Failures Mounting

In the series of talks that the cretin in chief has been giving, a legacy is indeed mounting. The unreal aspect that the talks have shown, in attributing disastrous unilateral war on Iraq to errors by the intelligence community, and now his talk about Middle Eastern diplomacy, are sadly indicative of the whole mindset that has destroyed U.S. relationships throughout the world.

Speaking last night at Saban Forum, a Middle East policy forum, once again the occupier of the White House showed his resounding ignorance about interests other than his own.

"When Saddam's regime fell, we refused to take the easy option and install a friendly strongman in his place," Bush said.

"Even though it required enormous sacrifice, we stood by the Iraqi people as they elected their own leaders and built a young democracy."

'Progress' made

Bush, the first sitting US president to call for an independent Palestinian state, defended his approach to ending the six-decade conflict despite the lack of any concrete progress from US-backed negotiations.

"On the most vexing problem in the region - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - there is now greater international consensus than at any point in recent memory," he said.

Palestinians are likely to be sceptical about the progress Bush has made [AFP]
Bush called the two-state approach "one of the highest priorities of my presidency," and described talks at a US-sponsored November 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, as "determined and substantial".

"While the Israelis and Palestinians have not yet produced an agreement, they have made important progress," he said.

Hillary Mann, a former Bush administration foreign policy official, told Al Jazeera that her experience of working with the US leader on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was different.

"When I worked for him, before we came up with the roadmap agreement of 2001-2003 ... he didn't think you needed a roadmap, he thought a speech was all you needed," he said.

"But reality doesn't work that way and that has been Bush's biggest enemy - reality."
(snip)
Equally critical of Bush's comments was Abdullah Schleifer, a political analyst from the American University in Cairo. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said: "It is as if he has reverted to type ... he talked about Syria and Iran in the same old context of 'you are not with us, you are against us'.

"There was no reference to negotiations. The whole role of diplomacy and negotiations is on the backburner as far as President Bush is concerned."

Just as the worst administration ever refused to negotiate with U.S. representatives in Congress, it failed to see that interests other than its own were in play abroad. There is no history that can fail to acknowledge that America was set back at home and abroad by the past eight years. America's recent election showed that reality has broken through in our national consciousness, and it has long been obvious that world leaders despaired of rational behavior from the exiting White House we have to endure for 45 more days.

The years from 2001 to 2008 should provide an intensive study for the wrong way to conduct foreign affairs.

No Holds Barred

On its last lap, the occupied White House has definitively shown that its oft-invoked legacy is going to be one of utter disregard for the public, and this world. The final slap at the environment is one that discards the flimsy excuse that the cretin in chief has been giving for inaction - that a cleaner coal burning plant was in the works, in the planning process.

The award was recently made, of a plant named FutureGen to be located in Illinois. This week FutureGen was called off. The bait and switch was passed off by Energy Dep't. officials as if it were another triviality to be swept under the rug. Fooled you.

For years, FutureGen has been offered up as the answer to tough questions facing the Bush administration about power and pollution.

The concept for a cutting-edge, cleaner coal plant was mentioned frequently when the White House's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions was in doubt.

But now, only six weeks later, the Department of Energy has unexpectedly and unceremoniously killed FutureGen.
(snip)
FutureGen provided the Bush administration with political cover as pressure to address environmental issues increased. Now, with this term winding down, the Department of Energy has pulled the plug.

Up until the end, administration officials had touted the project as a "centerpiece" of its efforts to develop more advanced coal technologies. And during last week's State of the Union address, President Bush pressed for cleaner coal.

Within 48 hours, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman was blaming cost overruns for FutureGen's demise and announcing a pared-down plan to pay for equipment that captures and stores carbon dioxide emissions at several commercial coal plants.

The new plan pulled out of the hat will include Rep. Joe Barton, minority leader of the Energy Committee, home town Jewett, TX, in a number of clean burning coal plants that will get a now scatter-shot location of federal funding. Sequestering the carbon pollution will be funded in several locales, to be announced sometime a few years from now, there's your latest environmental planning.

The ending of this war criminal regime is full of little surprises. Another has been that since Sen. Bunning of Tennessee has released his hold on legislation to allow public access to public information in the form of a president's papers. The torch to burn the records has passed to Sen. Jeff Sessions.

The Presidential Records Amendment Act of 2007 seeks to overturn an executive order signed by President Bush early in his term. It greatly expanded the ability of a president, or his heirs, to withhold from the public papers from the administration.
(snip)
"I am disappointed Senator Sessions has placed a hold on this bipartisan, open access bill," Mr. Lieberman said in a written statement. "To the White House, which is apparently behind these objections, I would say let's find a way to work together to pass this legislation so that the people's right to information about how their government works can be maintained."

The White House remains adamantly opposed to the bill, arguing that it violates the separation of powers and would prompt unnecessary lawsuits.

The worst administration in history is developing the worst limp on its way out. No offense will go uncommitted, no public interest go untrammeled.

If there's any decency left after this last year of the occupied White House, it will not be because the War Criminal In Chief didn't try to remove it.

Fall doesn't mean Fallen

Having a fall day, and I know in California the colors don't change. So I will wish for you something as beautiful the canopy of crepe myrtle orange I have overhead. When the sun comes through the leaves bringing beauty to you, there are no wrong days or nights. And for those who don't know yet, I am pretty ill. Getting better

And I feel guilt that anyone may be in want, as we all should. I support Nancy Pelosi. Minimum wage is a beginning.

In the meantime, we have that lame duck congress, as Diane has pointed out. And I fear more than Bolton and the NSA wiretapping - I fear the debt. My grandchildren now owe more than I did at their ages of 16, 14 and 8.

