Odds And Evens

Back on Friday I mused when Bush's pardons were coming. We've made it through the weekend without any major ones.

Politico takes a crack at handicapping the odds of who gets off, and who faces the music. You have to give them some credit, they called Bush commuting the sentences of former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean at 3 to 1.

Best odds are for Scooter Libby (1 to 2) , the worst appear to be for Duke Cunningham (50 to 1).

No mention of Nameless One, Keystone Kondi, or Rover/Harriet Miers in the list however. We'll see if he's saving any more for the last minute.

More Turd Polishing For Dummies

Ahh, where would we be without the Village constantly trying to rewrite Bush's failed legacy? Today's contestant: The Independent's Bruce Anderson (trying to meet or exceed the goal of complete temporal reversal set last week by Andrew Roberts.)

But it all comes back to the Iraq War, which was a tragedy, for a reason worthy of a great tragedian. It was fought in a spirit of excessive idealism. After 11 September, the US Administration asked itself one repeated and agonised question. Why do these people hate us? The Bush team came up with their answer: because they live in failed states, which offer their young no hope in this world and thus leave them open to the temptations of fanaticism and a better deal in another world.

Baghdad was one of the foremost cities in the Muslim world. Iraq was a rich country with a large educated middle class. Yet it had become a police state and many of its ablest people had fled into exile. Moreover, Saddam had been trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. We could not be certain that his quest had failed. So should we wait until the certainty of a mushroom cloud? It seemed that all the routes to progress in the Middle East and safety in the West led to Iraq.

There was one problem. Largely because of the malign influence of that fraud and tautology, international law, we have grown squeamish about regime change. As a result, the overwhelming desirability of regime change in Iraq had to be downplayed, and there was a further difficulty: the most unfortunate un-meeting of minds in recent public policy. After 2001, in both Washington and London, there was a split between those who knew Iraq, who were generally hostile to the War, and those who wanted war but usually knew nothing about Iraq. George Bush had little confidence in his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Unable to sack Mr Powell, he made up for it by not listening to the State Department. Tony Blair never took much notice of his foreign secretaries.

The size of the list of people who deserve the blame for Bush's failed legacy is impressive, but the one thing all these articles have in common is that Bush himself isn't on that list, but the reality-based community is.

That's to be expected after all...it's historical parallel universe fiction at its finest, the kind that makes Harry Turtledove novels look positively orthodox.

Pardon Our Dust

So when does Bush drop his bombshell pardons? He has roughly 100 hours left before he's not President anymore. BooMan is betting late today in grand Bush Administration Friday Night News Dump style, since Monday is a bank holiday for MLK, others say Monday would make sense as Obama's inauguration would act as a perfect news dump.

After Eric Holder's statements yesterday at his hearing and the GOP offering no more than token resistance, the incoming AG is making a lot of Bushies nervous as a nitro delivery guy in a trampoline factory.

President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general said unequivocally Thursday that waterboarding is torture, and he vowed to initiate an extensive and immediate "damage assessment" to fix fundamental problems within the Justice Department that he said were caused by the Bush administration.

Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee during a marathon hearing that the incoming Obama administration is making major course corrections on the interrogations of terror suspects and many other issues that will represent a significant break from the current policies and programs.

Early on he was asked whether waterboarding, a technique that makes a prisoner believe he is in danger of drowning, constitutes torture and is illegal.

"If you look at the history of the use of that technique, " Holder replied, "we prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam. ... Waterboarding is torture."

And while I absolutely applaud Holder's statements, I'm more convinced than ever that the pressure on Bush to issue blanket pardons some time in the next couple of days is going to be immense. He will be convinced there's enough risk of investigation and prosecution by Holder that he has to do it now. Bush really, really wants America to like him and to remember him fondly, but the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans are glad as hell to see him go only means he has much less to lose if he does it.

I'd put it at 80% he does it. It would be higher, except it's a tacit admission of a mistake, which Bush has always been loathe to do. Still...a last-second pardon like this would explain why Holder's getting a free pass.

We'll know very soon.

Turd Polishing For Dummies

The fiction writing contest that is the unbridled lying at the heart of the World Dubya Hagiography Tour continues with British historian Andrew Roberts, declaring Bush to be merely misunderstood by so many idiotic Americans who refused to appreciate the greatness of the man, including erudite and positively eloquent delusions such as:

At the time of 9/11, which will forever rightly be regarded as the defining moment of the presidency, history will look in vain for anyone predicting that the Americans murdered that day would be the very last ones to die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the US from that day to this.

