Quote of the Day:

One of President Obama's economic adviser's had the following to say about the credit card industry: "The card industry is giving the argument that if you didn't want to be carjacked, why weren't you locking your doors or taking a different road?" (Thanks to New York Times' reporter Andrew Martin.)

The Times reports that the banking/credit card industry is threatening to move the economy backwards at least thirty years if tougher restrictions are put into place. Thirty years ago, if you wanted to have a credit card, you had to have excellent credit, be willing to pay an annual fee, and agree to be charged an interest on your purchases from the moment you made them. In other words, credit cards were primarily a status symbol for the wealthy.

If the industry does move backwards in this fashion, it will only occur through government mandate or collusion on the part of the industry itself. No bank or credit card company will be the first to make this move for fear that some other company would not, thus losing all of its card business over night.

Think of the devastating effect this would have on the Internet business. Amazon might have to go into the banking business itself to counteract its losses.

How Low Did They Go?

We'll probably never know just how vile and corrupt the Bush administration was, but the picture is becoming clearer.

GQ is providing a glimpse into the cynicism of the Bushies, releasing images of Don Rumsfield's cover images to his Pentagon briefings delivered to the president complete with Bible quotes intended to manipulate the simple minded W.

Rumsfeld, not a religious man himself, must have giggled with glee at ordering the Bible versus to be placed as headlines on the documents, expecting that only a handful of people would ever see them, the president and a few of Rumsfeld's henchmen who were every bit as cynical as him.

You can see a slide show of some of "Bush's Bible Briefings" here.

The Conservative Toehold:

Social conservatives are grasping for a cause that will ring with whatever constituency remains after the abomination of the Bush years, so they are preparing for a fight over Obama's appointment to the Supreme Court. They are priming for two issues: abortion rights and gay marriage, neither of which seem likely to hold much sway over an American electorate facing economic bankruptcy promulgated by conservative policies. (See The New York Times' story.)

Literacy:

Verlyn Klinkenborg addresses the value of reading aloud in today's New York Times. The article is well worth reading by anyone interested in education, whether teachers and administrators or parents. In fact, it is more important that parents read and consider Klinkenborg's argument. School officials at any level will do little without being pressured into it by parents and government.

The practice of reading aloud along with being read to, not only in childhood but throughout adulthood has been demonstrated to enhance literacy anectdotally, but no long term studies exist. Some group should be envolved in such a study, which should cover at least a thirty-year period and envolve a large test group over a significant educational and economic base.

We Know He Did It—Now Can We Prove It?

Prosecutor Nora Dannehy will, according to The Washington Post, interview Karl Rove today in conjunction with the federal investigation into the firing of federal prosecutors during the Bush administration's politicizing of the Justice Department. The question is whether a "smoking gun" will come to light that will allow prosecution and conviction.

Finally, A Senator Who Speaks the Truth:

Senator Bernard Sanders is an independent from Vermont. That explains in part why he could speak the truth openly in the U. S. Senate when he called the credit card industry nothing more than a "loan sharking" operation. Sanders tried to get a bill through that would limit interest rates on credit cards to a max of 15 percent, which, according to Judeo-Christian standards, is immoral. In fact, anything above 10 percent is usury and immoral.

But 2 out of 3 senators voted against the proposal. Should we be shocked that two-thirds of U. S. Senators are in favor of the current banking industry's Mafia-like practices?

The proposal had a number of other vary reasonable measures as well, reported in Carl Hulse's New York Times' article.

The Emperor Comes Out of Hiding:

Dick Cheney emerged from his money lined cave to become the face of the Republican party this past Sunday, supplanting Rush Limbaugh as, ah, err … the Republicans' version of the voice of reason. (Gag! Cough!) In the few days that have passed since that historic (sic) meeting on TV with one condescending reporter, the media has gone gaga over this new turn of events. Just when young Jeb had set out to repaint the Republican portrait, Tricky Dick No. 2 showed up to push the grand old party back into the cesspool. (See today's Washington Post.)

