[t]’ ” expression. Bose Corp., 466 U.
S., at 510 (quoting New York Times, 376 U. S., at 270). Such a risk is
unacceptable; “in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even
outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the
freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S.
312, 322 (1988) (some internal quotation marks omitted). What Westboro
said, in the whole context of how and where it is entitled to “special
protection” under the First Amendment, and that protection cannot be
overcome by a jury finding that the picketing was outrageous.

Justice Samuel Alito again gave little credence to concerns over the
constitutional rights raised in the case. He insisted that “[i]n order
to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously
debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent
victims like petitioner.” Alito did not care that the protest was part
of the bizarre religious and political beliefs of the Respondents:

Respondents’ motivation—“to increase publicity for its
views,” ibid.—did not transform their statements attacking the character
of a private figure into statements that made a contribution to debate
on matters of public concern. Nor did their publicity-seeking motivation
soften the sting of their attack.

It is precisely the type of extreme analysis that led some of us to object to Alito’s confirmation. (For a prior column, click here)
Alito does not show how we will distinguish between types of speech
that he finds brutal and acceptable. It is precisely the type of
slippery slope of analysis that we sought to avoid. Alito offers little
compelling analysis in erasing the bright line protecting free speech.
Indeed, his conclusion appears driven more by anger than analysis. His
approach comes close to a content-based approach that would deny free
speech protection to those who are most in need of it. We do not need
the first amendment to protect popular speech. It is there to protect
those who speak against the majority — those viewed as brutal and
obnoxious by people like Alito.

Here is the opinion: 09-751

Jonathan Turley

Link to original article: http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/02/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-westboro-church/#more-32542

Birthright Citizenship Was the Original Intent

2011-02-26T17:59:00.001-08:00

It has been a while since I have posted to the TrulyJones Blog, but I sense that this Constitutional issue is quickly becoming a hot potato. I enjoy seeing vigorous debate on such important things; however, I am dismayed at how quickly the political and philosophical extremes use distortion of history and fact to “win” the debate. I invoke the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

by David Drumm, Guest Blogger for Jonathan Turley’s “Res Ipsa Loquitur”

Published February 26, 2011

Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) claims that birthright citizenship “undermines the intention of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Arizona Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills alleged that “if you go back to the original intent of the drafters … it was never intended to bestow citizenship upon aliens.” Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) trots out the old canard that the Citizenship Clause was drafted to “address slavery, not immigration.”

When one looks at the 1866 Senate debate regarding the 14th Amendment, the facts don’t support these claims.

In 1866, the anchor babies of concern were Chinese. Senator Edgar Cowan (R-PA), who later voted against the amendment, was worried about Gypsies in Pennsylvania and Chinese in California overrunning the country if their children were granted citizenship.

Senator John Conness (R-CA) understood the amendment’s meaning to extend birthright citizenship to the children of Chinese immigrants:

The proposition before us … relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, claimed “During the debate on the 14th Amendment in 1866, a senator who helped draft the amendment said it would ‘not of course include persons born in the United States who are foreigners.’” This is nothing short of deceptive editing of Senator Howard Jacob (R-MI), who authored the amendment. Senator Jacob affirmed its plain meaning:

This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. [Emphasis added]

When politicians lie and distort history to this extent, they conceal the true motivation behind their desire to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants. If their intentions are honorable, why lie about the original intent of the 14th Amendment?

Find the original article at http://jonathanturley.org/2011/02/26/birthright-citizenship-was-the-original-intent/

2011-02-17T22:44:00.000-08:00

I am still here...and I will be me from now on!

The Quiet Power of Europe

2009-11-01T14:40:00.001-08:00

The last line really spoke to me on a political, social, and personal level. Slow, ungainly, and incremental may be boring to watch; but, that method is working just fine in my life!

By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 30, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Nov 9, 2009

It's often easy to view Europe as an aging continent in terminal decline. Pundits and politicians lament that the European Union is weak, riven by conflict, and unable to translate its size and wealth into hard power. Or, as British Foreign Minister David Miliband put it last week, "the European whole is less than the sum of its parts."

Yet such charges of drift and decline miss a stark reality. As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall arrives next week, Europe finds itself more united, prosperous, and secure than at any time in history. EU members have become some of the planet's most adroit globalizers, opening themselves to the world while keeping in place their extensive social services—Germany alone exports as much as China. The continent has also fared better than expected in the downturn. Europe's unemployment rate now bests America's, and France and Germany managed to escape the recession faster than the United States.

Things look almost as good on the political front. In the years since communism ended, the EU has doubled in size, and its population will pass 500 million next year. The Union, often decried as dysfunctional, has reached another important milestone: the Lisbon Treaty, a quasi constitution that streamlines decision making, has just been approved by the last of the 27 members. Its passage will curtail the veto that gave even tiny members the ability to block major projects, and will create a new post of EU president, who will be empowered to speak on the Union's behalf.

Thanks to this record, another half dozen countries are pushing to join. Enlargement has become a huge source of soft power as well, a potent weapon for spreading Europe's influence. Turkey, for example, has enacted a long chain of reforms over the past two decades to improve its candidacy, and Albania, one of Europe's most backward states, recently announced it would become the world's first Muslim-majority country to allow gay marriage—just to show Brussels it can meet EU standards on human and civil rights.

The EU is even beginning to extend its power beyond its neighborhood. EU countries now have some 100,000 soldiers, 60,000 diplomats, and countless aid workers deployed worldwide. And the cliché that Europeans avoid fighting is wrong: 21 European states have soldiers in Afghanistan, where they've suffered a full third of the Coalition's combat deaths. Europe, in other words—despite its nature as an often bickering club of nations—has already become a global power. True, the EU method—slow, ungainly, and often incremental—may be boring to watch. But that method is working just fine, and its prospects look better than ever.

Find this article athttp://www.newsweek.com/id/220516

2009-08-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Gabi on WJTV August 20, 2009 helping with the weather forecast.

Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts

2009-08-06T19:45:00.001-07:00

I found this to be a rather compelling and thought provoking opinion from Mr. George, specifically in the context that the Constitutional prerogatives of liberty retained by the people and the states must be treated seriously by the Judicial Branch of government. Additionally, he left me wanting to gain a better understanding of Loving v. Virginia and how the case may or may not be germane to the issue of same-gender marriage. Finally, Mr. George’s recognition that polyamorous relationships are next to be seeking official recognition by the government fits well within the conversation.

While slippery-slope arguments should be greeted with skepticism, there are many well-known names already advocating other unions beyond same gender marriage. Robert George aptly identifies the crux of the issue without the fear and prejudice often seen from the fringe political right. In the end, the logic of same gender and polyamorous marriage advocates, “is unassailable once the historic definition of marriage is overthrown.”

OPINION

AUGUST 3, 2009, 11:22 A.M. ET

The culture war will never end if judges invalidate the choices of voters.

By ROBERT P. GEORGE

We are in the midst of a showdown over the legal definition of marriage. Though some state courts have interfered, the battle is mainly being fought in referenda around the country, where “same-sex marriage” has uniformly been rejected, and in legislatures, where some states have adopted it. It’s a raucous battle, but democracy is working.

Now the fight may head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following California’s Proposition 8, which restored the historic definition of marriage in that state as the union of husband and wife, a federal lawsuit has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws.

It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.

Even many supporters of legal abortion now consider Roe a mistake. Lacking any basis in the text, logic or original understanding of the Constitution, the decision became a symbol of the judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives. It sent the message that judges need not be impartial umpires—as both John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor say they should be—but that judges can impose their policy preferences under the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees.

By short-circuiting the democratic process, Roe inflamed the culture war that has divided our nation and polarized our politics. Abortion, which the Court purported to settle in 1973, remains the most unsettled issue in American politics—and the most unsettling. Another Roe would deepen the culture war and prolong it indefinitely.

Some insist that the Supreme Court must invalidate traditional marriage laws because “rights” are at stake. But as in Roe, they are forced to peddle a strained and contentious reading of the Constitution—one whose dubiousness would undermine any ruling’s legitimacy.

Lawyers challenging traditional marriage laws liken their cause to Loving v. Virginia (which invalidated laws against interracial marriages), insinuating that conjugal-marriage supporters are bigots. This is ludicrous and offensive, and no one should hesitate to say so.

The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.

Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

Of course, marital intercourse often does produce babies, and marriage is the form of relationship that is uniquely apt for childrearing (which is why, unlike baptisms and bar mitzvahs, it is a matter of vital public concern). But as a comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union—marriage has value in itself and not merely as a means to procreation. This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages.

Only this understanding makes sense of all the norms—annulability for non-consummation, the pledge of permanence, monogamy, sexual exclusivity—that shape marriage as we know it and that our law reflects. And only this view can explain why the state should regulate marriage (as opposed to ordinary friendships) at all—to make it more likely that, wherever possible, children are reared in the context of the bond between the parents whose sexual union gave them life.

If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy.

A veneer of sentiment may prevent these norms from collapsing—but only temporarily. The marriage culture, already wounded by widespread divorce, nonmarital cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing will fare no better than it has in those European societies that were in the vanguard of sexual “enlightenment.” And the primary victims of a weakened marriage culture are always children and those in the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of society.

Candid and clear-thinking advocates of redefining marriage recognize that doing so entails abandoning norms such as monogamy. In a 2006 statement entitled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” over 300 lesbian, gay, and allied activists, educators, lawyers, and community organizers—including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, and prominent Yale, Columbia and Georgetown professors—call for legally recognizing multiple sex partner (“polyamorous”) relationships. Their logic is unassailable once the historic definition of marriage is overthrown.

Is this a red herring? This week’s Newsweek reports more than 500,000 polyamorous households in the U.S.

So, before judging whether traditional marriage laws should be junked, we must decide what marriage is. It is this crucial and logically prior question that some want to shuffle off stage.

Because marriage has already been deeply wounded, some say that redefining it will do no additional harm. I disagree. We should strengthen, not redefine, marriage. But whatever one’s view, surely it is the people, not the courts, who should debate and decide. For reasons of both principle and prudence, the issue should be settled by democratic means, not by what Justice Byron White, in his dissent in Roe, called an “act of raw judicial power.”

Mr. George is professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and founder of the American Principles Project (www.americanprinciplesproject.org).

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Keyes, Birthers, Buckley and Birchers: Oh my!

2009-07-28T18:55:00.001-07:00

I commend Bill Pascoe for speaking truth to power by issuing a call for conservatives to end the so-called 'Birthers' movement against President Obama. There may be numerous legitimate reasons for conservatives (and liberals) to oppose some of the policy directions of Obama, but following quack conspiracy theories is not one of them!

COMMENTARY

By Bill Pascoe, CQ Guest Columnist

CQ Politics

updated 2:37 p.m. CT, Tues., July 28, 2009

WASHINGTON - "Dear Birthers: Stop! Sincerely, Serious Conservatives."

I’ve held fire for the last several months as I’ve watched the so-called "Birther" movement gain steam. At first it was amusing, like playing a drinking game — you know, like taking a shot every time Chris Matthews explains why he insists on pronouncing the former Vice President’s name "CHEE-knee."

It’s not amusing anymore.

As one of the GOP operatives whose job it was to defeat Barack Obama in a campaign for federal office (there have only been three GOP campaigns run against him, and I’ve been involved with two of them), I can attest to the fact that nowhere in our opposition research did we find any reason to believe that the man was not a natural born citizen of the United States.

I can also attest to the fact that Alan Keyes, who, at about 1:22 into this video shot on February 20 of this year, lays out the "Birther" case against Obama, never raised any doubts about Obama’s alleged overseas birth while he was running against Obama for the United States Senate in Illinois in 2004.

Oh, Alan Keyes said all sorts of other nutty things while he was the GOP Senate nominee in 2004, the kinds of things that cause campaign operatives to go gray prematurely — "Jesus Christ would not vote for my opponent," Second Daughter Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist" and other such bon mots — but he never once challenged Obama’s place of birth.

Nor did he suggest Obama had anything to do with the introduction of the Edsel, nor the marketing of New Coke; nor the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, nor the disappearance of Amelia Earhart; nor did Keyes allege Obama was anywhere near Graceland on the morning of August 16, 1977, nor did he suggest Obama had anything to do with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

But that "Birther" thing...

Seriously. Is this anything but a gift to the Democrats?

Am I the only one to notice that mainstream media attention to the "Birthers" has picked up in recent weeks, and that this increased attention is coincident to the turn in Obama’s approval ratings?

For instance, a search of The Washington Post web site on the term "Birther" yields as its oldest hit this one from July 6; a search of The New York Times, though, shows one June reference in passing and then the first real mention of the term on July 22.

Far be it from me to assume one is the cause of the other, but, still, it is an interesting coincidence.

Coincidence or not, it is eating up valuable air time and gobbling up precious inches of type that could, and should, be devoted to other, more pressing, matters, like the self-immolation of the Democratic Party as it struggles to find a way to reform the health care delivery system without destroying it.

Reasonable and responsible conservatives, thus, are stuck. We are being lumped in with irresponsible and unreasonable conspiracy theorists.

And I believe the time has come for reasonable and responsible conservatives to deal with the "Birther" Problem.

In January 1962, conservative leaders faced a similar problem: How to deal with the members of the John Birch Society, whose leader, Robert Welch, believed that the former president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a a conscious agent of the International Communist Conspiracy.

National Review Founder William F. Buckley, Jr., Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, conservative historian and philosopher Russell Kirk, and American Enterprise Institute President William Baroody took it upon themselves secretly to meet at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, where they decided Welch and the Birchers would have to be excommunicated from the Conservative Movement, lest their lunacy taint reasonable and responsible conservative political activity.

Were Buckley alive today, is there any doubt he would have the same response to the "Birthers"?

I think not.

DISCLAIMER: When I write about the politicians in my past, CQ Politics says I have to turn the cards face up. I arrived in Chicago in late May of 2004 to try to help then-GOP Senate nominee Jack Ryan campaign against Barack Obama . Four weeks after I arrived, Ryan ended his campaign. I was the guy whose idea it was to recruit Alan Keyes to run as Ryan’s replacement candidate -- which led to a nightmarish 86-day campaign, about which all I will say for now is that if I ever sit down and write the book about that campaign, it will be called “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

Bill Pascoe is CEO of The Foundation for American Freedom, a conservative think tank headquartered in Alexandria, Va. and writes the ”In the Right” blog at CQPolitics.com.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32190004/ns/politics-cq_politics/

Democrats Denounce Obama for Bush-Like Signing Statement That He Is Not Bound By Federal Legislation

2009-07-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Turley is a wonderful example of one who consistently speaks truth to power. Once again, the power of the Executive Branch is proving to be too intoxicating. Truly, how much difference will there be between the legacies of Bush and Obama?!

Four House Democrats have finally stepped forward to denounce the Bush-like policies of President Obama, particularly his recent signing statement proclaiming that he is not bound by federal legislation. The letter was signed by Reps. David Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee; and subcommittee chairs Reps. Nita Lowey and Gregory Meeks of New York. The letter breaks from the lockstep loyalty shown Obama despite his adoption of many of Bush’s most controversial positions.

The four democrats expressed how they were “surprised” and “chagrined” by Obama’s declaration in June that he does not have to comply with provisions in a war spending bill restricting $106 million aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

This signing statement followed a similar signing statement declaring that he was not bound by limitations in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill. The signing statement on that bill occurred two days after Obama promised to depart from the abuses of signing statements by Bush.

The House has voted to oppose Obama’s signing statements, here.

Just to keep a rough score, here is the top ten list of Obama’s rollback on civil liberties and constitutional principles:

1. Issued signing statements asserting that he is not subject to the limitations set by Congress (despite his campaign promises opposing such statements);

2. Opposed any investigation into the torture program (here) and alleged war crimes of the Bush Administration;

3. Opposed any investigation into the unlawful surveillance program;

4. Preserved the surveillance programs of the Bush Administration;

5. Withheld photographs of the abuse of detainees to prevent “embarrassment” to the nation as well as White House logs;

6. Promised CIA employees that they will not be investigated or prosecuted for any crimes that they allegedly committed as part of the torture and surveillance programs;

7. Asserted that, even if acquitted in court, he would retain the right to hold detainees indefinitely and will preserve the Bush tribunal system;

8. Delayed his own deadline for a report on the future for Guantanamo Bayand detainees and opposed the right of detainees to challenge their confinement;

9. Asserted executive privilege arguments in court that go beyond prior Bush claims; and

10. Secure the dismissal of dozens of civil liberties lawsuits designed to uncover unlawful conduct and deprivation of privacy rights.

In his morphing into Bush, Obama has even outdone Bush on references to Jesus — while expanding his faith-based initiatives.

Of course, most members were not so moved to confront Obama on his opposition to any investigation or prosecution for torture. It took his refusal to comply with their authority over appropriation that produced this “chagrined” response.

Many Democrats appear blind to the hypocrisy shown in the treatment of Obama and the media on civil liberties. When Bush took these positions, he was rightfully denounced. Yet, the opposition to Obama is far more muted and nuanced. I supported Obama. However, he has abandoned not only campaign promises but basic principles of human rights and civil liberties in these policies. Democrats are showing the same cult of personality that destroyed the Republicans in their blind loyalty to George Bush.

Link to Dr. Turley's res ipsa loquitur blog post: http://jonathanturley.org/2009/07/22/democrats-denounce-obama-for-bush-like-signing-statement-announcing-he-is-not-bound-by-federal-legislation/

My mom and dad's 17th anniversary !

2009-07-23T15:43:00.001-07:00

Hi! I haven't blogged in awhile,but I'm back! Oh and hi Ashley Pearson! She is my bff! Anyway's my mom and dad's anniversary is on Saturday July 25.

My brother Evan and I are going to stay at my grandma and grandpa's house. My dad is going to bring the playstation three and little big planet

game so we can be occupied. We agreed that he plays 1st player and I play 2nd player unless he is not playing. Well see you later! -- Gabi

No Reconciliation Without Conversion

2009-07-16T06:21:00.001-07:00

"There is no reconciliation without conversion, the constant journey with God into a future of new people and new loyalties. Broken by sin, we do not long for what God wants. The world and its dividing lines such as nation, ethnicity, race, sex, power, and caste resist the new creation of God's beloved community where there is 'neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female' (Galatians 3:28). Self-interest easily becomes the goal of relationships, and loyalty to one's own group easily becomes the aim of politics. Reconciliation thus requires a transformation of desire, habits, and loyalties. This is a long and costly journey which is impossible without God's forgiveness and grace. But there is reason to hope: God has promised to give us everything we need for this transformation."

-- Emmanuel Katongale and Chris Rice, Reconciliation as the Mission of God

Is Obama Even Willing to Seek Justice and Follow the Law?!

2009-07-13T19:40:00.001-07:00

I am beginning to have serious doubts...politics and pragmatism are taking the place of the rule of law.

Check Out What Jonathan Turley Has to Say on Countdown...

Iran’s Regime: Marching Toward a Cliff

2009-06-22T20:30:00.001-07:00

Let's spend some time listening to the Iranians speaking about themselves, rather than forcing them and ourselves to live with false constructs. This looks to be a very interesting and insightful read. Grace and peace to the Iranians. Salam Alaikum to Neda Agha-Soltan and her family.

June 22nd, 2009

A special comment by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

The Khomeinist regime in Iran is in terminal trouble; but that doesn’t mean Iran is about to repudiate Islam and become a secular democracy. In order to see where Iran is going, it’s important to see where it’s been.

The so-called Islamic Revolution of Iran was never just about Islam. It was the product of three revolutionary currents coming together. One was constitutionalism, a century-old struggle for democracy, driven mostly by Iran’s secular modernists. One was Islamism, a push to put the shari’a in charge of political life—a movement fed by rural resentment of the Westernized urban elite and embraced by merchants of the country’s traditional economy.

And then there was nationalism: a rage fueled by Iran’s long-subjugation to European powers, a passion that permeated every level of Iranian society and made people of all backgrounds hungry to see Iranian sovereignty, strength, and pride restored.

In the tumult of 1978-79, master strategist Ayatollah Khomeini appropriated the nationalist impulse into his Shi’i Islamist movement. He was in a good position to do so because Shi’ism had been intertwined with “Iranianism” for over five centuries. Indeed, it was a defiant Shi’ism that set Iran apart from its powerful Ottoman and Moghul neighbors and let it emerge into history as a nation-state.

By making his brand of Islamism the face of Iranian nationalism, Khomeini combined two streams of revolutionary enthusiasm and used it to crush the third stream, the democracy movement of the secular modernists.

In the next several decades, while the world mourned the death of Iranian democracy, Khomeini and his successors made good their promise to nationalist pride and thus secured their grip on the country. They humiliated the United States; beat back Iraq; eradicated all traces foreign cultural influence in Iran; and forged a menacing state able to project its power through Lebanon into the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But recently the Khomeinists have faltered. The ascension of Ahmadinejad has hurt them. The trouble with Ahmadinejad is not that most of the world sees him as a villanous thug (that by itself could have helped him domestically.) The problem is that most of the world sees him as a laughable buffoon, a donkey: he brings shame upon the nation. And he compounded his flaws by mismanaging the economy. Iranians worried about tomorrow’s livelihood feel their country’s power and prestige waning. As a result, the regime’s ownership of the nationalist agenda erodes. If it loses that chip, it must rely purely on its Islamic credentials for legitimacy and even in Iran, that’s not enough.

Many in clerical establishment have seen this coming. This is what the reform movement has been about. Men like Khatami, Mousavi, and Rafsanjani don’t propose to dismantle the Islamic Republic and replace it with a secular democracy. They’re out to save the Islamic Republic by changing its approach to the world and thus preserve its stature in world affairs. They see what Obama sees: that belligerent bullying ultimately weakens a nation. This doesn’t mean their commitment to Islam (or even Islamism) has weakened, any more than Obama’s willingness to talk with states like Iran means he no longer believes in democracy.

In Iran, however, the pressure of internal contradictions has built up such intensity that there is no controlling the reformist challenge and no predicting its consequences. The only thing we can say for sure is that the regime led by Khamenei is in a bind from which it cannot escape.

The regime is in a bind because the question on the table now is whether it is hurting the nation, and the question doesn’t come from disaffected outsiders but from core members of the ruling elite.

Every instrument the regime possesses for dealing with the crisis tends to put its own legitimacy at risk. Khamenei’s decision-making has further boxed him and his cabal into a corner. Take the election results: had those been counted properly, they might well have produced numbers pretty close to what the regime announced—believe it or not, that’s what a Manchester Guardian poll and several others showed in the weeks before the election. In the voting itself, there may not have been much fraud.

But that no longer matters, because the votes were not counted properly. That’s indisputable. By issuing the results of the voting sooner than the votes could possibly have been counted, Khamenei drew the spotlight away from scattered polling booths and trucks rolling through the streets with ballot boxes, and situated the central act of fraud squarely in the headquarters of the regime.

As Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei may have many powers, but he doesn’t have the power to do as he pleases for personal gain. As a fundamental principle, in the Islamic Republic, no one is free to do as he pleases, not even the “Supreme Leader.” Everyone is subject to the law—that law being the shari’a. By appearing to commit a blatant dishonesty in order to put his own man in the drivers seat, Khamenei has cost himself an aura of impregnable authority, and this will hurt him because, for all the military and police resources at his command, the Supreme Leader’s authority ultimately derives from rectitude and religious learning, not bodyguards and guns. As soon as people stop believing in his rectitude, guns won’t save him.

No doubt Khamenei calculated that his decree would stop all the protests dead and that life would then do what life does: go back to normal. But the protests didn’t stop and so Khamenei found himself caught out in cold.

Therefore, he went to the next step and called on his military resources, because what else could he do? The revolution of 1979 suppressed whole currents of revolutionary passion unrelated to Islam, and those sentiments have been festering and heating up under the skin of the Islamic Republic for decades. The Khomeinist regime cannot let that magma keep welling to the surface. The trouble is, the division in Iran runs vertically. This is not a confrontation between a homogenous oppressed underclass and a monolithically united tyranny. Leading members on both sides of the divide are highly placed insiders. In calling out the troops, the regime turns its guns on itself. To justify this action, it has no recourse but to redefine some founding members of the Islamic revolution as disloyal outsiders. Even if it succeeds in thus rebranding men like Rafsanjani, it damages the legitimacy of the state structure as a whole: success is failure.

Furthermore, to keep the opposition scattered and disorganized, the regime has no choice but to stopper up their channels of communication. That means it has to disrupt the Internet, shut down Facebook, stop the Twittering, and keep cell phone text messages from getting through. These, however, are the power technologies of our time. These are what make societies effective, powerful, and modern. In shutting down these systems, the regime is dragging Iran back into a primitivism that can only reduce the country to third-tier status—and Iranians can feel this. So all such actions offend the yearnings still alive in the Iranian soul for strength, self respect, and a high standing in the world.

In short, every step the regime can take to shore up its strength must cost it some credibility and squander some of its ability to keep presenting itself as the champion of Iranian pride. If a plurality of the nation comes to feel that these Khomeinist clerics are good Muslims but bad for Iran, they are finished. Their only possible hope then will rest with some outside force inserting itself into the fray and giving them a convenient scapegoat, someone like John McCain, who incredibly enough said today that the United States “should lead” the Iranian revolution. But then, if the Khomeinists of Iran depend on John McCain to save their hides, they’re probably dead men walking already.

http://therumpus.net/2009/06/iran%E2%80%99s-regime-marching-toward-a-cliff/

© 2008 The Rumpus

The American Patriot’s Bible Released by Thomas Nelson

2009-05-09T13:50:00.001-07:00

Oh, my heart is saddened to hear about such a Bible. I was once of that mind, however, and I believe that it is possible to be set free from the bondage of blind nationalism and reject as false a spirituality that holds the flag higher than the Way of the cross and resurrection. The separation of church and state philosophy that is reflected in our Bill of Rights and the nature of our republic does as much to protect the government from religious warfare, as is protects the church from becoming a whore of the government.

Last Sunday (May 3, 2009) my church, Northside Baptist Church, recognized Baptist World Alliance Day during worship. English Christians fled religious persecution and held their first baptismal service in Holland in early 1609. Their study of the Bible led them to call for personal faith linked to baptism. When they returned to England, dissenters were in danger of whippings, fines, and imprisonment. 400 years later, Baptists still affirm and defend the freedoms first embraced by our earliest leaders.

The Baptist World Alliance is a fellowship of 214 Baptist conventions and unions comprising a membership of more than 37 million baptized believers and a community of 105 million. The Baptist World Alliance began in London, England, in 1905 at the first Baptist World Congress. Reflecting our deep held Baptist convictions, Northside Baptist Church of Clinton has become a financial and ministry partner of the Baptist World Alliance.

The Baptist World Alliance is a global movement of Baptists sharing a common confession of faith in Jesus Christ, bonded together by God’s love to support, encourage and strengthen one another, while proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to a lost world.

The goals of the Baptist World Alliance are:
1. To unite Baptists worldwide.
2. To lead in world evangelism.
3. To respond to people in need.
4. To defend human rights.
5. To promote theological reflection.

This is how we called ourselves to worship and prayer...

Jesus Christ is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. He knows his own, and his own know him. He guides us along sure paths and calls us believe in his name and lay down our lives for one another. Come now, let us respond to the Shepherd’s voice. Come to the table he has spread before us. Let us gather at his call in union with our Baptist sisters and brothers around the world and with all people everywhere who have found salvation in him. Called together as one flock under one shepherd, let us offer ourselves in worship.