Boy that sure feels good, no additional Americans on US soil murdered by Islamists! It almost makes up for the nearly 4,500 US troops murdered by Islamists in Islamist countries, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans we murdered over there!

There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush
after 9/11.

There are 4,000+ troops dead because we invaded the wrong country, but that's besides the point.

Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.

Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.

Because like the US, France, China, Israel, and Russia came to the same exact conclusions we did about Saddam's hideous evil terrible nasty lies about WMD then invaded Iraq like we did and are still stuck there after almost six years. Wait, they didn't invade? They're not stuck there with hundreds of thousands of troops in a quagmire?

Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Mr Bush's efforts over Aids and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.

Yes, the people of Afghanistan continue to thank us daily.

When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush Administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was only used on three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?

And when those same historians ask "When did the American Empire become truly morally bankrupt on its way into collapse," they'll be too busy laughing at articles like this to respond. But here's my favorite line:

The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush's very un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.

Got that? It's all Clinton's fault. Bush's massive tax cuts, $3 trillion wars, massive deregulation at the executive branch level, and Alan Greenspan's artificially inflated housing mega-bubble to get us out of the post-9/11 doldrums had nothing to do with our current economic crisis. It's all Democrats forcing poor people to take mortgages and the media's fault. Why, Bernie Madoff would be fine right now if it wasn't for those goddamn poor minorities.

Yes, Clinton was responsible for the end of Glass-Stegall. He opened the door for Bush, who promptly burned the door down, urinated on it, and then sold the ashes back to us for a profit.

Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally – perhaps years from now – lends objectivity to this fine man's record.

Yay we have won in Iraq. Bush is a genius! Pay no attention to stuff like this, we've won!

So, after the last eight years...was it good for you? Do you think Bush is one of the greatest Presidents we've ever had and a guy who just had bad luck on stuff like Katrina and 9/11 and Iraq and the economy? After all, Bush's only problem was that he was too humble.

I leave you with this.

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support. The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN security council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans.

If that paragraph didn't cause you to throw anything at the monitor...congratulations. You've either stopped giving a damn or the Bushies will be contacting you to write a similar piece. Either way, you're doing better than I am after reading this.

Cleaning Up After The Old Boss

The House at least continues to eagerly pass legislation that Bush vetoed over the last couple years in anticipation of Obama taking over next week. First it was the Ledbetter/Fair Play Act, and this week it's SCHIP that's back on the table.

The House is poised to give Barack Obama a quick legislative victory by approving a bill to expand a health insurance program for children, making a down payment on the president-elect's promise to provide coverage to every child in the country.

The bill, scheduled for a vote today, would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a popular initiative created during the Clinton administration that helps children living at or near the poverty line who fall outside the Medicaid system.

The House bill carries an estimated cost of $33 billion over 4 1/2 years and would extend coverage to an additional 4.1 million children, on top of the 7 million who are currently enrolled. It would be paid for primarily through a 61-cent-per-pack increase in the federal cigarette tax.

In 2007, President Bush twice vetoed similar legislation, objecting to its broader reach and its reliance on the tobacco tax hike. Bush's unwavering position was cheered by conservatives but caused political problems in 2008 for Republican candidates in more moderate states and districts.

Obama vowed as a candidate that one of his first acts in the White House would be to sign the long-stalled bill. It will not be ready on Inauguration Day, but congressional leaders hope to complete work well before the program's March 31 expiration date.

Republicans tried everything to kill this, ending in a pair of Bush vetoes that only made the GOP look more and more like a bunch of greedy assholes than usual. Cigarette taxes versus health care for all American kids? No brainer there.

It's nice being able to get this stuff done and passed, instead of turning everything into a two-year plus Very Special Episode of The West Wing.

Last Guy Out Of The Press Room Hit The Lights

Bush's final press conference (as President, I'm hoping it's the last time he's on my TV ever) was...interesting.

In a nostalgic final news conference, President George W. Bush defended his record vigorously and at times sentimentally Monday. He also admitted many mistakes, from the "Mission Accomplished" banner during a 2003 Iraq speech to the discovery that the alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that he used to justify war didn't exist.

After starting what he called "the ultimate exit interview" with a lengthy and personalized thank-you to the reporters in the room who have covered him over the eight years of his presidency, Bush showed anger at times when presented with some of the main criticisms of his time in office.

