Vindication

There seems to be a confluence of events around the Bush legacy of torture, coincident (or not) with Dick Aptonym Cheney's brief return to the human realm wherein he declared the US less safe under Obama.

Asked if he agreed, General Petraeus -- a credible voice, one might argue -- says no. More significantly, an article appears confirming that no useful information was in fact obtained in one of the most famous and highly-touted (by George Bush) cases of water-boarding and other torture techniques. It wasn't the first time it's been said. In fact, Bush continued to claim not only that important intelligence was garnered, but that the victim was an al Queda bigwig, even after he knew both statements to be false. Worse: he pressured George Tenant to keep quiet about it:

"'I said he was important,' Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. 'You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?'

'No Sir, Mr. President.'"

Knock me over with a feather.

A former Bush official opines that Bush "panicked" after 9/11, and that Guantanamo was a major overreaction. In other words, after he finally managed to put down that book, he went nuts, endangering us all. Contra Cheney.

Waking up from a long slumber, some media outlets are actually using the word "torture" to describe what was done (sort of), having for years accepted Bush's avowal that the US doesn't torture simply because he undefined the word.

And now it seems legal action might actually be taken against those who established the illegal and destructive policies. Not in the US, not yet anyway. But somewhere. Given all of the above, it's hardly lefty craziness to think it ought to be done here, too. In fact, in a world in which principles mattered, you'd think conservatives would be the most outraged at this illegal and dictatorial abuse of presidential power. But, most certainly, that's another world.

Having argued here many times that torture is ineffective and that its use has done us great harm, I'm feeling a little vindicated by these recent bits of news. Me, and everyone else who's been paying attention and able to see beyond ideological blindness. And as long as I'm feeling smart, I'll add this: we'll see the resurrection of the economy as a result of Obama's programs. And if I turn out right about those things, how about this prediction: once the economy is clearly on track and jobs are growing, President Obama will do the politically unthinkable and take on entitlement reform and military spending as ways to bring the budget back to balance. Because, as I've also claimed, and continue to believe, I think he's for real. If he does that, he'll end up pissing off the far left and the far right.

Then all he'll have left is everyone else; ie, about 80% of the country.
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Damn Lies

Two years ago, in acknowledging that the US took prisoners to other countries for "questioning," George Bush said (I'm quoting from a NYT article that appeared 3/15):

“...the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” (emphasis mine.)

The article is worth reading in full. Among the descriptions of "safe" and lawful procedures:

"I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.” The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”

There's much more. It should also be said that the article is based on a comprehensive report by the International Red Cross, which conducted extensive interviews, and that the prisoners had had no contact with each other; in addition, they were told that the information would not be made public. That they described virtually the same things lends believability.

“They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have slept or maybe fainted."

The conclusion of the IRC report states:

“The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

I know at least three of my readers are saying "So what?"

Let's leave aside the issue of whether torture is useful (because it's pretty clear it isn't) and whether we should be doing it (since it gives unreliable information and eliminates trying the prisoners in a court of law, we shouldn't). Let's just ask: did it serve US interests to have our president get up and lie, bald-faced, about such a thing as this? And what should we call a "Department of Justice" which ignores the law to serve up only what the president wants to hear? And finally, since by international agreement it's the International Red Cross that identifies instances of torture, what is the appropriate legal response? (Rhetorical question. We already know the answer, and we know nothing will happen.)

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The Decider

Another of George Bush's "legacy project" themes, in response to the fact that he leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents, ever: "When you make tough decisions," he says, "you're gonna get criticized."

No, sir. Incorrect, sir. It's when you make WRONG DECISIONS!!!! ARRRGGGGHHH!!!! Get a frickin' CLUE!!!!

Is there a term for someone so free of the need for introspection, so unable to process facts that shine ill upon him? Narcissist seems too genial, egotist a collossal understatement. Seriously. The man has a defect in his thought processes. His meninges are armor-plated, rejecting any flow into his central nervous system of doubt, reflection, or self-correction. He's impervious to fact, unable to conceive of ever being wrong. There's gotta be a word for it.

