by Charley James

As if we don’t have enough to worry about the shenanigans Bush & Co. might try pulling in their last 60-plus days in office, now comes whispered reports from Washington that Dubya is considering issuing a “blanket pardon” for everyone involved in anything illegal in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and – more critically – anything remotely connected to torturing detainees during his seven year reign of terror.

As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley explained last night on Countdown, such a pardon would not only be “unprecedented” in American history, it would establish a “dangerous precedent” for future presidents in that it would allow an administration to do anything and escape judgement by issuing itself a blanket pardon.

In effect, Bush would be pardoning himself, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Yoo and the rest of the neo-con cabal surrounding the administration that not just tore the Constitution to shreds but mounted illegal invasions of sovereign nations and authorized torture despite US laws and international treaties banning its use. Of course, it would also cover the hapless Army officers, NCOs and enlisted personnel who carried out illegal orders from on high.

Not even Richard Nixon had the gall to self-pardon his Watergate crimes.

Admission Of Guilt
Nixon’s reluctance wasn’t so much constitutional as it was personal: He knew that pardoning himself for Watergate would be an admission of guilt. 

Since George Bush is not capable of such careful thought or legal subtleties – remember, this is the man who told a Nov. 2001, Oval Office meeting “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a Goddamned piece of paper” – it’s entirely possible he could be talked into forgiving his and everyone else’s sins moments before leaving for Barack Obama’s inauguration. 

While that might free Bush, Cheney and their pals from worrying about US prosecution, a pardon’s reach would end at the US shoreline. And it appears increasingly likely that at least some European governments are not as eager to forgive and forget.

Yesterday, one of Britain’s most authoritative judicial figures delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante”.

Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then-attorney general’s defense of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.

“No Factual Grounds” To Invade
Contradicting head-on British attorney general Lord Goldsmith’s advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham told an audience Monday night, “It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.” 

Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as Tony Blair’s government did, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions “passes belief.”

Lord Bingham reminded his audience that governments are bound by international law as much as by their domestic laws, adding “The current ministerial code binding on British ministers requires them as an overarching duty to ‘comply with the law, including international law and treaty obligations’.”

Opposition parties in Parliament are pressing for an independent inquiry into the invasion but the government is resisting. 

But Lord Bingham insists, “If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK and some other states was unauthorised by the Security Council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law. 

“For the effect of acting unilaterally was to undermine the foundation on which the post-1945 consensus had been constructed: the prohibition of force save in self-defense, or perhaps, to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe, unless formally authorized by the nations of the world empowered to make collective decisions in the Security Council …”

Broken Law Compact
The moment a state treats international law as binding on others but not on itself, the compact on which the law rests is broken, Lord Bingham argues. Quoting a comment made by a leading academic lawyer, he added: “It is ‘the difference between the role of world policeman and world vigilante’.”

He contrasted that with the “unilateral decisions of the US government” on issues such as the detention conditions in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Referring to mistreatment of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib, Bingham states, “Particularly disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for international legality among top officials in the Bush administration.”

In many respects, Lord Bingham was laying out the case for a war crimes prosecution against individuals in the Blair and Bush governments.

Think back a few years when Donald Rumsfeld, then just a retired pensioner having been fired as Secretary of Defense, was pursued across Paris by a French prosecutor who wanted to detain Rumsfeld to question him about war crimes. Somehow, Rumsfeld made his way to the American Embassy where he hid out until a plot was concocted to smuggle him out of France.

Under Bush, of course, the United States dropped its recognition of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. If Pres. Obama reinstates America’s participation in the court, not only will the Bushmen not be safe to travel outside the United States, they may not be safe from detention in the US while awaiting extradition, either.

by Charley James

Although I’ve lived in Toronto for going-on two decades, Minnesota was my last state of residence in the US so it is where I’ve voted since moving here. Reading on-line editions of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press coupled with having friends – some since high school – who still live there, it’s easy for me to keep up with home state politics.

In a state known for squeaky clean, Lake Woebegon-like politics, Sen. Norm Coleman is the poster child of slimy political stunts, self-serving manoeuvring and kow-towing to corporate campaign donors. 