He particularly became indignant when asked about America's bruised image overseas.

"I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said.

Bush said he realizes that some issues such as the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have created controversy at home and around the world. But he defended his actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including approving tough interrogation methods for suspected terrorists and information-gathering efforts at home in the name of protecting the country.

Why is anyone surprised at this? A petulant child mouthing "I'm sorry" so he can get dessert.

Insert Caption Here

"No Jimmy, you can't play center. Look, we take on the Ex-British Prime Ministers in three weeks, so we gotta get our game on, guys."

Thanking Dubya

Condi Rice still carries the "work wife" torch for her boss, as she explains to CBS that Americans of all stripes will soon "start to thank the President for what he's done" over the last eight years.

"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that aired on CBS' "Sunday Morning."

The secretary of state brushed off reports that suggest the United States' image is suffering abroad. She praised the administration's ability to change the conversation in the Middle East.

"This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sorry, it isn't. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans' interests and values in the long run -- not for today's headlines, but for history's judgment," she said.

"And I am quite certain that when the final chapters are written and it's clear that Saddam Hussein's Iraq is gone in favor of an Iraq that is favorable to the future of the Middle East; when the history is written of a U.S.-China relationship that is better than it's ever been; an India relationship that is deeper and better than it's ever been; a relationship with Brazil and other countries of the left of Latin America, better than it's ever been ...

"When one looks at what we've been able to do in terms of changing the conversation in the Middle East about democracy and values, this administration will be judged well, and I'll wait for history's judgment and not today's headlines."

On its face, Rice's protestations are equal parts stupidity and delusion. She's been the weakest Secretary of State in modern history, serving as the Bush administration's Apologist-In-Chief more than anything else. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, the EU, Haiti, Indonesia, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa -- all places where our foreign policy has made things worse and in many instances has cost thousands of lives if not hundreds of thousands. Arrogance, ineptness, stubborness, stupidity, ignorance...these are the hallmarks of Bush foreign policy, and while Colin Powell certainly has his own crimes to pay for, Condi Rice bears a large butcher's bill herself, first as Bush's intel wrangler, then as Bush's cleaning crew.

But as ridiculous as Condi Rice's argument is (her assumption that Bush's policies will "stand the test of time" is both delusional and horrifying) she's correct on one level: I do thank Bush for being such a singularly terrible leader in every sense of the term that America chose to elect Barack Obama specifically to fix all the things Bush fucked up.

So, she's right on that account. We'll soon be thanking Bush for not being President anymore, and that soon will be about 12:01 PM on January 20.

Too Much To Take

It appears that Bush's planned (and then reversed) pardon of mortgage fraudster Isaac Toussie was more than even Malkinvania could handle.

"What's particularly galling is this man was involved in mortgage crimes and mortgage fraud, which, HELLO! has been the number one story of the year," Malkin said about Bush's year ending "embarrassment."

The conservative pundit wondered why the Bush vetters didn't do a basic Google search beforehand.

"It calls attention to the Bush administration's own role in allowing the subprime crisis to fester," said Malkin. "The fact is under Bush's watch, a lot of this did take place, and the Bush administration's policies themselves, particularly at HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban development, encouraged exactly this kind of behavior."

If even Our Lady Of The Muslim Concentration Camps is convinced Bush is at fault for this disaster of an economy, there's pretty much zero hope for his legacy.

But it gets worse. As Steve Benen points out, the nature of Presidential pardons are absolute, meaning that there's a strong legal argument that Isaac Toussie's pardon cannot be rescinded in any way.

Like it or not, presidents have broad authority when it comes to granting pardons. They also, however, have no authority to when it comes to taking pardons back.

Bush's clemency, announced this week, for Isaac Toussie is rather scandalous in its own right, given Toussie's background as a scam artist who got off easy running an illegal mortgage scheme and his father's contributions to Republicans earlier this year. But it's the president's decision to try and change his mind that's especially interesting.

Now, as a legal matter, it appears Bush can't grant a pardon and then rescind it. The process just doesn't work that way. The White House would have us believe, however, that his publicly announced, unconditional pardon for Isaac Toussie didn't really count. Bush was going to grant him clemency, but it hadn't actually happened yet, so the president interrupted the process before it could become official.

and as Josh Marshall reveals, THAT argument holds no water either.