As one who beat himself up if a bandage didn't look perfect, much less if a patient had even the tiniest surgical complication, it's literally beyond my understanding.

Thoughtful. Frightening.

Hmm. Well, the video worked when I first embedded it. Now it isn't. But it's here.

As an appropriate followup to the previous post, wait a minute or so, while Charlie ends a prior session. Then watch this interview with David Sanger, NYT Washington Bureau Chief and author of a new book on the issues Obama inherits from Bush. (And I hear my constant critics: "yeah, yeah, New York Times, blah, blah." Listen to the guy. See if what he says is credible, factual. (And it's not just about China.)

The first part of his interview, which is longer and therefore, for the benefit of those with ADHD, I didn't embed, is here. Equally enlightening, equally dismaying.

For all but the habitual and most incorrigible enablers, the disaster of Bush -- and most particularly his war -- is obvious, and chilling. The only thing not yet obvious is whether it's reversible.

Crash Test Dummies

If you're a passenger in my car, and if I'm drunk and speeding, hands off the wheel, and if I've removed the seat belts and disabled the air bags, as long as we haven't crashed yet is it credible for me to argue that I've kept you safe?

The one theme that seems to prevail in the face of George Bush's astronomically huge failures is that he's "kept us safe." Well, okay, in the above sense. But I think a couple of things need to be kept in mind. First, those efforts that actually may be playing a role in preventing another attack are ones that any president would be doing, without question: namely, gathering intelligence. (The difference being, of course, that most would have done it legally.) I absolutely understand the need to keep an eye on certain people. Wiretaps don't bother me. But (even though it's clearly open to abuse no matter what) I don't see a reason why the law can't be followed, or updated where necessary. And I'm not at all persuaded that torture (not to mention renditions, suspending American law, Guantanamo) has been or is a useful tool. The only people who support it besides Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, are knee-jerk (and non-militarily-experienced) pundits of the Limbaugh/Kristol variety, who think 24 is a documentary. There seems nearly unanimous agreement among actual intelligence operatives that torture produces unreliable information. False information. Not to mention the degradation of our image around the world. It's part of the tough-guy swagger that right-wingers, nearly all of whom found ways to avoid signing up for the military, like to imagine for themselves.

Beyond those things that we'd all have done, there's nothing one can point to as a positive for safety in Bush's policies. Clearly creating more potential terrorists than it has eliminated, Iraq has been a debacle, no matter how it finally turns out. With George Bush seeing himself as Samson, no Delilah was needed. Having shifted power to Iran, having ignored Afganistan/Pakistan and the real al Queda, there's no argument but that we are at increased risk. Likewise, the bankrupting of our country and depleting of our military has left us nearly paralyzed.

Approaching eight years after 9/11 we're teetering on the brink of collapse in ways for which Osama bin Laden couldn't have hoped in his wildest prayers. (If he did, he's the most brilliant villain in history.) What has brought us to this point? Three airplanes, or the presidential policies since then?

I'll give Bush credit for taking certain obvious steps in response to 9/11, ones that had he not taken he'd have been guilty of presidential malpractice. But to see the Iraq misadventure and its offshoot illegalities as anything but a disastrous over-reach (to put it kindly) and to claim that it in any way deserves credit for the lack of further attacks on our soil (ignoring, of course, the fact that it's led the the death and disabling of tens of thousands more Americans than occurred on 9/11) is, at best, to claim something plainly unprovable, and, at worst, willfully to look away from the direction to which the facts point.
And answer me this: if Bush is to be credited with the lack of attacks since September Eleven, why is he not to be blamed for the attack itself, nine months into his presidency, when he'd been told explicitly by the out-going administration that al Queda was a grave threat, and ignoring it? How does that work? All credit for the one thing, no blame for the other? Or this, to those who absolve Bush of any responsibility for 9/11: how far into the Obama administration's tenure would an attack be marked on Bush's side of the ledger?