Background: Cheney is the politician whose private army enriched him during the current war in the middle east, a war whose rational was fabricated by Cheney among others. Cheney refused to divest himself of his financial interests during his time in office, as required by law. It should be noted that Cheney has never had anything to say about the state of the dollar, the economy, the banking industry, the environment, or any social issues. His soul philosophy of governing seems to be to fulfill his wishes to see Americans kill people in the middle east. Vicariously, of course. Tricky Dick No. 2 is also known as one of America's leading draft dodgers during the Vietnam War.

The man's a one trick pony, and that trick is to line his pockets with taxpayers' moneys.

Who Needs the Autobahn?

Hitler built the big multi-lane highway system on which drivers could travel at NASCAR speeds, and then he promoted the production of automobiles for Mr. Everyman (VWs). But today's hot news from Deutschland is the car-free society. In Vauban, Germany, if you want a garage for your car next to your house, you have to pay an extra $40,000. The residents there are trying to live without cars.

Europe has always been a fairly easy place to get around without mounting thousands of pounds of metal and and pumping tons of carbon into the air. It's an old place, and Europeans had to create a society long ago that allowed people and goods to move freely without automobiles. On the other hand, here in the U. S. we have made it virtually impossible to leave our own yards without being surrounded with metal.

Interestingly, while Europeans are moving away from the massively expensive mode of personal transportation, in India and China all the rage is to escape muscle power and public transportation. Will the carbon savings in Germany simply go up in smoke in other areas of the globe? (See The New York Times' story.)

Swift Boating Health Care:

The group that managed the swift-boating of John Kerry's presidential campaign are back at it, trying to destroy health care reform so that those who reap massive profits from the current system can continue to do so. This time they are being funded by Rick Scott, a former business partner with George W. Bush. Scott was once the CEO of a health insurance company found guilty of fraud and fined record amounts of money. He is now the founder of an advocacy group self-titled "Health Care for America Now" (sic), bent on funding misleading advertising intent on undermining any meaningful reform in the U. S. (See The Washington Post story.)

Latest News: Garbage Wrappers Disappearing!

Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich both devote their columns today to opining the condition of newsprint. Who will keep the government in check if no one is willing to subscribe to a daily newspaper?

Let me start with a confession—I've only subscribed to one newspaper in my life, and that was for a three-month trial period when I was in college. I have no interest in paying for the news, no matter how logical the argument.

The thing is I've always had free access to the news. When I was a child, my father subscribed to two daily papers, one local in the little community where I was raised and one from the closest big city. On Sundays he bought a copy of the Chicago Tribune. (Sorry, New York Times, Dad was a Yankee hater.)

By the time I was four years old, I had learned to read and write with those daily papers as prompts, mostly from following the "funny papers." Many years later I helped start a weekly newspaper whose circulation reached over 33,000. And my first publications came in newsprint while I was in college. As early as high school, testing indicated that I should have a career in publishing, probably as an editor. But I resisted for a long time. I wanted to play center field, preferably for the Chicago Cubs. (Ah, well, something about good eyesight got in the way.)

For many years, my favorite way to access newsprint was by way of the "counter paper" in a local diner. Corner restaurants always had several copies of various newspapers so that their coffee swilling customers had something to read and gossip about. (If you check out the history of coffee houses in Europe, you'll find this is an old story and an important one. They were hubs of political opinion making and revolution.)

Now blogging has taken the place of the coffee house. I can sit with my cup at my computer and read the paper and voice my reaction to the day's (or yesterday's) events and opinions. But I do confess that I miss the instant feedback from my coffee drinking buddies and the give and take of real conversation.

I have no idea how newspapers are going to survive their current decline. The state of the newspaper business has always been in a state of flux. Its history is more similar to that of a fruit fly, constantly evolving.

Newsprint and radio served us fairly well during the Second World War; and during the civil rights/free speech/Vietnam era, newsprint and TV served the public relatively well. But prior to WWII, newsprint was most notable for being yellow, and after the Nixon administration almost all of journalism sold its soul for a quick buck. During the last eight years, very nearly all of news media happily joined the propaganda program for the Bush administration's campaign to fight an illegal and immoral war.