But from what I can tell, the Pardon Attorney doesn't 'execute' anything. The current system of having the Pardon Attorney create certificates of pardon only goes back to the Eisenhower administration, and was then apparently only done to relieve the president of the chore of signing so many pardons and commutations. I spoke to former Pardon Attorney Margaret Colgate Love (1990-1997) who told me that "receiving the president's warrant and sending notifications to the petitioners is purely 'a ministerial act of notification.'" In layman's terms, at this end of the transaction, the Pardon Attorney's role is really just a matter of paperwork. "When we received the Master Warrant from the president," said Love, "what our job was was to notify them, by telephone, and eventually by written notification. The document evidenced the president's action. We never assumed that that document had any necessary legal significance."

So just as a factual matter, the idea that the Pardon Attorney needs to 'execute' the pardons seems to be bogus. End of story.

In other words, once Bush or any President grants a pardon, it's a done deal. Bush can't take it back. And as Digby pointed out yesterday, the whole point of reversing the Toussie pardon was to make sure Bush didn't have a fishy-looking Marc Rich-style controversial pardon like Clinton did so that the GOP could oppose the appointment of Eric Holder to AG. Holder was of course the Clinton Justice Department official who signed off on the Marc Rich pardon, and the plan was of course to make him pay for it during the nomination hearings and burn him to the ground.

Now the Bushies don't even have that. There's no way they can accuse Obama of glossing over pardon shenanigans to appoint Eric Holder when Bush's pardon of Toussie looms over the entire proceedings.

Insert foot, pull trigger. These Bush idiots can't even get a pardon right...a final, sad commentary on the complete political incompetence of the outgoing administration. Is it any wonder 75% of Americans are glad to tell Bush "Don't let the White House door hit you in the ass on the way out"?

Records? What Records?

Today's front page Washington Post story on Bush' s records raises more than just eyebrows.

Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years.

But archivists are uncertain whether the transfer will include all the electronic messages sent and received by the officials, because the administration began trying only in recent months to recover from White House backup tapes hundreds of thousands of e-mails that were reported missing from readily accessible files in 2005.

The risks that the transfer may be incomplete are also pointed up by a continuing legal battle between a coalition of historians and nonprofit groups over access to Vice President Cheney's records. The coalition is contesting the administration's assertion in federal court this month that he "alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records" and "how his records will be created, maintained, managed, and disposed," without outside challenge or judicial review.

It's going to be a long, ugly battle. Perhaps Obama can compel Bush to comply, perhaps not. But unless the Democrats demand these records be released, it won't happen. And given the lack of spine on Capitol Hill, I'm thinking eight years of Bush lawbreaking will just get swept under the rug in the name of "pragmatism."

Of course, the Dems will act surprised when Obama is asked for every piece of communication ever conceived in his administration by the GOP in the name of "open government."

Auto-matic Response

How much do the wingnuts like Malkinvania hate the UAW? Their brilliant idea is, no joke:

Instead of wringing their hands, I’d like to see fiscal conservatives in Congress put their money where their mouths are and file suit against this illegal, unconstitutional bailout.

That's right. Sue the US Government for the auto bailout. The reasoning? The auto bailout uses TARP funds. TARP funds are for "financial institutions". Treating GM and Chrysler's finance arms as "financial institutions" for this purpose is the worst thing Bush has ever done as far as these folks are concerned, instead of letting the horrible, terrible UAW die screaming and taking millions of jobs with them. It's so bad in fact Congress should sue Bush for this unconstitutional use of unchecked executive power.

Stop and think about this. Congress should sue Bush, she says. Not over illegal wiretapping. Not over torture. Not over Scooter Libby, not over Iraq, not over Afghanistan, not over Gonzo's US Attorney firings, nor any of the dozens of scandals over the last eight years. No, the outrage that prompted Michelle Malkin to say that Congress should stand up to the President is the outrage of refusing to kill the UAW.

Nothing that Bush has done before warranted being sued by Congress in her eyes. Nothing. Not a single thing. Until, in a lame-ass attempt to punt and spare the atomized wreckage of his "legacy", Bush went too far in his use of executive power for even Malkinvania to handle by committing the unforgiveable sin of failing to put a couple million Americans out of work by destroying an iconic American industry.

I salute you, Madam Malkinvania. Your infinite lack of humanity has even shocked and surprised the most cynical of observers such as myself.

