Quote of the day

"It has become no longer politically correct in certain circles in Washington to speak about climate change or carbon pollution or how carbon pollution is causing our climate to change. This is a peculiar condition of Washington. If you go out into, say, our military and intelligence communities, they understand and are planning for the effects of carbon pollution on climate change. They see it as a national security risk. If you go out into our nonpolluting business and financial communities, they see this as a real and important problem. And, of course, it goes without saying our scientific community is all over this concern. But as I said, Washington is a peculiar place, and here it is getting very little traction. Here in Washington we feel the dark hand of the polluters tapping so many shoulders. And where there is power and money behind that dark hand, therefore, a lot of attention is paid to that little tap on the shoulder. What we overlook is that nature — God’s Earth — is also tapping us all on the shoulder, with messages we ignore at our peril. We ignore the messages of nature of God’s Earthand we ignore the laws of nature of God’s Earth at our very grave peril." --Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to the US Senate last week. If you don't like or want to read, you can see his brief speech here: Link: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/19/347768/senator-whitehouses-climate-speech/

3 involved men

There are 3 men, currently, who are very involved with the current negotiations for the economic stimulus and this administration whose approaches are very different.

Two are very similar while the third is very different in their approaches.

It seems that Senator John Cornyn (R., Tx) and Represetative John Boehner (R., OH) both have a "Jones", so to speak, to grandstand and oppose things from the Democrats.

It's not like it's a surprise it's just frustrating.

Rep. Boehner seems to really enjoy the limelight, as much and frequently as possible. I get the sense he isn't sure what he likes more--his own photo on paper or footage of himself on television.

Both Cornyn and Boehner seem to want to block progress just to be blocking progress.

The thing is, we're in one heck of an ugly financial mess right now and we need to put politics aside, unfortunately for these two men, and work for solutions.

It's very unfortunate for them because in the first place, the Republican leadership in the past 8 years got us to where we are today and, as I said here earlier, if we get the solutions we do need--as we should--now, with this Democratic President, the Republicans run the risk of being out of power for many years to come.

A large legacy of screw-ups from the Bush years, followed by success in Obama years will doom them for a long time to come, certainly. (And here's hoping).

Republicans, right now, keep saying we need to put in more tax cuts into the stimulus package and not just spending.

Well, they handed out their tax cuts during the just-left Bush administration--only it was to the very wealthy of the country. Also, we have debt out the wazoo. How do you lower taxes further when we can't pay for what we already get? (But that's another column: tax cuts vs. insanely large spending--neither of which we can afford).

The fact is, we need to solve these very large problems because so many people's lives and livelihoods are at stake now. People have already lost their life savings or their jobs, due to this banking, economic mess.

It's not a time for stalling and blocking. It's a time for solutions.

The third person I mentioned is one Bill Perkins, from Houston, Texas.

Have you seen the large ads Mr. Perkins has run in newspapers either mocking Washington or just asking where the trillions of dollars in bailouts went in the last few months?

They're huge.

And frequent.

He's paying big money to ask these questions.

And I think they need to be asked.

And answered.

It seeemed, for a while there, that no one in Washington wanted to even ASK where the money for the first 1/2 of the bank's bailout went, let alone give Americans answers.

So here's to Mr. Perkins--thank you from the rest of us.

We'd like to know where this boondoggle has gone, too.

Who knows? We might avoid throwing away many more millions--or even billions--of taxpaid dollars, all in a supposed attempt to "kickstart the economy."

More good news!

Between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) and the ACLU, it looks as though we really are going to look into what our government was up to the last 8 years, after alll, God willing.

It seems Senator Whitehouse was quoted as saying the new President may not "look backwards" but that he intends to examine what's been going on in our supposedly open government.

Now, news today from the ACLU that they may be getting the documents from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel on the Bush Administration's anti-terrorism policies.

It would be nice to know whether our own government has been operating within the law, after all, don't you agree?

This good news follows the fact that Attorney General nominee (who is, apparently, sure to get the job this week) testified before the Senate in his confirmation hearings that, yes, he thought like most of the rest of the free world that waterboarding is, in fact, torture.

And then there's this:

"Since Obama's directive on disclosure, Melanie Ann Pustay , the director of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy , instructed federal officials that they should process requests for records with a 'clear presumption in favor of disclosure, to resolve doubts in favor of openness, and to not withhold information based on 'speculative or abstract fears.'"

"In another indication that the ACLU may get its way, the nominee to head the OLC, Dawn Johnsen , has previously indicated she thinks that such memos should generally be released."

"Before her nomination, Johnsen wrote in an article for Slate, the Internet magazine, that the central question in the debate was whether OLC could issue 'binding legal opinions that in essence tell the president and the executive branch that they need not comply with existing laws — and then not share those opinions and that legal reasoning with Congress or the American people? I would submit that clearly the answer to that question must be no.'"

It seems that, all along, what we've needed to do was shine light in the dark corners of our government.

But with old "Tricky Dick" Cheney, that just wasn't going to happen--not on his watch.

But his time is over, thank God.

Links here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/13/whitehouse-investigate-bush/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090128/pl_mcclatchy/3154778