God of grace and God of glory, you have raised your crucified Son, Jesus, from the dead. He was rejected by those who build to their own glory, but you have made him the cornerstone of life and healing and grace and truth, and called us to find salvation in him alone. We are gathered here at your call. We are gathered here because you are our shepherd and we need nothing more. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, gather us as one flock, abiding in Christ Jesus, faithful to the heritage of faith we have received, and boldly going wherever you call us. Receive our praise, our love, our service, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Patriot’s Bible — Really?
by Greg Boyd

May 8th, 2009

Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live skit entitled “Really? With Seth and Amy”? Sometimes it’s pretty funny. I was thinking that perhaps the best way to get through my critique of The American Patriot’s Bible (henceforth Patriot’s Bible) would be to give a “Really?” type report on it.

I want to preface my “report” by saying I am certain the commentators behind the Patriot’s Bible are well intentioned, godly scholars who believe they’re doing the Kingdom (and America) a great service. Despite their noble intentions, however, I believe this Bible is, frankly, idolatrous, dangerous and profoundly damaging to the Kingdom. I feel compelled to denounce it in the strongest possible way I can. The sarcasm that follows is intended for this purpose only.

Here’s some “really?” reflections, in no particular order.

* The Lord’s statement that Moses “is faithful in all My houses” (Num. 12:7) calls for a boxed quote from Grover Cleveland about how the teachings of Christ “results in the purest patriotism…”

Really? Oddly enough, Christians for the first three centuries of the church were persecuted for being unpatriotic. They wouldn’t pledge allegiance to the emperor or fight to defend the empire. Now Jesus becomes the champion of patriotism. Really? Does this hold true for Russians, North Koreans and Iranians, or just Americans? And how on earth did we leap from a verse about God’s “houses” to the topic of patriotism in the first place? Really?

* In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul notes that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but are spiritual and mighty in God for the tearing down of strongholds. This inspires the Patriot’s Bible commentators to provide the reader with a historical note about Eisenhower signing into law the clause “one Nation under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. Eisenhower is quoted as saying this clause would help “strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our countries most powerful resource in peace and war.”

Really? Do you really think Paul – who taught us to give our enemies food and water and to never retaliate (Rom. 12:14-21) – would approve of having his authority borrowed to buttress up America’s resources in war? Really? Doesn’t this verse explicitly say he’s not talking about earthly wars and that our weapons are not carnal? Oh, and by the way, the Patriot’s Bible leaves out “not carnal” in their commentary’s quote of this verse. Really?

* Perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible is John 3:16 which tells us “God so loved the world he gave his only Son…” This inspires the commentators of the Patriot’s Bible to quote Colin Powell on how “the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders.”

Really? Really?? With all due respect to the bravery of American soldiers, are you really suggesting that in sending soldiers to war, the United States is acting like God did when he sent his Son? Would you be willing to grant this parallel for every nation that has sacrificed young men and women in war, or is it just the United States that is God-like in doing this? Don’t Russians and Iranians love their children too? And aren’t we tip toeing dangerously close to blasphemy when we compare our nations military with the sacrificial love of God? Just wondering.

* Jesus statement that “if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36) inspires a page long commentary on the Bill of Rights, with an ominous emphasis on how the “wall of separation” between church and state today is threatening freedom of religion.

Really? Doesn’t the wall separating church and state protect the freedom of religion? But more importantly, are we to actually believe the freedom Jesus was talking about had anything whatsoever to do with political rights? Why didn’t he say so, since his audience happened to have zero political rights. He could have inspired a violent political revolution, similar to the American Revolution, if he’d connected his freedom with political freedom.

Wait a minute: this is exactly what many in his audience wanted and expected Jesus to do. How did Jesus respond? He rebuked them, telling them instead to love and do good their enemies. It’s kind of what got him crucified. His “freedom,” like his Kingdom, apparently is “not of this world.” Nevertheless, the Patriot’s Bible succeeds in accomplishing what Jesus’ audience could not. Jesus becomes the champion of political freedom after all! Patriot’s Bible — 1. Jesus — 0.

* David’s census of warriors in Israel and Judah (2 Sam. 23:8) elicits a full page commentary on “Freedom’s Defense,” consisting of quotes from various people who agreed that freedom is worth fighting for, including the 19th century former slave, Frederick Douglas.

Really? The link between David’s census and American soldiers is tenuous enough, (couldn’t this be applied to soldiers from every nation?) but what’s even stranger is that this is an account of David disobeying God. He was not to place his trust in warriors but to trust God, which is why counting his soldiers was forbidden. What’s even stranger is that Douglas is included in this list. The freedom Douglas was talking about was the freedom that the United States was at the time denying blacks!

Here’s a quote of Douglas that I wish had found its way into the Patriot’s Bible.

“Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference – so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked…I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”

I suppose including a quote like this might call into question the God-ruled glorious history of this Christian nation celebrated throughout this Bible. But come on. What do you think Douglas would think of this Bible — let alone having his name used to advance it’s agenda?

* A reference to Joseph being sold as a slave to the Ishmaelites (Gen. 37:28) elicits a tender quote from Dick Cheney regarding how easy it is to “take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.”

Really? Dick Cheney the champion for civil liberties? Really? And on the topic of liberty being taken from people, why does the version of American history in this Bible gloss over the long and bloody history of how white Americans took away the freedom of millions of Africans and Native Americans? Honestly. Christopher Columbus is made out to be a hero – even fulfilling Zechariah 9:10 which says “He shall speak peace to the nations…” — and no mention is made of how he and his fellow Conquistadors cheated, enslaved, raped, mutilated and executed members of the indigenous population. Instead, the Patriot’s Bible sees God’s hand involved in this and every other advancement of white Europeans on this land. Really? Could you possibly do a better job justifying those who reject Christianity as a Eurocentric, racist, nationalistic and violent religion?

* A statement that the king of Tyre gave gifts to David (2 Samuel 5:11) occasions a commentary on President Thomas Jefferson who provided the newly converted Kaskaskia Indian tribe seven year support for a priest and money for a church.

Really? We can certainly applaud Jefferson’s generosity, but are you really going to mention this act of kindness on the part of the American government toward Indians and remain silent on the many acts of betrayal and butchery toward Indians perpetrated by, or with the support of, the U.S. government? Really?

Why, for example, don’t we find a commentary on how President Andrew Jackson signed the “Indian Removal Act” in 1830, robbing Cherokees, Choctaw and other Indian tribes of millions of acres of land once promised them because white settlers now wanted it. (Among other things, it was discovered the land had a lot of gold.) Jackson eventually ordered them to march to a little reservation in Oklahoma, and multitudes died in the process.

Is presenting America as “one Nation under God” really so important you need to be this one-sided in your retelling of its history? Really?

* Joseph’s statement to his brothers that God had sent him to Egypt before them “to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5) elicits a quote from Clarence Manion regarding the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are equal in the sight of God.” In so far as any connection between this verse and commentary can be made, it seems the commentators are suggesting a parallel between God sending Joseph and God sending the Declaration of Independence “to preserve life.”

Really? I mean, I’m all for Americans being happy we’re free, but come on! Where did these commentators discover the divine revelation that God was fighting on the side of the U.S. troops against the British? After all, the British had a lot more Bible on their side in their debate with the American Revolutionaries than the Revolutionaries did (e.g. Rom. 13:1-7). And while we’re on the topic, shouldn’t a commentary on the Declaration of Independence at least mention that, when it was signed, the “all men are created equal” clause applied only to white males?

Lets celebrate the Declaration of Independence. But do we really want to suggest it was sent by God? Really?

* Following a passage that says that Abram armed his servants for war (Gen. 14: 14) the reader is given a page-long history on “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms” that celebrates the fact that early Americans were always “prepared to fight” for “liberty” which was “at the heart of their religion.”

Really? Really?? Do we honestly need a section defending – indeed celebrating – the right to bear arms in a Christian Bible? Come on! Didn’t Jesus rebuke Peter and tell him to put away his sword (Jn 18:10-11)? Didn’t Jesus tell us to “not resist an evil person” but instead “turn to them the other cheek” (Mt 5:38)? Didn’t Jesus command us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us if we want to be “children of your Father in heaven” (Mt. 5:44-45)? And while it may be true that political liberty was at the heart of many American pioneers, didn’t Jesus constantly tell us to surrender our rights, giving a person our shirt if he takes our coat for example?

Yet, here we have a Christian Bible eulogizing American pioneers who were willing to kill for their personal liberty. What’s wrong with this picture?

* Though it finds every verse it can to use as an excuse to heap further praise on America, the Patriot’s Bible is curiously silent on all passages that might in any way curb a Christians enthusiasm for this (or any other) nation. For example, there is no comment on any of the passages that depict Satan as the ruler of the whole world and as owning all the authority of all the kingdoms of the world (e.g. Lk 4:5-6; Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 n 5:19; Rev. 13).

Really? Do the commentators in the Patriot’s Bible think America is somehow exempt from Satan’s rule? What part of “all the kingdoms” in Luke 4:5-6 did the Patriot’s Bible not understand? Wouldn’t you think that a Bible devoted to eulogizing this “one Nation under God” would find these passages comment-worth, if only to disagree with them?

* In I Samuel 12:13 the Lord reluctantly accommodates Israel’s demand for a King, telling Samuel that this constitutes a rejection of him. This inspires a page long commentary on how Christians have a duty to vote.

Really? Really?? I’m a huge fan of democracy, but it says something when a Bible has to stoop this low to find support for it. Come on! The whole Saul-as-King narrative is about human rebellion against God! One might have thought the passage would be used to support the view that Christians have a duty not to vote.

* You have to love this one. A statement that “the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle” (2 Sam. 1:25) inspires a commentary entitled “Duty-Honor-Country.” Here General Douglas MacArthur says that soldiers sacrificing (and of course, killing) for their country represent “the noblest development of mankind.” The commentators of the Patriot’s Bible add that “as long as other Americans serve their country courageously and honorably, his words will live on.”

Really? Really?? Christians can’t find anything more noble than soldiers fighting other soldiers in the interest of their respective nations? Not even, say, someone choosing to die for their enemies rather than killing them? Really? And does the title of “noblest development” apply to all soldiers from all countries, or just to American soldiers? Hasn’t every country thought it’s soldiers were the noblest? Are Christians really to get sucked into the age long merry-go-round bloody game of insisting that our soldiers are more noble than our enemies? Really?

I could go on (and on and on), but I think I’ve made my point. I’ll end by simply noting that the very fact that there’s a sizable market for this Bible (why else would Thomas Nelson Publisher’s publish it?) is a sad commentary on the state of the church in America. It makes me tilt my head, squint my eyebrows and say….

Really? Really?

Link to this article: http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/the-patriots-bible-really/

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. Christus Victor Ministries & Greg Boyd. Designed by Turtle Interactive.

The Truth about the Swine Flu...

2009-04-28T18:35:00.001-07:00

A Primer on the American Form of Government

2009-04-19T18:45:00.001-07:00

Meghan McCain Warns of Looming Civil War in the GOP

2009-04-19T12:50:00.001-07:00

I suspect that the infighting among conservatives reflects a broader trend in our culture, or more specifically our culture wars. When you have been fighting for so long, sometimes it is hard to recognize that the war may have already been won or lost. The younger generations do not recognize the perceived or real threats shared by their parents. The older generations wrongly assume that the younger generations do not care. A word of caution to the more politically liberal among us...the same is true for them! While I may not personally agree with everything that Meghan McCain has voiced, I deeply respect her willingness to speak truth to power!

Posted: 09:00 AM ET on CNN PoliticalTicker

From CNN's Rebecca Sinderbrand

Meghan McCain addressed a group of gay Republicans in Washington Saturday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Meghan McCain warned a group of gay Republicans Saturday that there was "a war brewing in the Republican Party" – a war between the past and the future.

"Most of the old school Republicans are scared s***less of that future," she told a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay and lesbian party members.

The 24-year-old daughter of former GOP presidential candidate John McCain pushed back against critics upset over her comments to CNN that she wanted President Obama to succeed, and played down her recent headline-grabbing feuds with conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. "I did not expect my frustration with what I perceive to be overly partisan and divisive Republicans to cause a national incident," she said.

"I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes…I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party," she said. "But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past…

"I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican," she told a cheering crowd.

Last week, McCain signed a deal with Hyperion to write a book about the future of the Republican Party. She said Saturday that embracing new technology wouldn't solve the party's problems. "Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn't going to miraculously make people think we're cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don't divide our nation further will," she said. "That's why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing, and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what's keeping our party down."

On Monday, McCain wrote an opinion piece urging the Republican Party to use more gay-friendly language. "Of all the causes I believe in and speak publicly about, this is one of the ones closest to my heart," she wrote in a blog post on the Daily Beast titled 'Memo to the GOP: Go Gay.' " If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric."

McCain's father, former Republican presidential candidate John McCain, does not support same-sex marriage but opposed a constitutional amendment five years ago that would have banned the practice, calling the legislation "un-Republican." Speaking to the Log Cabin Republicans Friday, former Bush and McCain senior advisor Steve Schmidt publicly endorsed same-sex marriage.

Mr. Obama: Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely...

2009-04-07T20:24:00.001-07:00

Mr. President, I think you are simply wrong on this one. Warrant-less wiretapping is not only dangerous it is also antithetical to the basic premises of our civil society and constitutionally guaranteed rights. Just because one does not get caught does not mean that one is not a criminal. The president is not entitled to unlimited power or power that is beyond a bridle. Please do not allow a horrible error of the Bush administration to become standard operating procedure for the executive branch. A benevolent and enlightened dictator is still a dictator who enslaves.

You gave us your word, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Furthermore, you know that you are directed to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed...." Oh yea, one last word of truth spoken to power: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Mr. Obama, make this right!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

(04-06) 15:26 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration's wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.

Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, "which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security," Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign's "unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency."

In a 2006 lawsuit, the AT&T plaintiffs accused the company of allowing the National Security Agency to intercept calls and e-mails and inspect records of millions of customers without warrants or evidence of wrongdoing.

The suit followed President George W. Bush's acknowledgement in 2005 that he had secretly authorized the NSA in 2001 to monitor messages between U.S. residents and suspected foreign terrorists without seeking court approval, as required by a 1978 law.

Congress passed a new law last summer permitting the surveillance after Bush allowed some court supervision, the extent of which has not been made public. The law also sought to grant immunity to AT&T and other telecommunications companies from suits by customers accusing them of helping the government spy on them.

Nearly 40 such suits from around the nation, all filed after Bush's 2005 disclosure, have been transferred to San Francisco and are pending before Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. He is now reviewing a constitutional challenge to last year's immunity law, which the Obama administration is defending.

Walker is also considering a challenge to the surveillance program by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now-defunct charity that was inadvertently given a government document in 2004, reportedly showing that its lawyers had been wiretapped during an investigation that landed the group on the government's terrorist list.

The Obama administration is also opposing that suit and has challenged Walker's order to let Al-Haramain's lawyers examine the still-classified surveillance document.

The administration's new filing asks Walker to dismiss a second suit filed in September by AT&T customers that sought to sidestep the telecommunications immunity law by naming only the government, Bush and other top officials as defendants.

Like the earlier suit, the September case relies on a former AT&T technician's declaration that he saw equipment installed at the company's San Francisco office to allow NSA agents to copy all incoming e-mails. The plaintiffs' lawyers say the declaration, and public statements by government officials, revealed a "dragnet" surveillance program that indiscriminately scooped up messages and customer records.

The Justice Department said Friday that government agents monitored only communications in which "a participant was reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization." But proving that the surveillance program did not sweep in ordinary phone customers would require "disclosure of highly classified NSA intelligence sources and methods," the department said.

Individual customers cannot show their messages were intercepted, and thus have no right to sue, because all such information is secret, government lawyers said. They also said disclosure of whether AT&T took part in the program would tell the nation's enemies "which channels of communication may or may not be secure."

by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/07/MNRP16TJOQ.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Bumble bee song

2009-04-03T19:10:00.001-07:00

Well,sorry to keep you waiting!Here is another song I found along with butterfly.Enjoy!

Is Simply Being Alive Becoming a Medical Condition?!

2009-03-30T19:42:00.000-07:00

Things that make you go, humm?!? If you have not done so, I suggest watching the movie, The Road to Wellville. It humorously documents the pseudo-science and alchemist-medicine that led to the creation of breakfast cereals and the Kellogg -v- Post rivalry. (Did you know that corn flakes were offered as a remedy for national health pandemic of rampant masturbation?) I wonder if we have really come that far...maybe we are just deluding ourselves into thinking that we really understand what it is to be human?!

By Alasdair Cross
Producer, Medicalisation of Normality

Restless leg syndrome, social anxiety disorder, female sexual dysfunction, celebrity worship syndrome - it seems that a new illness is invented every week, covering every potential quirk in human behaviour.

Is the human condition becoming a medical condition?

Ten per cent of British children are regarded as having a clinically recognisable mental disorder, 34 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were written in the UK in 2007, while it is estimated that 10% of US children take Ritalin to combat behaviour problems.

Dr Tim Kendall, Joint Director of the National Collaboration Centre for Mental Health and a key government adviser is deeply concerned at what he sees as a medicalisation of a vast swathe of society.

He said: "I think there is an inherent danger from increasingly classifying people.

"If you look at the American Psychiatric Association 'bible', you'll see almost every piece of human behaviour can be classified as being in some way aberrant."

Dr Kendall sees dangers in a "tendency for new categories to be invented, often at the behest of drug companies looking for a new drug".

Medical historian, Dr Louise Foxcroft agrees, pointing to ill-defined conditions such as female sexual dysfunction and to the erectile hardness scale promoted by the producers of Viagra which she claims "is a creation of fear and anxiety".

It is certainly not a new phenomenon.

Historical ailments

Dr Foxcroft, author of 'Hot Flushes, Cold Science', has shelves of old medical textbooks stuffed with long-forgotten ailments.
“ I think there is an inherent danger from increasingly classifying people ”
Dr Tim Kendall National Collaboration Centre for Mental Health

Among them is hysteria, the symptoms of which could range from excessive masturbation to excessive novel reading and a tendency to wander.

Common treatments for hysterical women, and they were invariably women, included opium, the removal of the clitoris and incarceration.

Later, neurasthenia became the fashionable mental affliction, suffered by the likes of novelist, George Eliot and philosopher Immanuel Kant.

These over-worked intellectuals were offered the more convivial option of Priory-style rehab retreats to help ease their troubled minds.

Such ailments and the chance of treatment were once confined to the upper classes but that has changed in the past 20 years.

US advertising

In 1997 the US fully legalised the advertising of prescription medicines.

Since then television ad breaks and popular magazines have been packed with explicit claims for the effectiveness of anti-depressants, behaviour modifying drugs and pre-menstrual tension treatments.

Prescriptions for the most heavily-advertised drugs have risen significantly.

Could we see a similar effect in the UK?

Dr Kendall is concerned by current European Commission proposals that could loosen the blanket ban on the advertisement of prescription medicines to European consumers.

Do not expect Prozac ads before Coronation Street or a Ritalin sponsored X-Factor.

However, the proposed shift would allow adverts on medical websites and in relevant magazines.

Dr Richard Tiner of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry says that his members are completely opposed to 'direct to consumer advertising' on the American model.

Dr Kendall, an adviser to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, said: "It's far better that independent bodies like NICE provide the evidence, turned into plain English for patients.

"I'd far rather that's what patients got than so-called information provided by a pharmaceutical company."

If the proposals become law then, as in the US, we can expect to see even more new conditions and new drugs to treat them, new ways not to be 'normal'.

'The Medicalisation of Normality' is broadcast on BBC Radio Four at 2100 BST on Monday 30 March and repeated on Wednesday 1 April at 1630 BST.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/7967851.stm

Published: 2009/03/30 07:04:55 GMT

© BBC MMIX

MSNBC Answer Desk: Big bonuses for everyone? How much money is there?

2009-03-30T13:18:00.001-07:00

Some very interesting information that seems to contradict many policy wonks and much of the "conventional wisdom" spewed on talk radio and editorial news shows...please consume with much salt!

By John W. Schoen
Senior producer
msnbc.com
updated 8:37 a.m. CT, Mon., March. 30, 2009

With the government's latest handout to investors looking to profit on the bank bailout, more than one reader is wondering: Why doesn't the government just give the money directly to taxpayers?

Why isn't the stimulus money being given to the taxpayers that are going to have to pay for it? I keep hearing that this would be about $500,000 each, which would go to pay off mortgages, buy cars, vacations, you name it. Wouldn't this do more to "kick-start" the economy?
— Gary J., Greenville, S.C.

It sure seems like you and I have somehow gotten left off the list of people getting some of those trillions of bailout dollars the government is handing out.

Maybe it’s because the government isn’t sure exactly how many of us are out here. (More on that in a minute.) But it wouldn’t come close to $500,000 a head. And it’s not clear it would provide the “kick start” we’re all looking for.

So far, the list of bailout recipients includes banks (some of whom got us into this mess in the first place), a failed insurance company (ditto), car companies, foreign central banks, and investors who are getting risk-free loans to profit from buying up bad bank assets. Congress is doling out hundreds of billions more to state and local governments, schools, health care providers and people who build roads and bridges for a living.

To be sure, there is some money in there for individual taxpayers: roughly $360 billion. Most of that money will pay for tax cuts targeted to specific groups — including people with the lowest incomes, first-time home buyers, people whose unemployment benefits are about to run out or the rapidly growing middle-income households who are being victimized by the "alternative minimum tax" originally created to make rich people pay their fair share. Some of these people who are eligible for a tax cut, and don’t owe any taxes, get a “refundable tax credit” (aka “a check.”)

Figuring out how much we’d all get if the government gave the rest of that money directly to taxpayers turns out to be harder than it looks. Though the Federal Reserve has doled out several trillion dollars (so far) that money represents loans backed by collateral that includes other forms of debt. This, after all, is what the Fed does in “normal” economic conditions: it swaps its Federal Reserve Notes (aka “cash”) for U.S. Treasuries held by banks and other “primary dealers” in the financial system.

To pump more money into the system, the Fed usually pays cash for Treasuries; to drain cash, it sells them back. Despite a massive expansion of lending since last September, the only real change has been the types of debt the Fed is accepting and the companies it does business with. The list of both has gotten much longer.

The Treasury, on the other hand, is spending our money and getting no hard assets in return. The $787 billion “stimulus package” is money the government won’t get back. The other big chunk of change, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan, or TARP, is being invested in bank stock and, soon, to help investors buy chancey loans and bonds backed by dicey mortgages.

These assets are worth something, but no one knows how much because no one can predict how much further the economy will slide and how many more homeowners will default on their mortgages. If all this paper changes hands at a steep enough discount, the government might actually make money on the deal — which they'll split with investors who took none of the risk. For investors, it's a "heads I win, tails I don't lose" deal.

So far, the money that’s been actually spent (not lent with a good chance of it coming back) comes to about $1 trillion (this year’s $787 billion stimulus package plus the last year's $168 billion stimulus that was mostly paid out as tax rebate checks.)

So how much would every taxpayer get if that $1 trillion went directly to individuals? That’s hard to say. The IRS estimates there will be roughly 154 million individual returns filed in 2008, but many of those are joint returns filed by married couples. Because of the way it collects its data, the IRS can’t say exactly how many people those returns represent. Same goes for the Joint Committee on Taxation – the arm of Congress that handles tax matters. (You’d think Congress would at least want to have a rough estimate of how many taxpayers there are out here.)

The Tax Foundation, a private research group, estimates there are 194 million of us who file income tax returns, individually or jointly, though many don’t end up owing tax. (And some get that "refundable tax credit.") But if you spread $1 trillion evenly over 194 million people, each of us would get a check for $5,154.64.

That certainly would be a nice little bonus. Not exactly AIG material, but it would relieve at least some of the financial pain most taxpayers are feeling right now. But it wouldn’t come close to replacing the trillions of dollars in lost home values or the trillions more in retirement savings and investment losses. That huge money crater is the main reason the economy is in a tailspin.

To pay you a $500,000 bonus, the government would need to borrow roughly $100 trillion, and there just isn’t that much available wealth on the planet. (If the government created that much money, the surge in inflation would mean you’d use up your $500,000 to order a pizza.) You also probably wouldn’t get the biggest economic bang for all those bucks.

It turns out when times are tough, people tend to take a windfall and save it for an even rainier day. That’s what happened to a lot of the money that was handed out in tax rebates last year. There was a noticeable uptick in retail sales as the checks cleared, but sales fell right back down again — and kept falling — as home prices fell and unemployment rose. That’s why Congress took a different tack this time around.

Economists say the best way to stimulate the economy is to put the money where it has the highest “multiplier effect.” If the money is targeted to build a highway, for example, those dollars start off on the books of the contractor with the winning bid. The contractor then keeps a little in profit, which gets spent to buy a new backhoe or pay for groceries for the contractor’s family. Most of the money goes to pay for labor and materials; the workers take the original dollar and spend it again on, say, a new set of tires for the pickup truck that gets them to work. The tire shop owner spends the dollar a fourth time — maybe it goes back to the tire plant, where the manager can call up a worker who’s been laid off and turn the dollar over yet again, so the newly rehired worker can take her family out to dinner, and tip the waiter, and so on. Every time that dollar moves along, it creates fresh economic activity. That's what we need most right now.

The folks at the Congressional Budget Office have even gone through the $787 billion stimulus package and estimated which parts of it provide the most efficient stimulus. According to their report, tax cuts and direct payments to individual have the lowest “multipliers” — some less than 1.0, which means those dollars won’t get past the original recipient. The biggest multipliers are direct spending on goods and services by the government and transfers to state and local government for infrastructure. But only $132 billion of the stimulus package was spent on those two categories, according to the CBO.

How much American currency is in circulation?
— David T. Clifton, Ariz.

On Wednesday, Mar. 25, there was just shy of $900 billion ($899,798,000,000) Federal Reserve notes (dollars) in circulation, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. That includes cash sitting in bank vaults, but most of it is out there making the rounds of the global economy.

That cash represents less than half of the $2.1 trillion in assets on the Fed’s books. The rest is largely debt securities, like U.S. Treasuries that the Fed swaps for cash when it wants to add or drain cash from the system.

The supply of paper money is about $100 billion higher than this time last year. But that's just the minimum monthly payment on the $2.6 trillion in consumer credit outstanding. These days, paper currency is only one form of money. The contraction of consumer wealth from lost retirement savings and falling home values is much bigger than the increase in supply of paper money.

And that's why, for now, the folks at the Fed say they're not too worried about stoking inflation with all these trillions of dollars in fresh lending and spending.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29920296/page/2/

© 2009 MSNBC.com

Just Something to Consider...

2009-03-24T19:04:00.001-07:00

How Obama can repair AIG damage

2009-03-20T08:11:00.001-07:00

I am not sure that anyone really knows what is going on in the economy...but I am sure that there are some profiteers and robber barons who know exactly how to take advantage of the situation. I believe in free markets(at least I think I do)...but they must also be fair and accountable markets. Actions taken by our government, regulators, and business insiders over the past dozen years have eliminated much of the fairness and accountability of the market, which may result in much of the freedom being stripped away. Let us all remain vigilant, be willing to speak truth to power, and never allow our current view to block our vision as we navigate these uncertain waters.

By Drew Westen
Special to CNN

Editor's Note: Drew Westen is professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." He has been a consultant or adviser to several candidates, nonprofit organizations and Fortune 500 companies, and informally advised Barack Obama's campaign.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- In getting the nation's economy back on its feet and pursuing an agenda aimed at keeping it there for the next 40 years, the White House has to do two things at once: implement effective policies and keep the public behind the president long enough to keep implementing them until they work.

As the president learned in the stimulus debate, even the best policies don't sell themselves, especially when the other side is aggressively attacking them. President Obama's inspiration, Abraham Lincoln, noted that without public opinion behind you, good governance is impossible.

In this sense, the AIG debacle, in which the government has handed nearly $200 billion of taxpayers' money to one of the corporate Leviathans whose misadventures have cost many taxpayers their jobs, homes and savings, is both instructive and destructive.