More Tortured Logic

Via BooMan, we discover the NY Times Editorial Board has a problem with people who torture.

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

That's no joke, folks, when the Gray Lady is calling for criminal charges against cabinet members. The Senate report itself is pretty damning.

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

The report is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true.

The administration's policies and the resulting controversies, the panel concluded, "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

The panel drew from congressional testimony and official documents, many of which were previously released during a nearly two-year probe. While many of the underlying facts were known, the report represented the most significant attempt by Congress to assess one of the defining controversies of the Bush presidency.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," McCain said in a statement.

Rumsfeld seems to get the most of the criticism and deservedly so. Of course, he denies everything and blames Congress for even daring to investigate this sort of thing.

Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary from 2001 to 2006, rejected the report's conclusions and said it was the committee, particularly Levin, that had sullied the nation's image.

"It's regrettable that Senator Levin has decided to use the committee's time and taxpayer dollars to make unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation," said Keith Urbahn, an aide to Rumsfeld. He accused Levin of pursuing a politically motivated "false narrative" that is "unencumbered by the preponderance of the facts."

So the real question is will Bush pardon these assholes on the way out the door? I think it's a distinct possibility, because come January 20, the Democrats will have the leverage needed to start some real fireworks.

Besides, I'm thinking Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin, Michigan's senior Senator, may be looking for a little payback for the GOP at this point.

Like He's A Roach Or Something

Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush in Baghdad. Not meat or pies or paint or poop. Shoes. Like you would throw at a particularly bad dog or a bug or something.

That's his legacy. You are President of the United States of America and people throw shoes at you to get you to go the hell away.

Double G Goes Double Barrel

Nobody on the left does righteous indignation like Glenn Greenwald. When he latches on to The Stupid, he doesn't let go. Ever. Today's poor schmuck in his jaws is former Clinton OMB official Matt Miller, who rightfully gets both barrels.

Matt Miller, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and former official in the Clinton OMB, has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post decrying the "kiss-and-tell" books written by top presidential aides once they leave the White House, and he singles out as examples the "tell-all" books written by George Stephanopoulos and Scott McClellan (whose name is repeatedly misspelled throughout the Op-Ed). Miller doesn't merely want former officials who write such books to be stigmatized and scorned, though he does want that. Far beyond mere disapproval, he actually wants to vest presidents -- or at least the new President -- with the formal legal power to block publication of these books in the first place:

Just as mergers and marriages that flourished on handshakes and vows had to turn to coarser arrangements once the stakes of break-up became high, the politician-aide relationship now needs its contract. In other words, it is time for the political prenuptial. Barack Obama should simply require key advisers and officials to sign a binding contract of confidentiality as a condition of employment. Aides should pledge not to disclose anything they see until, say, five years after their boss leaves office.

That is an atrocious idea. For one thing, it's hard to see how enforcement of these silencing contracts could be permitted in light of the First Amendment. And I doubt that Obama, for appearance reasons if nothing else, would take this proposal seriously. But those matters aside, the thinking behind this proposal is common among Beltway insiders and reveals much about the ways of Washington.

The attribute that defines Beltway culture as much as anything else is obsessive, gratuitous secrecy. The vast bulk of what takes place of any consequence occurs away from the public eye. Even laws which Congress enacts are proposed, negotiated and written behind closed doors with lobbyists and operatives. By the time these bills are even known to the public, let alone openly "debated," their outcome is a foregone conclusion. Floor "debates" and Congressional votes are pure theater, empty rituals with no purpose other than to ratify pre-ordained outcomes that were determined in secret.

Presidents in particular already possess a vast arsenal of weapons to prevent transparency, from the virtually unfettered power to classify to borderline-omnipotent investigation-quashing tools such as the state secrets and executive privileges. As Radley Balko detailed in his recent article urging the Obama administration to renounce claims of executive privilege except where genuine national security secrets are jeopardized by disclosures, these powers have grown so rapidly over the last decade that Presidents can now maintain an almost impenetrable wall of secrecy around virtually everything they do. CAP's own blog, ThinkProgress, just recently cited a report documenting "that by almost every measure, government secrecy is rising."

As always, Double G is a good read, and of course he has a good point here. Obama is breaking down that wall of secrecy, as is VP-elect Joe Biden. There's no way the opposite would be acceptable after eight years of Preznitman From Preznitland.