He was narrowly elected to the Senate in 2002 after incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash during the campaign – a sad irony because Wellstone was first elected in 1996 barnstorming the state in an battered, old, school bus. Now, Coleman is embroiled in a state-mandated recount because the election results in his fight against Al Franken fell within 0.5% of a tie.

How slimy is Coleman?
Besides demanding that Franken forego the recount even though precious few votes separate them and the law requires it, Coleman and his surrogates are attacking everyone from poll workers to Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie with lies about vote count shenanigans, being untrustworthy and practically criminal behaviour. When Republican lies are disproven – sometimes by the very people who started them – Coleman conveniently ignores reality and goes on with his smears.

Well, what can you expect? Coleman was first approached about running for the Senate by Karl Rove.

Typical Coleman Crappola
This week on The Rachel Maddow Show, Ritchie fired back at the Senator. He noted that, as the elected Secretary of State, it is his job to take the jabs and smears “but Sen. Coleman has no business attacking the integrity of election judges around the state, many of whom have been volunteering for decades without a hint of wrongdoing or impropriety.”

Now Coleman and the national Republican Party are flying in some 100 GOP lawyers to peek over the volunteer’s shoulders as Minnesota’s 87 counties recount the Senate vote. But while much of the nation is aghast at what Coleman is doing, for people in Minnesota his smarmy representation is nothing new.

For example, in March 2007, Coleman introduced legislation to kill the Defense Travel System, a program to automate Defense Dept. travel purchases, which spends roughly $5.5-billion annually for travel. Shortly after filing the legislation, Coleman received a generous contribution from CEO Marilyn Carlson Nelson of Minneapolis-based Carlson Companies, owner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Its Government Travel unit provides lucrative services for numerous federal agencies. Moreover, over the years, Coleman has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from other Carlson Companies executives.

As a constituent, I wrote objecting to his measure to bring efficiency to travel purchases by the federal government. Weeks later, a form letter showed up in my e-mail saying, in effect, go stuff yourself.

He backed Pres. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, telling me in a letter I wrote to him at the time objecting to the scheme that Americans can better take care of their future than the government. As the stock market crash amply demonstrated, had Social Security been privatized as Coleman wanted, the nation’s elderly would be even worse off now than they are.

He told me in another letter that the Patriot Act is an important way to protect Americans from terrorism, saying that people not involved in nefarious activities have nothing to worry about. Uhm, it turns out we all have a lot to worry about as Attorney General Michael Mukasey proved again a few weeks ago by allowing FBI agents to investigate anyone for any reason.

Smart Money
I stopped writing to Sen. Coleman once I realised all I was receiving in return were Republican talking points, the same ones The White House shares with Fox News every day. By comparison, when I write to my other senator, Amy Klobuchar, I receive a thoughtful reply that includes a rationale for her position. I don’t always agree with her but at least she explains why she is supporting or opposing some piece of legislation.

Coleman merely spits in my face.

Friends in Minnesota tell me that the smart money in the recount is on Franken who carried the urban Hennepin and Ramsey counties and their surrounding suburbs by wide margins as well as counties in the traditionally heavy Democratic-voting Iron Range which includes Duluth. The state and the US Senate would be well-served by ridding itself of another self-serving toady who, in his own quiet way, is the Ted Stevens of the Midwest.

Lost in the wake of Henry Paulson’s announcement Wednesday that Treasury is “changing direction” in how it doles out money in the bank rescue plan is a little-noticed lawsuit filed last Friday by Bloomberg LP, the business news wire service. It is suing the Federal Reserve Board’s governors for public records that would answer two simple questions: Who is receiving $2-trillion in Fed loans and what collateral are taxpayers getting to support them?

That’s trillion, with a “t.”

And, yes, as hard as it is to believe, taxpayers don’t know the identity of the borrowers to whom they are lending. They also don’t know what kind of junk — Stocks? Bonds? Three milk cows and a ’69 Camaro? — they are getting to collateralize the federal loans.

As Bloomberg wrote Monday, “The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.”

Unbelievable.