[An interesting datum in regard to the above, according to Ron Suskind whom I recently saw on TV: He says it's known by Bush and Cheney, based on gathered intelligence, that al Queda has "called off" attacks on the U.S. for now, until they're able to deliver a greater blow (presumably with some form of WMD) than was 9/11. So in claiming to have kept us safe, George Bush is saying something he knows to be untrue (surprise). Rather than having been deterred, al Queda is simply waiting, preparing for something bigger than before. Great. One can only wonder how much less vulnerable we'd be, had we not pissed away opportunity in Iraq.]

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Just A Thought...

[It's possible I've seen this idea somewhere else: The Onion, perhaps? But I couldn't find it. If I'm unoriginal, so what else is new?...]

Maybe George Bush has a grand plan, after all. "History will judge me," he is fond of saying. Do you suppose his real purpose has been to prevent that from happening, by ENDING history? Just asking.

A Commission ForThe Commissioner

I understand the reluctance. In the same interview to which I referred in my previous post, Barack Obama declined to commit to investigating crimes of the Bush administration; in fact, he made it pretty clear he's more interested in addressing the future, by focusing on the problems at hand. So saying, he implied there'd be no investigations. I'm of two minds. Or rather, I think it should be done, but neither Obama (or people in the executive branch) nor Congress ought to be the ones to do it.

Frank Rich's latest column is a good starting point. In it, among other important things, he refers to "...an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq.

The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math.

What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace."

There's a lot more, of course. And it may well be that, in a form of mental self-preservation, people have just tuned out. I, for example, willfully force myself not to think of the money I've lost in the last year; in large part, it's because in confronting it I'm forced to admit what an idiot I was. Greedy, trusting, failing to take my own advice. But that's the point: if we allow ourselves the indulgence of simply moving on from Bush and letting him rewrite history however he wants (and, boy, is he trying!) we risk allowing it all to happen again sometime. And it's not just Iraq deceptions, and torture: in nearly every corner of government there are examples of egregious malfeasance.

When 80% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track; when a majority of historians think Bush is among the worst presidents ever, I feel safe in arguing that it's not just me. And it's far more than parlor games. If we recover, it'll be because of a phenomenal effort by lots of people, and at enormous cost, now, and for generations. By all measures, it behooves us to have a full accounting. Knowing everything (everything that hasn't been destroyed, that is) is much more important than prosecuting Bush et his als. (Although if I didn't think it'd further fracture the country and make the nearly-impossible fully-impossible, I'd like to see it.)

The hard core on the left speak of a commission as a cop-out. And so it might be. But if it's true that the transgressions need sunlight (it is), and if it's true that a drawn-out congressional investigation, or one in the Justice Department, would degenerate into an unholy partisan debacle with preposturing on both sides (it would), then some sort of independent commission, peopled with respected investigators, properly authorized, and created to be non-partisan, would seem to be the best -- probably the only -- way to bring everything to light. Who knows? Maybe they'd even show Bush wasn't as bad as I think. One way or the other, with so much wreckage in his wake as he marches madly out of town tooting his trumpet in convulsive contortions, George Bush's breaches* must brought clearly to light, even if at the outset it's clear that prosecution is off the table.

We have to know. It mustn't happen again.

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*And need I say: it includes this sort of shit as well.

[Note: I write some of these posts and schedule their publishing in advance. I see that Eugene Robinson's column of 1/13 says much of the above, particularly at the end. For the record, I wrote this one a few days ago. And I have planned one on the news conference, too, even though I probably have nothing unique to say.]

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Idiots, The Whole Lot Of 'Em

Boy, who coulda seen this coming? The Fed hasn't been using the TARP funds as required. And Congress didn't build in enough oversight. I'm shocked. Shocked.

