I am pretty excited for the inauguration!

Hi Matt! Thanks for all of your help and all of your hard work! I, too, am excited about the inauguration! There is a young man in our neighborhood who won the honor of representing his school and he is getting to go with a group of high school students from Memphis.

This is a GREAT article:
To: George W. Bush
From: Your biggest fan
Re: Your imminent unemployment

Greetings, Mr. Bush.

I was sorry to hear about the passing of your cat, India. Eighteen years is a long time for a cat - my mother has one that's 20 and still going strong, if you can believe it - and I'm sure India had a comfortable, caring life with your family.

I got to spend part of last weekend with an old friend of mine. He's a bit older than 18, and he's also a troop who recently rotated back from a tour in Falluja. He just had a baby daughter, and he will be sent to Afghanistan before too much longer. He did his duty in Iraq, dealt his share of death and saw his friends die or be ripped to shreds right in front of him.

He was hollow in a lot of places that had been full before he went to Iraq. He was not the same man we'd said farewell to. But he was alive, and if he survives his upcoming Afghanistan tour, maybe he will get the chance to have a long, comfortable, caring life with his family, just like little India.

At present, my friend's life is the polar opposite of comfortable, and he still has Kabul waiting for him just over the horizon. His life is the way it is because of you, Mr. Bush. You have been the single greatest influence upon his time in this world; you put him over there and hollowed him out, and because of you, it's about to happen again. You were the single biggest influence upon the lives of every person he knew over there, every person he saw over there, and every person he killed over there.

It's funny. I was thinking the other day about when I marched in one of the first large-scale post-inauguration protests against you in Washington, DC. It was May of 2001, it was The Voter's Rights March to Restore Democracy, and it was a few thousand people shouting down the unutterably ruinous Supreme Court decision which unleashed, just as we then feared, everything that has since come to pass. "Not my president!" we bellowed. "Not my president!"

It's funny because that memory seems so very quaint to me now. A stolen election? Pfff. To paraphrase a different president, Americans get scarier stuff than that free with their breakfast cereal nowadays. Thanks to you, governor.

My All-Time-Grand-Prize-Bull-Goose-Gold-Medal-Winning Top Five list of what you've done, in no particular order, and in my own humble opinion:

http://www.truthout.org/010709J

CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader lashed out at President-elect Barack Obama in a new audio message Tuesday, accusing him of not doing anything to stop Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to an intelligence monitoring center.

The recording purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahiri was al-Qaida's first comments on the Gaza crisis since Israel launched its offensive against the Islamic militants of Hamas on Dec. 27.

In the comments, which were posted on a militant Web site and obtained by the SITE Monitoring Service, al-Zawahiri described Israel's actions in Gaza as a "crusade against Islam and Muslims" and called it "Obama's gift to Israel" before he takes office later this month.

"This is Obama whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America," al-Zawahiri said, according to SITE. "He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection."

Al-Zawahiri, who is Egyptian, also criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, calling him a "traitor" for keeping Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip closed since Hamas seized power.

"At the time when Israeli planes drop their bombs from the air, he closes the borders with his forces so that the plan of the killing of believers in Gaza is fulfilled," al-Zawahiri said, according to SITE...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090107/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_al_qaida_tape_gaza

This terrorist logic boggles one's mind. Hamas, more than likely at the behest of Iran, launches hundreds of rockets into Israel thus creating an act of war and now it is the President-elect's fault that Israel got fed up with this nonsense and decided to kick arse? al-Zawahiri must've bumped his head on one of the stalagmites in his cave.

Bob! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - you great Blue Dog Democrat!

Bob! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - you great Blue Dog Democrat!

Hello Mary. Happy New Year!

Bob: What amazes me about that article that you posted is that it contains that same stupid "pretzel" logic employed by the trolls who post here sometimes. Did you notice that?

Bob, You must not judge the situation by what you read in the papers! the US media sources tend to leave off a lot of facts, fearing they will be called anti-semitic! If you read International websites, and news sources you will see a different picture of what goes on in Israel and Palestine. For instance, are you aware, that a lot of the problems there are at Bush's suggestions and ideas?

"One of Obama's biggest challenges will be to craft diplomatic solutions that do not have unintended consequences. Good intentions go only so far in the Middle East, and today's battles often can be traced to choices made by the Israeli government or the Bush administration that ended up backfiring.