As you all probably know, the funding for the war in Iraq is not part of the official budget. Temporary spending has been provided by emergency bills. I sincerely hope that this is one of the reasons for rejecting the Republican party. If not the horrendous costs, it was at least their ignorance.

In WaPo this a.m., some attention is being paid to the emergency our nation's finances are in;

'A LAME-DUCK congressional session when both the House and Senate are about to change hands isn't, as a general matter, the right time to make important policy decisions. When it reconvenes this week, the 109th Congress should concentrate on finishing up the business of the 109th Congress -- primarily, passing the 11 remaining spending bills for the 2007 fiscal year, which started in October. The temptation for Republicans will be simply to approve a continuing resolution keeping this year's spending at 2006 levels, leaving the new majority to make the tough choices when it takes over in January. But this would be an abdication of responsibility, forcing government agencies to limp along without knowing their final budgets. It would create a logjam for the new Congress, which will simultaneously have to be staffing up, dealing with the president's 2008 budget proposal and working on an expected emergency spending bill early next year.

The spending that has gone into the war in Iraq has been for the large part pretty misdirected, the Halliburton/KBR monies amounting to wastage far beyond most of our abilities to comprehend.

Sadly, the administration seems to have the U.S. public in its sights. We are not seeing the promise of a new prospect that the public instead of its own ends will be served by this administration.

The deficit is increasing, in debt and in the public interest.

The national debt on May 22, 2006 totals $8.3 trillion. You can check the debt to the penny every day at PublicDebt.Treas.Gov/opd The debt is comprised of savings bonds, treasury bills and other bonds offered for sale by the US government at a specific interest rate established at the time the bonds were sold. Recently, these bond and bills offered interest rates ranging from 4.6% to 4.9%.

They're Back

Congress reconvenes today after the election break, and according to an article in the NY Times, it has a full load of work facing it. The question is, how much do we really want these lame ducks to do?

Despite devastating losses at the polls, Republicans will control the post-election session that opens Monday as lawmakers return to try to finish 10 overdue spending bills and other legislation that stalled because of pre-election gamesmanship.

Republican leaders have compiled an ambitious to-do list, hoping to dispose of energy legislation, a trade deal or two, a civilian nuclear treaty with India and other favored bills before turning over the keys to the House and Senate chambers to the Democrats in January.

Democrats have some measures they want completed as well, most notably the spending bills, to save them the added work next year.

President Bush, hoping to get the most out of the remaining days of a Republican majority, is pressing two contentious matters: legislation authorizing domestic wiretapping by the National Security Agency and the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. And the Senate has scheduled confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates to be the new secretary of defense to begin the week of Dec 4.

Members of both parties in Congress have all but written off the wiretapping legislation and the Bolton nomination, given the strong Democratic opposition and the impending power shift. It is also uncertain how hard Congressional Republicans will be willing to press Mr. Bush’s more divisive issues. Some have expressed anger at his decision to remove Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld the day after the election, contending that earlier action might have cut Republican losses.

Getting the budget work done is a must-do: we've waited long enough for that. Deciding on a new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates or another, should also be considered before the Holiday recess, but there should be real hearings on his nomination, not just the pro forma speechifying and approval that we've seen from this Congress the past two years.

That having been said, there is absolutely no reason for the Democrats to allow votes on the Bolton nomination, the NSA wire tapping bill, the oil drilling bill, even the approval of the India nuclear energy bill. We shouldn't have to wait until January to see the results of last week's election. The days of rubber stamping the President's wishes into law are over.

Promises of Bipartisanship...

...But not quite yet.

The results are in, and the Democratic sweep of Congress official. What's a poor president to do? Why, promise to work with the party he characterized as traitors and terrorist-enablers just a week ago. The trick part is that the promise doesn't take effect until January. In the remaining two months, the President intends to use the current lame-duck Congress as a rubber stamp for every bad idea not yet enacted into law. From an editorial in today's NY Times:

Without missing a beat, Mr. Bush made it clear that, for now, his idea of how to “put the elections behind us” is to use the Republicans’ last two months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the law that limits a president’s ability to abuse his power in this way.

For example, he wants the Senate to ratify his recess appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. That vote, which is likely to be strongly debated, can easily wait for the new Congress, and should. Mr. Bush also pressed for quick passage of “the bipartisan energy legislation,” which had Congressional officials scratching their heads in puzzlement about which bill he might mean. And he wants immediate approval of his administration’s deal to sell civilian nuclear technology to India despite that nation’s refusal to sign or abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

That was a bad idea from the start. But the wiretapping bill is simply outrageous, and it has no business being discussed in this lame duck session.

...The White House refuses to explain itself because this has never been about catching terrorists. It is about overturning the crucial limits placed on executive authority after Watergate and Vietnam. Mr. Cheney and a few other hard-liners have been trying to turn back the clock and have succeeded in some truly scary ways, including the military commissions act they pushed through Congress before the elections. It is vital that they not be allowed to do any more harm. [Emphasis added]

The Democrats in the current Congress no longer have any excuse to play nice. They have nothing to lose. They need to make clear to their GOP colleagues in both houses that the days of the rubber stamp are over and if the GOP wants any role in the next Congress, they'd better start cooperating now, when it counts.

Spinelessness on both sides of the aisle cost as habeas corpus. We don't need to lose the Fourth Amendment as well. If the Democrats need literature to read during a filibuster, I'm sure the voters who gave them a chance to straighten out the messes Mr. Bush and his minions have made of this country will be happy to provide them with pocket Constitutions, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers, and anything else deemed appropriate.