Can Congress really have trusted the Bush administration to do it right? Did they assume the Fed would act competently and responsibly, now, all of a sudden, for the first time? And do we chalk this up to which of the choices, when it comes to understanding George Bush: 1) incompetence, 2) inattentiveness, 3) blind ideology, 4) wanton disregard of the public interest in favor of cronies, or 5) the usual combination of all of the above?

Bush has behaved like this for eight years. We can blame him -- and it's no surprise that I do, partial to facts as I am -- but it's even more infuriating that once again, when the chips are down (WAY WAY WAYdown), Congress once again goes all hypo-pituitary and lets him get away with it.

I really believe Barack Obama wants to change these things; that he's committed to finding things that are most likely to work and to make an effort toward efficient implementation. I believe he wants to find consensus in Congress (ironically, it's that willingness that might work against him: already we hear more resistance from congressional Democrats than they ever showed toward Bush); but given past performance of Congress no matter who's in charge -- their functional inability to transcend self-aggrandizement and gotcha games -- and given the enormity of the tasks at hand, if he actually succeeds it will surpass the parting of the Red Sea as the greatest act of overcoming inertia and the laws of nature in the history of mankind.

Not that the Red Sea ever got parted.

[As if to prove my point, here's further proof of what seems obvious bull-headedness and needless obscurity. Why not just wait a couple of weeks and give the money to the Obama team? As I said: idiots, the whole lot of them.]

[[Happily, the person in charge of TARP oversight of the funds is an impressive woman.]]

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Remember The Pain

More than once commenters on this blog have questioned why I continued to harp on George Bush. He's leaving after all. Get over it.

Get over it? Will our country get over it? That's the real question, a positive answer to which is far from certain. And as the Bush brigade is mobilized now to rewrite history to promote his "legacy," it seems more important than ever to be sure they fail. How ironic, if the only success of the Bush years were the inducement of forgetting of his catastrophic failures! In this short attention span era, where news fades as fast as the next story appears, where people care more about Joe The Plumber than Joe The Biden, where a strong and free and inquisitive press has been (permanently, for sure) replaced by the likes of Sean Hannity and owned by Rupert Murdoch, it's not at all unlikely to happen. George who?

Which is why Bob Herbert's column in today's NYT is required reading. He says, in part:

"When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job."

Read the whole thing: it says nothing new, I suppose, but it catalogs well and forcefully why we need never to forget, and why, if there's any justice at all in this indifferent universe, the very least George Bush will get is our ongoing scorn; and he ought to be continually aware of it, for as long as he lives.

Not that he'd care.

[Update: I don't hold Bob Shrum in particularly high esteem, but he's occasionally right on, as in this.]

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The (S)hits Just Keep On Comin'

My recent post comparing Bush's last-minute antics to a burgler crapping on the bed on his way out the door needs updating. It really is pretty awful: it's hard to see it as anything but a middle finger in the eye of the public -- particularly those librul earth-lovers.

It's as if, in a perverse sort of way, he feels liberated: the "permanent campaign" is over, his approval ratings are crap. Gone is pretense; no need to make up empty phrases like "compassionate conservative." So this is he, the real George Bush.

Surprise. I still don't like it.

Rewrite!

I wonder if George Bush and Karl Rove will get away with their attempts to rewrite history, even while the bodies are still warm. Given the complicity -- by virtue, mostly, of laziness, I think -- of the press, it's entirely possible. The truth, as they say, is out there; but future journalists will have to expend a little energy to find it. It's not as if they're famous for doing so.

Among the many facts so easily revised, so ignored, is the Iraq WMD issue. In the past couple of days, we hear Bush regrets the failure of intelligence. And Rove says (in a statement Bush himself isn't so damn sure about) that if they'd known there were no WMD they'd not have invaded.

Bullshit. They knew it. There's no way they didn't.