In the 1980s, for instance, the Israeli government decided to weaken the secular Fatah movement headed by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat by promoting the rise of Islamic parties as a counterweight, on the theory that Islamic groups would not have the same nationalistic impulses.

So Fatah's social networks were dismantled by the Israeli government, but it went easy on Islamic charitable networks. This decision fueled the rise of Hamas as a political force, with its network of health clinics and social services that far exceeded the abilities of the often-corrupt Fatah movement.

"There's no question there was a degree of blowback," Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and the author of "The Much Too Promised Land."

Israel now wants to make a peace deal with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president who heads Fatah but has no control over Gaza. So one of the Israeli aims in Gaza today is to weaken Hamas enough that it no longer can be a political rival to Fatah in Gaza -- precisely the opposite of what Israel hoped to achieve decades ago with its efforts to encourage the rise of Islamic groups.

"This is not like a regime-change operation, but at the end of the day, the restoration of the Palestinian Authority back to Gaza should be on the agenda as a whole," said Jeremy Issacharoff, deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Similarly, the Bush administration encouraged Israel to withdraw from Gaza and demolish its settlements there, arguing that it was a step forward on peace. But, as a condition, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 demanded a letter from President Bush in which the United States conceded two critical peace issues on settlements and refugees to Israel. The Israeli government later cited the letter as giving implicit permission to continue some settlement expansion during peace talks brokered late in the Bush administration, undermining those efforts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010602868.html

Pam - Happy New Year.
In addition to all of the above, Bush & Co. 'forced' an election between fatah and hamas and with little or no choice, the people of Gaza chose hamas, which is what almost every mid-east expert advised Bush would happen if he 'forced' the elections. The Palestinians had little or no choice when they chose Hamas and then, after the election, because Bush, Cheney and Co. did not like the results, they armed the Fatah supporters.

NEW DELHI (AP) - "We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone.

The response was brutally simple: "Kill them." Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.

The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls Indian authorities say they intercepted during the November Mumbai attacks. They were part of a dossier of evidence New Delhi handed Pakistan this week that it says definitively proves that the siege was launched from across the border.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that he did not believe the gunmen were acting alone, and Pakistani state agencies must have had a hand in the attacks.

The dossier made no mention of any Pakistani officials or agencies...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28538542/

The Pakistanis had better hope these were terrorists and it can't be proven they worked for the Pakistani Intelligence service. India's internal security should be scrutinized as well. They got caught with their pants down on this whole affair.

testing

marymac_memphis on January 7, 2009 at 05:55 PM

Indeed I did, Mary. This is what happens when the facts do not support one's argument(s).

PamB on January 7, 2009 at 05:59 PM

Pam, you raise a very valid point about shifting strategies when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians. In a perfect world, Israel will destroy the terrorist organization, Hamas, in Gaza with this incursion and strike a deal with Fatah that could finally bring peace to Israel and Palestine. Hamas, IMHO, is not to be negotiated with. It is to be destroyed as it is nothing more than a proxy for Iran.

I sincerely hope, as I'm sure you do, the folks at Foggy Bottom are already working on this or will work on this once Sen. Clinton (D-NY) is confirmed as Secretary of State. If President Obama and Secretary Clinton can get this fixed, it will be a big help in negotiating in other hot spots of the Middle East.

Or Could it be that people are now discovering - via the internet - that the MSM can't be trusted?

US Networks' International News Coverage at Record Low in 2008
Monday 05 January 2009
»
by: Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

Foreign-related news coverage by the three major US television networks fell to a record low during 2008. (Photo: PressTV)
Washington - Despite two wars involving more than 200,000 U.S. troops and a global economic crisis, foreign-related news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks fell to a record low during 2008, according to the latest annual review of network news coverage by the authoritative Tyndall Report.
Squeezed out by intense coverage of the presidential election campaign and the domestic consequences of skyrocketing oil prices and the subsequent credit crisis, international and overseas events received by far the least attention from the 30-minute evening news programmes of the three networks - the primary source of national and international news for most U.S. citizens - of any since the report was first published in 1988.
"This was an exceptional year for domestic news, so the test will be whether the foreign coverage rebounds in a year when there is relatively light domestic news, or whether this marks a real turning point in insularity in the mainstream media," Andrew Tyndall, the report's founder and publisher, told IPS.
"It could be that when there's not a big election and the economy isn't in the toilet, international news will be back in the news," he said. "Or it may be that people interested in global news are getting it more and more online, and the TV networks may be saying, 'We'll just let individuals who are interested in this stuff get it on the Internet'."