Listen, one can argue about whether the Fed’s loan program is wise or not though most people think it is.

But now that the Treasury’s vaults have been thrown open, taxpayers have a right to know who is getting the loans. Likewise, taxpayers should know the collateral being held, especially given the virtual certainty it is worth far less than the cash they are lending. Taxpayer exposure is enormous.

Loans Worth $2-Trillion
The $2-trillion in loans that are the subject of its suit are separate and apart from the $700-billion rescue package passed by Congress in October. At least, that law has some measure of transparency — we know which banks are getting capital — and safeguards to ensure that taxpayers’ investment is secured.

The Fed lending program is different. As the Bloomberg suit explains, before August 2007 the Fed typically loaned money to regular banks for very short periods of time requiring gold-leaf collateral and had about $1-million in loans outstanding at any one time. Come the financial crisis, the Fed added three new lending programs and dramatically eased terms and dropped collateral standards, opening the loan spigot. By the first week of October, the Fed had average lending of more than $400-billion. Now, the figure is much higher.

Almost daily, the Money Honeys on CNBC announce that such numbers are unprecedented, and it is all too true.

In return, banks handed over collateral of unknown and, assumedly, poor quality. The gap between amount loaned and the amount the collateral is worth is the amount the taxpayers may have to pay if banks can’t make good on these loans.

Seeks Basic Information
The Bloomberg suit is looking for very basic the information:
The government documents that Bloomberg seeks are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression. The effect of that crisis on the American public has been and will continue to be devastating. Hundreds of corporations are announcing layoffs in response to the crisis and the economy was the top issue for many Americans in the recent elections …

In response to the crisis, the Fed has vastly expanded its lending programs to private financial institutions. To obtain access to the public money and to safeguard the taxpayers’ interests, borrowers are required to post collateral. Despite the manifest public interest in such matters, however, none of the programs themselves make reference to any public disclosure of the posted collateral or of the Fed’s methods of valuing it. Thus, while the taxpayers are the ultimate counterparty for the collateral, they have not been given any information regarding the kind of collateral received, how it was valued, or by whom.

Seems pretty clear to me. The documents Bloomberg request are all pretty basic stuff.

• Records sufficient to show the names of the Relevant Securities…
• Records sufficient to show the amount of borrowing permitted as compared to the face value [the non-marked-down value of the collateral], also known as the ‘haircut…’
• Records sufficient to describe whether valuations or ‘haircuts’ for the Relevant Securities changed over time [i.e. whether taxpayer losses are growing]…
• Records sufficient to show the terms of the loans and the rates that the borrowers must pay…
• Records, including contracts with outside entities, that show the employees or entities being used to price the relevant securities and to conduct the lending process.
• Who’s running the program? A simple question.

Unneeded Secrecy
There are arguments against disclosure, of course, but the secrecy case here seems especially weak.
Banks oppose any release of information because it might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group.

Barney Frank gives it a try and comes across sounding foolish which Rep. Frank is not: “I talk to [New York Fed Chairman Tim] Geithner and he was pretty sure that they’re OK. If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that’s regrettable.” Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.

Pretty sure they’re okay? Sorry, Barney, that’s just not enough. And then he makes an equally weak case for secrecy.

Frank said the Fed shouldn’t reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of “delicacy with respect to pricing.” He said such disclosure would “give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.” He wouldn’t say why he thought that information would be sticky.

Actually, it’s more likely that visibility would help the market, as Bloomberg’s story points out:
Revealing how the Fed values collateral could help thaw frozen credit markets, said Ron D’Vari, chief executive officer of NewOak Capital LLC in New York and the former head of structured finance at BlackRock Inc.

“I’d love to hear the methodology, how the Fed priced the assets,” D’Vari said. “That would unclog the market very quickly.”

Misplaced Fear
The fear for banks is misplaced. They already have the loans, so they’re fine. The real purpose of secrecy is hiding how badly taxpayers are in the hole. As the Bloomberg suit points out:

The public has significant and legitimate interest in the Fed’s conduct with respect for these four lending facilities because the Fed’s assets are public assets. Taxpayers are entitled to understand and assets the decisions by the Fed on the valuation of the collateral it accepts as security for public money being lent to private institutions. The public’s interest is particularly pronounced in light of the new expansive powers of the Fed, the new risks that the Fed is taking with public money, and the ongoing financial crisis and its effects on the American economy.

