By Dave Lindorff

Critics of government get all worked up when Washington spends money
stupidly, or does something manifestly stupid. There was a even senator
from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, who used to hand out "Golden Fleece"
awards for such things.

The Pentagon's notorious $600 payments for toilet seats that were
$12 in local discount stores, or $434 paments for hammers that were $10
in the local hardware store were good examples of this.

But nobody seems to be screaming about the incredibly wasteful
rescue of AIG, on which the government has spent first $85 billion and
now another $37.5 billion.

By Dave Lindorff

With the Bush Administration, the two leading presidential
candidates, and the Congressional leadership, as well as a phalanx of
Wall Street lobbyists all pushing hard for a massive transfer of
taxpayer money to the coffers of banks and investment banks, the
American people need to demand a halt to this bums' rush to a bailout.

By Dave Lindorff

The most entertaining thing about this Wall Street crisis and the
refusal of the House of Representatives (not failure but refusal) to
pass a bailout bill negotiated by the Bush White House and the House
leadership is how shocked and upset those leaders and the pundit class
have been by the idea that members of Congress would actually heed the
wishes of their constituents!

The Founding Fathers always saw the lower house of Congress as
voice of the people—the elected body that, because its members had to
face the voters every two years, would be most responsive to public
sentiment.

By Dave Lindorff

Hold everything!

Talk about déjà vu. Remember when Bush and his cabinet officers were
running all over in late 2002 crying wolf about Iraq’s supposed nukes,
and threatening that inaction on a war resolution by the Congress would
leave them to blame when the “mushroom cloud” appeared over some
American city?

Well, now they’re doing it again, this time claiming that economic
Armageddon faces the US and even the global economy if Congress doesn’t
hand over all power over the economy to the Secretary of the Treasury
in absolute contravention of the most fundamental principle of the
Constitution, which establishes that the budget be in the control of
Congress. These guys are saying if Congress doesn’t vote to hand over
$700 billion or more of taxpayer money to the Treasury to dole out to
fat cat bankers, the resulting economic collapse will be on their heads.

The Bush administration is heading us towards more disaster with its 'toxic debt' bailout and destabilization of Pakistan and Iran. We can't afford to go down this road again. In this short video, Heather Wokusch provides background, context and ideas for taking action.

Links for sources cited in this video:

Bailout:

Crisis talks over $700B 'toxic debt' rescue plan

Everything Bush has ever touched in his life has turned to s**t. Will that long list now include the AAA rating of the United States Treasury?

S&P says pressure building on U.S. "AAA" rating

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pressure is building on the pristine "AAA" rating of the United States after a federal bailout of American International Group Inc, the chairman of Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings committee said on Wednesday.

The $85 billion bailout of AIG on Tuesday by the U.S. Federal Reserve "has weakened the fiscal profile of the United States," S&P's John Chambers told Reuters in an interview.

By Dave Lindorff

Sarah Palin stated again, most recently in her interview yesterday
by ABC’s Charlie Gibson, that she has foreign policy experience because
as governor of Alaska she has been in charge of that state’s National
Guard, and because Alaska is, doggone it, “right next” to Russia.

This made me feel pretty good, because it made me realize that I
have a whole lot of skills and experience which I hadn’t really
appreciated before and that I could perhaps use to get myself out of
this freelance journalism profession, which is not all that great from
a financial perspective.

By Dave Lindorff

Now that we’ve had a chance to see Sarah Palin and to hear her speak—or at least read the big rolling white block letters on the teleprompter in front of her—we can see that she’s prone to telling whoppers.

Now we know politicians as a group have a propensity to embellish the truth—particularly when describing their opponents or themselves—and even to lie outright, but Palin does it so well, she’s like a George Bush with reading and pronunciation skills.

In her acceptance speech last night, Palin told a whole string of lies. My favorite was talking about little Trig, her latest offspring, who was born with Down syndrome. Looking right out into the camera, she told the parents of America with special needs children that if she and John McCain win in November, “You’ll have an advocate in Washington.”

By Dave Lindorff

There are many reasons why most Americans should be turned off by
Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s last-minute choice of
Sarah Palin as his running mate.

She’s an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism and
thinks this fantasy belongs in the school science curriculum alongside
evolution. She’s opposed to the right to abortion. She thinks global
warming is not a proven phenomenon. She favors drilling for oil in the
Arctic Refuge and damn the environmental consequences. This supposedly
family-centered “hockey mom “is happy about sending her 18-year-old son
off to war in Iraq, even as Iraq is trying to shoo us out of the
country and even as the president is tacitly admitting that the whole
thing is a bust by agreeing to a timetable for withdrawal.

By Dave Lindorff

I was a speaker last night at an anti-war event sponsored by the
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, Progressive
Democrats of America and Democrats For America in Lincroft, NJ, near
the shore. It was a great group of activist Americans who want to see
this country end the Iraq War, turn away from war as a primary
instrument of policy, and start dealing with the pressing human needs
of the country and the world.

Yet even in this group of committed people, one woman stood up
during the question-and-answer session and said, “I want to get
involved in writing emails to members of Congress urging them to cut
off funding for the war and other things, but if I do that won’t I end
up getting put on a `watch list’” or something?”