Author: Brian

The author at CoolBuzz constructed these words too:

“Simplicity is hard to achieve. While its easy to make a simple thing complicated, molding a complicated idea in a simple manner is hard and when someone achieves just that, it is called creativity. A resourceful mind can map out anything unusual into reality. Sometime it receives applause, and at times it goes beyond such mundane forms of praise.

“A renowned floral urinal designer, Clark Sorensen, has widened his forte, making a Presidential toilet! Mind, it ain’t for the White House but bears President George W Bush’s face – not much to be mocked.

“The designer asserts that his presidential toilet design expresses his view of the President’s last eight years of rule.”

I’m clipping this whole much thing.
And she spent far more on clothes than was reported:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family–clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Finally, Steve Schmidt (who reportedly picked Palin as VP) would not let her speak on election night.

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended.

Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

Read more highlights here. Read the Newsweek story here.

Lose The Decider

“You know, if there is a role in national politics it won’t be so much partisan,” Palin said. “My efforts have always been here in the state of Alaska to get everybody to unite and work together to progress this state … it certainly would be a uniter type of role.”

Gain A Uniter

NY Times:

Cheney & Bush rev up their Wrecking Balls

We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.

As Les Lohman commented,

The thing to do is to get involved and stay involved. Write your congressman. Phone your Senator. Send letters and emails to the White House. Let ’em know what the will of the people is. Let advisors know. Get on the blogs and comment. Create your own blog and voice your opinion. Pick a method, ANY method, of getting and staying involved. Just DON’T SIT ON YOUR HANDS. Don’t “Wait and See”. Because we, the people can effect change.

“Yes, we can.“

After running for office while carrying water, Ron Paul ponders:

Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job:

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”

I enjoy Roger Cohen:

Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental at stake in this U.S. election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people.

Obama said: “For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we are connected as one people.”

Read this piece by Frank Schaeffer at Polly’s Hrrmph! blog:

Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.

Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we have the leader for our times.

I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the proud father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching his pension evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone who knows it’s time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put the country first.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy For God – How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

John McCain – the veteran war hero – finally gave up the fight on an Arizonan lawn, under a cloudless night sky, by gently swaying palm trees.

At the BBC on McCain’s Last Battle, there are many comments from readers in the UK and around the world. You will be heartened by reading a few. There are several smart, warm and healing statements from many citizens.

Here in Amman, the sun seems to be shining more brightly this morning. I teach in Queen Rania’s school and the children are walking around wishing each other a ‘Happy Obama Day’. Says it all really.

…
Thank you, John McCain, it graces him to be magnanamous in defeat like this.
It is good that Obama is to be the next president, and also good that McCain is indicating his recognition of the way the world is changing.
All very positive.

…
McCain was gracious in defeat and is an inspiration for many. How he conducted himself should be taken as a shining example by leaders everywhere on how to deal with loss and how to be the better person in your worst hour.

International Herald Tribune:

So Little Time So Much Damage

Here’s a sobering reminder: As of Wednesday, George W. Bush still has 76 days left in the White House.

And he’s not wasting a minute.

President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights among others – few for the good.

In a week or so our attention will turn to what is called the second Bretton Woods [wiki]. Hundreds of executives and staff are preparing for the upcoming meeting of the G-20. A phrase that sums up the purpose of the meet-up is that they will “apply globally the lessons learned” from this horrid financial crisis.

“Complexity, transparency, liquidity and leverage have all played a huge role in this crisis.” [link] [link]

The nation is a mess and nothing could be better.
Arrogance will quit and ignorance with it.
Promise is front and proof critical.
Sense overcomes position.
Courage returns.

We are America.

OK
America Again.

I want more than politics.
More than winning.
Not battle.
Justice.

America’s Defense Meltdown

1. Never has the US spent more in real or relative terms on defense.
2. Not since the 1930’s has America had so little real capability to meet the real threats that confront it.

Our Military is in trouble but spending is way up. We have far less capability with far greater cost.

There is something wrong with this picture. Readiness and force strength is declining but the cost has never been higher.

We have an inventory of equipment that is worn out and a pipeline of new equipment that is too expensive or too complex and in most cases totally unsuited to the threat that America can face.

What’s the problem and why should anyone care?