A Second Chance For The Big Three's Second Chance

I had pegged the bailout of the auto industry as all but dead, but it seems that today's dismal job numbers with over half a million jobs lost in November alone has spurred both the GOP and Democrats into action on the Big Three automakers.

Efforts to provide emergency loans to struggling U.S. automakers gained momentum on Friday after a grim U.S. jobs report spurred talks between congressional leaders and the White House.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dropped her insistence that the money come from the $700 billion financial bailout fund that the Bush administration had refused to use on automakers, said a congressional aide familiar with the discussions.

Another congressional source said Pelosi was open to the idea of tapping the existing $25 billion advanced energy technology loan fund to help auto companies - an idea the White House has promoted.

Such a move would likely build bipartisan support in Congress for a bill that could be signed into law by President George W. Bush.

So far, this is being spun as a victory for the GOP, but the reality is just a bit further down the article...

Congress and the White House are anxious to prevent the threatened near-term collapse of one or more of the Detroit Three - which directly employ 250,000 people.

Somebody in the White House has apparently told Bush that if his final month in office leads to the death of the American Car, well history is really, really not going to look kindly upon him. Not that history had any other place for him but dead last of 44, but apparently that's too much for even Bush to handle.

The fact of the matter is the effective unemployment rate, the rate that includes all the folks who have stopped looking for work, or are scraping by on part-time work, has now reached 12.5%. That means one in eight American workers don't have a full-time job right now, and since December 2007, America has lost 2.7 million jobs.

Neither side wants to take credit for losing millions more should the auto industry fold. In a matter of about 8 hours today, both Obama and Congress have swung into action and the White House has done a complete 180.

By next week, an auto industry bailout could be on Bush's desk.

What a difference a day makes.

Epic Irony Detector Fail

After eight years of Bush's unlimited "unitary executive in a time of war", Nameless One's extra-constitutional Fourthbranch antics making him accountable to no one, and Sarah Palin being unable to describe the duties of the Vice-President job she was running for as the GOP standard-bearers on the limits (or complete lack of them) of executive branch power, we have Palin herself making this comment today campaigning for Saxby Chambliss in Georgia:

"We need Saxby because we need checks and balances in Washington, and we will not have that if Saxby is not re-elected," said Palin. "With one party in control of the House and the Senate and the White House we need a conservative who will speak for themselves."

Is there any more reason why the GOP can never be allowed in power again? The GOP was never, ever interested in checks and balances when it was in power...in fact how can we forget the promises of a permanent Republican majority in Washington?

But now of course we need to restrain the Democrats before they do anything.

EPIC FAIL.

Salting The Earth

In the Third Punic War between the Romans and Carthage more than 2,000 years ago, the Romans sacked Carthage and poured salt onto the fields surrounding the city in a 50 mile radius, rendering the fields useless for crops for years.

The Romans didn't just defeat the Carthaginians, they completely ruined them on the way out the door. Carthage never recovered as a threat to the Romans or anyone else for that matter after that.

Which brings me to Bush and his executive order salting of the earth.

Bush administration aides are rushing to pass a safety rule which would make government regulation of workers' exposure to toxic chemicals more difficult; a rule President-elect Barack Obama opposes.

Public health officials worry the decreased protections will result in additional, unnecessary deaths.

It is just one of about 20 controversial Labor Department proposals being pushed by large business interests, according to a published report.

Other proposals would allow power plants to be built closer to parks and wildlife preserves, and further limit the role of environmental and animal experts in determining where major infrastructure projects may be carried out.

Obama will do what he can, but Bush is going out as nasty and as corrupt as he came into office.

Epic Bush Legacy Fail

Preznitman on his legacy:

George W. Bush hopes history will see him as a president who liberated millions of Iraqis and Afghans, who worked towards peace and who never sold his soul for political ends.

"I'd like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace," Bush said in excerpts of a recent interview released by the White House Friday.

"I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values."

No George. You will not be remembered like this. There are hundreds of millions if not billions of people worldwide who disagree with you there and will make sure that is not the case. I'm one of them.

EPIC FAIL.

Obama's AG

Many news outlets are saying this morning that Obama has picked former Clinton Justice Department #2 man Eric Holder as his choice for Attorney General, but there's one rather big blemish on his record:

Holder, 57, has a rich background within the criminal justice system as a former judge and top federal prosecutor in Washington. He is widely known within the city's legal community and for his philanthropic work on behalf of troubled juveniles detained at Washington's Oak Hill facility. If he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Holder will be the first African American attorney general.

