This story isn't from The Onion or a Saturday Night Live skit. It's for real. WTF???
Two national banking organizations — the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable — are having a tantrum because some of their $700 billion bailout package might actually go to regular people so they can keep their homes.
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Jesus Christ, crusher of testicles?
The Bible is a big book, so I've been having a hard time finding the passage in which Jesus commanded his followers to torture their enemies. Here's what he said in the Sermon on the Mount:
You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
That doesn't seem to be an argument for torture, unless Jesus meant that we should "love" our enemies in the sadomasochistic sense.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28546806/
The president's father said political invective has "gotten worse" since his days in the White House, adding: "It's offensive, very offensive."
The younger Bush agreed. "The biggest disappointment in the political process, that's been this kind of bitterness by a few people to the point where they don't want to have a logical discussion or a civil discussion about policy," he said. "They just want to tear you down."
Bush Jr. has, under Rove's tutelage, learned to leave the verbal bomb-throwing to the help, but it's just lovely to be lectured on civility by Bush Sr., who high-mindedly said of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, "My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos."
That's President George W. Bush, looking nervous while surrounded by children's books yesterday at an elementary school in Philadelphia.
Why does he seem so worried? Is he praying that there's no sequel to My Pet Goat that they'll ask him to read to the kids? Things ended badly last time, if you'll recall. Does he think he's in a dream? Deja-vu? Or is it just a general anxiety that afflicts him?
Or is he just thinking, like the rest of us, "Less than two weeks, less than two weeks, how much can I screw things up in less than two weeks?" Maybe the real issue is whether that question is, for him, a hope or a fear.
Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, the Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad. - frank rich in the nytimes
Thomas Friedman, the consummate Villager, demonstrated yesterday on ABC This Week, just how readily Republican talking points become Conventional Wisdom in their hands:
Friedman: There are many terrible handoffs the Bush administration, many many, uh, are leaving for President Obama. But there is one overriding large one -- there has been no terrorist act in this country since 9/11. And I think that is a very sobering, weighty handoff for this administration.
Stephanopoulos: The number one priority is to keep the country safe.
Friedman: And I think that's where the debate's gonna have to be. Where I think the administration, the last one, really faulted itself was not consulting Congress. But the fact is, you know, the American people don't want to lose that. And I think that how Obama handles that -- I think that's going to be one of the toughest, toughest challenges going forward.
OK, let's have that debate. But it can't just be on Village terms. Because there are three components of this "weighty handoff" that go unmentioned by Friedman:
1. Bush also laid the groundwork for future terrorist attacks. The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, after all, warned that the invasion of Iraq and subsequent Bush policies -- including the use of torture -- have in fact made the likelihood of future terrorist attacks exponentially greater.
2. Bush didn't keep us safe before 9/11. The historical record is clear that prior to that event, Bush dismissed counterterror concerns as a "Clinton thing," and he was clearly asleep at the wheel on the day it occurred. Any president who allowed the worst terrorist attack on American soil on his watch has no business subsequently claiming that he kept the country safe. (Also worth noting: The lack of any international terrorist attack in the intervening years is not evidence that Bush's post-9/11 strategy actually prevented anything.)
3. There in fact have been other terrorist attacks since 9/11. The most noteworthy of these was the October-November 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people, and has still gone unsolved. There have also been planned attacks nipped in the bud: a planned cyanide bombing, a man who intended to blow up LA banks, a former Army Ranger who planned to bomb abortion clinics, and the Alabama militiamen who intended to go on an anti-Latino killing rampage. There have been a number of lower-level acts of terrorism that reached fruition as well, ranging from rampaging gunmen in Knoxville, Tenn., and Moscow, Idaho, to a conservative wingnut who was sending out hoax anthrax letters.
All of these cases underscore the fact that domestic terrorism is almost completely off the Bush administration's radar -- except, of course, for those "eco-terrorists." What the "war on terror" we've gotten from Bush has amounted has been little more than a political marketing campaign.
Until we mount a serious campaign against terrorism that recognizes it for the global beast that it is -- one perfectly capable of emanating from our own soil -- we won't be doing anything to effectively halt the forces that actually breed terrorism.
And what George W. Bush's post-9/11 "war on terror" has done has actually harm our ability to do that for many years to come. He may not have suffered any further attacks, but that does not mean he kept us safe, now or in the future.
And this:
If global terrorism has increased under Bush's watch, how exactly did he keep us safe? Just because there hasn't been another major terrorist attack doesn't mean there won't be one, and Bush's will leave behind a world with far more terrorism than there was when he took office. Even if a major terrorist attack occurs under the Obama administration, the roots of such an attack will be in the growth of global terrorism that occurred under Bush.
So we haven't been attacked, but the likelihood we will be attacked is higher than ever. If this is the best thing George W. Bush and his supporters can take away from the past eight years, he truly has left us all with a legacy of ashes.
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Were oil prices manipulated by the speculators? Gee, what do YOU think?
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Joe the Plumber, who is currently in Israel reporting on the war, says journalists shouldn't be allowed to report on wars: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/11/joe-plumber-media/
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Per Month - $10.3 billion
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Per Day - $343 million
Per Hour - $14 million
Per Minute - $238,425
Per Second - $3,973
Per Month- $2 billion
Per Week - $469 million
Per Day - $67 million
Per Hour - $2.8 million
Per Minute - $46,296
Per Second - $771
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