The White House needs to be able to go back to the American people if the banks need another infusion of capital or the economy needs another stimulus -- both of which are high-probability events -- and the president needs public opinion at his back to enact his ambitious agenda on infrastructure, health care and education.

So aside from offering the kind of sweeping and long-needed regulatory reforms he proposed Wednesday (the policy side of the equation), what does President Obama need to do to prevent the AIG fiasco from eroding public confidence in what government can do in times like these?

Three things. First, he needs to make sure, when a story like this one breaks, that he and his public surrogates are all on the same page. The president got it right with his cool public outrage and his order to his Treasury Secretary to look harder for ways to stop another round of public theft.

In the same way, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, responded with just the right tone to Dick Cheney's attempt to pin both the Bush economy and the next terrorist attack on the new administration. Gibbs wryly noted that Rush Limbaugh was apparently unavailable to do the interview and that the former vice president was not in much demand right now for his economic advice.

But watching some of the president's chief economic advisers publicly throw up their hands in helplessness, suggesting the government could feed the monster but couldn't control it, was a reminder of what happens when presidential surrogates speak without proper media training, a unified message and a clear sense of why getting their message right on this really matters.

Second, the White House needs to speak in plain language to the American people about what needs to be done, so it harnesses their legitimate anger and anxiety and continues to inspire their confidence and hope.

Americans understand that if you own 80 percent of a company (like the federal government owns of AIG), you are in the position to tell senior management what to do, and if you can't, you need a new lawyer, because you wrote a bad contract.

Americans could readily understand that if a single company is so important that its demise would spell the demise of the entire economy, then it should either be owned, tightly regulated (as public utilities are), or split up by the government, because we can't afford to have our common interest held hostage to the private interests of any single company.

Americans also would not have a visceral reaction to temporary "nationalization" of failing banks if someone would stop calling it nationalization and tell a coherent story about what happened and why we have to take the steps we do: that the Bush administration, in its bank bailout, socialized the risks of sleazy business practices while privatizing the gains, and that isn't fair.

If we as taxpayers are going to assume the risk as stakeholders when bankers make bad decisions, we should reap the profits as shareholders when those banks are profitable again, and use that money to pay down the national debt, cut our taxes and get a solid return on our investment.

That leads to the third point. The president needs to tell the American people the story, over and over, of how we got in this mess, who put us in it and what will and won't get us out of it. Franklin Roosevelt had no trouble pinning the nation's economic difficulties on the Republicans who had fiddled with free-market extremism as the nation's economy burned, and it took 40 years and the charisma of Ronald Reagan for anyone to put voice to that ideology again.

A good story typically has protagonists, antagonists, a battle between them and a resolution. The president has a penchant for telling stories without antagonists (even while those antagonists are antagonizing him, with their rhetoric of "borrow and spend," "socialism," etc.).

When referring to the causes of our economic meltdown, he often reverts to passive voice (something "was done") or to nameless, faceless, impersonal forces ("corporate greed"). The reality is that we're in this mess because for eight years we were in the grip of a radical economic ideology that preached that all would be well if we just gave free rein to corporate greed and removed all constraints on it.

The unspoken (and sometimes spoken) idea was that if we just let the people who know the most about energy (energy executives, of course) shape our energy policy in private meetings, the people who know the most about meat production (the cattle and meat-packing industries) regulate meat production, and the people who know the most about Wall Street (bankers, hedge fund managers, and derivatives traders) regulate (or refuse to regulate) banking and investing, everything would be fine.

The fact that the federal government engineered a $170 billion no-strings-attached, no transparency required bailout to AIG when the economy was melting down was not a deviation from that philosophy. It was its logical extension.

The president needs to make clear where his policies -- and values -- depart from those of the previous administration if he wants people to hang onto their tenuous, newfound belief that maybe this time government is part of the solution and not the problem.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Drew Westen.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/19/westen.obama.aig/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

War Message Found Inside Lincoln's Watch

2009-03-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

I think I am starting to believe that movies like National Treasure might have some truth in them?! This is really too cool!

By Kelly Marshall

(CNN) -- A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, the Smithsonian's Museum of American History announced Tuesday.

Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln's watch in April 1861 when he heard about the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and wrote a short message on the metal inside the watch, the Smithsonian said.

There it remained, unseen for almost 150 years, it said.

In a 1906 interview with The New York Times, Dillon reported that as soon as he heard the news about the first shots of the Civil War, he unscrewed the dial of the watch and wrote on the metal, "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try."

The actual message that the museum found differs from the watchmaker's recollection. It says, "Jonathan Dillon, April 13-1861, Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon, April 13-1861, Washington, thank God we have a government, Jonth Dillon."

According to the Smithsonian, it was not unusual for professional watchmakers to record their work inside a watch.

"Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket," said Brent D. Glass, director of the National Museum of American History.

The museum decided to open the watch after being contacted by the watchmaker's great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles, who had heard about the message Dillon said he had inscribed and wanted to see if it was really there.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/10/lincoln.watch/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Sojourners: Our Moral Audit of the Budget

2009-03-05T20:21:00.001-08:00

While there may be some specifics to disagree with, I concur with the overall assessment of the change in our national budget priorities. I hope the evangelical center and left will continue to speak truth to power and lay aside quibbles for the time being...I hope. I hope the evangelical right can find a way to acknowledge honest policy differences with their brothers and sisters in Christ yet remain in loving fellowship bound by a common love for a risen Lord and a willingness to walk in his Way...I hope.

by Jim Wallis 03-02-2009

Four years ago, faced with a disastrous federal budget proposal, Sojourners coined a phase, “budgets are moral documents.” That phrase has now entered the common lexicon, but it remains our fundamental principle. Budgets reflect the values and priorities of a family, church, organization, city, state, or nation. They tell us what is most important and valued to those making the budget. So, it is important that we do a “values audit” of President Obama’s proposed budget, a “moral audit” of our priorities. Who benefits in this budget, what things are revealed as most important, and what things are less important? America’s religious communities are required to ask of any budget: what happens to the poor and most vulnerable — especially, what becomes of the nation’s poorest children in these critical decisions?

The values of the American people should also be applied to the budget, e.g. fairness (everyone paying their fair share); opportunity for all Americans; fiscal, personal, and social responsibility; balancing important and different priorities; defining security more broadly than just military considerations, as it is related to economic and family security too; compassion and protection for the vulnerable; building community; and upholding the common good.

That’s a principle that has been forgotten in the past years. We have trusted in “the invisible hand” of the market to make everything turn out all right, but things too often haven’t turned out all right. The invisible hand let go of some things, like the common good. The idea that policies which benefit the wealthiest will eventually benefit everyone has proven false. The president’s budget is a step toward restoring the value of the common good to our policy. It is a step to rebalance our priorities, protect the vulnerable, and strengthen the middle.

It contains major investments in the president’s three priorities: significantly expanding health care coverage, focusing on climate change reduction and developing renewable energy, and investing in education – early childhood programs, strengthening and reforming public schools, expanded opportunities for college — all of which will benefit low-income people. There are also specific changes in important areas such as tax policy, food and nutrition programs, housing, needed aid to veterans, prisoner re-entry, global food security, and increased foreign aid for combating pandemic disease. It’s a budget aimed at redressing the imbalances.

The growing inequality in America over decades is a sin of biblical proportions, and it’s time to bring our principles of social justice to bear. As columnist E.J. Dionne wrote,

The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth. Politicians will say lots of things in the coming weeks, but they should be pushed relentlessly to address the bottom-line question: Do they believe that a fairer distribution of capitalism’s bounty is essential to repairing a sick economy? Everything else is a subsidiary issue.

It is that question that should guide our moral audit of the budget. The fundamental moral question in the upcoming budget debate is whether to begin to reverse the rapid and massive increase in American inequality which has grown over the past thirty years — and has dramatically increased during the past eight. I believe it is time to stop helping the undeserving rich, under the now demonstrably false assertion that this will then benefit the rest of us. When the top 1 percent of the country now get 20 percent of its income, control 33 percent of its wealth, and pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than their receptionists do (as Warren Buffet has pointed out)—something has gone terribly wrong in America. The new Obama budget is the first and dramatic step to fix all that, and turn the nation in a different direction.

The new budget proposed by the White House is a dramatic step in the direction of the common good, with strong support for the middle of America, real help for the poorest among us, and the proposition that the wealthiest pay their fare share. And my prediction is that many in the faith community, especially those on the front lines of serving the poor, will rally around the principles and priorities of this budget, bringing their energy and advocacy to bear on the debate that now lies ahead. Because this will not just be a policy debate, but also a moral one; the prayers of the faithful — along with their watchful eyes, willing hands, and ready feet — will surround the congressional budget process over the next few months.

This post comes from Jim’s remarks at a media teleconference on March 2, 2009. Click here to listen to the call.

Sojourners | 3333 14th Street NW, Suite 200 | Washington, DC 20010
Phone 202.328.8842 | Fax 202.328.8757 | sojourners@sojo.net

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Sojourners 2008

Secretary of Defense: Obama Is More Analytical Than Bush

2009-03-01T18:06:00.001-08:00

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. -- George Orwell

WASHINGTON - Tell us, Robert Gates, what's the difference between working under Barack Obama and working under George W. Bush as defense secretary?

"That sounds like the subject of a good book," Gates said with a smile.

"It's really hard to say," he continued during an interview aired Sunday on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

"I think that probably President Obama is somewhat more analytical. And he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue. And if they don't speak up, he calls on them."

And the former president?

"President Bush was interested in hearing different points of view but didn't go out of his way to make sure everybody spoke if they hadn't spoken up before," Gates said.

Bush picked Gates to succeed Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary in November 2006. The following June, Gates recommended that Bush appoint Adm. Mike Mullen as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's top military officer.

When Mullen was asked Sunday to compare the styles of the two presidents, he demurred.

"Well, I think individuals are always different," Mullen said on "State of the Union" on CNN. "But, you know, I mean, I wouldn't characterize them one way or the other."

That said, Mullen remarked that Obama listens to his military advisers.

"He's anxious to get the military's input to all his decisions," Mullen said. "The discussions have been broad and deep, and I've been very comfortable both with the access and the ability to give that advice."

Both Gates and Mullen remained in their positions in the opening weeks of the Obama administration. Gates told NBC that it would be "a challenge" to serve as defense secretary for the entirety of Obama's term.

The Associated Press
updated 2:27 p.m. CT, Sun., March. 1, 2009

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29453760/

© 2009 MSNBC.com

Why the New York Post Cartoon Is Hurtful...

2009-02-26T17:24:00.001-08:00

Do you find the cartoon below offensive or otherwise hurtful? If not, I suggest a personal exploration of the history of our nation and a time of intentional listening to those whose relatives and ancestors were not only offended; but, deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Posted on Wed, Feb. 25, 2009
By LEONARD PITTS JR.

'Police and deputy sheriffs hunted Wednesday night for a negro `beast man' . . . ''
-- The Billings Gazette,
Sept. 19, 1929

An original Guinea negro whose blood has not been crossed is as docile as a shepherd dog . . . ''
-- The Atlanta Constitution,
June 4, 1899

"Miss Mary Henderson The Victim of a Negro Beast''
-- The Moberly Weekly Monitor,
Aug. 29, 1901

"For two minutes [Joe Louis] was a throwback to a wild jungle creature . . . ''
-- The Associated Press,
Jan. 14, 1940

"Towering above them all, his black apelike face, distorted with rage . . . ''
-- The Oelwein Daily Register,
April 24, 1919

"Northerners cannot realize how low in intelligence, how irresponsible the pure negro is. He is an animal . . . ''
-- The New York Times,
June 9, 1901

Just so we're all clear on why black folk tend to get annoyed when newspapers compare them to animals.

For all that, though, it was not the New York Post's now-notorious chimp cartoon that offended me. Rather, it was everything that came after.

Last week's cartoon, referencing a recent incident in which police killed a chimpanzee that mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn., depicts two officers standing over the bullet-riddled body of a dead ape. One says to the other: ``They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.''

Some observers were outraged, believing that cartoonist Sean Delonas had likened President Barack Obama to a chimp. I thought it equally likely he meant to taunt congressional Democrats (the president, after all, did not ''write'' the stimulus bill) and had inadvertently blundered into an awful racial stereotype. Given that ambiguity, my instinct was to give Delonas the benefit of the doubt.

Then he opened his mouth.

He and his bosses, actually. First, there was the strident defense: 'absolutely friggin' ridiculous'' said the cartoonist in a statement to CNN. Later, with protesters ringing its building and finding itself questioned and criticized by everyone from the National Association of Black Journalists to New York Gov. David Paterson to the NAACP, the paper issued a grudging, churlish apology in which, even while expressing regret, it tried to blame the controversy on ''opportunists'' to whom ``no apology is due.''

It took nearly a week before it dawned on the paper's braintrust that maybe people had good reason for their vexation. Tuesday, media baron Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Post, issued a new apology, no strings attached.

That it took so long to do the obvious speaks volumes.

Let's be clear on one thing: The Post has a right to provoke and even offend. That is absolute and sacrosanct. But it is difficult not to be troubled by a suffocating cluelessness that allows it to provoke and offend without knowing it or meaning it or even, apparently, caring about it -- and then, to dismiss provocation and offense as the work of ''opportunists'' instead of seeking to understand why people were so upset.

The paper's attitude, its evident ignorance of historical context, are not unique. Rather, they have their echo in too many white Americans whose default defense is the proverbial good offense whenever they feel cornered on the subject of race.

And yes, that attitude is fed by the fact that in recent years too many African Americans have found it convenient to cry wolf where race is concerned. But if arrogance on the one end and disingenuousness on the other are our only alternatives, we're in trouble.

Fittingly, this all unfolds in the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder's contention that we need to become better and braver in talking about race. Take the Post's self-satisfied ignorance as Exhibit A.

The paper didn't know that it didn't know. One hopes the next time controversy comes calling it will, before deploying its defenses, do what it should have done here.

Shut up and listen.

© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

John McCain: Cost Overruns Have Military Facing 'Train Wreck'

2009-02-24T17:53:00.001-08:00

Finally, I am starting to see the real McCain reemerge! Go get'em McNasty!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Cost overruns on big-ticket Pentagon projects have left the U.S. military facing a budgetary "train wreck" at a time of growing budget deficits, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday.

McCain and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the cost of 95 major weapons systems -- ships, aircraft and armored vehicles -- have ballooned by a total of 30 percent in recent years, to about $1.3 trillion.The senators announced an effort, including legislation, to rein in that spending and tighten Defense Department oversight.

With U.S. troops fighting two wars overseas and personnel costs dominating the defense budget, "We're facing a train wreck," said McCain, the ranking Republican on the committee and the GOP's presidential candidate in 2008.

"We cannot continue on this path of escalating costs without at some point making some tough choices, which may endanger our nation's security," he said.

McCain and Levin singled out the Navy's planned construction of Littoral combat ships, a class of small vessels designed for coastal operations, for particular criticism. Levin said the ships are "way beyond" their projected construction time of two years, and the program has grown from a cost per ship of about $220 million to more than $500 million, according to a November report from the Congressional Research Service.

"We can't have a ship that's a small ship that's supposed to be built in two years run completely out of control to double or triple or quadruple its original cost estimates," McCain said.

He also criticized the planned purchase of 28 new Marine helicopters for the White House that he said cost "more than Air Force One." But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has put that $11 billion order on hold.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday that the Defense Department is committed to reviewing its big-ticket contracts, "particularly those programs that are underperforming." The presidential helicopter project "is one of those programs," he said.

Levin and McCain said their push will include hearings into military contracting, legislation creating new watchdog posts in the Pentagon and an effort to stiffen congressional oversight of big-ticket programs.

"The Department of Defense has the major responsibility to make sure that these programs are run efficiently. Congress has an oversight responsibility," Levin said. "Neither of those activities have been carried out adequately."

Their announcement comes as Obama is scheduled to deliver his budget address to Congress, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates is already examining whether to cut back on some of the armed services' biggest purchases.

"This moment also presents an opportunity, one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity, to critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements," Gates told a Senate hearing in January.

Among the other items under scrutiny: The $950 billion joint strike fighter program, the Army's $200 billion Future Combat System and the Navy's Virginia-class attack submarines.

"We are going to have lots of fights in the next two or three months over various parts of the defense budget," said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst for the nonprofit Center for Defense Information.

The plans have leading defense contractors and members of Congress with contractors' factories in their districts already arguing to keep their programs intact. Lockheed Martin's F-22 program, for instance, employs about 12,000 people in 44 states, its supporters argue.

But Wheeler said defense spending produces "significantly less" employment than spending in other areas, such as mass transit or health care.

CNN's Barbara Starr and Mike Mount contributed to this report.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/congress.pentagon/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Hey, Obama, It Is Time to Step Up Your Game!

2009-02-17T09:45:00.001-08:00

CNN's Jack Cafferty considers the stimulus bill a sorry spectacle; and I think he is pulling some punches. Each party only seems to care about their portion of the American electorate. Republicans are only governing for Republicans and Democrats are only governing for Democrats. Hey guys and gals, whether you like it or not, Republicans have to govern for liberals and Democrats have to govern for conservaties! Suck it up, pull on your big boy and big girl underwear, and do the following: "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." That is your only job...and you currently suck at it!

By Jack Cafferty
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- What a joke. Your Congress has voted to spend almost $790 billion of your money on a stimulus package that not a single member of either chamber has read.

The 1,073-page document wasn't posted on the government's Web site until after 10 p.m. the day before the vote to pass it was taken. I don't care if you're Evelyn Wood, you can't read almost 1,100 pages of the lawyer talk that makes up all legislation in eight or 10 hours.

The criminal part of this boondoggle is divided into two parts. The first is the Democrats promised to post the bill a full 48 hours before the vote was taken to allow members of the public to see what they were getting for their money. Both parties voted unanimously to do this ... and they lied.

It didn't happen. Why am I not surprised? Congress lying to the American people has become part of their job description. They can't be trusted on anything anymore.

I'm sure part of the reason there was no time for the public to read the bill was the 11th-hour internecine warfare between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

When Reid first announced the compromise had been reached, Nancy Pelosi was nowhere to be seen. And it would take an act of God for this egotistical, arrogant woman to miss a photo op where she could take credit for anything. But she wasn't there.

She summoned Reid to her office, where unnamed sources said she blew her top over some provision for schools that she wasn't happy with. Pelosi's snit delayed everything.

It's really too bad President Obama couldn't figure out a way to jettison these two who are poster children for everything that is wrong in Washington. The Associated Press called the birth of the stimulus bill "sausage making" in the best tradition of Washington politics as usual.

The second part of the crime is the contents of the bill itself. Far from being only about jobs, infrastructure and tax cuts as promised, the stimulus bill stimulates a bunch of other stuff as well. Eight billion dollars for high-speed rail lines, including a proposed line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This little bit of second story work wasn't even in the House version of the bill.

It started in the Senate as a $2 billion project, and came out of the conference committee costing a whopping $8 billion. Gee, now who would that benefit? Oh yeah, the Senate majority leader is from Nevada.

Filipino veterans, most of whom don't live in the U.S., will get $200 million in compensation for World War II injuries. And: $2 billion in grants and loans for battery companies, $100 million for small shipyards and a rollback of the alternative minimum tax at a cost of some $70 billion.

The AMT provision is much-needed legislation, but it doesn't belong in the stimulus bill. It forced other things out so Congress could keep to its self-imposed $800 billion cap.

And when it comes to the tax cuts contained in the stimulus bill, experts have determined they will amount to about $13 per week after taxes for the average American. I'm not sure how much stimulation $13 a week buys. It depends on the neighborhood.

The biggest problem of all is the stimulus bill may not be nearly enough. And if the president has to come back asking for more, the next time might not be so easy.

So far, we have an anemic stimulus bill and some sort of vague proposal from the secretary of the Treasury to deal with the banking crisis -- a proposal that landed with a thud last week -- as the two first steps toward solving a financial crisis that is threatening to take down the country.

Obama better step up his game, or it's going to be a short four years in office.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jack Cafferty; but, Truly Jones likes them a whole lot!

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/cafferty.stimulus/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

The Function of Music

2009-02-11T19:48:00.001-08:00

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

Sir Thomas Beecham
English conductor (1879-1961)

Nobel Economist: How to rescue the bank bailout

2009-01-26T20:07:00.001-08:00

First, the good news...the government can fix the bank bailout fiasco in ways that other governments have fixed theirs. But now the bad news, if you are a conservative...the government can fix the bank bailout fiasco in ways that other governments (possibly "liberal" or "socialist" governments according to some) have fixed theirs. According to professor Stiglitz, "Inevitably, American taxpayers are going to pick up much of the tab for
the banks' failures. The question facing us is, to what extent do we
participate in the upside return?" Notwithstanding the honest and sincere constitutional issue of constraining the coersive institutions of government, I sure hope that, even if it is just temporarily, we can lay aside political posturing and narrow agendas; and embrace prudent policies and practical plans that fix our mistakes and prevent their return. I hope...

By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 for his work on the economics of information. Stiglitz was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration before joining the World Bank as chief economist.

(CNN) -- America's recession is moving into its second year, with the situation only worsening.

The hope that President Obama will be able to get us out of the mess is tempered by the reality that throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at the banks has failed to restore them to health, or even to resuscitate the flow of lending.

Every day brings further evidence that the losses are greater than had been expected and more and more money will be required.

The question is at last being raised: Perhaps the entire strategy is flawed? Perhaps what is needed is a fundamental rethinking. The Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner strategy was based on the realization that maintaining the flow of credit was essential for the economy. But it was also based on a failure to grasp some of the fundamental changes in our financial sector since the Great Depression, and even in the last two decades.

For a while, there was hope that simply lowering interest rates enough, flooding the economy with money, would suffice; but three quarters of a century ago, Keynes explained why, in a downturn such as this, monetary policy is likely to be ineffective. It is like pushing on a string.

Then there was the hope that if the government stood ready to help the banks with enough money -- and enough was a lot -- confidence would be restored, and with the restoration of confidence, asset prices would increase and lending would be restored.

Remarkably, Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and company simply didn't understand that the banks had made bad loans and engaged in reckless gambling. There had been a bubble, and the bubble had broken. No amount of talking would change these realities.

It soon became clear that just saying that we were ready to spend the money would not suffice. We actually had to get it into the banks. The question was how. At first, the architects of the bailout argued (with complete and utter confidence) that the best way to do this was buying the toxic assets (those in the financial market didn't like the pejorative term, so they used the term "troubled assets") -- the assets that no one in the private sector would touch with a 10-foot pole.

It should have been obvious that this could not be done in a quick way; it took a few weeks for this crushing reality to dawn on them. Besides, there was a fundamental problem: how to value the assets. And if we valued them correctly, it was clear that there would still be a big hole in banks' balance sheets, impeding their ability to lend.

Then came the idea of equity injection, without strings, so that as we poured money into the banks, they poured out money, to their executives in the form of bonuses, to their shareholders in the form of dividends.

Some of what they had left over they used to buy other banks -- to pursue strategic goals for which they could not have found private finance. The last thing in their mind was to restart lending.

The underlying problem is simple: Even in the heyday of finance, there was a huge gap between private rewards and social returns. The bank managers have taken home huge paychecks, even though, over the past five years, the net profits of many of the banks have (in total) been negative.

And the social returns have even been less -- the financial sector is supposed to allocate capital and manage risk, and it did neither well. Our economy is paying the price for these failures -- to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

But this ever-present problem has now grown worse. In effect, the American taxpayers are the major provider of finance to the banks. In some cases, the value of our equity injection, guarantees, and other forms of assistance dwarf the value of the "private" sector's equity contribution; yet we have no voice in how the banks are run.

This helps us understand the reason why banks have not started to lend again. Put yourself in the position of a bank manager, trying to get through this mess. At this juncture, in spite of the massive government cash injections, he sees his equity dwindling. The banks -- who prided themselves on being risk managers -- finally, and a little too late -- seem to have recognized the risk that they have taken on in the past five years.

Leverage, or borrowing, gives big returns when things are going well, but when things turn sour, it is a recipe for disaster. It was not unusual for investment banks to "leverage" themselves by borrowing amounts equal to 25 or 30 times their equity.

At "just" 25 to 1 leverage, a 4 percent fall in the price of assets wipes out a bank's net worth -- and we have seen far more precipitous falls in asset prices. Putting another $20 billion in a bank with $2 trillion of assets will be wiped out with just a 1 percent fall in asset prices. What's the point?

It seems that some of our government officials have finally gotten around to doing some of this elementary arithmetic. So they have come up with another strategy: We'll "insure" the banks, i.e., take the downside risk off of them.

The problem is similar to that confronting the original "cash for trash" initiative: How do we determine the right price for the insurance? And almost surely, if we charge the right price, these institutions are bankrupt. They will need massive equity injections and insurance.

There is a slight variant version of this, much like the original Paulson proposal: Buy the bad assets, but this time, not on a one by one basis, but in large bundles. Again, the problem is -- how do we value the bundles of toxic waste we take off the banks? The suspicion is that the banks have a simple answer: Don't worry about the details. Just give us a big wad of cash.

This variant adds another twist of the kind of financial alchemy that got the country into the mess. Somehow, there is a notion that by moving the assets around, putting the bad assets in an aggregator bank run by the government, things will get better.

Is the rationale that the government is better at disposing of garbage, while the private sector is better at making loans? The record of our financial system in assessing credit worthiness -- evidenced not just by this bailout, but by the repeated bailouts over the past 25 years -- provides little convincing evidence.

But even were we to do all this -- with uncertain risks to our future national debt -- there is still no assurance of a resumption of lending. For the reality is we are in a recession, and risks are high in a recession. Having been burned once, many bankers are staying away from the fire.

Besides, many of the problems that afflict the financial sector are more pervasive. General Motors and GE both got into the finance business, and both showed that banks had no monopoly on bad risk management.

Many a bank may decide that the better strategy is a conservative one: Hoard one's cash, wait until things settle down, hope that you are among the few surviving banks and then start lending. Of course, if all the banks reason so, the recession will be longer and deeper than it otherwise would be.

What's the alternative? Sweden (and several other countries) have shown that there is an alternative -- the government takes over those banks that cannot assemble enough capital through private sources to survive without government assistance.

It is standard practice to shut down banks failing to meet basic requirements on capital, but we almost certainly have been too gentle in enforcing these requirements. (There has been too little transparency in this and every other aspect of government intervention in the financial system.)

To be sure, shareholders and bondholders will lose out, but their gains under the current regime come at the expense of taxpayers. In the good years, they were rewarded for their risk taking. Ownership cannot be a one-sided bet.

Of course, most of the employees will remain, and even much of the management. What then is the difference? The difference is that now, the incentives of the banks can be aligned better with those of the country. And it is in the national interest that prudent lending be restarted.

There are several other marked advantages. One of the problems today is that the banks potentially owe large amounts to each other (through complicated derivatives). With government owning many of the banks, sorting through those obligations ("netting them out," in the jargon) will be far easier.

Inevitably, American taxpayers are going to pick up much of the tab for the banks' failures. The question facing us is, to what extent do we participate in the upside return?

Eventually, America's economy will recover. Eventually, our financial sector will be functioning -- and profitable -- once again, though hopefully, it will focus its attention more on doing what it is supposed to do. When things turn around, we can once again privatize the now-failed banks, and the returns we get can help write down the massive increase in the national debt that has been brought upon us by our financial markets.

We are moving in unchartered waters. No one can be sure what will work. But long-standing economic principles can help guide us. Incentives matter. The long-run fiscal position of the U.S. matters. And it is important to restart prudent lending as fast as possible.

Most of the ways currently being discussed for squaring this circle fail to do so. There is an alternative. We should begin to consider it.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/26/stiglitz.finance.crisis/index.html

© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome, Mr. President!

2009-01-20T19:27:00.001-08:00

Welcome, indeed!