"Build a better mouse trap and people will beat a path to your door." Maybe, but only if they are willing to admit they have a problem with rodents.

"Politicians are people who are willing to do the jobs that no one else wants to." Which is why they believe it is their right to raid the public treasury.

When America Declared War on Americans:

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the murder of four students at Kent State University (May 4, 1970), fulfilling a wish by then President Richard Nixon, who wanted anti war protesters to be stopped, preferably by having someone shoot some of them. Ohio Governor Rhodes was pleased to set a series of events in motion that would satisfy the desires of his party's president.

For a worthwhile account, visit the Kent State University site where Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley describe the events and provide an excellent bibliography. Lewis and Hensley neither confirm nor reject my view of the events of that day.

It must be noted that isolating the events of that day does little justice to the historical period leading up to and following it, from the race issues, including the marches lead by Martin Luther King to the riots that set fire to American cities, from the free speech movement to the anti war movement that spread over a twenty-year period of time. It begins with the McCarthy Hearings and perhaps only ends now with the election of the first African American president.

After W Crashes Your Party, What Do You Do?

Invite his brother Jeb to a local pizza restaurant and tell people you're non-partisan. And, uh, tell Rush to stay home.

So the frat party got outa hand and the jokers burnt the house down. Now some Republicans want to rebuild. They just don't know which way to turn. Not left, that's for sure, but the right is a cul-de-sac. Where does a Mitt (made his money from destroying the livelihoods of working families) or a Jeb (inherited his fortune) go? I mean besides a pizza restaurant. (See "GOP Leaders Try to Polish Party's Image.") Here's a clue—they haven't figured that out yet. Hey, guys, thought about a third party? I know, that'd mean the Dems would remain in power a little longer, but let's face it, doesn't look like they're going anywhere any time soon.

Dowd Ruminates over Student Grilling of Condi:

Reflecting over the recent defection of moderate Republican Sen. Specter to the Democratic party, Maureen Dowd quotes former Secretary of State Condi Rice's reply to a student who questioned her about whether water boarding amounted to torture. "Unless you were there … after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Dr. Rice said. Hey, doesn't that sound just like the excuse given by the guy who murdered his wife?

Earlier in the op-ed, Dowd quotes Rice as stating, "I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency." In other words, Rice was just the messanger boy. How convenient. Where have we heard that excuse before? Nuremburg?

What's Up with Pakistan?

A hint about how a bunch of insurgents whose only allegiance hinges on mutual hatred and a desire for power could come so close to the national capitol of Pakistan without that country's military doing more than making a show appears in today's New York Times. Helen Cooper and Mark Mazzetti report on the Obama administration's "reaching out to the former prime minister, … whose ties to Islamists could help" the current president of Pakistan. In other words, major forces within Pakistan and its military see a political advantage to allowing the insurgents to run amok in the nation, threatening to gain access to nuclear weapons.

In the U. S., the "loyal opposition" just has Dick "the Emporor" Cheney running around crying "the sky is falling," while in places like Pakistan, the opposition allows an insurgency to murder people. Guess there is something to be greatful for in all of this.

Who Will Obama Pick?

The big question now is who will President Obama pick for the Supreme Court vacancy now that Justice Souter has decided to retire. He wants a woman, and a woman "of color" would please quite a few people, but appointing his wife might be more than congress could stand for. Sec. of State Clinton would be ideal, but then he'd have to fill her current position. (See today's New York Times.)

I told my daughter yesterday that she'd make a great candidate. She's had six months experience at the International Criminal court and I'd be glad to help her out with any decisions, but she said she'd already been accepted at grad school and didn't think she could fit Supreme Court duties in with her busy schedule. I reminded her that the court isn't like the old days. They don't hear all that many cases anymore, and she could probably fit her time in Washington into her weekends. In addition, the justices all have a bevy of clerks who prepare their questions for them and write their conclusions, and if a 79-year-old could do the job, then why not a 23-year-old?