As the public’s independent eyes and ears on the government, news organizations, can do no less than everything in their power to put a spotlight on these public expenditures. The power to tax and spend is probably government’s most basic one. To me, watching those is a news organization’s first order of business: It is Job One.

Freedom of Information Act requests are a common newsgathering tool and so are lawsuits to force disclosure when the law is violated. The Bloomberg suit is a reasonable, appropriate and measured tactic by a mainstream news organization. And the suit is manifestly in the public interest.

News organizations compete but they usually cooperate on matters of press freedom and transparency. This is one of those times.

It is time for Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The New York Times, CNBC and every other print and broadcast media that purports to cover business news to join the Bloomberg suit.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada - what Americans call Veterans Day - and everything other than retailing and restaurants shuts down tight. Canada treats Remembrance Day much more somberly than do US celebrations. This might be the result of how the British mercilessly used the colonial Canadian army as fodder in both World Wars and the US seems to view Veterans Day mostly as time for a one-day-only sale. 

In The Great War, Canadian troops were always the first over the top and units were usually being assigned impossible tasks such as taking and holding Vimy Ridge. Tens of thousands of Canadians died in a few days of fighting while the Brits stayed the flanks and took very little German fire. But Canadians held the ridge.

It was much the same thing in World War II. 

When Winston Churchill decided to try an ill-considered and poorly planned mini-invasion of France way before D-Day, Lord Louis Mountbatten send a nearly all-Canadian force to Dieppe. Ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-led by the British, almost everyone was either killed or captured, and those who returned to England were suffering hideous wounds. 

During the Italian campaign, Field Marshall Montgomery used Canadian troops to take the brunt of German resistance as the British army fought its way up the center and east coast of Italy. 

Likewise during and after D-Day: Canadians were assigned to fight their way through the hardest of German reinforcements in Normandy and, later, sent alone to rout Germans from the Veldt in the Low Countries.

On the other hand, the Danes have been forever grateful to Canada for liberating the country. It is Canada - not Britain or America - that holds a special place in Danish hearts (and, for all I know, Danish pastry). On a number of occasions over the years, I’ve been in bars in Denmark where a friendly local happened to ask where I was from. When I answered Toronto, patrons wouldn’t let me pay for a drink the rest of the evening.

My dad served in the US Navy during World War II. Other than a few anecdotes about how he figured out a way to scrounge more than his ship’s meager allotment of beef when a supply party went ashore, he barely spoke of his wartime experiences. Now that he is long dead, all I have from that period of his life are his officer’s dress uniform, a pair of shoulder bars showing his rank, a tiny handful of photos and an ash tray some Chief Petty Officer carved out of a shell casing after Iwo Jima.

Phil survived the war, went to law school on the GI Bill, and when he aged and needed medical help, the Veterans Administration hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota turned him away. He would relate to the problems veterans of Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan face nearly every day with the VA.

So, to Phil and the millions of others who have served in war time, for me it is truly a day to remember all of you. Thanks.

by Charley James 

Maybe it’s because after countless pre-election late nights I slept in this weekend and missed the announcement, but when did everything become an “experience?”

I read something the other day about the growing length and complexity of restaurant menus. A half dozen chefs used “dining experience” to describe what, to me, always has been simply “going out to eat.” I guess when you have a “dining experience,” it costs more than if you’re just going for dinner with friends. Certainly, the tip is going to be larger so the waiter will enjoy a better “gratuity experience.”

Then I began noticing how frequently the word shows up in new places, describing things in ways that never would occur to me. 

A movie critic wrote about a “film-going experience” he’d had; he probably thought that sounded a lot more authoritative and grand than simply saying “I went to a movie.” Ordinary proles go to movies, but the film critic sitting two rows behind me is having an “experience” watching the same lousy flick while we each eat overpriced popcorn. 