Common Sense Is a Super Power!

2009-01-17T12:17:00.001-08:00

Parents, help your children achieve this power. Employers, expect this from all of your employees! Citizens, demand this from our elected officials. Let us all seek this power!

Melissa Etheridge on Rick Warren: He Is No Monster

2009-01-02T14:45:00.001-08:00

I find the attitude and actions of Melissa Etheridge to be compelling and worth modeling. Also, I appreciate the spirit (Spirit?) present in Rick Warren that moved him in a different direction in both word and deed. I think the most important message being taught here is..."Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry" (Epistle of James 1:19). Peace to us all...

The Huffington Post
Post by Melissa Etheridge
Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter
Posted December 22, 2008 | 05:10 PM (EST)

This is a message for my brothers and sisters who have fought so long and so hard for gay rights and liberty. We have spent a long time climbing up this mountain, looking at the impossible, changing a thousand year-old paradigm. We have asked for the right to love the human of our choice, and to be protected equally under the laws of this great country. The road at times has been so bloody, and so horrible, and so disheartening. From being blamed for 9/11 and Katrina, to hateful crimes committed against us, we are battle weary. We watched as our nation took a step in the right direction, against all odds and elected Barack Obama as our next leader. Then we were jerked back into the last century as we watched our rights taken away by prop 8 in California. Still sore and angry we felt another slap in the face as the man we helped get elected seemingly invited a gay-hater to address the world at his inauguration.

I hadn't heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same 'ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I'd agreed to play a song I'd written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called "Ring The Bells," and it's a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night... Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, "Are you really about peace or not?"

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife's struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world's attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don't hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward all men and women... and everyone in-between.

Permalink: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-etheridge/the-choice-is-ours-now_b_152947.html

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Post originally found on Newser

© 2009 Newser, LLC. All rights reserved.

"Biggest Financial Scandal, Probably, in the History of the Markets"

2008-12-15T12:14:00.001-08:00

"One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. A man's riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat." -- Proverbs 13:7,8

Me thinks something doth stinketh greatly!

The Associated Press
updated 11:34 a.m. CT, Mon., Dec. 15, 2008

NEW YORK - The list of investors who say they were duped in one of Wall Street’s biggest Ponzi schemes is growing, snaring some of the world’s biggest banking institutions and hedge funds, the super rich and the famous, pensioners and charities.

The alleged victims who sunk cash into veteran Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff’s investment pool include real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman, the foundation of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and a charity of movie director Steven Spielberg, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Among the world’s biggest banking institutions, Britain’s HSBC Holdings PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Man Group PLC, Spain’s Grupo Santander SA, France’s BNP Paribas and Japan’s Nomura Holdings all reported that they had fallen victim to Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme.

The 70-year-old Madoff (MAY-doff), well respected in the investment community after serving as chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was arrested Thursday in what prosecutors say was a $50 billion scheme to defraud investors. Some investors claim they’ve been wiped out, while others are still likely to come forward.

“There were a lot of very sophisticated people who were duped, and that happens a great deal when you’ve had somebody decide to be unscrupulous,” said Harvey Pitt, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory agency in charge of monitoring investment funds like the one Madoff operated.

The extent of the potential damage prompted a leading fund manager in London to lash out at U.S. regulators for failing to detect the fraud earlier.

“I think now it is very difficult for people to invest in things that are meant to be regulated in America, because they haven fallen down in the job,” Nicola Horlick, the manager of Bramdean Alternatives, which has 9 percent of its funds invested in Madoff’s scheme, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

“All through the credit crunch this has been apparent,” Horlick added. “This is the biggest financial scandal, probably, in the history of the markets.”

Among U.S. investors, the Boston-based Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, a charity that financed trips for Jewish youth to Israel, let go of its staff after revealing that the money for its operations was invested with Madoff.

New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, entrusted his family’s charitable foundation to Madoff. Lautenberg’s attorney, Michael Griffinger, said they weren’t yet sure the extent of the foundation’s losses, but that the bulk of its investments had been handled by Madoff.

Lautenberg’s foundation handed out more than $765,000 to at least 100 recipients in 2006, according to the most recent listing on Guidestar, which tracks charitable organization filings.

The foundation helps support a variety of religious, educational, civic and arts organizations in New Jersey and elsewhere, and its contributions range from a gift of more than $300,000 to the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey to a $2,000 donation to a children’s program at the Hackensack Medical Center.

Reports from Florida to Minnesota included profiles of ordinary investors who gave Madoff their money. Some had been friends with him for decades, others were able to invest because they were a friend of a friend. They told stories of losing everything from $40,000 to an entire nest egg worth well over $1 million.

They join a list of more powerful investors that have come forward, all worried about the extent of their losses. The roster of names include former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman, New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and J. Ezra Merkin, the chairman of GMAC Financial Services, among others.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, said Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman of real estate firm Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, had significant exposure through a fund that invested substantially all of its assets with Madoff.

The Journal also said the Steven Spielberg charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation, in the past appears to have invested a significant portion of its assets with Madoff. It said the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, founded by the famed Holocaust survivor and writer, was hard hit by losses, citing two people familiar with the organization’s investments.

Messages were left with the Zuckerman fund and Wunderkinder foundation. The Wiesel foundation said it was looking into the matter.

The Journal also reported potential investors and firms exposed to the alleged fraud included: Carl Shapiro, founder and former chairman of women’s apparel company Kay Windsor Inc.; Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. co-founder Leonard Feinstein; Yeshiva University; EIM Group; UBS AG; Fairfield Greenwich Advisors; Tremont Capital Management; Maxam Capital Management and Ascot Partners.

Among those overseas confirming exposure on Monday, Banco Santander, the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization, said its clients have 2.33 billion euros ($3.07 billion) in exposure with Madoff, mostly through a fund called Optimal Strategic US Equity.

HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, said a “small number” of its institutional clients had exposure totaling some $1 billion in Madoff funds.

It added that it has custody clients who have invested with Madoff, but it did not believe those “custodial arrangements should be a source of exposure to the group.”

Royal Bank of Scotland — Britain’s second-largest bank, which is now 58 percent owned by the British government — said it could lose around 400 million euros pounds through exposure in trading and collateralized lending to funds of hedge funds invested with Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

Man Group, the world’s largest publicly traded fund manager that reported exposure of around $360 million on Monday, said “it appears that a systematic and comprehensive fraud may have been committed, evading a range of structural controls.”

Japan’s Nomura Holdings said it has 27.5 billion yen ($306 million) in exposure, but added that any losses were likely to be limited compared to its capital base.

French banks foresee nearly 1 billion euros in potential losses as indirect victims of the alleged fraud.

Natixis, France’s fourth-largest bank, set its maximum indirect exposure at about 450 million euros. A statement by the investment bank said it made no direct investments in hedge funds managed by Madoff. However, it said that some of its clients’ money was invested in funds managed by “first class custodians,” which in turn entrusted those securities to Madoff’s investment securities company.

Both Societe Generale and Credit Agricole said they had “negligible” exposure of below 10 million euros each. However, the euro zone’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, has estimated its risk exposure to hedge funds managed by Madoff at up to 350 million euros.

In a statement Sunday, BNP Paribas said it has no investment of its own in Madoff’s hedge funds, but “does have risk exposure to these funds through its trading business and collateralized lending to funds of hedge funds.”

Swiss bank Union Bancaire Privee indicated it had hundreds of millions of dollars in client assets invested under the management of Madoff. The Geneva bank, one of Switzerland’s largest, did not disclose a total amount invested, but did say the exposure of its clients “represents less than 1 percent of the total assets under management of the bank.”

UBP’s announcement Monday followed weekend disclosures by Swiss banks Reichmuth & Co. of Lucerne, Benedict Hentsch of Geneva and Neue Privat Bank of Zurich that they had millions of dollars worth of client assets at risk in the case.

Unicredit, Italy’s largest bank, said its exposure to Madoff’s company is about 75 million euros, representing amounts the bank invested directly and not funds belonging to its clients, said spokesman Andrea Moreschi. Unicredit has a separate, indirect exposure through Pioneer Investment, its asset management division.

In Germany, Deutsche Bank AG, Dresdner Bank AG and Commerzbank AG declined to comment on the matter.

On Friday, representatives from major U.S. banks — Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. — declined to comment on whether they had exposure to Madoff’s company. Both BlackRock Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said they had no exposure.

Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co., Comerica Inc. and U.S. Bancorp did not return calls seeking comment.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28226910/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

It Started 389 Years Ago...

2008-11-20T17:19:00.001-08:00

I love watching our history unfold. My emotions create an enigmatic thought: Everything has changed...but nothing has changed yet?!

Link to original page: http://www.wallstats.com/blog/389-years-ago/

© 2008 All Rights Reserved | Custom Web Design by Scottrageous Design

Saluting a Female General

2008-11-16T15:44:00.001-08:00

"With rock piles and signposts, mark the way home, my dear people. It is the same road by which you left. Will you ever decide to be faithful? I will make sure that someday things will be different, as different as a woman protecting a man." -- Jeremiah 31:21-22

I realize that I am taking some liberties with the text; but, perhaps the prophecies of old still have some life in them? Perhaps one day the world will be truly different...if we are willing to walk the way home.

By Jamie McIntyre
CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent

In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre reflects on the historic promotion of Gen. Ann Dunwoody, the first woman to achieve Army's highest rank.

(CNN) -- Watching Army Chief of Staff George Casey swear in his newest fellow four star -- the first woman to achieve the Army's highest rank -- it was hard not to feel something truly historic was happening before your eyes.

The cavernous Pentagon auditorium was packed with a constellation of multistarred senior officers, mostly men. The mood was festive. There were broad smiles everywhere.

It was both a sign of how far women have come in the U.S. military and a reminder that women are still not full equals to their brothers-in-arms.

"It's taken a long time, probably longer than it should have," Casey admitted in his congratulatory remarks.

Gen. Ann Dunwoody was beaming as Casey and her husband pinned the four stars on each of her shoulders, stars that carry with them the heavy burden of a "historic first."

"I didn't appreciate the enormity of the events until tidal waves of cards, letters, and e-mails started coming my way," Dunwoody said.

"And I've heard from men and women, from every branch of service...from moms and dads who see this promotion as a beacon of hope for their own daughters."

One such letter came from Master Sgt. Michael Bergener, who served with Dunwoody at Fort Bragg.

"Now, you get to pin on our nation's highest military rank, and I get to tell my 5- and 7-year-old daughters that they really can be anything that they want to be, even a general in the United States Army."

Well, almost anything.

Technically, women are still barred by Congress from serving in direct ground combat -- a distinction that seems increasingly disconnected from the reality of modern warfare.

Still, I couldn't help think how much attitudes had changed from when I first reported on the women in combat debate in 1993.

Bill Clinton was president, and Defense Secretary Les Aspin had ordered an end to the ban on women flying combat aircraft.

The military saluted smartly and began trumpeting the breakthrough, even as some senior officers harbored deep reservations.

I remember questioning the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Tony McPeak, who made no secret of his personal opposition to allowing women in the cockpits of his fighter jets, about how he felt.

"I'm comfortable with it, and there's always the small chance I was wrong," McPeak said.

It sounded like self-deprecating humor, but anyone who knew Tony McPeak knew he really did think there was only a small chance he was wrong.

At the time -- in the early '90s, after Desert Storm -- the prevailing thought was summed up by Kate O'Beirne, a former member of the Presidential Commission on Women in Combat.

"I do not believe the American public is ready to see America's daughters and sisters being paraded in downtown Baghdad as POWs. And we know that our pilots run that risk," she said at the time.

That's no longer a theoretical question. The fact is American women have been fighting and dying alongside men in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- two wars with no front lines.

So far, 115 women have laid down their lives for their country in those wars.

But the reason it took so long for a woman to earn four stars is because most full generals prove their mettle in combat.

Dunwoody, though she served the Airborne, rose through the ranks of the Army Materiel Command.

"History will no doubt take note of her achievement in breaking through this final brass ceiling to pin on a fourth star," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at Dunwoody's promotion ceremony, "But she would rather be known and remembered first and foremost as a U.S. Army soldier."

Dunwoody has a proud military history. A Dunwoody has fought in every American war since the Revolution.

Her great-grandfather, Brig. Gen. Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, was the chief signal officer in Cuba from 1898 to 1901.

Her father, Hal Dunwoody, is a veteran of three wars -- World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

But it is the younger generation of Dunwoodys who are a living testament to the strides woman have made. Her sister Sue was the third female helicopter pilot in the Army, and her niece Jenny is an Air Force A-10 pilot who recently returned from flying combat missions in Afghanistan.

"If anyone is worried about the next generation of warriors, fear not," says Dunwoody. "The bench is loaded with talented sailors, airmen, soldiers, and Marines. And while I know I may be the first woman to achieve this honor, I know with certainty I won't be the last."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/14/btsc.female.general/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

FDIC, Treasury clash on anti-foreclosure plan

2008-11-14T12:27:00.001-08:00

Look, someone in the Bush administration is trying to do the right thing; but, turn out the lights because the party is over! W...Worst President Ever!

Released by Reuters on Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:15pm EST
By Karey Wutkowski and Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. banking regulator unveiled a plan on Friday to prevent about 1.5 million foreclosures, breaking ranks with the Bush administration by demanding bailout funds be diverted from banks to consumers.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said the plan would modify millions of delinquent mortgages and the government would reward participating lenders by sharing the cost of defaults on restructured loans.

The dispute over housing policy during the administration's final weeks spilled into the public as a U.S. Treasury official and the White House on Friday renewed their opposition to using money from the $700 billion bailout fund to support such a program.

Treasury Interim Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari told a U.S. House of Representatives committee the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which the Treasury controls, was designed for investing.

"The FDIC proposal at the end of the day is a spending proposal," he said.

Kashkari said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson thinks the FDIC proposal "is a very interesting idea" and urged Congress to consider drafting legislation to create such a program.

The White House said it is carefully reviewing the FDIC plan, but that it has to think about its potential cost.

The FDIC said its plan would cost the government about $24.4 billion, which could be paid from the TARP. Most of the money from an initial disbursement in that program has been injected as capital into banks.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who spent weeks unsuccessfully lobbying Bush administration officials for the plan, issued the proposal two days after Paulson publicly dismissed the idea.

Leading Democratic lawmakers have rallied behind Bair, a Republican, and have even pushed for her to have a place in Democratic president-elect Barack Obama's administration.

Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Wednesday that he hopes Paulson works with Bair to get the program up and running as soon as possible to address the worst housing crash since the Great Depression.

The FDIC pushed forward with its plan, posting it on the agency's Web site on Friday morning (http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/loans/loanmod/index.html).

"Although foreclosures are costly to lenders, borrowers and communities, the pace of loan modifications continues to be extremely slow," the FDIC said. "It is imperative to provide incentives to achieve a sufficient scale in loan modifications to stem the reductions in housing prices and rising foreclosures."

The FDIC, which insures most U.S. bank deposits, said it plans to overcome the problem of reaching borrowers, which has dogged previous efforts, by offering mortgage servicers $1,000 to cover expenses for each loan modified. It said the plan could modify about 2.2 million mortgage loans and promised to share up to 50 percent of losses incurred if a borrower defaults on a loan that has been restructured.

Eligible borrowers would include those who have missed at least two monthly payments on loans for homes they live in. Lenders would be expected to lower those borrowers' monthly payments to about 31 percent of the borrowers' monthly income.

The plan is modeled on the FDIC's program to modify distressed mortgages at failed lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc, which the agency seized in July.

COMPETING PLANS

Kashkari said on Friday that it was "aggressively" looking at ways to use TARP to reduce skyrocketing home foreclosures.

The federal government has laid out a number of plans in recent months to try to help distressed homeowners, the latest of which came earlier this week. On Monday, the federal overseer of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said the companies' struggling borrowers can apply to have their mortgage payments lowered to 38 percent of their income.

An FDIC official, however, said on Friday that plan and others have not gone far enough, and that $24 billion in federal money should be dedicated to having a stronger effect on foreclosures.

"I think more needs to be done now," said Mike Krimminger, special policy adviser to the FDIC, to CNBC. "That's a substantial amount of money, but I think trying to get an impact on the overall market justifies the spending of that money. I think investing in the housing market, investing in the stability for our communities, and stability for our mortgages is crucial if we're going to avoid the greater economic impact."

Consumer advocates cheered Bair's proposal.

"It is clear that existing loan modification efforts have not worked," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in a statement. "The administration needs to get behind a meaningful proposal to address home foreclosures."

Linda Lowell, a mortgage market veteran and founder of consulting firm OffStreet Research, said Bair has been talking about stabilizing borrowers for more than a year and clearly intends to get her plan through.

"She more than a lot of people has gotten it sooner, that if they don't find a way that is reasonable and productive to stop the foreclosures, they continue to build the pressure on home prices" and the overall economy, Lowell said.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski and Patrick Rucker, additional reporting by Al Yoon in New York, Editing by Tom Hals)

Link to Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AD5AU20081114?sp=true

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

2008-11-14T12:06:00.000-08:00

Why can't the Big 3 simply understand this...

Found on CNN's iReport, posted by David from Washington DC

2008-11-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

CNN's Hugh Riminton interviews former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is asking all Americans to get behind Obama. I would be humbled and amazed to have such an endorsement offered and such true words spoken about me by such an American...

Yes, We Can!

2008-11-04T21:17:00.001-08:00

Yes, America! We Can!

"The Reign of Terror" at the OSC Is Over!

2008-10-28T11:15:00.001-07:00

Wow! The Bush administration has finally dismissed Mr. Bloch. I fear long-term damage has been done to the reputation and integrity of the Office of Special Counsel, but at least a change has been made.

Fresh Details Emerge In Special Counsel's Ouster

by Ari Shapiro

October 28, 2008

New details are emerging about the White House's dismissal of Scott J. Bloch as special counsel last week. The Bush administration told Bloch on Thursday that he would no longer serve as head of the office that protects federal government workers from mistreatment.

Government watchdog groups had complained for years that Bloch abused his power. They said he ignored legitimate whistle-blower complaints and retaliated against his own employees whom he perceived as disloyal.

The Office of Personnel Management eventually began an investigation into the claims against Bloch. Bloch then hired a private company to scrub his computer, triggering an FBI investigation into whether the scrub violated obstruction-of-justice laws. Bloch claimed it was to eliminate a computer virus. But even when FBI agents staged a high-profile raid on Bloch's home and office last May, the White House did not take any action.

Sources close to the Office of Special Counsel say the first indication that something was about to happen came about 10 days ago. The White House told Bloch to attend a meeting the following Friday. A few days after he learned of the meeting, Bloch sent the president a resignation letter saying he would step down in January, at the conclusion of his five-year term. After the letter was released, White House officials moved up Bloch's meeting. Thursday morning, they told Bloch he was done.

He was placed on administrative leave with salary through December. While Bloch was at the White House meeting, federal police officers showed up outside his office door to make sure he didn't return.

"It seems like this has been a long time in coming," said Elaine Kaplan, who preceded Bloch as special counsel. "I don't think it matters that he's going to get a paycheck through the next couple months."

She says Bloch's leadership in the past five years has demoralized the career staff, and that many experienced employees have left.

"I view the departure of Scott Bloch with great satisfaction," said Jim Mitchell, who was Bloch's spokesman and chief of staff until Bloch forced him out over the summer. "Bloch was doing harm to the credibility of the office because of all of his problems," Mitchell said. "He also was not much of a leader. He spent most of his days sitting in his office, interacting only with a few senior people and rarely with any of the people who were doing the work in the office."

The current office spokesman referred requests for comment to the White House. White House spokesman Carlton Carroll declined to comment on personnel matters but said the decision to dismiss Bloch was not based on any ongoing investigations.

Debra Katz, a lawyer who represents whistle-blowers in a lawsuit against the OSC, described Bloch's departure as "a really significant event."

"If whistle-blowers get protection again," she said, "the public will be better served."

Katz has a theory about why the White House put Bloch on administrative leave instead of firing him outright. Bloch was investigating White House officials at the same time the FBI was investigating Bloch. Katz says that if the Bush administration had fired Bloch, he might have countersued, claiming he was a whistle-blower being punished for investigating the White House.

"We have felt all along that Bloch has been trying to insulate himself from termination," Katz said, "so here it appears that the White House has taken the easy road out, and instead of firing him for misconduct is just allowing him to receive a paycheck."

Another possibility is that the White House wanted to fire Bloch but could not find a good enough reason. After all, Bloch's supporters point out, although the complaints against him are legion, no one has charged Bloch with a crime.

The Office of Special Counsel had an all-staff meeting Thursday afternoon. The agency's top lawyer told everyone that Bloch was gone. Sources said there was an awkward silence at first before someone cracked a joke about getting Bloch a going-away present. Then everyone relaxed, and at the end of the meeting, people burst into applause.

When asked why, an OSC employee replied, "The reign of terror was over."

Link to article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96184109

Copyright 2008 NPR

Dear Joe the Plumber: if you wind up paying more taxes, you’re an idiot

2008-10-23T20:14:00.001-07:00

It's like watching a train wreck in slow-motion...and I can't turn away!!!

Posted on October 16, 2008 by JS OBrien on Scholars and Rogues

Dear Joe the Plumber,

Welcome to your 15 minutes of fame. It’s not everyone who gets his name mentioned 286 times in a presidential debate. If you haven’t already, you simply must change your business’s name to Joe the Plumber. That’s just good marketing. Oh, and don’t forget to add the tag line, “As seen on TV!”

OK, Joe, so you had a conversation with Barack Obama and, while media reports are very sketchy about exactly what your circumstances are (not surprising), it appears you want to buy a business that “brings in” more than $250,000. I have yet to find out if “brings in” means $250,000 in revenue or profit (a very important distinction, Joe), but let’s assume for a moment that it’s profit we’re talking about. Under Barack Obama’s plan (as sketchy as it is on his website), a good guess would be that you would go into a higher tax bracket, paying about 3.6% more in taxes on every dollar you earn over $250,000, for a total marginal tax rate of 39.6% — exactly the same as it was in the 1990s.

But let’s take a closer look at your situation, shall we Joe?

You say you’re planning to buy this business, and it must be a very large small business, indeed, if it covers salaries, expenses, trucks, inventory and the like and still yields a $250,000 + profit. I’m going to guess that you don’t have the cash to buy this business outright, Joe, and if you do, I think you’re holding back on us. I think you’ve inherited some money. But let’s assume that you’re borrowing a fair amount of money to buy the business, using its book value (what the business is worth if you sold all the assets and paid off all your debts) as security and using the revenue stream to pay off the loan. Let’s also assume a business this size is incorporated.

Here’s what you do, Joe. First off, you have your corporation pay you a salary of, say, $249,000 per year. Now you’re not in the higher marginal tax bracket, right? Payments on the loan you took out to buy the business are fully tax deductible, so profits will be reduced by that amount. If you still have more than $250,000 in profit, we’re talking about a rather large business here, and probably a very large down payment (which suggests that you can manipulate your down payment to reduce your taxes, doesn’t it?)

But here’s the thing, Joe. When you own a business, you can do all kinds of things to reduce taxable income (profit). For instance, you can buy more equipment, which can then be depreciated over the years, providing a tax deduction and increasing the company’s book value and, thus, your wealth. Even fully depreciated equipment can generally be sold, in the future, for something. You can spend more money on advertising and hire on a new plumber or two. The advertising costs and the employment costs are generally fully tax deductible. Well, let me take that back. If you provide your employees with health insurance, your costs for health insurance won’t be tax deductible under John McCain’s plan, but who’s counting, right?

By advertising and hiring on, you can drastically increase your revenues (the amount of money coming in) while keeping profits below the $250,000 mark. The increased revenues will make the resale value of your business much higher than it already is, increasing your wealth without getting taxed on that increase. If you want to take more wealth out right now without paying taxes, there is a cornucopia of tax-free or tax-deferred retirement options, benefits, and the like that can move money right around the IRS’s outstretched palm.

Eventually, Joe, your company will be so large, and you will be so wealthy, than an extra 3.5 pennies in tax on each dollar on income you earn over $250,000 will be chickenfeed to you (if it isn’t already). But, hey, it’s up to you. Increase the underlying wealth in your company without paying taxes, or take cash now and pay a few additional taxes on it.

But, please, don’t complain to me about paying more taxes. All it says to me is that you’re not smart enough to run your business’s financial side.

All the best to you and yours,

JS O’Brien

UPDATE

It turns out that Joe is not a good businessman for a simple reason: He doesn’t own a business, appears to have no immediate prospects to do so, has no plumber’s license, works for a small firm doing residential work (which means his employer is unlikely to be clearing $250k per year), and has occasionally talked to the owner about buying the business — someday.

Poor Joe. He’s about to get ripped to shreds by the media, and he seems like a pretty decent guy. I feel for him.

On the other hand, Joe is a great example of those who are so terrified that they’ll get rich some day and owe an extra 3.5 cents on every dollar over $250,000 that they spend a lot of time worrying about it. Joe doesn’t know that he is unlikely ever to make that kind of money.

UPDATE #2

It just gets better and better. Bloomberg is reporting that Joe owes around $1200 in back taxes, and there is an Ohio lien filed against him.

Link to Article:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/10/16/dear-joe-the-plumber-if-you-wind-up-paying-more-taxes-youre-an-idiot/

© 2007-2008
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American debt nightmare ends easy credit era

2008-10-14T18:20:00.001-07:00

"Experts say crisis could spark shift away from maxing out credit cards." Amen and amen!

The Associated Press
updated 1:38 p.m. CT, Tues., Oct. 14, 2008

An inflatable gorilla beckoned from the roof of Don Brown Chevrolet in St. Louis, servers doled out free bowls of pasta and a salesman urged potential customers to "come on up under the canopy and put your hands on" a new set of wheels.

But sitting across from a salesman in a quiet back room, Adrian Clark could see it would not be nearly that easy. This was the ninth or tenth dealership for Clark, a steamfitter looking for a car to commute to a new job. Every one offered a variation on the discouragement he was getting here: Without $1,000 for a downpayment, no loan.

"It's just rough times right now," Clark said. "Rough times."

For Clark, and for a nation of consumers heavily dependent on credit, there are growing signs that those rough times could prove to be more than just a temporary problem, that they could be the beginning of a stark, new reality.

Is America's long era of easy credit over?

Experts say that even when the current credit crunch eases, the nation may finally have maxed out its reliance on borrowed cash. Today's crisis is a warning sign, they say, that consumers could be facing long-term adjustments in the way they finance their everyday lives.

"I think we're undergoing a fundamental shift from living on borrowed money to one where living within your means, saving and investing for the future, comes back into vogue," said Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com. "This entire credit crunch is a wakeup call to anybody who was attempting to borrow their way to prosperity."

A prolonged period of tighter credit is ahead, experts say.

U.S. consumers will find it much harder to get a credit card, and to carry large balances. Late fees will rise and lines of credit will be reined in. After years of buying homes with interest-only loans, or loans that allowed people to borrow more than the value of the home, substantial payments and downpayments will be required. Interest rates are also likely to rise.

Lenders, far more wary of risk, have tightened the standards they use to judge potential borrowers. Regulators will be looking over their shoulders.

The changes cap three decades in which U.S. consumers — along with businesses and government — have run up ever-increasing debt. Americans became accustomed to financing purchases large and small with plentiful credit cards, easily approved loans for cars and the latest conveniences, and by siphoning the equity in their homes. Lenders did far more than just make credit plentiful. They aggressively marketed it as a necessity, a way for the smart consumer to leverage themselves into a better lifestyle.

The financial meltdown has made clear the role an increasingly global economy played in facilitating U.S. consumers' borrowing, with banks packaging and selling debt to investors, providing cash to people who once would have been considered too risky to get a loan.

The expansion of credit has, in many ways, been a good thing. It has allowed many more people to buy homes. At a time when household incomes have stagnated, borrowing has made it possible for many people to afford purchases and cover short-term expenses they might otherwise have had to delay or abandon.