For the past several years, Holder has defended private corporations as a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling. But he took on an active role in the Obama campaign as a friend and adviser to the senator from Illinois after meeting him at a Washington dinner party, and over the summer served on his vice presidential vetting team.

Holder has won praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, although his selection is likely to revive questions about his failure to act forcefully to prevent a last-minute pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, who won clemency from President Bill Clinton during his last days in office in early 2001.

The Republicans are already attacking Holder on this, and the wingnuts are gleefully pointing to this as proof that "Clinton's third term" is underway and that Holder is somehow worse than disgraced Bush AG Alberto Gonzales. I leave with you with part of a speech given by Holder in 2004, courtesy of Melissa McEwan at Shakesville:

At the beginning of the 21st century, this nation faces problems that are old and that are new: racial, sexual orientation, and gender inequality all remain. … The solutions are contained within a new, dynamic, progressive movement that has the ability to inspire and motivate the people of this nation in the way that progressives have in the past. That ability exists in this room, and in the law schools, and in the courtrooms, and in the law offices around this country. It is our task to unlock, to unleash the creative energy needed to give life to this renewed movement. It is not enough for us to gather at annual meetings, to participate in panels, and to return to our communities, and be content to observe, or to passively criticize, the now dominant governing philosophy.

Quite simply, it is time to act. It is time to organize. It is time to retake the levers of government and to use them for the common good. It is time, finally, to be true to our ideological heritage. And so my challenge to you tonight is to leave this convention renewed in your convictions, and committed to using your abundant talents for the good of the citizens of this country.

So...yeah. This is one of the guys who will help Obama put the country back together, I hope. I'm far less worried about Eric Holder and Marc Rich than I am his views on the Constitution, torture, executive power and the "plenary executive", the legality and scope of how much power the Warren Terrah grants President Obama, enforcement of civil rights and voting laws, and the politicization of the Justice Department.

Even more than SecState, Obama's appointment to AG is the most important appointment he can make after the "above the law" presidency of Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzo, John Yoo, and Mike Mukasey. It was the Bush legal team (illegal team?) that gave him the cover to do all the horrendous things that he did to America like torture, like suspension of habeas corpus, like wiretapping American citizens, and it was specifically Gonzales who turned Justice into the Cover Preznitman's Ass Department.

Only after Gonzo went too far and fired career US Attorneys based on political reasons was he forced to resign. Meanwhile, current Chief Ass-Coverer Mike Mukasey has done exactly nothing to clean up Justice.

I understand that "Better than Gonzo" is about the lowest bar in the history of Presidential cabinet appointments, but Eric Holder seems like somebody actually dedicated to Rule Of Law and not Rule By President. More than any other cabinet position, it's the AG that has the most work ahead of him, and it's good to see former Consitutional Law professor Barack Obama take this seriously.

Not A Good Day

Well, those 8,000 job cuts I mentioned for DHL are actually somewhat worse: they are closing all domestic delivery services and closing all their domestic hubs resulting in 9,500 lost jobs.

On top of that, Circuit City announced it was filing for Chapter 11.

Circuit City Stores Inc., the No. 2 electronics seller after Best Buy, filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, thus becoming the latest retailer hurt by a worsening economic downturn.

According to the company's Chapter 11 filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Richmond, Va., Circuit City (CC, Fortune 500), which currently has 566 operating stores in the United States, will continue to do business and pay its workers while it restructures debt and its business operations.

Circuit City said it decided to file for bankruptcy at this time to ensure that it would have "adequate merchandise flow to stores during the important holiday season."

The November-December holiday shopping months are crucial to retailers since the two months can account for 50% or more of merchants' annual profits and sales.

Just last week the Richmond-based company announced that it would close another 150 stores and cut about 17% of its domestic workforce as it continues to face eroding sales at its stores.

The company said it has negotiated a commitment for a $1.1 billion "debtor-in-possession" (DIP) revolving credit facility to supplement its working capital. The company said the DIP credit will replace the company's $1.3 billion asset-based credit facility provided by its lenders.

The retailer said the credit facility will give it immediate liquidity while it works to reorganize the business and enable it to pay its vendors and its roughly more than 40,000 employees.

This again is only the beginning. You'll see a lot more jobs lost over the next several months. It's important to keep in mind these job losses are on Bush's head...not Obama's.

Yet.