Suddenly, experiences are everywhere.

Shopping Experiences
In a newspaper article about a retail chain that just remodelled all of its stores, an executive explained that the company spent several million dollars because it wanted to “enhance the shopping experience” for customers. The CEO of an airline was on a newscast last night talking about steps his company was adding to “the flying experience” of its passengers. I’ve bought stuff on eBay, which thoughtfully reminds me whenever I log in just how much fun the “eBay experience” can be. I received an e-mail this morning from a book store telling me that it is dedicated to making my “reading experience” more pleasurable and meaningful.

Apparently, it’s not enough just to buy a new book to read: I must have a “reading experience.” If I like the book and offer it to a friend, am I inviting them to have their own “reading experience”? But if I don’t like the book and toss it out halfway through, did I have a “bad reading experience” or did it morph into a “recycling experience”?

Maybe because of the Internet, cable channels by the hundreds, and on-demand everything including acquaintances who know each other only through chat rooms, we have to label anything an experience because nothing is a genuine experience anymore. It represents a kind of “language creep” where glossed-up words and phrases are used to make the mundane seem meaningful.

This may also explain another word that I’ve seen used a lot lately: “Community.” I’ve always thought of a “community” as the neighbourhood where I live but it seems I’m being too parochial. If you look carefully, you discover that every human activity has created its own “community.” 

Everybody’s Own Community
Not long ago, a friend was leaving her job at Second City and moving to New York. She told me that she while she was looking forward to living in Manhattan, she would miss the “comedy community.” The what? Where is the comedy community? Is it part of a hip, downtown loft district or somewhere out in the vast, sprawling reaches of the suburban area codes? Are all of her neighbors funny? Some of mine are a bit dour, so I might want to move to the comedy community if I could just find it on a map.

No one has a job or career anymore, merely working at a company: They belong to a “community.”

A lawyer friend speaks of being in the “legal community.” A gallery owner talked about the “artist community” on Bravo! a few weeks ago. Friends who blog write about the “progressive community.” I’ve heard other people refer to the “writer’s community,” a “high tech community,” the “entertainment community” – which, by the way, is so large it has subdivisions like the “movie community” and the “music community” – and so on. 

When the city where I live was hiring for a new police chief, a member of the search committee told a reporter the choice would be someone who’d mesh well with the “police community.” I gave a speech recently to a group that described itself as part of the “advertising community.” Silly me. I walked into the room thinking I was going to address a group of ad agency executives. 

What’s next? A “cross-community community’s experience?”

What is it like to be part of these “communities”? Do members invite each other over to help paint the porch? May people from one community date people from another? Do they have special soccer teams for their kids? Could I address mail to somebody by just putting their name and “Wretched Community” on the letter? Do they have special clothes to wear or rules to follow?

I wonder if I am part of a “community” and don’t know it. I certainly would never knowingly join a “community;” it sounds much too post-modern. I’m content just being part of the “community experience” where I live, even with a few dour neighbours.

Sarah Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, told the AP that Palin spent “the weekend going through her clothing” to determine what belongs to the Republican Party after it spent $150,000-plus on a wardrobe for the vice presidential nominee (and possible Senate candidate? -Ed).

“She was just frantically … trying to sort stuff out,” Heath reports. “That’s the problem, you know, the kids lose underwear and everything has to be accounted for.”

Uhm, has anyone bothered to ask why contributors to the Republican Party were buying underwear for Palin’s children?

Meanwhile, in Wasilla, hometown backers put aside their disappointment over her unsuccessful Veep bid to focus on really important issues. Jessica Steele, for one, can’t wait to see what Sarah Palin does next – with her hair.

“That’s something I want to talk to her about: What’s our vision for her hair?” says Steele, proprietor of the Beehive Beauty Shop and keeper of the governor’s Bee Gee’s era up-do since 2002.

This just about sums up Sarah’s depth and that of her campaign and friends. ‘Nuff said.

One of Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s “sayings” immortalized in his Little Red Book deals with stealth in politics and war. “Make a noise in the east,” the Great Helmsman wrote, “and strike in the west.”