But all that borrowing came at a heavy cost.

Americans are more reliant on debt then ever before.

The portion of disposable income that U.S. families devote to debt hit an all-time high in the second half of last year, topping 14 percent, figures from the Federal Reserve show. When other fixed obligations — like car lease payments and homeowner's insurance — are added in, about one of every five household dollars is now claimed by bills.

The credit card industry lobbied heavily in 2005 to tighten bankruptcy laws to make it more difficult for consumers to seek court protection and shed responsibility for paying off debt. But in a sign of just how much households have become dependent on borrowing, the average amount of credit card debt discharged in Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings has tripled — to $61,000 per person — from what it was before the law was passed.

"We are going to have to cut back," said Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C. thinktank. "We've really been living beyond our means."

Americans, borrowing to cover ordinary living expenses, have all but abandoned saving.

The U.S. personal saving rate dropped to well below 1 percent in late 2007 and early this year, according to figures from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. The figure has edged up in the last few months, but the actual savings rate may still be near zero, given that many people are covering living costs by using credit cards or money saved earlier, according to the BEA. The lack of savings is a sharp contrast with the decades after World War II. Americans routinely saved more than 10 percent of their income in the early 1970s.

Now, many families spend virtually all of their incomes covering living expenses, and even that is not enough.

"In the credit era, which is like living on steroids, you're not saving money, you're not breaking even. You're actually borrowing 20 to 30 percent," said Robert Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation: The Consequences of America's Addiction to Credit."

The new era of tighter credit will largely be a mandate, as consumers are forced to adjust to tougher rules and tighter limits. But consumers have also begun showing signs of a change in mind-set, putting off purchases, buying less expensive substitutes, going out to eat less, and rethinking their propensity to do so on credit.

Consumer borrowing fell for the first time in more than a decade in August, the Federal Reserve reported this week. The decline, at annual rate of 3.7 percent, reflected a sharp drop in the category of borrowing including auto loans and a smaller decline in the category including credit cards.

The tightening of credit will force American families to cut their spending, mindful of their current paychecks instead of borrowing against future ones, said Frank Badillo, senior economist with TNS Retail Forward, a consulting and market research firm in Columbus, Ohio.

"We're going to see some fundamental changes in consumer behavior," he said.

Badillo and others compare the psychology to the way people reacted after gasoline reached $4 a gallon last summer. Prices have eased considerably since then, but consumers seem to have decided that the good old days of very cheap gasoline are over. In response, people have moved to buying smaller, more efficient cars, and trying to reduce the miles they drive. Demand for homes in outlying suburbs has declined.

Like gasoline prices, the availability of credit should improve once the current crisis eases. But consumers are confronting what some see as a long-term change.

After years of living off one income and drawing on credit to fill the gap, Portland, Ore., legal assistant Susie Shepherd and her partner, Kaite Chase, are rethinking their finances. In the past few years, they regularly ran up debt to pay Chase's tuition and repeatedly refinanced their home, pulling out equity to pay bills and drawing on lines of credit to cover expenses.

But Shepherd was caught short this fall when her brother asked for help in paying moving expenses. She tried to draw on a credit card, but found her line of credit had been cut in half. The only way to help, the couple decided, was to sell some household items.

"We'd been living on credit for so many years," Shepherd said.

Borrowing against the future has always been part of the American story.

"How did those religious English people get to this country on the Mayflower? They came on what we would call the installment plan," said Lendol Calder, author of "Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit."

But the Great Depression chastened consumers. After World War II, and the explosive growth of the suburbs, consumption rose sharply. But the modern era of easy credit really began with the deregulation of the late 1970s.

In a 1978 Supreme Court decision, banks won the right to charge whatever interest rate their home state allowed and to do so across state lines. States repealed usury laws capping interest rates. Banks began pursuing consumers in ways they hadn't before.

When inflation soared in the early '80s, banks aggressively marketed credit cards to struggling consumers as a good deal. The interest rates were high, but not as high as inflation. In the recession of 1990-91, banks who saw their profits tightening seized on the margins available by lending more to consumers. When Congress eliminated income tax deductions for interest on credit cards, banks pushed home equity loans, encouraging people to take money out of their homes to pay off the credit cards.

As families took on debt, they were encouraged to follow a rule of thumb: It's OK as long as you don't devote more than 25 percent of income to borrowing costs.

Lenders, though, found a way around that. The 20-year home loan was repackaged as a 30-year loan and lenders stretched three-year car payment schedules to seven, masking the extent of the debt load.

Consumers "think they're doing fine by their parents' standards," Manning said. "But boy, have they fallen far behind."

The industry came up with subprime loans in the 1990s, then used them to encourage consumers with checkered credit history to buy homes. When very low interest rates early this decade sent home prices skyrocketing, and Wall Street demanded even more lending to feed a market for mortgage-backed securities, lenders went into overdrive. Consumers could buy with no money down and no documentation of income and were encouraged to borrow against the rising value of their homes.

Before the housing bubbled popped, many consumers were pulling money out of their houses to pay for expenditures — from boats to big-screen TVs — well beyond ordinary living expenses.

Over the years, economists have tried to figure out when, if ever, consumers might finally reach their debt limit. But each time, Americans have proven far more resilient than pessimists imagined, financing their spending by borrowing.

The credit crunch, though, may be the breaking point.

Dolores Holmes took out an interest-only $515,000 loan two years ago to buy a bed and breakfast in Lambertville, N.J., a Delaware River town popular with weekend antique hunters. Once the business took root, she planned to refinance into a fixed-rate loan and cut her cost. But as the economy declined, she had trouble filling rooms.

That increased pressure on her to find a way to cut her mortgage payments. But her accountant and financial adviser say her hopes of getting a more affordable loan are slim without a profit that convinces a lender she's worth the risk.

"I've been cutting back on anything personal," she said. "It's like everything I have has to go back into the business."

In Kansas City, Mo., David and Norine Piet were surprised to get a letter in September from USAA Federal Savings Bank that it was freezing their $40,000 home equity line of credit. The bank told the couple it was doing so because their home's value had plunged from $310,000 to $141,200.

The couple had been poised to refinish their basement to add a bedroom and make it suitable for visitors — a place to have people over and play cards, shoot pool and cook. Now that plan has been shelved.

"It's kind of like we had this $40,000 cushion there, that if anything happened we had an emergency fund," David Piet said. "At least we had a source of funds there, and now that's gone. That has caused us to cut back and try to put more money into savings, and be cautious on what we're spending money on."

The Piets are comfortable enough financially to have retired early. But for consumers of more modest means the new restrictions on credit are cutting into their ability to make what would have been relatively ordinary purchases.

Clark, the steamfitter shopping for a car, returned home to Fairview Heights, Mo., in January after a 12-month tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. He found a new job and expected that a regular paycheck would be enough to secure a loan for the car he needs to commute.

At the dealership last weekend, Clark and his wife, Flora Rivera, settled on a Dodge Stratus with 8,000 miles on the odometer. But the dealership was looking for a $1,000 downpayment and Clark had just $200.

The problem is that Clark, 22, has almost no credit history, a problem compounded by the time he spent serving overseas. A few months ago, multiple banks would have been happy to give such a consumer a loan, salesman Scott Ziegler said. But now only companies offering pricier subprime loans are interested, and that still doesn't solve the problem of the downpayment.

Clark left the dealership without a loan, but decided to put down his $200 as a deposit and try to find another source for the remainder of the downpayment. In recent weeks, such scenarios have become the norm, said the dealership's loan manager, Jarrod Campbell.

"I'm getting a lot more customers who are saying, 'I've been to 10 other car lots,"' Campbell said, "and no one will give me a loan."

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27149408/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Next Generation Skyscrapers to Exceed One Kilometer in Height

2008-10-13T19:19:00.001-07:00

Astounding, at least we get to see where some of our petrodollars are going. I would like to know how I can have my name listed on the cornerstone or dedication plaque as a primary investor?!

Saudi prince to build tallest building

By Mark Tutton
For CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Saudi Prince and billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal says he will build the world's tallest building, planned to be over a kilometer (3,281 feet) high. The tower will be built in the Saudi town of Jeddah and will be part of a larger project that will cost $26.7 billion, (100 billion Saudi riyals) said the Prince's firm, Kingdom Holding Company.

The project, entitled Kingdom City, will span 23 million square meters (248 million square feet) and will include luxury homes, hotels and offices.

The booming city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has also joined the skyscraper race.

While the ever-growing Burj Dubai is already the tallest man-made structure in the world, the Nakheel Tower is set to go even higher.

Developers suggest the finished building will be at least 1 km tall.

While in Europe, Paris is leading the skyscraper revolution -- plans for a 50-story building have been given the green light, which will make it the first skyscraper to be built in the city for 30 years.

These buildings are part of a new generation of innovative, exciting skyscrapers set to appear all over the world over the next 10 years.

Some truly mind-blowing structures are being planned for the Middle East.

Hot on its heels, the Burj Mubarak Al Kabir, proposed for the planned 'City of Silk' in Kuwait, could also break the 1000-meter barrier.

While they may be mere midgets compared to the mega structures of the Middle East, Russia Tower in Moscow and the Okhta Center Tower in St Petersburg promise to provide some stunning eye candy.

Spiraling its way through the Chicago skyline, the Chicago Spire will have a striking corkscrew design, while a gleaming Freedom Tower is to be the highlight of the rebuilt World Trade Center. And proving the skyscraper renaissance is a global phenomenon there are stylish giants planned for Panama, Pakistan and South Korea.

Anouk Lorie also contributed to this report

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/10/13/future.skyscraper/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

States Warned about Mortgage Crisis: Bush administration, financial industry thwarted efforts to curb greed

2008-10-12T19:17:00.001-07:00

A long, but nonetheless interesting, read on the current financial crisis. I find it interesting and instructive that most of the problem is rooted in poor character, greed, low integrity, and the interests of the powerful and rich being placed ahead of the poor and marginalized. "Let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).

("To' Nizhoni Ani" found on Al_HikesAZ's flickr photostream)

By Robert Berner and Brian Grow
Business Week
updated 11:59 a.m. CT, Sun., Oct. 12, 2008

More than five years ago, in April 2003, the attorneys general of two small states traveled to Washington with a stern warning for the nation's top bank regulator. Sitting in the spacious Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with its panoramic view of the capital, the AGs from North Carolina and Iowa said lenders were pushing increasingly risky mortgages. Their host, John D. Hawke Jr., expressed skepticism.

Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Tom Miller of Iowa headed a committee of state officials concerned about new forms of "predatory" lending. They urged Hawke to give states more latitude to limit exorbitant interest rates and fine-print fees. "People out there are struggling with oppressive loans," Cooper recalls saying.

Hawke, a veteran banking industry lawyer appointed to head the OCC by President Bill Clinton in 1998, wouldn't budge. He said he would reinforce federal policies that hindered states from reining in lenders. The AGs left the tense hour-long meeting realizing that Washington had become a foe in the nascent fight against reckless real estate finance. The OCC "took 50 sheriffs off the job during the time the mortgage lending industry was becoming the Wild West," Cooper says.

This was but one of many instances of state posses sounding early alarms about the irresponsible lending at the heart of the current financial crisis. Federal officials brushed aside their concerns. The OCC and its sister agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), instead sided with lenders. The beneficiaries ranged from now-defunct subprime factories, such as First Franklin Financial, to a savings and loan owned by Lehman Brothers, the collapsed investment bank.

Some states, including North Carolina and Georgia, passed laws aimed at deterring rash loans only to have federal authorities undercut them. In Iowa and other states, mortgage mills arranged to be acquired by nationally regulated banks and in the process fended off more-assertive state supervision. In Ohio the story took a different twist: State lawmakers acting at the behest of lenders squelched an attempt by the Cleveland City Council to slow the subprime frenzy.

A number of factors contributed to the mortgage disaster and credit crunch. Interest rate cuts and unprecedented foreign capital infusions fueled thoughtless lending on Main Street and arrogant gambling on Wall Street. The trading of esoteric derivatives amplified risks it was supposed to mute.

One cause, though, has been largely overlooked: the stifling of prescient state enforcers and legislators who tried to contain the greed and foolishness. They were thwarted in many cases by Washington officials hostile to regulation and a financial industry adept at exploiting this ideology.

The Bush Administration and many banks clung to what is known as "preemption." It is a legal doctrine that can be invoked in court and at the rulemaking table to assert that, when federal and state authority over business conflict, the feds prevail — even if it means little or no regulation.

‘Fundamental disagreement’

"There is no question that preemption was a significant contributor to the subprime meltdown," says Kathleen E. Keest, a former assistant attorney general in Iowa who now works for the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit in Durham, N.C. "It pushed aside state laws and state law enforcement that would have sent the message that there were still standards in place, and it was a big part of the message to the industry that it could regulate itself without rules."

"That's bull----," says Hawke, the former comptroller. He returned to private law practice in late 2004 with the prominent Washington firm Arnold & Porter. Once again representing lenders as clients, he confirms the substance and tone of the April 2003 meeting with the state AGs, saying they "simply had a fundamental disagreement." But he denies that federal preemption played a role in the subprime debacle.

Hawke blames much of the mess on mortgage brokers and originators who, he says, were the responsibility of states. "I can understand why state AGs would try to offload some responsibility here," he adds. "It's important to remember when people are trying to assign blame here that the courts uniformly upheld our position."

His arguments have some merit. The federal judiciary has bolstered preemption in the name of uniform national rules, not just for banks but also for manufacturers of drugs and consumer products. And state oversight alone is no panacea, as the chaotic state-regulated insurance market illustrates. Inadequate supervision of mortgage companies in some states contributed to the subprime explosion. But the hands-off signals sent from Washington only invited complacency. When some state officials fired warning flares, the Administration doused them.

Consider a clash in 2004 between the OCC and regulators in Michigan. In January of that year attorneys working for Hawke filed a brief in federal court in Grand Rapids on behalf of Wachovia, the national bank with $800 billion in assets based in Charlotte, N.C. Michigan wanted to continue to examine a Wachovia-controlled mortgage unit in the state, which the bank had converted to a wholly owned subsidiary. The parent bank sued, claiming Michigan could no longer look at the mortgage lender's books. Citing the threat of unspecified "hostile state interests," the OCC argued in its brief that "states are not at liberty to obstruct, impair, or condition the exercise of national bank powers, including those powers exercised through an operating subsidiary."

Michigan countered that Wachovia Mortgage was not itself a national bank. The Constitution preserves state authority to protect its residents when federal statutes don't explicitly bar such regulation, Michigan contended. Ken Ross, the state's top financial regulator, says his department fought Wachovia all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in part because it feared a growing subprime mortgage problem: "We knew there needed to be [state] regulation in place or there could be gaps." The OCC, he adds, "did not have robust regulatory provisions over these operating subsidiaries."

The nation's highest court sided with the Bush Administration, ruling in April 2007 that the OCC had exclusive authority over Wachovia Mortgage. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for a five-member majority, pointed to the potential burdens on mortgage lending if there were "duplicative state examination, supervision, and regulation." In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said that it is "especially troubling that the court so blithely preempts Michigan laws designed to protect consumers."

By the time of the Supreme Court decision last year, Wachovia and its mortgage operations in Michigan and elsewhere were feeling the ill effects of unwise lending. As real estate prices continued to fall this year, pushing many borrowers into default, Wachovia teetered on the edge of failure. In late September the federal government stepped in to arrange a fire sale. On Friday, federal antitrust regulators cleared Wells Fargo's $11.7 billion acquisition of Wachovia, a day after Citigroup Inc. walked away from its own efforts to buy the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank.

Confrontations such as Michigan's battle with Wachovia became far more common after George W. Bush took over the White House in 2001 and instituted a broad deregulatory agenda. The OCC, an arm of the Treasury Dept., has adhered closely to it. The agency oversees more than 1,700 federally chartered banks, controlling two-thirds of all U.S. commercial bank assets. Historically, its examiners have monitored bank capital levels and lending to corporations more attentively than they have the treatment of individual borrowers. "Consumer protection has always been an orphan [among federal bank regulators]," says Adam J. Levitin, a commercial law scholar at Georgetown University Law Center.

The OCC brought 495 enforcement actions against national banks from 2000 through 2006. Thirteen of those actions were consumer-related. Only one involved subprime mortgage lending. OCC spokesman Robert Garsson says the figures could be misinterpreted because the agency addresses many problems informally during bank examinations. He declined to provide any examples.

Beyond the influence of free-market theory, turf concerns have reinforced the Administration's determination to exercise responsibility for as many lenders as possible — and prevent state incursions, notes Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr., a professor at George Washington University Law School. Almost all of the funding for the OCC and OTS comes from fees paid by nationally chartered institutions.

The fight in Georgia

Hawke says the OCC seeks only to exercise powers that it has long held under federal law. It is far more efficient for national banks to deal with one set of federal rules than a hodgepodge of state directives, he argues, echoing the Supreme Court's majority view. By the late 1990s, he adds, more state legislatures and AGs were trying to bully national banks by, for example, restricting ATM fees charged to nondepositors. State officials "found it politically advantageous to assert these kinds of initiatives," he says. The OCC's heightened preemption campaign "was occasioned by the fact the states were becoming more aggressive."

The current head of the OCC, John C. Dugan, concurs. "To claim that it is our fault from preemption is just a total smokescreen to shield the fact that the state mortgage brokers and mortgage companies were just not regulated," Dugan says.

Efforts in Georgia to rein in unwise lending provoked a particularly fierce federal reaction. In 2002 the state passed a law that imposed "assignee liability" on the mortgage-finance process. Understanding the significance of this requires a little background.

One of the forces that accelerated the proliferation of dangerous home loans was the Wall Street business of buying up millions of mortgages, bundling them into bonds, and selling the securities to pension funds and other investors. Securitization, which grew to a $7 trillion industry, meant the lenders could pass along the risk of default to a huge universe of investors. Many of those investors, in turn, relied uncritically on reassurances from fee-collecting investment banks and ratings agencies that mortgage-backed securities were high-quality. When many of the reassurances proved hollow, the securitization market collapsed this year.

Assignee liability would radically reshape that market by making everyone involved potentially responsible when things go bad. Investment banks that created mortgage-backed securities and investors who bought them would be liable for financial damage if mortgages turned out to be fraudulent. The financial industry opposed assignee liability, maintaining that it would cripple the market for asset-backed securities. Major ratings agencies later agreed that allowing unlimited damages would be disruptive. The agencies threatened to stop evaluating many bonds tied to mortgages covered by the Georgia law.

But some banking experts speculate that if Georgia's example had spurred more states to adopt broad assignee liability, greater caution would have prevailed in the mortgage-securities market, possibly preventing the blowups of Lehman, Bear Stearns, and other once-mighty institutions. "If the Georgia law had held, it is possible that other states would have followed and there might have been change earlier," says Ellen Seidman, who headed the OTS from 1997 through 2001.

‘Outgunned’ advocates

Roy Barnes, Georgia's governor in 2002, understood the potential significance of assignee liability when he signed the state's new Fair Lending Act that year. He recalls a breakfast meeting with banking lobbyists during which he admonished the industry to clean up reckless lending. He jokingly threatened to hire "the longest-haired, sandal-wearing bank commissioner you ever saw." But the bankers fought back, seeking to undermine the new law.

The OCC's Hawke assisted the industry by issuing a ruling in July 2003 saying the Georgia law did not apply to national banks or their subsidiaries. A fact sheet prepared at the time — and still available on the OCC's Web site — says: "There is no evidence of predatory lending by national banks or their operating subsidiaries, in Georgia or elsewhere."

The OCC ruling had been requested by Cleveland-based National City Bank on behalf of several of its units, including First Franklin Financial, a subprime lender that operated in Georgia and other states. First Franklin, which was acquired by Merrill Lynch in 2006, has been hit with dozens of suits alleging unfair lending practices. Merrill shut down First Franklin's troubled lending business in March. Itself hobbled by mortgage-securities losses, Merrill agreed last month to be acquired by Bank of America. The bank and Merrill declined to comment.

In August 2004, Hawke went a step further in a letter to the Georgia Banking Dept. He said even state-chartered mortgage brokers and lenders were exempt from the Georgia law — if the loans they handled were funded at closing by a national bank or its subsidiary.

By then support for the Georgia law was already eroding. Barnes, a Democrat, lost his reelection campaign in November 2002, and his Republican successor moved to dilute the lending act. Still, supporters mobilized to defend the legislation. One was William J. Brennan Jr., an Atlanta legal aid attorney who specializes in housing and had testified before the U.S. Congress in 2000 about what he saw as the looming mortgage mess. He told the House Financial Services Committee: "The entry of many prominent national banks into the subprime mortgage-lending business has resulted not in reform, but in the expansion of the abusive practices." Federal regulators, he testified, "have done little to stop" the trend. In early 2003, Brennan and a legal aid colleague, Karen E. Brown, consulted with Georgia legislators trying to block amendments softening the lending law. At a hearing in February, Brennan requested a police escort because he feared that angry mortgage brokers would block his way. "The words that come to mind are 'outgunned' and 'overwhelmed,' " says Brown.

The Georgia legislature sharply curtailed the assignee liability provision in March 2003 and eliminated other elements of the law as well. Subprime lenders such as Ameriquest Mortgage that had halted lending in Georgia in protest of the law resumed marketing high-interest, high-fee mortgages. But by late 2007, Ameriquest had gone out of business after agreeing to a $325 million settlement to resolve suits alleging that it had made fraudulent loans.

Escaping state enforcement

Georgia now has the sixth-highest rate of foreclosure in the country. Consumer advocates and state attorneys general contend the weakening of the state's law was a severe blow to efforts to curb careless lending. "Had the Georgia Fair Lending Act not been watered down, we would be in a very different place right now," says Brown.

In some states, dubious local mortgage firms sold themselves to national banks, gaining protection against state enforcement. The Iowa Division of Banking in 2006 sought to examine a subprime broker called Okoboji Mortgage in the town of Arnolds Park. A borrower had accused the firm (named for an area lake) of duplicitous lending practices. Cheryl Riley, a 52-year-old janitor, told state officials she had not received the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage she thought she had arranged with Okoboji in 2005. Instead of one monthly statement, Riley got two: one for a 9.25 percent adjustable-rate loan and another for a 15-year fixed loan at 12 percent. Both rates were far higher than what Riley and her husband thought they had negotiated. "We were horrified," she says.

A preliminary state investigation found that Okoboji's manager had headed a mortgage firm in Nebraska that lost its license for falsifying loan documents. But Okoboji refused Iowa's demand for an examination, forcing the agency to file suit in August 2006. Okoboji responded by announcing that it had been acquired by Wells Fargo, a nationally chartered bank regulated by the OCC. Okoboji handed in its state license, saying it no longer had to comply with Iowa rules. "We'd had red flags but were now blocked from investigating," says Shauna Shields, an Iowa assistant AG.

Okoboji's former manager, Lyda Neuhaus, calls Nebraska's earlier actions "a witch hunt" based on "12 miserable complaints." Her father, Juan Alonso, who owned Okoboji, says he sold his company because he wanted to retire, not to escape state regulation. Both deny any wrongdoing. A Wells Fargo spokesman declined to comment on Iowa's concern about Okoboji and defended the acquisition as benefiting customers and shareholders.

A playing field with no rules

The experience with Okoboji was the sort of thing that Iowa AG Miller had warned about when he joined his counterpart from North Carolina on their visit to OCC chief Hawke in 2003. "Now, we could not do anything with federally chartered banks or subsidiaries," Miller says. In 2006 and 2007 the Iowa legislature shot down proposals by Miller for more-restrictive lending laws. Lax regulatory standards at the federal level helped undermine his efforts, he explains. State-chartered banks insisted that tougher rules in Iowa would put them at a competitive disadvantage with federally chartered banks overseen by the OCC. "We had to acknowledge the [political] environment we were in," Miller says.

The banking industry repeated the argument for regulatory "parity" in many states that tried and failed to tighten supervision of subprime lenders, says Keest of the Center for Responsible Lending: "State institutions then wanted a level playing field, which was a playing field with no rules."

Hawke says that it would have been inappropriate for the states to impose more-stringent standards on federally chartered institutions: "Had they tried to apply those rules to national banks, they clearly would have been preempted."

In Cleveland in 2002, Frank G. Jackson, then a member of the City Council, could see that many lower-income residents were being persuaded by lenders to pile on high-interest debt. "It was pure greed, based on exploitation," he says. "[Some subprime lending] is just the same as organized crime." He started negotiating with mortgage lenders for more-favorable terms. To his surprise, the lenders bypassed him and persuaded the state legislature to enact a less stringent version of an anti-predatory lending act he was drafting. "I figured the good faith had ended, so I passed my law [at the city level]," Jackson says. That law required lenders to register with the city and provided counseling to prospective borrowers.

His accomplishment was short-lived. That same year, the American Financial Services Assn. (AFSA), a national trade group, sued to block Ohio municipalities from passing lending laws that conflicted with state statutes. The Ohio Supreme Court later sided with the industry. AFSA's goal was to ward off conflicts between federal, state, and local rules, says spokesman Bill Himpler. "Different municipalities moving different anti-predatory lending legislation ... would have brought the credit markets to a screeching halt."

Fulfilling Jackson's fears, the Cleveland area has become one of the places worst hit by the mortgage catastrophe. More than 80,000 homes have gone into foreclosure since 2000, the highest per capita rate in the country.

In January, Jackson, elected the city's mayor in 2005, tried a new tactic. He filed suit in state court against Lehman, Wells Fargo, and 19 other lenders, alleging that they sold "toxic subprime mortgages ... under circumstances that made the resulting spike in foreclosures a foreseeable and inevitable result." The city's attorneys based the suit on an Ohio law banning "public nuisances," which is usually used against defendants such as manufacturers whose factories emit pollution. The idea was to steer clear of conventional banking law and head off any claim of federal preemption. The suit is pending; the banks all deny wrongdoing.

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27121535/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Reversing the Politics of Race...

2008-10-08T20:07:00.001-07:00

Things that make you go...hummm?!

the following was posted by Mikey on October 08, 2008
Riddle me this, Cindy
TheGoodWord, a column of TheAmericanBoy

I’m not sure who wrote this, but I received it in an e-mail the other day. After John McCain’s seemingly racist disdain and commentary offered to Barack Obama last night and Cindy McCain’s claim today that Barack is running the dirtiest campaign in history, I thought it appropriate to share. While reading the following think hard about how race plays a part in this election.

——————————————————————————

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating
class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to?

What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no
longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5*?

What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes
positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in
another when there is a color difference.

PS: What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter….
*******
You are The Boss… which team would you hire?

With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a
weakened dollar, all-time high prison population, mortgage crises,
bank foreclosures, etc.

Educational Background:

Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
   Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin:
   Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
   North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
   University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
   Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
   University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

——————————————————-

Kinda makes you take a step back and think about things doesn’t it? If you’re leaning McCain, think for a second about why you’re even considering McCain and make sure it’s not because Obama is black.

© 2008 TheAmericanBoy. All Rights Reserved.

Financial Crisis: Rooted at the Board of Director Level of Leadership

2008-10-07T20:22:00.001-07:00

The financial crisis that we are facing as a nation (and perhaps an entire world) is ultimately rooted in a crisis of leadership. At a national level, our leaders are acting in selfish and self-serving ways that create and perpetuate debt and ignore the general welfare of our nation. At a corporate level, boards of directors are ignoring sloppy executive management or outright fraud in order to protect their places of oligarchical power and wealth, as well as ignore the welfare of shareholders and the interests of all citizens. Pat Lencioni, of The Table Group, offers some provocative words that, in part, challenge all of us to be(come) people of courage and clarity. Thanks for speaking truth to power, Pat!