Everyone who tries to justify the "failure" likes to say how many others believed there were WMD: Europeans, Bill Clinton, Congress. Well, yeah, for a while they did. But they didn't invade. And there were serious questions raised, and ignored. But most important of all: before Bush invaded Iraq, there were inspectors there. THERE WERE INSPECTORS THERE!! Finding nothing. Given the reservations, and the fact that THERE WERE INSPECTORS THERE FINDING NOTHING, there was no reason to invade -- assuming WMD was really the reason. It's simply a lie to say otherwise. Rantings notwithstanding, I'm not particularly quick to call people -- even George Bush -- liars. But in this it's impossible to think otherwise. Because -- stop me if you've heard this -- there were inspectors there, finding nothing. And then Bush pulled them out! How easy it seems to be to ignore that fact, to forget it entirely.

George Bush has a right to say whatever he wants, and to try as hard as he can to rewrite his own history. I hope to hell that he doesn't get away with it.

Thank God for the internet.

[Update: it's even worse than I thought!]

Exit Strategy

Several years ago, a friend's house was robbed. In addition to stealing precious things and trashing much of what was left behind, the thief took the time to defecate on her bed before he left.

For some reason I've been thinking about that a lot, lately.

Update: and there's this.

Hating George Bush

One of my most respectful commenters tends to see my posts through the lens of "Bush Hatred." It's a convenient deflection.

Similar to the unmentioned and evidently forgotten Clinton Hatred, the concept of Bush Hatred (that conniest of neo-cons, my fellow M.D. Charles Krauthammer, coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" [in fairness to me and my fellow physicians, Krauthammer is a former psychiatrist, which subset of medical doctors I've always considered a waste of a good education [[in fairness to psychiatrists, not all of them are as idiotic as Krauthammer, nor do I mean to disrespect the profession: only to say it hardly requires a medical degree]]]) misses the point entirely -- as does, for that matter and most of the time, the commenter to whom I refer.

Just as there were on the right people who so hated Bill Clinton that they couldn't credit him with a single positive thing, so there are on the left a few (present blogger excepted) who are so enraged by George Bush that they are blind to his accomplishments.

Or would be, if he had any.

What I hate about George Bush is not the man (although it gets pretty damn hard to take when the President of the US constantly embarrasses us all) but what he's done. My wise commenter suggests that "if libs proclaimed their disdain for people who would harm this country as loudly as they proclaim their disdain for the current president, maybe they wouldn't sound so "unpatriotic." " He (I assume it's a he, because the women I know [I'm speaking personal knowledge, now, as opposed to one I've seen of late on TV] are pretty rational thinkers) couldn't be more wrong. The tragedy, the disgrace of George Bush is exactly that in every way, he's aided and abetted those who would harm this country. Because of his shallow and incompetently executed policies, wherever you look you see our enemies stronger than they were. It's precisely BECAUSE we dastardly liberals understand the danger to our country posed by those who wish us ill that we are angry at George Bush.

You name it: our economy is faltering, our military is weakened, the invasion recruited more terrorists than it eliminated, Iran is stronger, al Queda is safely ensconced in Pakistan, North Korea has bombs, peace is further away from Israel and Palestine, we are more hated and less respected around the world: in short, I can see only damage to our interests inflicted upon us by George Bush. His "war on terror" is, in addition to being stupidly named and constitutionally abused, nearly entirely ill-conceived;* it has accomplished the exact opposite of what was (presumably) intended (other than to have enriched certain pro-Bush members of the plutocracy). (Not wishing to sound too conspiratorial, I'll allow the possibility that that was not the primary intent.)

It's the unswayable Bush lovers that represent the real danger. In passing off all disagreement as "Bush Hatred," and in claiming falsely that liberals don't understand that we have enemies, people like my commenter willfully ignore the real reasons behind the criticisms and make correcting the mistakes harder. You can't eradicate terrorists with invading armies. You can't recruit help in finding them when you piss off the entire world. You don't make the country safer when you disregard the vulnerabilities on its own soil, nor when you bankrupt it to the point of being unable to fix them. When you round up people and torture them and hold them without charges, you not only get inaccurate information, you degrade your ability to try them in a respectable court of law (assuming you believe in such a thing) and rob us of our ability to demand lawful behavior in others. When you spend trillions on an unnecessary war that in no way plugs our weak spots but in fact increases them while killing our own and tens of thousands of others, you damage yourself more than our enemies could have -- and did -- in their wildest seventy-seven-virgin-dreams in their deepest caves. That, I'd say, is reason enough to believe George Bush has been a disaster for our country, and a boon to our enemies.