“The problem appears to be the same as the problem that has just delivered the financial crisis.”

The leadership of the system has gamed it by using the procurement process and by using the personnel process to focus on the needs of the leadership itself versus the needs of the nation.

“Big men in the pentagon have big procurement programs. Big men in the field drive carrier groups, armored divisions and fleets of bombers. The fact that all of these have no value in wars means nothing.”

America spends more than all possible enemies combined.

The British and Americans each have a strong class system, though it’s not acknowledged in the USA, or if so, often with blind anger. This early 1950s photo by London’s Robert Frank exposes the position of lives whether chosen or circumstance. [from wood s lot]

This NASA image captures the curvature of the Earth and shows our atmosphere.

“Meanwhile, the White House, the center of power in this superpower, seemed oddly abandoned, as if no one were at home.

“As if 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., were temporarily closed for renovations.”

“We never had such a large number of people, at least if you believe public opinion polls, saying that the country is on the wrong track. The reason is a combination of the war in Iraq, but even more the feeling of economic insecurity. Globalization, de-industrialization, declining real wages, even for people who have jobs, life is getting more difficult. Then I think a complete loss of confidence in government. Whoever becomes president, they are going to have to convince voters that they can actually make a difference.”

For all the crimes and mistakes of the Bush Administration, I think one of its greatest failings was just utter incompetence.

But to know where this crisis is headed over the next year or so, you need to watch a different number: the size of the US trade deficit.

In the third quarter, the U.S. had a trade deficit of $707 billion (€550 billion) — equal to 5 percent of GDP at an annual rate. That’s smaller than the peak deficit of nearly $800 billion in the third quarter of 2006, but it’s still an astonishing sum, especially since every dollar of the trade deficit is another dollar that the rest of the world has to lend the US.

Homeowners are staggering, Wall Street is flat on its back, and the country is in the greatest credit crunch since the Great Depression — yet America keeps borrowing by the truckload. If this crisis was caused by too much debt, how long can the trade deficit stay so high?

There are three possible scenarios for the trade deficit:

Business as usual
One possibility is that the trade deficit remains high. The rest of the world keeps shipping goods and services to the US while it continues to lend the US the money to pay for the imports.

Global restructuring
Alternatively, the trade deficit shrinks because US consumers cut back on imports and the rest of the world has to adjust to a global economy that lacks the US’s customary demand and borrowing.

Innovative growth
The final possibility is that the trade deficit shrinks because the US exports more innovative goods and services to the rest of the world.

Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.

Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates that burglary and robbery – street crimes – costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds – Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron – swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.

The savings and loan fraud – which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called “the biggest white collar swindle in history” – cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.

And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year – and on down the list.

Education, science, innovation. Are we supporting progress? I don’t think so. Our nation has fallen in all ranks while ideologues and pirates have been in power. Whether cars or cellphones, we are fed inaccurate stories about our achievements. We are not safe.

Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winner for economics, warns us in the NYTimes that

“…the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.”

…
“Also, the Republican base already seems to be gearing up to regard defeat not as a verdict on conservative policies, but as the result of an evil conspiracy.”

There are too few articulate explanations about why we war or live in a culture of battle or fail to build a civil nation.

We have too little understanding about how superstition can rise to power.

Here’s an article worthy of thought:
The Evidence Establishes, without Question, that Republican Rule Is Dangerous: Why It Is High Time to Fix This Situation, For the Good of the Nation

The Nation’s William Greider:

“The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national election.”

United Steelworkers Union prez Leo Gerard cracks open the sweetheart deal that bailed out nine banks–and likely lined the Treasury Secretary’s own pockets–with billions of taxpayer dollars.

Does anybody care?

And then, The Nation adds the fire of Naomi Klein:

When European colonialists realized that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.

The Bush gang prefers bureaucratic instruments: “distressed asset” auctions and the “equity purchase program.”

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian Governments, whether Nazi or Communist. It is only when extreme danger to the State can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the Executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a Free Parliament. As the danger passes, persons so imprisoned, against whom there is no charge which courts and juries would accept, should be released, as you have been steadily doing, until hardly any are left. Extraordinary powers assumed by the Executive with the consent of Parliament in emergencies should be yielded up when and as the emergency declines.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.” – Winston Churchill