Pat's POV: September 2008

The Financial Crisis

In the midst of the financial crisis going on in America these days, there is a natural tendency to search for a villain we can blame and move on with a sense of tidiness and moral certitude. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is such a villain.

Sure, there’s more than likely a good number of people who made serious mistakes out of carelessness or greed, and they will need to be held accountable for that. But the real culprit here, in my opinion, has nothing to do with economics or regulations or finance. It is about the desire of leaders to avoid interpersonal discomfort.

I realize that this doesn’t sound very sexy, and certainly isn’t going to make for a compelling television movie-of-the-week. It would be better if there were a group of sinister old men out there who sit around in three piece suits smoking stogies and laughing about how rich and powerful they are going to get stealing people’s homes and investments. That would actually be easier because then we could track those guys down, throw them in jail, and achieve a measure of closure. But based on my experience consulting to CEOs and their teams over the past decade, I can say with a high degree of confidence that this just isn’t the case.

The biggest cause of this and other crises is that most leaders operate under the assumption that they should never have to engage in discussions that are awkward, confrontational or career-limiting. As a result, they rarely have the kind of uncomfortable discussions that prevent people from doing stupid and harmful things. Instead, they are polite and guarded and collegial with one another, even when what is called for is passionate disagreement or even outrage.

This is a surprise to people who don’t have a view into corporate America. They are usually shocked when I tell them that I rarely see people passionately argue with one another or take a strong, moral stand. What they don’t realize is that the real world is nothing like what we see in movies where executives routinely pound their fists on the table and announce, “this is just plain wrong and I won’t stand for it!”

Consider the current situation at various banks, some of which no longer exist. Plenty of intelligent and well-intentioned board members and executives must have known that something was wrong with granting a CEO a $20 million bonus in the event that he were fired. And even the least sophisticated executive had to have seen the potential problem with approving home loans to people who would not be able to afford them if and when interest rates changed. So why didn’t they do something?

Because they looked around and saw other intelligent and well-intentioned people who weren’t standing up on their chairs and objecting. And they figured that perhaps what was going on wasn’t so bad after all, especially if so many other executives and banks and boards of directors were doing it. “Who am I to rain on this parade?”

To be fair, some of them probably made a quiet comment during a meeting, or more likely, mentioned something to another board member over lunch. But they weren’t laying down on the railroad tracks and risking their compensation or their friendships or their reputation if no one else would. Of course, plenty of them will come out now and say they saw the problem all along, and they might even be able to convince enough people that they should be considered whistle blowers.

The fact is, too few people in life have the courage and clarity of thinking to stand up at the right time and say what needs to be said. And that’s what makes real leaders different. They are ready and willing to do what is unseemly, uncomfortable, and even personally risky for the sake of what is right.

And so the lesson that comes from all of his, or at least one of the most important ones, has nothing to do with legislation or economic policy or oversight. It is a personal lesson that each of us can learn by honestly and humbly asking ourselves what we would have done had we been a board member or an executive at one of those companies that did something that seems so clearly wrong in hindsight. By considering that question, we will probably shift our emotional energy away from trying to find a legislative, economic or legal explanation for the mess we’re in, and shine the light on the behavioral one that really deserves the attention. And perhaps that will help us avoid the next crisis.

Copyright © 2008 The Table Group Inc.

Butterfly (song and lyrics)

2008-10-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

I was on youtube.com when I clicked on this. Now it is one of my favorite songs. ENJOY!

Dr. Ron Paul Diagnoses Our Economic Illness: Buying bad debt is the wrong solution

2008-10-01T09:26:00.001-07:00

If it is impossible to dig ourselves out of a hole...then how can we expect to borrow our way out of debt?! Ron Paul is not crazy...he is a patriot and a prophet who believes that the Constitution means what it says. Listen as he speaks truth to power!

(CNN) -- Two days after the House rejected the $700 billion bailout bill, the Senate is set to vote on the rescue plan for financial institutions.

The vote is scheduled for after sundown Wednesday.

Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama, and Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, all said they would be present for the vote.

Speaking to CNN's John Roberts on Wednesday, House Financial Services Committee member and former Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul discussed why he thinks the bailout bill is the wrong solution to the economic problem and what he would do to secure financial security.

John Roberts: Congressman, great to see you. I was browsing around on your Web site, Campaign for Liberty. And right there on the very front page, you are appealing to your supporters -- and there are tens of thousands of them -- to get in touch with key senators to tell them to vote this bill down when it comes to a vote in the Senate at sundown tonight.

Why do you want them to vote it down?

Rep. Ron Paul: I think it's a bad bill. I think it's bad for the taxpayers. I think it's doing more of the same thing. The same policy that we're following now with this bill is exactly how we got into that trouble. VideoWatch Ron Paul explain why he opposes the bailout »

And you know, I really don't have that much clout in Washington, D.C. And I recognize it. But there are a couple people outside of Washington that care about what I'm thinking and care about free market ... economics. And they will respond. And I think we did help generate a little bit of mail to the House members.

So you go where you can have the influence. And I think that people -- the grassroots -- understand this a lot better than members of Congress give them credit for.

Roberts: So, instead of the bills that are currently before the Senate, the one that may be before the House as early as Thursday, what would you do?

Paul: Well, we need to do a lot, but a lot differently. We have to recognize how we got into this problem. We have too much debt. We have too much malinvestment.

Roberts:OK, OK. So we recognize all of the things that got us here. But, right now, today, what would you do, if not this bill?

Paul: You have to liquidate those mistakes. Those mistakes were made due to monetary policy. So you have to allow the market to adjust prices downward. And that's what we're not allowing to do.

If there are too many houses and the prices are too high, the sooner we get the prices down to the market level, as soon as we quit trying to encourage more housing -- this is what we're doing. They're trying to stimulate houses and keep prices high. It's exactly opposite of what we should do.

So, we should get out of the way and not buy up bad debt. There's illiquid assets, but most of those are probably worthless. They're mostly derivatives. And we're sticking those with the taxpayer. So we have to recognize that the liquidation of debt is crucial. And if we did that, we would have tough times, there's no doubt about it, for a year. But if we keep propping a system up that's not viable, we're going to have a problem for decades, just like we did in the Depression. That's what we're on the verge of doing.

Roberts: Congressman Paul, what do you think of this idea that's being floated -- this process called mark to market, which would, they would modify the rules so that the, right now, paper that a lot of these institutions are holding, which is worth nothing, they would actually be able to assign some sort of value to it.

Some people are saying that that would just hide the problem. Other people are wondering if maybe that might create some sort of voodoo accounting that would allow widespread abuse in the system.

What do you think?

Paul: It demonstrates the problem. You know, when they prevented them from marking them down, this was an SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] regulation. Shows how regulations backfire.

If you had a market economy and then if you had a market-adjusted FDIC, where insurance was based on the strength of the bank, this would have happened on a daily basis. But instead, we insure everybody, no matter what the bank is doing, and we do it, either we overkill -- we give you too much credit on bad investments -- and then we make changes all of a sudden, and they're drastic, to what they have done.

So, it's impossible. It's either too little or too much. And what you need is insurance of, FDIC type of insurance, has to be driven by the marketplace to measure the viability of a bank.

Roberts: So what do you think?

Paul: This adds to all the moral hazard that we have in the system.

Roberts: So what do you then think of this idea of raising the limit on [FDIC] insurance to $250,000, from its current cap of $100,000?

Paul: Well, on the short run it will calm the markets. People will feel better. I might even personally feel better for a week or two.

But I know that long term, it's the wrong thing to do. I opposed this in the early '80s when they went from 30 [thousand dollars] to 100 [thousand dollars], saying it would lead to more problems like this with malinvestment. It would cover over the mistakes. And the same thing will happen.

But if we raise it to 250 [thousand dollars], people are going to feel better, then it will keep the bubble going for a little while longer and putting more pressure on the dollar. If the dollar lasts longer, then finally the world will give up on the dollar -- and then we will have a big problem that nobody has even really begun to think about.

Roberts: A lot of people might hope that you're wrong with your projection.

Paul: I do too. I hope I'm wrong.

Roberts: You tend to be right on these things on occasion, though. Dr. Paul, it's good to talk to you. Appreciate it.

Paul: Thank you.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/01/paul.qanda/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Saving the wealthy with socialism, conservative-style

2008-09-24T20:10:00.001-07:00

Bush economic policy...another success story for supply-side, trickle-down economics!

September 23, 2008

by Thomas F. Schaller
baltimoresun.com

Like it or not, we're all socialists now. You can thank those free-market conservatives and their deregulatory idol, George W. Bush, for that.

Conservatives love to wield the word socialism like some all-purpose, liberal-slaying sword. Redistribution to the poor, the right to unionize and affirmative action are decried as anti-market, unfair advantages for filthy socialists who can't compete and fail to appreciate the almighty, equalizing power of self-determination and an unfettered market.

To social conservatives, Darwinism is merely an unproven "theory" about how our species evolved. But "social Darwinism" is an ineluctable fact: The smart and hardworking prosper, while the stupid and lazy fail.

Yet notice how those same chest-thumping capitalists of talk radio and at the corporate-funded think tanks often fall silent in the face of fixed markets, no-bid contracts, bailouts and subsidies for the very corporations that demand less government oversight when things are going well, then turn to Washington when things go horribly wrong.

The hypocrisies abound.

If unionized teachers were given 15 percent annual raises, regardless of performance, that would be socialist. But when easily repaired military equipment in Iraq is discarded so no-bid defense contractors can charge the automatic 15 percent overhead for replacements (watch Iraq for Sale, a documentary exposing Defense Department contracting), that's the cost of doing business during wartime.

If Congress proposes legislation to extend leniency to Americans who, because of unexpected medical expenses or a job recently shipped overseas, go bankrupt, Republicans fret about governmental dependency. But when Chrysler, insurance giant AIG or the airlines after 9/11 take Beltway bailouts, executives such as Lee A. Iacocca are still esteemed as corporate masters of the universe.

If affirmative action provides a minority or female applicant the inside track for a job or college admission, conservatives lecture us about the power of competition. But when the pharmaceutical companies and the Bush administration collude in passing a Medicare Part D prescription drug bill that expressly prohibits the government from using its competitive buying power to negotiate the best price for those taxpayer-funded drugs, Fox News cues the video for the latest Paris Hilton scandal.

Propose a national health care program to cover everyone, or invest a mere $7 billion per year over five years to expand the children's health insurance program? Sounds like "each according to need" Marxism. But spend several times that amount to bail out AIG, the nation's largest insurance company? That's, um, market stabilization.

While we're debunking myths, now is a good time to revisit those free-market, tax-cutting promises that economic conservatives have been feeding us for years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently dropped to the level it was back in summer 2001, when Mr. Bush signed the first of his four income-tax cuts. That means that if you put $5,000 into blue chip stocks seven years ago, and rolled another $5,000 into sweat socks and hid them under your mattress, your socks and your stocks would have about the same value today.

And you may have to break those socks out now, because the government's proposed $700 billion bailout of the mortgage and finance industries will translate into $4,000 from the pocket of every employed American. (Plus interest, since the money is all borrowed, and Mr. Bush will soon retire as the fifth straight Republican president to leave office without submitting a single balanced budget.)

Meanwhile, rising unemployment means those who are working will continue to shoulder a larger share of our mounting national debt.

The U.S. economy must generate about 150,000 net new jobs each month just to employ Americans entering the work force from high school, college or the military; in a seven-year period, that requires 12.6 million new jobs just to keep pace. The Bush administration's job creation record these past seven years: 4.7 million.

Those of us who work hard and pay our taxes are getting screwed. Our Christmas bonus this year? The privilege of covering the tab for greedy executives in the deregulated insurance and mortgage industries who scoff at safety nets for you but demand a safety trapeze for themselves.

As I said, we're all socialists now. Too bad all that filthy, pinko socialist redistribution is moving up, rather than down, the economic food chain.

Thomas F. Schaller teaches political science at UMBC. His column appears regularly in The Sun. His e-mail is schaller67@gmail.com.

Article Link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.schaller23sep23,0,7915225.column

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

Becoming a "True Conservative"

2008-09-21T13:57:00.001-07:00

He has said some pretty rough stuff at times, but Pat Buchanan is consistently conservative. Therefore, when he offers criticism of the Republican machine (along with the Democratic machine), it is worth noticing. If Buchanan's definition of a "true conservative" is accurate, then call me a friend of Pat Buchanan. Now, if we could just get the Republican Party or Democratic Party to be truly conservative too?! "A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means."

One final thought...there is usually more baggage in being a "true conservative" than Mr. Buchanan's simple definition...which requires a "true conservative" to be able and willing to consistently speak truth to power on behalf of those whom Jesus was interested and focused.

The Party's Over
Fri Sep 19, 3:00 AM ET

The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people's wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another.

The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The "Omnipower" and "Indispensable Nation" we heard about in all the hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history.

Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of market economics, a failure of conservatism.

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko ("Greed Is Good!") capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means.

Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess — that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

"Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government — the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt — all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party's over

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday's bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into "global companies" and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or "bomb, bomb, bomb," with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

What the Greatest Generation handed down to us — the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved — the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

What brought down Wall Street?

2008-09-19T20:43:00.001-07:00

I confess that I am no expert in the arena of investments and macro economics; but, it seems to me that this can all be boiled down to character and integrity, or the lack there of. The subtitle of this Business Week article is, "Financial crisis arose from bad choices, greed, failure to learn from mistakes." It is not about bears and bulls...it is more about which end that you get!

By Paul Barrett
Business Week
updated 5:06 p.m. CT, Fri., Sept. 19, 2008

In times of high stress, many in the financial world seek solace in watery metaphors. We hear of vast irresistible forces converging in "perfect storms" and unforeseeable events contributing to "100-year floods."

How could we have expected, let alone prevented, this?

Count on Warren E. Buffett to cut to the truth. Years ago, referring to reckless corporate debt, Buffett noted (or so the story goes): "You never know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out."

The tide's moving, and we're starting to get the full, not-so-pretty view. Along with the bare swimmers emerging from the soggy murk, we're being reminded of some of the dumb ideas and reckless choices that helped deliver us to our current debacle. As stunning as the scene seems, we've actually had plenty of experience with this sort of thing. But like some stubborn residents of hurricane zones, we swiftly choose to forget the last tempest and reassure ourselves that things will be different from now on. Why don't we learn the obvious lesson to the contrary? Answers: the timeless power of hubris during periods when profits seem easy, and a set of foolish financial notions that have become prevalent over the past three decades.

One of those beliefs is the indiscriminate anti-regulatory ideology one hears preached on Wall Street with tent-revival fervor. What makes this thinking so perplexing is that many of the free-market true believers also assume the federal government will save them if they flop. Consider the extraordinary taxpayer-backed rescues of insurance titan American International Group, housing financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and, before those, the Treasury-guided merger of Bear Stearns into JPMorgan Chase. It brings to mind the homeowner who rants about getting Washington off his back but wants federally guaranteed flood insurance no matter how close to the Gulf Coast he builds his house.

Other by-now-familiar attitudes have helped put us in the drink: In good times, there's no such thing as too much leverage. (Remember Michael Milken?) Derivatives don't require oversight, even though almost no one understands them. (How now, Long-Term Capital Management?) And, don't worry, the quantitative geniuses have devised models to eliminate extreme risk. (Enron, anyone?)

"Now, again, the banks and the Bush administration and [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson and [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke would like you to think these crises are like floods or hurricanes," says Michael Greenberger, a senior official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration. An advocate of more aggressive regulation of investment banks, he was shot down in the late 1990s by Democratic colleagues, not just GOP foes.

Most financial calamities aren't like natural forces beyond control, Greenberger says. "These are predictable events." Predictable events, of course, are more likely to be prevented with sound rules and stiff enforcement.

The long view
Alfred E. Kahn offers the long view — a very long view. As the Carter administration's aviation czar, he unshackled airline routes and fares in the late 1970s, reshaping that industry (for better and worse) and helping spur a lengthy era of economic deregulation. Still sharp at 91, the retired Cornell University economist and part-time consultant recalls that almost as soon as the free-market spirits were set loose, a furious stampede ensued.

Lenders, for one, demanded lots more freedom. But they "were a different kind of animal" from airlines and trucking firms, which the Carterites also deregulated, Kahn says. "They were animals that had a direct effect on the macroeconomy. That is very different from the regulation of industries that provided goods and services. ... I never supported any type of deregulation of banking."

During the Reagan years, Kahn's cautious industry-by-industry analysis was replaced by the all-encompassing anti-regulatory ideology of the University of Chicago. One result: the liberation of an armada of savings and loan pirates, abetted by congressional Democrats as well as Republicans, many of them drunk on S&L campaign largesse. (Wall Street lobbyists with open wallets have since perfected the practice of neutralizing Congress on a bipartisan basis.) Hundreds of thrifts ultimately collapsed in the late 1980s and 1990s amid greedy and, in some cases, fraudulent real estate deals.

As early as 2000, William J. Brennan, a prominent consumer attorney who has represented mortgage borrowers since the S&L catastrophe, warned in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee that real estate finance would return in new guises to haunt us. Few listened. Behind every burst of ill-advised lending lurk financial innovators creating new mechanisms to entice ever-more-sketchy borrowers, says Brennan, the director of Atlanta Legal Aid Society's Home Defense Program.

In the 1980s, Michael Milken and his comrades at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert investment bank exacerbated the S&L fiasco by hawking their thrift clients' high-risk junk bonds. More recently the likes of soon-to-be-defunct Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns engineered the securitization of mortgages, encouraging home lenders to spew wildly unwise loans. "Lending without regard [for] the ability to pay back started with the S&L scandal," says Brennan. In the 1980s the borrowers were reckless shopping-mall developers; in the recent boom, unsophisticated and sometimes cavalier homeowners.

Wall Street transformed dicey subprime mortgages into the toxic securities that have required hundreds of billions in writedowns and that drove once-mighty Merrill Lynch to sell itself to Bank of America. One of the most striking aspects of the current turbulence is the degree to which banks invested in the noxious fare themselves, notes Emanuel Derman, who heads risk management at Prisma Capital Partners, a hedge fund in Jersey City, N.J. "These guys ate their own cooking; they didn't just pass it on to clients."

The outsize appetite on Wall Street for hazardous mortgage-backed securities and even more obscure derivatives has had a lot to do with the people in the kitchen failing to understand fully what was in their recipes. All of this is painfully familiar to anyone who paid attention to past adventures with wizards who claimed their esoteric models had magically eliminated risk and uncertainty. Hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management couldn't imagine Russia defaulting on its debt, much as Lehman apparently couldn't conceive of housing prices across the country deteriorating simultaneously, followed by a paralyzing credit crunch.

For four years in the mid-1990s, LTCM boasted extraordinary profits based on supposedly flawless computer formulas devised by a team that included two Nobel laureates. But in the summer of 1998, Russian credit disintegrated, one of several concurrent global shocks that the LTCM crew had failed to factor into their algorithms. After losing more than $4 billion in a few months — in retrospect, the amount seems almost quaint — the hedge fund received a federally organized rescue, although it later shut down altogether.

Financial "rocket scientists," says Henry T. Hu, a corporate law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, have a knack for neglecting low-probability, catastrophic events. The smartest guys in the room at Enron similarly assumed away risks they didn't want to confront. "These models … work in normal circumstances but not during times of market stress, when it really matters," Hu says. "It is almost like a safety belt that only fails in a serious car crash."

One of the things that dismayed outsiders about LTCM after it came apart was the size and complexity of its derivatives portfolio. Some in the Clinton administration pushed for more oversight of the unregulated, privately traded instruments whose value derives from price shifts in currencies, securities, or other assets. Then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, allied with Robert E. Rubin, Clinton's Treasury secretary (and now a director and senior counselor at Citigroup), opposed tougher policing of derivatives. Banks could watch over each other more effectively than regulators could, Greenspan argued. This turned out to be shortsighted.

In an interview, Greenspan doesn't back down, even after all we've seen lately. "The majority of lawyers, in my experience, seek to regulate — that is, to contain certain activities with little weight given to the lost benefits of such activities," he says. "The question is: What do you lose? In this case, a very valuable instrument [credit default swaps, the derivatives at the core of the current mess] for the diminution of systemic risk. You can stop the system dead and eliminate speculative losses. But you will also get significantly reduced economic activity and ultimately lower standards of living."

Greenspan adds: "I've been extraordinarily distressed by how badly the most sophisticated people in the business handled risk management. But the question is: If, protecting their own resources, they can't do it, who's going to do it better?" (Well, maybe regulators who don't have big bonuses at stake would be less likely to get carried away by the euphoria.)

‘Too big to fail’
Rubin says separately that he didn't oppose the general idea of scrutinizing derivatives, but instead argued against particular proposals in the late '90s to expand CFTC authority. "I have always been concerned about derivatives," he says.

Michael Greenberger served as the CFTC's director of trading and markets at the time. A proponent of tougher oversight, he recalls the Greenspan-Rubin resistance as being fierce and across-the-board. "If we had prevailed, the [subprime-securitization] party would never have gotten started; the wildness wouldn't have happened," he says. "There would have been auditing requirements, capital requirements, transparency. No more operating in the shadows. Bear Stearns, Lehman, Enron, and AIG would be thriving, and spending every waking hour complaining about regulatory restraints imposed upon them."

Now a law professor at the University of Maryland, Greenberger adds: "In a booming economy, people couldn't be convinced that without corrections, LTCM would happen again — bigger and with more ramifications." Today, Bear, Lehman, and AIG have untold amounts of outlandish derivatives on their books. It could be years before anyone untangles what they're worth.

One other legacy of LTCM is "moral hazard": the prospect that other financial actors would take greater risks because at some level they'd assume that they, too, would be considered "too big to fail." Surely one can surmise that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overstepped in part because of an implied federal safety net that turned out to be a very real one.

Edward S. Lampert, the hedge fund tycoon who controls Sears Holdings, worries about yet another twist. He says the current wave of federal intervention sends the opposite signal from what's intended: that officials are panicking because of broader instability. "As an investor, that was my immediate reaction" to the Fannie and Freddie moves, he says. "They completely destroyed confidence in any financial institution."

Lampert frets that with investment banks failing and merging, the resulting consolidation will concentrate risk and invite more rescues. "You are going to have Citi, JPMorgan, and Bank of America with $2 trillion-plus in assets each," he notes. "That's three times the size of Fannie and Freddie. Now if they end up with problems, what do you think is going to happen? They are too big to fail."

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26793500/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

It's Sarah's Way, or It's the Highway

2008-09-18T20:22:00.001-07:00

Woah...I really wonder if we will ever know the "real" Governor Palin?!

By Barbara Koeppel

September 17, 2008

The idea that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is experienced, ethical and
wise would be laughable if it weren't so alarming, and millions have
fallen for the fable. In truth, the pretty woman's story is not so
pretty.

While a majority of Alaskans are thrilled their local beauty queen is center stage, some are horrified.

Her populist persona--the "just plain hockey mom"--is preposterous, her notion of decency defective, her ambition unbridled, her compassion counterfeit, her actions extreme, her intelligence limited and her judgment flawed.

Fearing retribution, only one of the more than twenty elected state and city officials, lawyers, doctors, health administrators, librarians, clergy and just plain residents I interviewed while in Alaska and over the phone agreed to be named.

"It's Sarah's way or the highway," claim many who've worked with her. As one state representative confided to me, "the public doesn't know the real Sarah Palin."

After elected mayor of Wasilla in 1996, one of Palin's first victims was Irl Stambaugh, the longtime police chief who opposed her NRA-backed plan to allow concealed guns. Then, too, he wanted to close the bars at 2 am, instead of 5 am, due to the high number of alcohol-related road accidents. But as the bar owners and NRA were among her base, Palin axed him. She then installed her own chief, who, besides following her line on bars and guns, slapped a charge of $300 to $1,200 on rape victims for medical tests for injuries and sexually transmitted diseases--fees previously covered by the city. Since medical staff at the same time also offered morning-after pills to rape victims, this was anathema to Palin's anti-abortion agenda. Outraged, then-Democratic Governor Tony Knowles pushed through a bill banning her tactics, and the tests were once again free.

Other victims are now well known, like Mary Ellen Baker, the librarian who wouldn't ban the books that offended Palin. Originally fired along with other city department heads who backed Palin's mayoral opponent, Baker (also president of Alaska's Library Association), was reinstated because several hundred residents protested the sacking. But, according to a librarian who knows Baker, Palin met with her several times, pressuring her to remove books from the shelves--among which was Pastor, I Am Gay by Howard Bess, an American Baptist minister in Wasilla. Baker finally resigned in 1999 and moved away. The librarian friend says Baker is keeping silent: "Why wouldn't she? The period was so painful that after she left her job, she had a breakdown."

Then there's Dr. Susan Lamagie, an obstetrician who practices in Wasilla and delivered Palin's first two children. She also performed abortions at what was then called Valley Hospital. While Palin was on Wasilla's City Council, members of her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, and its minister, picketed Lamagie's office. Because the doctor held her ground, the group ousted the hospital board and installed a new one, whose first act was to ban abortions. Lamagie and Howard Bess organized a group that sued the hospital in a case that went to Alaska's Supreme Court, which ruled the hospital had to allow abortions, as before.

Palin's claims that she's a cost-cutter and corruption cop are equally crazy, since she hiked the state budget by 20 percent in the less than two years since becoming governor.

But it's not all smoke and mirrors: Palin did slash some funds. She vetoed $150,000 for the Fairbanks Catholic Community Counseling and Adoption Services, $3.5 million to build a daycare facility and student housing for unemployed Alaska Natives, $500,000 for the Safe Harbor Muldoon Housing for Homeless Families and People with Disabilities, and eliminated funds for the Fairbanks Community Food Bank.

And in a state with one of the highest drug and alcohol rates in the United States, she killed funds for a substance abuse facility and an education and prevention program for youths in a northwest Alaska village, as well as for addiction rehabilitation services.

Then there's her record on health, another alleged Palin priority. State Senator Bill Wielechowski says, "We sponsored a bill to improve children's health care, since we're forty-seventh in the US in terms of the services we offer. Had Palin supported it, the Republican-controlled House would have approved it. But she refused and the bill died."

Flip-flops are another Palin specialty, though you'll hear zip from GOP fans who dissed candidate John Kerry for similar misdemeanors in 2004. There's the now well-known story of the "bridge to nowhere" (from the city of Ketchikan to the island of Gravina), that she promised Ketchikans she would back when she ran for governor in 2005. In the same year, Congress earmarked hundreds of millions for two Alaskan bridges to nowhere, but reversed itself in 2006, when the deals became a national poster for pork. However, the cash still landed in Alaska, and Palin, now wearing the maverick's mantle, says she abhors earmarks and has shunned the money. In fact, she kept the roughly $230 million and, according to officials, used it for other transport projects. Only about $50 million remains unspent.

What also remains of the affair is a 3.2-mile, $25 million access road to nowhere (which would have connected to the bridge), on which construction continues.

Critics also point to her unfettered drive. Until she was mayor, Wasilla and the nearby town of Palmer successfully shared a regional dispatch center located in Palmer for state troopers and emergency services in the region. Unknown to Palmer officials, she lobbied Washington for funds to build a second center in Wasilla. The Palmer "partners" learned of the move only when she announced it in the press. "It was completely redundant, said one Palmer official, "just a notch in Palin's belt."

Then there's her environmental myopia. A Palmer borough assemblyman told me Palin courted development in any form, with no city planning or zoning, mainly by removing business property taxes. Thus, big box stores flocked to Wasilla and Park Highway, which runs through the town (population 4,600 when Palin became mayor), is one long strip mall; through the sales tax the stores collected, Wasilla pocketed the huge revenues Palin lusted after. Although Wasilla's city council introduced the tax before she was mayor, she raised it--and it applies to most everything except medicine.