We all agree there are dangers and dangerous people out there. Where we disagree is in what are effective responses.

To buy the simple-minded idea that "liberals" love our enemies and hate our country is only to exacerbate and catalyze the destruction wrought by George Bush: by reducing the argument to absurdity while ignoring the issues, it -- as did he -- plays right into the hands of those who wish us ill.

*[I happen to agree that domestic surveillance and world-wide intelligence-gathering are an integral part -- the main part, in fact -- of fighting terrorism. Republicans laughed it off, of course, when John Kerry said as much in 2004; but, in fact, to the extent that we are safer since 9/11, it's due to the increased security (such as it is) at airports, and to the plotters (the ones that were actually real) that were uncovered by surveillance (mostly in and by other countries). On the other hand, there's no reason why such surveillance can't be done within the law, a concept evidently foreign to George Bush.]

Meltup

Today's advance in the stock market says, in ways more obvious than the many others out there, how far from relevancy George Bush has taken the US. (And, by extension, since he agrees with the essence of Bush's foreign and domestic policies, how much further McCain would lead us.)

George Bush fumbled around and came up with a plan (agreed to both by Obama and McCain) that was by most accounts better than nothing but which missed the mark; at least, one could say, that was the judgment rendered by the markets, which tanked. Henry Paulson has looked confused (though not as much as McCain.) It took the leaders of Europe, guided, it appears, by the leftist Gordon Brown of England, to produce a plan that engendered confidence. At least the US plan had in it, one infers, some flexibility; because now it seems the approach has changed in ways which make it similar to that proposed across the pond: injecting capital and taking a stake in some banks, instead of buying up "toxic debt."

In no way is economics my strong suit. It seemed obvious that something had to be done (and that John McCain, taking credit for the passage and then for the failure of the bill after the bill, was of no help at all) but I had no basis for knowing what it might be. (I have been asking people I know who might have a clue, why buying up debt was a better use of the money than providing capital directly, and got not much of an answer.) It's reported that it was Paulson (and, therefore, Bush) who insisted on the US plan as proposed and that Ben Bernanke was for the European approach (I read that this morning, and now I can't find the damn link). Under the crisis scenario claimed by Bush, et al., the Congress felt great pressure to act rapidly. They may have done better, it turns out, to have thought a little longer. All of them. Nevertheless, it's impressive that when it was clear the crisis was spreading to Europe, those folks acted with diligent speed and came up with something far better received. George Bush, once again, looks wrong-headed. Our congressional leaders, not a hell of a lot better.*

A one-day rally does not recovery make. How long the tunnel is, and whether that's actually a light at the end of it remains to be seen.

[To those who'd point out that Obama was party to it, I agree. But -- as opposed to John McCain who showily injected himself into it and then flopped flopped like a grounded fish -- Senator Obama acted like a Senator and not a president, which he is not, yet. He came, he spoke, he voted (McCain voted but didn't speak), leaving the process to those in Congress whose job it was. Were he President, I think he'd have played a very different role. And, given his prescient vision on the matter, I'd guess he'd have handled it differently from Bush.]

Doubling Down On Dumbing Down

Once again someone has said, much better than I, exactly what I've been thinking and trying to say, about elitism, about Sarah Palin, about the electorate that may well swing the election. This time, it's Sam Harris, in Newsweek. Dougie sent it to me.

And, if you want additional interesting reading, here is a short piece by Ron Susskind on the leadership of George Bush, to whose style of governance Sarah Palin's bears a disturbing similarity.