On Monday afternoon, we realised that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson must be channelling Chairman Mao. While everyone on the Hill and around America was focusing attention on the election and bank rescue plan – a noise in the east – on Sept. 30, Paulson struck in the west by quietly giving banks a $140-billion windfall by issuing new regulations under an arcane provision of a seldom used 1980’s-era tax law involving corporate mergers.

According to The Washington Post, the change to Section 382 – a provision that limits a kind of tax shelter arising in corporate mergers – came after a two-decade effort by conservative economists and Republican administration officials to eliminate or overhaul the law, which is so little-known that even influential tax experts sometimes draw a blank at its mention. Until the financial meltdown, bank lobbyists told the Post, its opponents thought it would be nearly impossible to revamp the section because it would look like a corporate giveaway.

It would look like a giveaway because that’s exactly what Paulson intends it to be, and Goldman Sachs best friend in Washington pulled a fast one on Congress and the American people while everybody was looking the other way.

If people called Bill Clinton “Slick Willy,” this must make Henry Paulson a 21st century Wily Coyote. He’s like Willy Sutton, the once-famous bank robber: Sutton said he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is” and Paulson robs taxpayers for the same reason.

Muck And Mire
Listen to Treasury’s rationale: Spokesman Andrew DeSouza says Paulson has the legal authority as part of his power to interpret the tax code and provide legal guidance to companies. He described the Sept. 30 notice, which allows some banks to keep more money by lowering their taxes, as a way to help financial institutions during a time of economic crisis.

Apparently, Paulson doesn’t think that Seven Hundred Billion Dollars is enough of a helping hand to get clever, greedy bankers with their voracious appetite for grabbing someone else’s cash out of their own muck and mire.

Even more egregious, noted tax lawyers and other experts around the country say Paulson’s gimmick isn’t even legal.

“Did the Treasury Dept. have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no,” George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, told the Post’s Amit Paley. “They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks.”

Adds Candace A. Ridgway, a tax partner at the law firm Jones Day, “It was a shock to the tax law community. It was one of those things where it pops up on your screen and your jaw drops.
“I’ve been in tax law for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ridgway asserts in an interview with Paley.

Today, I spoke briefly with 10 US tax lawyers I know well in New York, Washington, Chicago and Minneapolis. All said Treasury has no legal authority to unilaterally change the meaning of Sect. 382; at least two of the 10 were aghast Paulson would try pulling such a stunt in the waning days of an administration already blamed for being too cozy with Wall St. and causing the financial crisis.

Now What?
Here’s the rub.

If either Treasury repeals its own regulation or Congress does it for Paulson, there’s a serious risk that more than a few of the recent bank mergers – many engineered by Treasury, the Fed or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to prevent weak banks from collapsing – will unravel. The tax benefit Paulson created is likely to be one of the driving forces behind a healthy bank’s willingness to take over a sick sister; in some cases, the acquiring bank might well have its entire, potential exposure covered by tax breaks generated by the deal.

About the best thing would be for Congress – preferably the lame duck session that convenes shortly or at least the new one in January – to turn back Paulson’s slight-of-hand trick without toppling existing merger deals. No one would gain by a sudden rash of unexpected bank failures, and the ensuing losses would put the FDIC at risk.

Still, if anyone needs proof at this late date of the deceitful behavior of Henry Paulson and the rest of the Bush gang, they need look no further than the Sept. 30 regulations for Sect. 382. Someone better lock the cash register now, before the door slams into their backside as they leave office Jan. 20, 2009.

by Charley James

Not surprisingly, red meat conservatives are wallowing in denial today, now that the shock of Tuesday night has worn off. Basically, the arguments run along one of two or three lines: Obama tricked people, Obama stole the election or that despite the size and scope of the win across counties and states, he must abandon the liberal or progressive wing of the Democratic party and govern from the center.

Speaking yesterday on MSNBC’s Hardball, Michele Bernard intoned that “Obama will have to govern from the center because that’s where America is.”

Oh, no it isn’t, girl.