CHICAGO (Reuters)- U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.

They said they had detected and measured a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.

The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.

Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28546058/

Welcome to the 21st century! I am so glad we have elected a POTUS that is not scared of science as the Republicans are.

BobVADemocratHawk on January 7, 2009 at 06:23 PM

Bob - As I started reading your post, I was thinking - "they probably made the discovery a few years ago and held it back for as long as they could so that Bush and the fundies couldn't squash it!" Then I read your post - what is it they say about "Great Minds thinking alike?" LOL ;-)

marymac_memphis on January 7, 2009 at 06:21 PM

Mary, I believe this is a direct result of the disinformation campaign started by the GOP in an effort to dissuade the sheeple from trusting the MSM. There are numerous organizations, such as Media Matters, that act as a watchdog to the MSM. And if you ask any journalist about their dropping of the proverbial ball during the run-up to the Iraq invasion they'll tell you they screwed it up. None the less, it is the 21st century now and I expect TV and TV news, as we know it, will be defunct by 2040. I hope I'm still around to see if that predicition comes true.

marymac_memphis on January 7, 2009 at 06:28 PM

That wouldn't surprise me in the least little bit, Mary. President-elect Obama has the opportunity to make a new golden age of science with his administration and especially in light of the fact that the fundies are now officially in the minority and should be from here on out.

Bob: I consider the MSM to be untrustworthy because it is corporately owned and usually reflects to one degree or another the views of the owning corporation and it's directors. Aside from the internet, there is very little independant media that does not 'bow' in one form or another to the interests of corporate America. See, in part, the treatment of Dan Rather and the subsequent 'ignoring' by the MSM of said treatment.

well, it sure is nice to have the blog back. Big thanks again to Matt Ortega for all of his hard work.
bbl

Savings and Moan

Americans are finally banking more of their money—and that's a bad thing.

Mark Gimein | TheBigMoney.com
Jan 6, 2009 | Updated: 2:51 p.m. ET Jan 6, 2009

A good three years before the current financial crisis, some of the smartest thinkers on the economy—people like NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, and billionaire and all-around economic oracle Warren Buffett—started pointing out to everyone who would listen that things were going very wrong. There were three major things that worried them: the unprecedented housing bubble, the fragility of ever-more-complex Wall Street relationships, and the savings crisis. In 2007, the housing bubble decompressed. In 2008, Wall Street unraveled.

Now it's 2009, and the last punch is coming into view: The scary economic story of the next year is likely to be the painful unwinding of the great savings shortage. Thanks to the catastrophic savings deficit of the last decade, we now have on our hands a spending and credit crisis that will make our recession much harder to solve.

Today's Wall Street Journal and others have pointed out that the U.S. savings rate, which for most of the decade was as low as had ever been seen in a major post-World War II economy, is finally going up. In just about any other time, this would be very good news. But right now it's not. Our savings are finally rising but not because the United States has suddenly become a thrifty nation. It's happening because after years of spending everything we earned, there is suddenly no money available for consumers to borrow and no money safely stored away for us to fall back on...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/178151

If the sheeple haven't figured out yet that it is a good idea to save at least 5% of their paychecks and have twelve months worth of money on hand, then they deserve what they get. We Americans need to learn, or re-learn as the case may be, that saving money in financially stable investments, such as T-Bills and Savings Bonds, is the most prudent course of action.

I have heard projections that we may enter a period of deflation. This will be a perfect opportunity to start saving again if it comes to pass and even if it does not. The mess we're in right now is a direct result of people trying to live above their means. You can't live a million dollar lifestyle on $50K per year.

Unfortunately, another conservative will get elected in the future, hopefully the distant future, and reinvent the "Ownership Society" argument. Of course, as President-elect Obama so eloquently put it during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, the "Ownership Society" means nothing more than you're on your own.

Save your money, America. Stock up on staples. Be prepared for the next recession.

marymac_memphis on January 7, 2009 at 06:38 PM

That is a very valid point, my good friend. However, I can't think of a single company that invests heavily in all three major networks. When we see that being the case, then I would agree with you 100%. I get most of my news from the BBC and PBS. For "editorial" news, I go to MSNBC. Gotta love that Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

Good night fellow Democrats. Keep the Faith and keep the faith. Yes we can, yes we will, and yes we did!