The new growth spells problems. The city's sanitation capacity is stretched since the sewage system, faulty even when built, is overwhelmed, says a former Palmer city official. Effluent is piped to the sewage plant from which it is pumped into a large field, and many residents worry the liquid is leaching into the groundwater. Thus candidate Palin's promise of a waste treatment plant evaporated in favor of a sports complex. "Sewage treatment plants aren't sexy, but hockey rinks are," said the Palmer official.

Link to Article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/koeppel

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

Palin comes under fire for using Yahoo e-mail for state biz

2008-09-17T19:11:00.001-07:00

This does not really reflect a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Seriously, why would good Republicans support this type of obfuscation and subterfuge within their ranks? I really thought they were better than this?!

By Julian Sanchez | Published: September 16, 2008 - 10:35PM CT

John McCain has caught his share of flak for not knowing his way around e-mail. But as his running mate has been discovering over the past week, being a bit too clever with e-mail has its pitfalls as well. As Sarah Palin seeks to beat back charges that she improperly used her position as governor to urge the firing of her estranged brother-in-law, an Alaska state trooper, internal documents suggest that her staff may have hoped to channel sensitive correspondence through unofficial personal e-mail accounts to evade potential subpoenas.

"Troopergate," as the iron laws of American political scandal nomenclature dictated the fracas would be dubbed, began as a dispute worthy of Judge Judy: Palin's sister was embroiled in a nasty divorce and custody dispute with State Trooper Mike Wooten, and the newly elected governor made no secret of her displeasure that the ex-in-law was not yet an ex-lawman. The family tiff blossomed into a full-blown ethics investigation after Palin dismissed public safety commissioner Walt Monegan, who has claimed his refusal to fire Wooten led to his own termination.

Palin has indicated she won't cooperate with the investigation, which she regards as "tainted" by political motivations, but the McCain-Palin campaign yesterday released a batch of e-mails that her lawyers say demonstrate Monegan was fired for insubordination. But over the past week, press attention has focused on other e-mails that Palin appears more reticent about releasing. In response to a request filed by a conservative activist under Alaska's Public Records Act, Palin sought to invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some 1,100 e-mails (PDF), many of whose subject lines suggest little connection to sensitive policy deliberation.

Moreover, Palin's appeal to executive privilege appears to be at odds with a strategy she discussed with aides in correspondence obtained by the Washington Post and New York Times: using unofficial e-mail accounts, like "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" and personal devices like BlackBerries to shield communications from subpoenas as official public records. As bloggers were quick to note, this was the same tactic adopted by White House aides worried that their correspondence could be disclosed to investigators probing the allegedly political firing of US attorneys.

Even before the US attorney scandal, the present administration had exhibited a spectacular gift for losing track of digital correspondence. Thanks to a purported upgrade implemented soon after the Clintons cleared out, the White House e-mail system was left without an effective means of archiving correspondence. Millions of e-mails vanished at least temporarily, and thousands may well be gone for good: A leaked memo suggested, at any rate, that there is little hope of completing the recovery before a new president is sworn in.

Whether the Yahoo-loophole exploited by Palin holds up would depend on how courts interpret the relevant Alaska statues, according to Meredith Fuchs, an attorney with the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "It is a basic tenet of legal ethics that records should not be destroyed if litigation is anticipated," Fuchs told Ars. "If one anticipates litigation, then the destruction of the evidence is called 'spoliation' and in some cases is subject to court sanctions."

That's not to say that alternation between official and unofficial channels is some nefarious Republican invention. One former Democratic congressional staffer with whom Ars spoke noted that colleagues would typically switch to personal mobile phones or e-mail accounts when discussing electoral campaign activities—a form of fuzzy half-compliance with the ban on using congressional office resources for partisan campaign purposes. (Perhaps that's why Palin staffer Ivy Frye waited until a Saturday evening to phone up blogger Sherry Whistine. Whistine, a conservative critic of Palin's, told Ars that Frye angrily demanded she—and perhaps others on what the blogger termed the "Poison Ivy call list"—stop attacking the governor.)

Even if all this proves technically permissible, however, it can't do much good for Palin's straight-shooting reformer image to have traded her official account for Yahoo as a means of avoiding transparency. As with so many political scandals, the cover-up may prove more damaging than the underlying controversy. But if a suit launched Tuesday by five GOP state legislators that aims to end or delay the Troopergate probe until after the election succeeds, Palin stands a good chance of shrugging off the fracas. And it seems even more unlikely that the Bush administration will face any real consequences for its record-keeping failures.

One nagging question, then, is whether these cases don't illustrate the double-edged nature of transparency and "sunshine" rules. Regulation of the intelligence community may make abuse of power less likely, but it makes it downright inconceivable a future generation of spymasters would pen the candid memos, openly admitting criminality, uncovered by the Church Commission in the 1970s. Faced with strong disclosure obligations, public officials may find ways to game the rules and simply avoid leaving trails—paper or pixelated—if there's the slightest doubt about the propriety of their communications. That's surely no reason to abandon the ideal of more open government, but is a reminder that the law of unintended consequences remains in effect. In some cases, at least, eternal sunshine yields the spotless drive.

Link to article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080916-palins-e-mail-habits-come-under-fire.html

Copyright © 1998-2008 Ars Technica, LLC

Dilbert on the economic plans of McCain and Obama

2008-09-16T10:38:00.001-07:00

At this point, I figure that the comments of a cartoon (and its cartoonist) are just as valid as the purported "experts."

By Scott Adams
Special to CNN

Editor's Note: Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the comic strip that appears in 2,000 newspapers in 70 countries. He blogs at www.dilbert.com on politics and other subjects. He says he's an independent voter but donated to John McCain's campaign because he had promised a friend he would do so if the surge of troops to Iraq worked. "I figured my money was safe," Adams says.

(CNN) -- This summer I found myself wishing someone would give voters useful and unbiased information about which candidate has the best plans for the economy.

Then I realized that I am someone, which is both inconvenient and expensive. So for once I asked not what my country could do for me.

At considerable personal expense, I commissioned a survey of over 500 economists, drawn from a subset of the members of the American Economic Association, a nonpolitical group, some of whose members had agreed in advance to be surveyed on economic questions.

The results do not represent the economic association's position. The survey was managed by The OSR Group, a respected national public opinion and marketing research company.

I should pause here and confess my personal biases, since the messenger is part of the story. On social issues, I lean Libertarian, minus the crazy stuff.

Moneywise, I can't support a candidate who promises to tax the bejeezus out of my bracket, give the windfall to a bunch of clowns with a 14 percent approval rating (Congress), and hope they spend it wisely.

Unfortunately, the alternative to the guy who promises to pillage my wallet is a lukewarm cadaver. I'm in trouble either way.

I just hope whoever gets elected notices that the economists in my survey don't think that raising my taxes is a priority.

Nationally, most economists are male, and I'm told that most are registered as either Democrats or independents. Our sample reflects that imbalance:

48 percent -- Democrats

17 percent -- Republicans

27 percent -- Independents

3 percent -- Libertarian

5 percent -- Other or not registered

Eighty-six percent of our economists are male, and 65 percent work in the field of academia or education. The rest are spread across various industries or not working.

We asked the economists which candidate for president would be best for the economy in the long run. Not surprisingly, 88 percent of Democratic economists think Democratic Sen. Barack Obama would be best, while 80 percent of Republican economists pick Republican Sen. John McCain.

Independent economists, who in our sample are largely from the academic world, lean toward Obama by 46 percent compared to 39 percent for McCain.

Overall, 59 percent of our economists say Obama would be best for the economy long term, with 31 percent picking McCain, and 8 percent saying there would be no difference.

We can't know the degree of bias in our survey group. But we have some clues. On the issue of international trade, only 42 percent of our Democratic economists support Obama's plans, with 34 percent favoring McCain. Independents favored McCain on this question by 63 percent to 16 percent, while favoring Obama overall.

Another indicator of objectivity is that the income levels of the economists have little impact on their opinions. The economists with lower incomes are no more likely to favor taxing the rich than the rich economists favor taxing themselves.

Likewise, economists in the academic world were largely on the same page as the nonacademic types in predicting which candidate would be best for the long term.

Here are the economic priorities according to the economists. The percentages indicate how many rated each issue eight or higher on a scale of 1-10.

71 percent -- Education

67 percent -- Health care

62 percent -- International trade

60 percent -- Energy

58 percent -- Encouraging technology and innovation

58 percent -- Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and homeland security

52 percent -- Mortgage and housing crisis

49 percent -- Social Security

45 percent -- Environmental policy

39 percent -- Reducing the deficit

37 percent -- Immigration

29 percent -- Increasing the proportion of taxes paid by the wealthy

28 percent -- Reducing waste in government

16 percent -- Tax relief for the middle class

15 percent -- Reducing capital gains tax

14 percent -- Extending unemployment insurance

13 percent -- Extending and strengthening the unemployment insurance system

13 percent -- Raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation

11 percent -- Reforming bankruptcy laws

9 percent -- Eliminating the estate tax

Moving along, we asked the economists which candidate they thought would do the best job on the most important issues. For me, the surprise is how many economists say there would be no difference.

The economists in our survey favor Obama on 11 of the top 13 issues. But keep in mind that 48 percent are Democrats and only 17 percent are Republicans.

Among independents, things are less clear, with 54 percent thinking that in the long run there would either be no difference between the candidates or McCain would do better.

Many of you will wonder how reliable economists are. In my view, if an economist uses a complicated model to predict just about anything, you can ignore it.

By analogy, a doctor can't tell you the exact date of your death in 50 years. But if a doctor tells you to eat less and exercise more, that's good advice even if you later get hit by a bus.

Along those same lines, economists can give useful general advice on the economy, even if you know there will be surprises. Still, be skeptical.

To see what the candidates say about each issue, visit their web sites. For full details on the survey, including a discussion of its limitations, go to dilbert.com and click on the blog button.

The opinions contained in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/16/dilbert.economy/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Rove: McCain went 'too far' in ads

2008-09-14T17:57:00.001-07:00

I confess that I am a bit slack-jawed by this comment from Rove. I did not think that Karl Rove was capable of saying anything negative about a Republican; or more importantly, saying anything that could lend even behind the back support of a Democrat. Look to the east...perhaps the Lord has returned?! Has something stirred in Rove's heart to make it grow three sizes today?

(CNN) -- Former Bush adviser Karl Rove said Sunday that Sen. John McCain had gone "one step too far" in some of his recent ads attacking Sen. Barack Obama.

Rove has leveled similar criticism against Obama.

"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far," he told Fox News, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."

The Obama campaign immediately leaped on the quote.

"In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove -- the man who held the previous record -- said McCain's ads have gone too far," said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, in a statement sent to reporters minutes after Rove's on-air comments. Rove masterminded both of President Bush's successful White House bids.

Rove said both candidates need to "be careful" about their attacks on each other.

"They ought to -- there ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don't we make our point and won't we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don't include that one little last tweak in the ad?' " he said.

Obama on Saturday accused McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of avoiding the issues to "distort" his record.

"They're going to talk about pigs, and they're going to talk about lipstick; they're going to talk about Paris Hilton, they're going to talk about Britney Spears. They will try to distort my record, and they will try to undermine your trust in what the Democrats intend to do," he said at a stop in Manchester, New Hampshire.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds criticized Obama for showing "zero restraint," considering what Gulf Coast residents were facing after Hurricane Ike. Bounds said the "attacks mark a new low from Barack Obama."

The Obama campaign shot back and accused McCain of "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history."

McCain said last week that he thinks the tone of the campaign would be different had Obama agreed to appear with him in town hall meetings across the country.

Both McCain and Obama laid low on Sunday. McCain attended a NASCAR race in Loudon, New Hampshire.

Obama had no public events scheduled, but Sen. Hillary Clinton hit the trail for him in Akron, Ohio.

Clinton repeated her campaign one-liner -- "No way, no how, no McCain, no Palin."

The New York senator said "all that McCain and Palin offer is four more years of the same failed policies and wrong direction and disappointment and difficulties that have confronted our country."

"Barack and I may have started out on two separate paths, but we are on one journey now," she said.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign announced Sunday that it had raised $66 million in August. The new total bests the campaign's previous high of $55 million, which came in February during his tough primary fight with Clinton.

The Obama campaign said more than half a million new donors contributed in August, when the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic presidential nomination and named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate. The campaign had more than $77 million in cash on hand at the end of August, compared with about $66 million in July.

On September 1, McCain's campaign reported raising $47 million in August. That haul also set a monthly record for the Arizona senator, whose campaign says it received a financial shot in the arm after McCain picked Palin to join the ticket.

Obama has rejected public financing, calling the system "broken" -- a decision that frees him to continue raising money for November.

McCain has accepted federal matching funds for his general election campaign, giving him $84 million to spend for November. The money comes with strict spending limits, but the Republican National Committee's victory fund can continue to raise and spend money on his behalf.

With Palin on the campaign trail, McCain has been seeing increased numbers and energy at his campaign events.

The two will hold joint town hall meetings sometime early this week.

A McCain adviser said early plans are to hold the town halls in western Michigan and Wisconsin, although the exact details of where and when they will be held are still being worked out.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/14/campaign.wrap/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Bill O'Reilly on "Chatting with Obama"

2008-09-12T22:29:00.001-07:00

I have no affinity for the vitriol that often spews forth from Mr. O'Reilly; however, I find this assessment of Senator Obama to be as close to "fair and balanced" as he is going to get. At least they are engaging in conversation and dialogue...may it occur more often!

By Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com
Friday, Sep 05, 2008

Like him or not, you have to give Barack Obama credit for waging a smart, focused campaign. Destroying the Clinton machine was a major achievement and so was putting together a successful convention in Denver. Obama is now firmly a part of U.S. history, no matter what happens in the presidential election.

The problem some Americans continue to have with the Senator is that he is long on charisma but short on detail. This frightens some voters. Who the heck is this guy, anyway? So when Obama finally agreed to speak to me this week, specifics were on my mind.

First, the man. The Barack Obama I witnessed is self-confident, determined and driven. He was acutely aware of his surroundings from the moment he entered the room. He looks you in the eye and touches your shoulder. He understands how to connect one-on-one.

As far as philosophy goes, Senator Obama is convinced that the federal government should be in control of income distribution and, to some extent, should regulate the free marketplace. That is a classic liberal position, and Obama promotes it well.
The Senator also believes that poor Americans have a basic right to free health care and monetary supplements from the government with no strings attached. The American substance abuser, for example, would derive the same benefit as a hard working, laid off worker would. Again, classic liberalism. No judgments made regarding entitlements.

So, if Barack Obama does become president, there will definitely be change. His left-wing base will demand it, and he will come through. You can decide if that's change we should believe in, but keep in mind that the unintended consequences of government interference in the marketplace are impossible to predict. Free markets have a way of chafing under government imposition.

On the foreign policy front, Obama has convinced me that he is tough but cautious. He rose up quickly because he vehemently opposed the Iraq war. But now I see a man who understands the victory that has taken place in Iraq. I don't believe he wants to screw that up. I could be wrong.

After going mano-a-mano with Obama on television, I am also persuaded that he is a sincere guy-that he wants the best for all Americans. He's an ideologue, but not a blind one. He understands that his story is incredible, and, I have come to believe, he is grateful to the American system for allowing it happen.

It is true that we don't know whether Senator Obama has the ability to solve complex problems, but you can say that about all presidential contenders.

Like most politicians, Obama has used guile and good luck to accumulate his power. He can be ruthless, kind, unfair, and generous. In short, he's a real person trying to achieve an unreal position-that of the most powerful person in the world.

God help him.

Link to article: http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn?pid=24183

Copyright © 2002-2008 BillOReilly.com. All rights reserved.

The Sarah Palin Selection: Why McCain's Inexperienced Running Mate Falls Short of Meeting the Implicit Constitutional Qualifications For Vice Presidents

2008-09-12T21:45:00.001-07:00

John Dean is a speak truth to power kind of thinker. I hope his wisdom is heard by many!

By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, Sept. 05, 2008

In truth, the Vice President of the United States is important for only one reason: He or she will become President of the United States upon the death, incapacity or resignation of the President. Nine times in our history, vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency: John Tyler (1841), Millard Fillmore (1850), Andrew Johnson (1865), Chester A. Arthur (1881), Theodore Roosevelt (1901), Calvin Coolidge (1923), Harry Truman (1945), Lyndon Johnson (1963), and Gerald Ford (1974). Of course, the vice president also has a significant secondary role: It is he or she, acting with a majority of the Cabinet, who can declare the president incapable of carrying out the duties of the office, and then take charge - until the action is either ratified or rejected by a majority of the Congress. So far in our history, however, this has never occurred.

Given the fact that the 2008 GOP standard-bearer John McCain is seventy-two years of age, his selection of an inexperienced Vice Presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has again focused attention on the process and procedures for selecting vice presidents - or, to put it more bluntly, the utter lack of process or procedures in selecting the person who is a heartbeat away from the presidency. McCain, not unlike others before him, selected a less than fully vetted running mate for political reasons. That is surely a concern for voters to think over in the upcoming election - but it raises a systemic concern, too, for the long run.

Consider this parallel: Does anyone believe that if John McCain were president and had selected Governor Sarah Palin under the Twenty-fifty Amendment to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency, Congress would have confirmed her? Not likely. In fact, it is even less likely that McCain would have even attempted to do so, for he would have embarrassed himself.

While the Constitution does not expressly set forth qualifications for the vice-presidency, it strongly implies them --- and Palin falls short.

How Our Constitutional Process for Selecting Vice Presidents Evolved

Our founders gave little thought to the vice presidential selection process. Initially, the candidate who placed second in Electoral College votes became vice president. While this worked for the first three presidential elections, the election of 1800 produced a tie in the Electoral College, between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both of the same party), and although Burr was the announced candidate for vice president, when he came up with a tie vote, he refused to step aside, forcing the resolution of the contest in the House of Representatives, which proved to be a messy affair.

This clear flaw in the system was corrected by the Twelfth Amendment, which requires electors to vote separately for president and vice president. It was the Twelfth Amendment (adopted in 1804), along with the growth of political parties, that encouraged the pairing of candidates in the presidential election. Since then, the vice presidential selection process has evolved from party leaders' making the selection to the current system, under which the party's presidential nominee is given the power to select a vice presidential running mate.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment (adopted in 1967) indirectly codified the power of a candidate for president to select his vice president, for the Amendment states that when there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, "the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." A Vice President, like a President, must be a natural born citizen, at least thirty-five years of age, and a resident of the United States for fourteen years.

Of course, Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, meets the minimum constitutional requirements. But there also exists a clear subtext within the Constitution, and related statutes, that suggests that there are other, implicit qualifications for the Vice President, as well - qualifications as to which Governor Palin falls short. While this subtext is plainly not formally binding on either a presidential candidate or president, candidates and presidents have traditionally followed the implicit qualifications suggested by the Constitution.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment Suggests the Primary Qualifications for Vice Presidents: Be Equipped to Serve as President Starting, if Necessary, on Day One

I served as minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee when the Committee was working on the Twenty-fifty Amendment. Accordingly, I recall well the difficult debates and discussions on how vacancies in the vice presidency should be filled. The procedures under discussion ranged from a special national election for the vice president, to a convening of the Electoral College to make the decision, to the selection of a vice president by the Congress.

The process that was actually settled on, as I mentioned earlier, codified the procedure that had evolved over the years, through which the candidate selected his running mate. In line with that procedure, presidents were similarly given the power to fill vacancies in the office of the vice president. But there was a crucial difference: Under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, presidents can only fill that office with the approval of a majority vote of both the House and Senate. Confirmation thus entails not only ratification by the public, but also scrutiny by political pros who assure Americans that the new vice president is up to the task of taking charge.

Twice, the Twenty-fifty Amendment has been employed to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency. Nixon appointed Gerald Ford to fill the office when Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned (under threat of indictment). Then, after Nixon resigned, and Ford succeeded to the presidency, Ford used it to appoint Nelson Rockefeller his Vice President.

Both Nixon and Ford explained their decisions, and the criteria at the top of their lists. Nixon wrote in RN: Memoirs of Richard Nixon that from "the outset of the search for a new Vice President I had established four criteria for the man I would select: qualification to be President; ideological affinity; loyalty and confirmability." (Emphasis added.) Nixon's first choice was his Secretary of Treasury John Connally, who was dropped because he would have confirmation problems. (Connally was, in fact, later indicted but acquitted.) New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and California Governor Ronald Reagan were taken off Nixon's list because the selection of either one over the other would have split the Republican Party. Finally, also on the list was Jerry Ford, the Minority Leader of the House, on whom Nixon settled.

Ford explained in A Time To Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford that he had given considerable thought to filling the vice presidency when he became president, and his staff developed a ranking system. "There was one overriding criterion," he wrote to explain his baseline: "[H]e had to be a man fully qualified to step into my shoes should something happen to me."

Ford's top aides eliminated George H. W. Bush, who had served in the House of Representatives and headed the Republican National Committee, "as not yet ready to handle the rough challenges of the Oval Office." And when Ford settled on one of the wealthiest men in America, Nelson Rockefeller, it resulted in protracted confirmation hearings because of the extent of Rockefeller's holdings (which might have raised conflicts of interest). But in the end, Rockefeller was confirmed.

Congress Has Also Suggested Vice Presidential Qualifications Indirectly In the Succession Statutes It Has Passed

The Twenty-fifth Amendment only covers succession to the presidency or vice presidency when one of these offices is vacant - not both. It is silent if there are vacancies in both of the offices of the President and Vice President. The scenario of concurrent vacancies has, however, been addressed by Congress, most recently in a 1947 law.

The line of succession to the presidency begins with the Speaker of the House of Representatives (currently, Nancy Pelosi of California). Next is the President pro tempore of the Senate (currently, Robert Byrd of West Virginia). Finally, if neither of these officers is willing or able to take the post, the succession law turns to the President's Cabinet members.

The current order of succession is Secretary of State (currently, Condoleezza Rice), Secretary of the Treasury (Henry Paulson), Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates), Attorney General (Michael Mukasey), Secretary of the Interior (Dirk Kempthorne ), Secretary of Agriculture (Edward Schafer), Secretary of Commerce (Carlos Gutierrez, who was born in Cuba, and thus not "natural born"), Secretary of Labor (Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan, and thus not "natural born"), Secretary of Health and Human Services (Mike Leavitt), Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Steven Preston), Secretary of Transportation (Mary Peters), Secretary of Energy (Samuel Bodman), Secretary of Education (Margaret Spellings), Secretary of Veterans Affairs (James Peake) and Secretary of Homeland Security (Michael Chertoff). Under the succession statute, the presidency is filled for the remainder of the president's term.

Although this 1947 succession statute has been appropriately criticized, Congress has been reluctant to change it. The Congressional consensus has been that if there is a dual vacancy in the Executive branch's elected officials, it should be temporarily filled by a seasoned elected official from the Legislative Branch. In practice, while the full line of succession has been stipulated, it is unlikely that we will ever need to go beyond the Speaker of the House to fill the vacancy temporarily.

If neither the Speaker nor the President pro tempore is up to the task of serving, Congress has been comfortable with the caliber of appointees serving as Secretaries of State, Treasury, or Defense to serve as temporary president - for no one believes (absent a dramatic situation such as a massive attack on the seat of government that would call into force continuity-of-government plans) that the succession process would ever proceed beyond the "big three" Cabinet posts.

Governor Sarah Palin Does Not Qualify Under the Implicit Constitutional Standards

When Nixon selected Ford to be his Vice President, and Ford selected Rockefeller, the government was divided, with the Democrats controlling Congress. Yet a Democratic Congress approved both Ford and Rockefeller to be Vice President based on inter-branch comity. Surely no one would argue that Sarah Palin is in a league with Ford and Rockefeller when it comes to experience.

Nor does Palin possess anything close to the experience qualifications of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, or the President pro tempore of the Senate, Robert Byrd. Indeed, I feel confident that Palin could not get confirmed for any of the top presidential succession posts, namely the posts of Secretary of State, Treasury and Defense. Palin's lack of qualifications have been widely noted. Newspapers from her state have raised questions of her qualifications.

Recently, I was in Alaska, just after Palin's name was first floated as a possible McCain running mate. Although I am not a Democrat, I gave a keynote speech at the Democrats' state convention. During my visit, a senior Democratic Party official said to me that he sure hoped McCain would select Palin, because based on his observation of her record Alaska, he opined that, : "She's screwing up Alaska big time, and she could probably assure defeat for McCain." His wish may be coming true.

John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president.

Link to article
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20080905.html

Copyright © 1994-2008 FindLaw

Today...I Remember

2008-09-11T19:53:00.001-07:00

Sex, drugs, gifts uncovered in government oil probe

2008-09-10T18:20:00.001-07:00

Wow! It was a business doing pleasure with you!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. government employees received improper gifts from energy industry representatives, and engaged with them in illegal drug use and inappropriate sexual relations, according to a report issued Wednesday.

The report was issued by the Interior Department's inspector general after a $5.3 million investigation "uncovered recreational marijuana and cocaine use" by "a handful" of Interior Department staff, and found two federal employees "engaged in brief sexual relationships with representatives from companies doing business" with the department.

Two Interior Department employees "received combined gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions from four major oil and gas companies with whom they were doing business -- a textbook example of improperly receiving gifts from prohibited sources," Inspector General Earl Devaney says in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne accompanying the report.

Randall Luthi, head of the Minerals Management Service at the Interior Department, said the public had not suffered financial losses as a result of the employees' behavior.

Some of the government employees tried to hide their close association with the industry they were supposed to be regulating, the report says.

The investigation turned up e-mails in which MMS employees "preparing to attend industry events used such language as 'this trip is to be kept quiet,' or were asked to RSVP 'in private' by their supervisor," the report says.

"When we asked we these one of these employees why they needed to avoid discussing their social activities with industry, he responded with a slight chuckle, 'They might have, you know, contacted the [inspector general],' " the report says.

The investigation appears to have been prompted by an internal whistle-blower's report in 2006, and concerns activity from 2002 to 2006 by the department responsible for selling the oil and gas the government collects as rent from companies drilling on federal lands.

The report alleges inappropriate behavior by 19 members of the Royalty in Kind program -- about one-third of the department. Some have since left the department, making it unclear what kind of disciplinary action they could be subject to.

The Department of Justice declined to prosecute two former employees named in the report, the inspector general said, without saying why. Another pleaded guilty to a criminal charge.

MMS head Luthi said only "six or seven" employees named in the report still work for the department. He vowed appropriate action by the time he leaves office in January.

Democrats used the report to accuse President Bush's administration of being too close to the oil industry.

"The Bush administration put an 'America for Sale' sign on the White House lawn from day one and has been courting Big Oil ever since," Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York and chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said in a written statement. "Democrats have been saying it for some time, but this proves it. This administration is literally in bed with Big Oil. Little did we know they were such a cheap date."

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said the report should make Congress reconsider plans to expand offshore drilling.

"The rest of the United States government doesn't need to jump in bed with" the oil industry, he said.

"Offshore drilling will not solve our energy crisis nor will it bring down prices at the pump," Nelson said. "Instead, it will enrich the oil companies and reward the culture of corruption that has been fostered, funded and now exposed by the inspector general."

Two oil companies mentioned in the report, Shell and Chevron, declined to comment, saying they still needed to review it.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/10/oiil.scandal/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Another Community Organizer...

2008-09-09T21:05:00.001-07:00

Pastor: GOP may be downplaying Palin's religious beliefs

2008-09-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if I like to see arbitrary sect-ism developing as a political smoking-gun. Nonetheless, I believe that public comments demonstrating how one's faith instructs their world-view ought to be held under a critical lens. Whether Governor Palin believes in faith healing, glossolalia, or has a strange eschatology is irrelevant; however, I am deeply concerned that she expressed a sentiment that US troops in Iraq should be on a "task that is from God." Mixing armies with God's ordination is a spine-tingling compromise of both church and state. Let us strive to focus that which is objective and cogent to the issue at hand...the election of our nation's executive leadership. I suggest that character traits such as truthfulness, generosity, grace, intelligence, wisdom, and integrity are much more important than transitory sectarian distinctives.