Then Neil Stevens, writing at Red State, insists, “Democrats are going to claim that Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was a large, overwhelming repudiation of the Republican party, and that it was possibly even a historical turning point of partisan political realignment. There’s just one problem with that theory: It’s not true.”

Sorry, Neil, but it is true.

Even David Brooks, appearing on the PBS NewsHour last night, stated firmly that “Obama will have to fight off the left-wing of his party to govern more from the center.”

Got it wrong, again, David.

Thursday morning, at his Conscience of a Liberal blog, Paul Krugman (LINK à http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) thoughtfully provided a county-by-county map of the United States showing which counties voted more heavily Democratic in 2008 than in 2004, and those counties voting more Republican this time around than in the last election. 

Sorry, Michelle; my condolences, Neil; heartfelt sympathies; David, look again. The fact is that the map clearly indicates a major leftward shift straight across the country, even in states McCain won. Only in eastern Oklahoma, a large swath of Arkansas, southern Louisiana (now heavily white in post-Katrina New Orleans) and Tennessee did more people cast Republican votes than in 2004.

And yet the right persists. 

Victor Davis Hanson of the National Review grandly announces, “Like the young emperor Augustus, Obama may well have sensed that a country eager for change was still a largely traditional and centrist society — as this election’s relatively close popular vote reflected.”

A close popular vote? The map aside, Obama received well over 63.2-million votes, more than any presidential candidate in American history, beating McCain by nearly eight million votes – or the equvilent of about 12.5 Alaska ’s. 

Nevertheless, right wing blogger Kevin Walker wants to remind people that, “I just hope those few correct-minded people in Congress (Note: He means the remaining Republicans) will fight tooth and nail to Chairman O and his cohorts’ policies that will only hurt America .”

Walker doesn’t say which of Obama’s policies will hurt America : Perhaps universal health care, which the vast majority of the country says it supports – including big business? Maybe ending Wall St. shenanigans that sent the US and the world spinning into a deep recession? How about getting out of Iraq , another winner with 80% of Americans who see the war as a tragic error? Will a more equitable tax code hurt America , with the rich actually paying their fair share? Walker leaves out the specifics.

Meanwhile, a far right, moon batty blogger who goes by the name of Moonbattery, is quoted on Huffington Post as writing, “This is a day of celebration for everyone hostile to America and the principles of individual liberty for which it stands.”

Excuse me, Moonbeam, but George Bush and Dick Cheney tore individual liberties to absolute scraps of paper during their two terms so the Bill of Rights only barely resembles what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Even when it comes to the economy, conservatives remain in a state of denial. In describing what is happening now in the US , Manchester Union-Leader columnist Kathleen Parker writes today, “Granted, not everyone got to play Monopoly, but our hardships are relatively benign.”

Tell that to everyone who lost their job, their home, their health insurance and their hope for a better life.

The election made a number of things clear about 21st century America, prime among them that the Republican Party’s laisser-faire attitude about business and regulation, about social issues and the role of religion in public life, and what governing for all of the people means needs a massive re-think. 

Barack Obama will be everybody’s president but, based on what happened in this election, the last thing he needs to do is worry about governing from the center.  America ’s center has moved decidedly left.

by Charley James

I suppose like many others last night, at precisely 11PM when the polls closed in California, Oregon and Washington, and Keith Olbermann called the election, I started to cry. Steady, solid, weeping that kept coming in waves. 

Then I glanced at the screen where the MSNBC director was flipping from one celebration to another and saw many others crying: Blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, young, old, men, women, all over the country. A series of individual shots that, together, redefined the United States of America last night.

There was a student at Spellman College in Atlanta who collapsed in tears and was being comforted by her friends. 

Then Oprah was leaning on the shoulder of the man in front of her as she cried uncontrollably, Jesse Jackson standing directly behind her with two rivers flowing freely down his face. 

A quick shot of a nursing home day room where elderly white men and woman, some in wheelchairs, one man wearing an American Legion cap, some cheering and some wiping their eyes with tissues.

Cut to a sports bar in Georgia where white and black faces kissed each other, and hugged.

And always back to Grant Park in Chicago. The roar of the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to be free lifting their voices and their smiles and their hands in relief and jubilation and ecstacy and exhaustion. 

I thought of my mother, who died in 1996. She had my sister and me sit in front of the television when Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial before an endless sea of people who only had hope for a different tomorrow. Their - our - tomorrow finally came at 11PM Eastern time last night. I remembered how she wanted to go to that rally but Dad talked her out of it because it might become “dangerous.” It turned out, the only dangerous thing was Dr. King’s ideas.

John McCain came on screen in Pheonix to concede, giving his best speech of the campaign and silencing the yahoo’s in the crowd who booed when he mentioned Barack Obama. Then back to the studio where someone was reading a White House trasncript of Bush’s congratulatory call to Obama where he told the President-elect to “go out and enjoy yourself.” Only George W. Bush would be handing the presidency of a country he came close to ruining to someone by saying that Obama should “enjoy himself.” It was akin to what he urged people to do after 9/11: Go out and shop.

Finally, there was Obama himself. He gave a better, more encompassing vicory speech than most inaugural addresses over the past 30 years. 

Someone, it might have been Chris Mathews, said he looked “exhausted.” He may have been that after 20 months of campaigning but, to me, he looked somber. Written all over Obama’s face was the reality of the burden he suddenly bore, not just for himself and the country but the entire world. Even after his speech, when Joe Biden and his family and the throng of relatives and well-wishers crowded around him, he couldn’t shake the look of a man who suddenly realises how alone he is.

I remember what Jack Kennedy said the first morning he was president and walked into the Oval Office. Surrounded by long-time aides and advisors, he sat in the chair behind the Lincoln desk that he requested be brought out from the Smithsonian Institute, looked up and asked, “Now what the hell do we do?”

Last night, Obama’s face showed that he knew full well “what the hell do we do.” But he’s not alone. He has tens of millions of people around the country, and around the world, there to help. Our work has just begun.

by Charley James

The American author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams once wrote, “The eyes of the future are watching us and they are praying that we learn to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint, leaving room for the life that is destined to come.”

Described as a “visionary” by the Utne Reader, Williams’ prayerful hope sums up how I feel this morning, the day before what will be the most-critical election of our time. Maybe any time since Lincoln was elected in 1860. Yet I also tremble for my country as it stands on the eve of electing its 44th president. 

I tremble because we stare numbly at a world in crisis due largely to America’s catastrophic wars of and “in your face” foreign policy. 

I tremble because we live terrified in an economy melting faster than a snow cone in August thanks to the unbridled greed and “grab all you can before someone else gets any” philosophy nurtured by a president who has no moral compass. 

I tremble because we shiver in the cold, early days of winter as a cold, shivering chill runs down our spines when we hear John McCain and Sarah Palin throw smears and platitudes like red meat to starving animals instead of discussing real issues like 11% of the country not working when unemployment claims are added to the number of people who’ve become discouraged and stopped looking for a job, or poverty in America, or one-sixth of the country hoping they and their kids don’t get sick or injured because they have no insurance.

I tremble because we’ve endured eight years of seeing America’s honor in the world torn to shreds, the Constitutional rights that protected us for 225 years from government abuse of power and authority systematically stripped and shredded, the novel American ideal of equal justice and equal rights and equal opportunity and equal protection raped repeatedly by an ideologically-driven Supreme Court where one Republican-appointed justice is angry he was born black, a second is a mental midget and a third accepts the far right notion that those who have it are worth more under the law than anyone who doesn’t.

I tremble because if We the People of the United States of America have another election stolen out from under us there will be hell to pay at home and around the world. One of the most laconic women I know told me last night that if somehow McCain confounds the reams of polls and somehow wins, there will be rioting in the streets and “I’ll be out there throwing bricks myself.” Ironically, a deposition is being taken today in Ohio of the man who may have been responsible for illegal, computerized vote switching and disappearing votes in the Buckeye State in the infamous Great Ken Blackwell 2004 Presidential Election Vote Switcheroo. 

I tremble for my country because there is not enough Loraizapam™ in the world to calm me down if Obama loses. I should be celebrating my birthday today but instead I sit worried, fearful, frightened and trembling.