By Randi Kaye
AC360° Contributor

WASILLA, Alaska (CNN) -- For more than two decades, current Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a practicing Pentecostal.

She belonged to the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska. But though she attended the church from her teenage years through to 2002, she hasn't talked much about her religion since joining the Republican ticket.

Palin's former pastor, Tim McGraw, says that like many Pentecostal churches, some members speak in tongues, although he says he's never seen Palin do so. Church member Caroline Spangler told CNN, "When the spirit comes on you, you utter things that nobody else can understand ... only God can understand what is coming out of our mouths."

Some Pentecostals from Assembly of God also believe in "faith healing" and the "end times" -- a violent upheaval that they believe will deliver Jesus Christ's second coming.

"Our basic belief is that God is God and he knows where history is going and he has a purposeful plan and within the middle of that plan we live in an environment in our world where certain events would take place," says McGraw. "Sarah wasn't taught to look for one particular sign -- a cataclysmic sign. She knew as every Christian does ... that God is sovereign and he is in control."

The McCain campaign says the Governor doesn't consider herself Pentecostal.

McGraw says Palin's Pentecostal roots may be being downplayed for a reason: "I think there may be issues of belief that could be misunderstood or played upon by people that don't know."

When asked by CNN about Palin's beliefs, campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton would only say the Republican vice presidential candidate has "deep religious convictions."

But how might her religious beliefs impact policy in Washington if the Republican ticket is successful?

Palin's former pastor says he has no doubt her religious beliefs will influence her decision making when it comes to government policy. Regarding her desire to build an Alaskan pipeline and explore for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, McGraw told CNN, "Sarah knows that in Genesis, God creates the world and it's very good and that we're supposed to be caretakers in terms of not destroying the environment, so there's no way that Sarah is going to exploit or damage the Alaska tundra in the name of getting gas if she doesn't have to."

Six years ago, Palin left Assembly of God to join the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church. But the Assembly of God says she still returns for special conferences and events, such as the graduation of ministry students in June. Video of a speech she gave at the church just two months before joining the Republican ticket is making the rounds on the Internet.

Speaking of the troops in Iraq, Palin says on the video, ""Pray for our military men and women who are striving do to what is right. Also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for -- that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan."

Her campaign says she doesn't mix her faith with government business. But Palin did ask her audience to pray for $30 billion natural gas pipeline she is on a mission to build in Alaska. In the video Palin says, "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas pipeline built. So pray for that ... I can do my job there in developing my natural resources. But all of that doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart is not good with God."

McGraw, who was her pastor until 1998 and while she was mayor of Wasilla, says Palin attended discipleship classes to strengthen her Pentecostal faith and that he counseled her on how to become a better leader.

"Everyone has a way of viewing the world and Sarah does too and hers would be shaped by the common sense practicality of how she's been shaped by the Bible -- which is basically the world view that says God loves people, people can access him and he's given us wisdom for living," says McGraw.

He says Alaska has already seen Palin's faith play out. As governor she passed ethics reform and took on what she's referred to as a "good-ol'-boys network." However, she has said she would not seek to impose her religious views on others.

"I think one of the most obvious ways it plays out is what you've seen -- is being courageous enough to deal with deception and corruption," says McGraw.

Palin now attends the Wasilla Bible Church. She was there on August 17, just days before entering the national spotlight. David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus, was a speaker. He told congregants that terrorist attacks on Israel were God's "judgment" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. Brickner said, "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."

The McCain campaign says his comments do not reflect her religious views. Palin's spokeswoman says she is pro-Israel.

Pastor Ed Kalnin, the senior pastor of Palin's former Pentecostal church, has also come under fire for his comments. In 2004, he told church members if they voted for John Kerry for president, they wouldn't get into heaven. He told them, "I question your salvation."

Assembly of God issued a statement online in response which said Kalnin was "joking" when he suggested "Kerry supporters would go to hell," and statement went on to say, "We do acknowledge in hindsight that it was careless, and we do apologize for that. This statement is not written as a defense, but as a clarification."

Palin has done little while in office to advance a social conservative agenda. She told the Associated Press in an interview in 2006 that she would not allow her personal beliefs to dictate public policy.

"I've honestly answered the questions on what my personal views are on things like abortion and a lot of controversial issues," Palin told the Associated Press. "I won't hesitate to answer those questions about what my personal views are, but I am not one to be out there preaching and forcing my views on anyone else."

But in the last week, her religious background and outlook has certainly spurred debate far beyond Alaska.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/08/palin.pastor/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Remembering Carol Cafferty

2008-09-06T20:47:00.001-07:00

I periodically post comments from CNN's Jack Cafferty, so I was deeply saddened to read that he lost his wife this week. I am truly sorry, Jack.

Remembering Carol Cafferty
Posted: 10:05 AM ET on September 5, 2008

Jack Cafferty wasn't here Friday for the Cafferty File because of some tragic news.

His wife of 35 years, Carol, passed away unexpectedly this morning. Carol was everything to Jack. The dedication of his book reads, “for Carol, my wife, my life.”

Jack wrote about how she was the inspiration for him to get sober and straighten up his life: “In all the years that we’ve been married, she has always brought to the table her unshakable grounding in something a lot more real than being on television or being recognized in the corner drugstore. She has been my rock, having done a magnificent job of keeping me from getting full of helium and drifting off the surface of the earth… She was all the incentive I needed to make painful but transforming changes – to get sober and stop smoking. I knew that I’d lose her if I didn’t. She’s an amazing woman who simply wasn’t worth losing.”

One story Jack loves to tell is how he and Carol met – when he was a local news anchor in Kansas City. They started to meet regularly for a quick meal between his shows and became good friends. Whenever Jack had to leave, his exit line was “We’d better wrap this up. Got to get back to the station.” One night Carol finally asked, “What kind of a gas station do you work at? You’re always wearing a tie.”

Jack explained it was a television station. He loved the fact that she had no clue and couldn’t care less that he had been on air there every night for four years. He later described that as one of his life’s “twenty-four-carat moments” that made his heart soar. He said to himself then that he might marry her because “it can’t get any more honest and pure than that.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/06/remembering-carol-cafferty/

© 2008 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

25 things you might not know about Senator John McCain

2008-09-01T14:15:00.001-07:00

Source: Associated Press
Updated: 2:44 p.m. ET Aug. 26, 2008
Fact File: John McCain

1. He has a stuffed dancing hamster on display in his Senate office.

2. His wife says her obsession with electronic gadgets and technology is one of his pet peeves.

3. He says his pet peeve is politicians who talk too much. (He admits that he's guilty, too, sometimes.)

4. He's not much of a shopper, but he likes to buy rugs when traveling abroad.

5. His favorite book is "For Whom the Bell Tolls," by Ernest Hemingway.

6. He was addicted to the TV show "24."

7. He carries a lucky penny in his pocket.

8. He played Scrooge in the POWs' staging of "A Christmas Carol" at the Hanoi Hilton.

9. His movie favorites include "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "Casablanca," and "Viva Zapata!" He and wife Cindy have seen "Mamma Mia!" twice.

10. He talks to fellow prisoners of war, those with whom he shared a cell in Vietnam, almost daily.

11. He has seven children. The first two he adopted from his first wife's previous marriage, the third was born to him and his first wife, the next three were born to him and his second wife, and the seventh they adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. He has four grandchildren.

12. His wife was in Bangladesh on a charity mission and brought home baby Bridget without checking first with McCain.

13. He describes himself as "a person who is mostly normal."

14. His parents "eloped" and got married at Caesar's Bar in Tijuana, Mexico; McCain's grandfather accompanied them.

15. He's serious about the finer points of barbecuing, and he likes to deep-fry turkeys in peanut oil.

16. He wasn't happy when Hudson, the neighbors' black lab, ate the tenderloin he'd been marinating to grill for dinner at their ranch in Sedona, Ariz.

17. He doesn't like to be alone.

18. At Christmastime, he likes to supervise the lighting of about 1,000 luminaria candles on their property in Sedona with family and friends.

19. Going on vacation with him is anything but relaxing. His children call it "Camp McCain."

20. He's an early-bird, not a night-owl.

21. He doesn't e-mail. He doesn't surf the Web. He likes to read the newspaper in print. He's attached to his cell phone.

22. His office window sill is overrun with stacks of books. He hands books off to friends once he's read them.

23. He's into fruit trees. And birds. He keeps binoculars and bird books at the ready in Sedona. His pet collection: two dogs, two turtles, a cat, a ferret, three parakeets and 13 saltwater fish.

24. His wife is super-rich. They have a prenuptial agreement.

25. He programmed digital remotes at the family's homes in Phoenix and Washington so they can call up DVDs in any room.

© 2008 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26355356/

Iraqi PM says deal must include ‘specific deadline’ for withdrawal

2008-08-25T20:50:00.001-07:00

Now, isn't that just plain interesting!?! Not only does al-Maliki want combat forces out on a definite time-table but also training and advising forces as well. I suppose that is the difference in how a liberating army would be treated by a greatful nation...versus an occupying army? Gulp...

The Associated Press
updated 11:16 a.m. CT, Mon., Aug. 25, 2008

BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday no security agreement with the United States could be reached unless it included a "specific deadline" for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Last week, U.S. and Iraqi officials said the two sides had agreed tentatively to a schedule which included a broad pullout of combat forces by the end of 2011 with a residual U.S. force remaining behind to continue training and advising the Iraqi security forces.

Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the text had not been approved by either government.

But al-Maliki's remarks Monday suggested that the Iraqi government is still not satisfied with that arrangement.

"There can be no treaty or agreement except on the basis of Iraq's full sovereignty," al-Maliki told a gathering of tribal sheiks. He said such an agreement must be based on the principle that "no foreign soldier remains in Iraq after a specific deadline, not an open time frame."

President Bush has long resisted a timetable for pulling out troops from Iraq, even under heavy pressure from a nation distressed by American deaths and discouraged by the length of the war that began in 2003.

But that has somewhat softened recently, with the Bush administration now speaking about "time horizons." But even "time horizons" now appears unacceptable to al-Maliki's government.

"We find this to be too vague," a close al-Maliki aide told The Associated Press on Monday. "We don't want the phrase 'time horizons.' We are not comfortable with that phrase," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing negotiations.

Another top al-Maliki aide, also speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the Iraqi government has "stopped talking about the withdrawal of combat troops. We just talk about withdrawals," including trainers and logistics troops.

In his Monday address, al-Maliki also suggested that the question of granting immunity to U.S. military personnel or contractors continued to be a sticking point in the negotiations.

In one key part of the draft agreement, private U.S. contractors would be subject to Iraqi law but the Americans are holding firm that U.S. troops would remain subject exclusively to U.S. legal jurisdiction.

Al-Maliki said Monday that his country could not grant "open immunity" to Iraqis or foreigners because that would be tantamount to a violating the "sanctity of Iraqi blood." He did not elaborate.

Another al-Maliki aide, speaking on condition of anonymity also because of the sensitivity of the subject, said Iraq remained adamant that the last American soldier must leave Iraq by the end of 2011 — regardless of conditions at the time.

The agreement had been scheduled to be concluded by the end of last month.

No new date has been set, but the two al-Maliki aides said a final draft was now available to the political leaderships in Baghdad and Washington. One of the two said a breakthrough was not expected before next month.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26391358/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Jon Stewart lectures reporters on coverage

2008-08-25T14:05:00.001-07:00

Speaking truth to power can often include a punchline and rimshot...

PoliticalTicker
From CNN Senior Political Producer Sasha Johnson
August 25, 2008

Posted: 03:34 PM ET

DENVER (CNN) - As Comedy Central's "Daily Show" descends on Denver for four days of coverage, Jon Stewart took after the "established" media for getting too cozy with candidates and regurgitating campaign spin when it comes to political coverage.

In a breakfast with reporters, Stewart directed most of his ire at the 24-hour cable news networks, which he called "gerbil wheels," and said the media at-large had "abdicated" to what he called the "slow-witted beast."

He said the never-ending television news cycle creates a "false sense of urgency" and forces reporters to "follow the veins that have been mined," instead of pursuing serious and in-depth reporting.

Even as Stewart shredded reporters for, in his estimation, getting too cozy with and used by political candidates, he readily admitted that candidates flock to his show to attract his much sought after younger audience. "It's just one part of their sales pitch," he said.

Stewart said he found neither Sens. McCain or Obama particularly funny and it was "absolutely irrelevant" which one takes the White House because "the jokes will be there." He dismissed criticism that comedians are having a hard time joking about Obama because of his race and said "the age joke with McCain is somewhat meaningless because it's already trite."

The choice of Joe Biden as Obama's runningmate, Stewart said, was refreshing because of the Delaware senator's large personality and endless possibility for jokes. "Biden is really nice. His style is so effusive and unguarded," Stewart said. "He's emotion plus."

Stewart said politicians in recent campaigns are "animatronic" because all of the "humanity has been managed out of campaigns." He referenced the back-and-forth during the Pennsylvania Democratic primary over Obama's lack of bowling skills.

"It's stunning where this election is going to be decided on," he said. "Or what we allow it to be decided on."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/25/jon-stewart-lectures-reporters-on-coverage/

© 2008 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

Beijing 2008 Olympics

2008-08-24T17:42:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to say, Wow! Warts and all...the world uniting for the thrill of sport and game is a wonder to behold!

Does Bush Believe McCain Was Tortured?

2008-08-19T19:59:00.001-07:00

Well...it is a good question?! Thanks for speaking truth to power, Andrew Sullivan!

Post from Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish

19 Aug 2008 10:54 am

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

The cross-in-the-dirt story - although deeply fishy to any fair observer - is in the realm of the unprovable. But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn't, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/was-mccain-tort.html

Copyright © 2008 Andrew Sullivan. All rights reserved.

Jack Cafferty Asks: Is McCain another George W. Bush?

2008-08-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

I have a profound sense of agreement with Jack Cafferty on this issue of presidential intelligence. Most importantly to me, "I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me." We produce the brightest and best that the world can offer...why can't we elect a few of them to public office? Sheesh!

By Jack Cafferty
CNN

Editor's Note: Jack Cafferty is the author of the best-seller "It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America." He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Russia invades Georgia and President Bush goes on vacation. Our president has spent one-third of his entire two terms in office either at Camp David, Maryland, or at Crawford, Texas, on vacation.

His time away from the Oval Office included the month leading up to 9/11, when there were signs Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America, and the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.

Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.

I think he made a big mistake. When he was invited last spring to attend a discussion of the role of faith in his life with Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, McCain didn't bother to show up. Now I know why.

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we've all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

Asked about his greatest moral failure, he cited his first marriage, which ended in divorce. While saying it was his greatest moral failing, he offered nothing in the way of explanation. Why not?

Throughout the evening, McCain chose to recite portions of his stump speech as answers to the questions he was being asked. Why? He has lived 71 years. Surely he has some thoughts on what it all means that go beyond canned answers culled from the same speech he delivers every day.

He was asked "if evil exists." His response was to repeat for the umpteenth time that Osama bin Laden is a bad man and he will pursue him to "the gates of hell." That was it.

He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.

One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

Where are John McCain's writings exploring the vexing moral issues of our time? Where are his position papers setting forth his careful consideration of foreign policy, the welfare state, education, America's moral responsibility in the world, etc., etc., etc.?

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes. Unless he's reciting talking points or reading from notes or a TelePrompTer, John McCain is lost. He can drop bon mots at a bowling alley or diner -- short glib responses that get a chuckle, but beyond that McCain gets in over his head very quickly.

I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.

George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jack Cafferty.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/18/cafferty.mccain/index.html

Copyright 2008 Cable News Network

Center Left...Center Right

2008-08-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

We are currently experiencing a lull in the culture wars; but, the occasion has not resulted in much dialogue either. The Associated Baptist Press recently solicited opinions on the topic of a Christian ethic towards homosexuality after a thought provoking opinion from David Gushee was published. I offer the opinions of Peggy Campolo and George Guthrie as examples of how to express firm conviction while remaining open for continued conversation. While the opinions are simply those of two individuals, they are fairly representative of the "sides" without drawing lines of division or exemplifying polarizing extremes. Speaking truth to power sometimes requires a lot of listening too...

Opinion: Gay Christians can't wait any longer

By Peggy Campolo

Editor's note: The recent series of articles by David Gushee on homosexuality generated an unusual amount of response. ABP solicited these two representative responses -- from Peggy Campolo, an advocate for gay Christians, and George Guthrie, a professor at Union University.

(ABP) -- Thanks to Dr. David Gushee for his engaging article on Christian ethics as they relate to gay and lesbian Christians. I am a committed Baptist who has worked within the church of Jesus Christ for more than 20 years to foster the understanding and acceptance of my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers - I'll just say "gay" for shorthand. I can personally testify to the anguish gay people feel when rejected by church and family because of who they are. I have also witnessed the joy of the many gay people I know who have found church homes where they are loved and accepted.

I agree with Dr. Gushee that the majority of the church is devoid of the kinds of discussions that would enable its members to gain a sound, biblically based theology of sexuality and marriage. Sadly, that has left its people to be manipulated by political voices who influence public opinion on sexual issues to win elections.

Dr. Gushee is right on the mark when he states that the problems of gay Christians cannot be properly addressed without the church clearly defining the meaning of sex and marriage, and I think he would agree with me that those who reduce marriage to "plumbing and baby-making" are the ones who demean marriage. The church should be grateful to those gay Christians who are raising the right questions.

The current problems of straight people, as well as those facing God's gay children, cannot be solved until the church of Jesus Christ clearly defines for its people the meaning of celibacy, sex, marriage and what constitutes a family. However, as Dr. Gushee clearly states, the large majority of the church today is afraid to talk about divorce or discuss any of these matters, even as they relate to heterosexuals.

Dr. Gushee calls for "a careful, unhurried process of Christian discernment" on this subject. I join him in longing for that. But God's gay children cannot face exclusion any longer. They are raising the very questions that need to be addressed by all of us, straight and gay. The anguish and despair I have seen in the Christian gay community does not allow time for such a scholarly approach to be our first move. We who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves must get to know and listen to them NOW.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter titled "Why We Can't Wait" from a jail in Birmingham, Ala. He made his point about racial equality by talking about his own four small children, and all of the other children of color who were growing up feeling like second-class citizens. Those children of God, those who do not happen to be straight, are the reason that I, and so many others who love Jesus and believe in the Bible's message of grace, demand justice for them NOW.

A pastor friend of mine, who has conducted too many funerals for gay children of God who ended their lives because they could no longer live the lie that their churches and families demanded of them, tells of a suicide note left by a young Christian. He dearly loved the godly parents who had accepted him but could not bear the anguish felt when their church excluded them along with him. His final letter to his mother and father read simply, "I didn't know how else to fix it."

Dr. Gushee's proposal for "a careful, unhurried process of Christian discernment" is a necessary wake-up call for the church. However, we must also find a way to end the exclusion and anguish of God's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children NOW.

Peggy Campolo, a follower of Jesus Christ, speaks at churches, colleges and conferences, advocating for civil rights and full inclusion in the church for her lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers. A graduate of Eastern University, Peggy Campolo is a member of Central Baptist Church, Wayne, Pa., and serves on the advisory council of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. She is the wife of Baptist author and Eastern University professor Tony Campolo.

Opinion: No true compassion apart from revelation

By George Guthrie

Editor's note: The recent series of articles by David Gushee on homosexuality generated an unusual amount of response. ABP solicited these two representative responses -- from Peggy Campolo, an advocate for gay Christians, and George Guthrie, a professor at Union University.

(ABP) -- There exists a fundamentalism on the theological left, as well as the more broadly published fundamentalism on the theological right. Both fundamentalisms communicate, "You must agree with my position and my applications or I will vilify you." These strident cousins eschew dialogue as compromise and often take an approach that shouts, "If I can label you, I have dealt with you; and if I can label the information you present (e.g., "this is just garbage"), I have dealt with your research and ideas."

In his ABP article, "Discernment, the church and homosexuality," David Gushee invites us to move beyond the shrill extremes and join him around the table of conversation. He wants us to consider a renewed emphasis on hermeneutics and theology as we reflect together on the important issue of homosexual couples and the church. I am thankful for the opportunity to join the conversation, for I could not agree more that we must raise the level of theological and hermeneutical reflection in Baptist life.

Therefore, let me begin by making sure I have heard those sitting across the table from me correctly. Those who wish to rewrite the church's traditional teaching on the practice of homosexuality seem to build their arguments on at least three primary foundation stones: 1) Homosexuality is constitutional, intrinsic to who the homosexual is as a person and, therefore, compassion demands that we affirm the homosexual in his or her sexuality; 2) Scripture does not address a "covenanted monogamy" form of homosexuality and, therefore, does not condemn such homosexual relationships; and 3) homosexual couples who practice "covenanted monogamy" should be affirmed in their relationship and welcomed as members in good standing in the church.

Of course, there are other arguments offered, but let's begin here and probe the hermeneutical underpinnings of these points.

First, constitutionality. Let's begin by agreeing that many homosexuals experience their sexual desires for the same sex as "inherent" to who they are. Some certainly would say "I have always felt this way." Yet, the science on the biological constitutionality of homosexuality (i.e. the "nature vs. nurture" question) is still in process. I am aware, of course, of the pertinent studies, such as the one by Dr. Simon LeVay, but prominent scientists disagree on how the data should be read (Indeed, LeVay himself is modest concerning the significance of his findings).

Yet, even if biology someday was shown clearly to be a primary factor in homosexuality, I want to suggest that constitutionality cannot serve as an appropriate basis for making a hermeneutical move to accepting homosexual practice. Why? Because there are other aspects of our existence that we experience "constitutionally" that nevertheless cannot be used as a basis to affirm behavior in line with that constitution. For instance, according to Scripture, we as human beings are sinners (e.g. Romans 7:18-21). Yet, of course, that cannot be used as a basis for affirming sin. In my experience of ministry, I have had womanizing men state, "This is just the way I am." Indeed, do those of us who are heterosexuals not at times experience the sexual tug, that jibbering monkey in our loins, which attempts to draw us to sexual expression outside of our marriages? I experience the sex drive as inherent to who I am; it is constitutional. Yet, it cannot be used to excuse acting on that impulse.

I am also concerned that there exists a short step from affirming homosexuality on the basis of one's constitution, to affirming other forms of sexual expression, such as pedophilia, on the same basis. Some of our homosexual friends would abhor the idea, but we are talking about constitutionality as a basis for making ethical decisions, and there are those in the global, heterosexual and homosexual communities who already put pedophilia forward on the basis of it being "natural." My point is not that all homosexuals are pedophiles, but that constitutionality forms a terribly poor basis for promoting an ethical stance on homosexuality.

Second, what of the argument on the grounds of covenanted monogamy? I know of no hard data on the practices of homosexual couples who claim to be Christians (and am open to being informed on the matter). It seems clear (in works such as The Male Couple), however, that homosexual men in general experience an astronomically high rate of infidelity compared to heterosexuals, with strikingly low rates of monogamy or even semi-monogamy.

I am sure there are homosexual couples that are faithful to one another, but, again, even if covenant monogamy was widely practiced among homosexuals, is a commitment to monogamy an appropriate basis for affirming a homosexual relationship? If so, why would it not be appropriate to use the same principle of "covenant monogamy" to affirm incest, for instance? Most ancient references to incest, whether Greco-Roman or Egyptian, focus on relationships between consenting adults, whether brother and sister or parent and grown child. Again, my point is not that homosexuality leads to incest, but that a commitment to "covenant monogamy" makes a poor basis for a hermeneutical move to affirm homosexual practice.

This then brings us to the question of Scripture and its interpretation. If our discussion is to be considered "Christian," it must come down to a consideration of what God has revealed as true in his Word. There is no true compassion apart from revelation. Thus, we need to embrace a rigorous "Berean" hermeneutic that is coherent in terms of the broad scope of biblical theology (e.g. God's mercy, God's wrath, the human condition, human sexuality, redemption) and compassionate in its application of truth to real-life contexts of homosexuals in the modern world.

That said, it seems to me the attempts to affirm homosexual relationships with Bible in hand fall primarily into two categories. Arguments in the first go something like this: "The Scripture does not condemn monogamous, covenanted, homosexual relationships but rather other forms of homosexuality," and "Jesus never condemned homosexuality but welcomed the outcast." Both are arguments from silence. Monogamous, covenanted, homosexual relationships are not condemned in Scripture, because they were unknown (indeed, unthinkable) in Jewish or Christian contexts of the ancient world. It is true that in the Gospels Jesus doesn't say anything about homosexuality. (Remember, though, that he does strongly affirm marriage as a creation ordinance involving a man and woman -- Matthew 19:4-6). But neither does Jesus address directly other forms of sexuality, such as incest, beastiality, pedophilia or sadomasochism. Arguments from silence weave a terribly thin hermeneutical thread from which to hang one's theological behemoth.

The other approach to hermeneutics involves a reframing of what the Scripture does say about homosexuality. For instance, it is suggested, that Genesis 19 really concerns the lack of hospitality on the part of the men of Sodom. Or Romans 1:24-27 is about idolatry and participating in homosexual orgies, not the practice of responsible homosexual relationships. Yet, I would humbly suggest, the convergence of word meanings, background information, literary context and other factors stand against these interpretations. For instance, in Romans 1:26-27, Paul lays great stress on the "abandoning" of or "exchanging" natural sexuality (between a man and a woman) for sex with a person of one's own gender. This is the central point in those verses. The creation ordinance of God has been abandoned.

As for context, two verses later in Romans 1:29, the apostle speaks of greed, murder, strife, deceit, gossip and disobedience to parents, among other vices. That catalogue plays a role in communicating the pervasive sinfulness of humanity, not merely the sinfulness of specifically idolatrous or orgiastic contexts. Homosexual practice, according to Romans 1, is part of a larger problem of human sinfulness, the rejection of God's intentions for the world.

I am sure to be accused of lacking compassion for those embracing a homosexual lifestyle, and that grieves me. Yet, is it a rightly applied compassion that affirms a lifestyle that too often compromises the physical and emotional well being of fellow human beings? The data seems to indicate that homosexual practice for both couples and individuals leads to a greatly reduced life expectancy (as much as three decades, and not just due to AIDS). Among homosexual men, for instance, there exists a much higher risk of rectal cancer and rectal trauma (which causes a much higher risk of a wide range of diseases). Is it compassionate to affirm such a lifestyle?

In conclusion, I agree that churches too often have neglected important ministry to those struggling with homosexuality. Yet, what is needed is not to rethink the church's stance on homosexuality, as Dr. Gushee suggests, but to rethink our response to homosexuals themselves. For some this will mean dropping a harsh posture, getting the facts on the challenges faced by those in the homosexual community, and opening our hearts of compassion. For others it will mean a renewed commitment to the whole counsel of God on human sexuality.

George Guthrie is the Benjamin W. Perry Professor of Bible at Union University.

Copyright © 2007-2008 Associated Baptist Press, All Rights Reserved.

The Truth about Fiscal Conservatism

2008-08-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

I wonder what "Fiscal Conservative" really means to the Republican Party? They can talk all they want about balanced and fair budgeting, but they have hardly put the concept into practice anytime recently.

A Greenberg picture is worth a thousand words...

August 3, 2008

President Bush is projected to run up a national budget deficit of $482 billion, possibly a lot more. This is a fiscal conservative? In fact, the only president in the last 25 years to not only not run up a deficit, but to actually leave a surplus, was one of them thar "tax-and-spend" Democrats.

http://blogs.venturacountystar.com/greenberg/

© 2008 Ventura County Star