Take a Deep Breath...

I ran into this article courtesy of Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic.

Some things are just true. These are some of them.

"In an America in which the former president can boast on television that he approved the water-boarding of U.S. prisoners, it can hardly be a shock that following a lengthy investigation, no criminal charges will be filed against those who destroyed the evidence of CIA abuse of prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd a-Rahim al-Nashiri. We keep waiting breathlessly for someone, somewhere, to have a day of reckoning over the prisoners we tortured in the wake of 9/11, without recognizing that there is no bag man to be found and that therefore we are all the bag man.

"President Barack Obama decided long ago that he would "turn the page" on prisoner abuse and other illegality connected to the Bush administration's war on terror. What he didn't seem to understand, what he still seems not to appreciate, is that what was on that page would bleed through onto the next page and the page after that. There's no getting past torture. There is only getting comfortable with it. The U.S. flirtation with torture is not locked in the past or in the black sites or prisons at which it occurred. Now more than ever, it's feted on network television and held in reserve for the next president who persuades himself that it's not illegal after all....

"Eric Holder and Barack Obama have taken pains to tell the American people that water-boarding is illegal torture. So what? That's just their opinion. President Bush disagrees. The persistent failure to hold anyone accountable at any level for years of state-sanctioned abuse speaks louder than their words. It has taken this issue from a legal question to a matter of personal taste. What we choose to define as torture is now just another policy disagreement, like extending the Bush tax cuts or picking a caterer."

(emphasis mine)

Is there really a question if torture is wrong? While many may justify, condone or even support leaders who ‘make the hard choice’ and set aside their morality for the illusion of greater security – does anyone really think that torture is acceptable?

Or do they simply choose to ignore these acts and their consequences, hoping that history will somehow accept the argument that the ends were justified in a country founded on the concept of individual freedom and rights?

Who are these people?

They are you and me.  

I like Teddy; he manhandled the powers of the Presidential office but he hated monopolies and those who preyed on average American citizens.

See, there are circumstances in which I would vote Republican!
 

Scientology used to freak me the hell out. But now I realize, they are just after influence and money in Hollywood. Well honey, they can have it with a big side of 'Tom Cruise'.

What I am worried about are these guys.

As noted in the commentary from readers at digby’s blog ‘Hullabaloo’ – we have places for folks who are religious extremists attempting to undermine our government.

Representative-democracy, not Theocracy. Big difference.

Prediction or fantasy: I'm holding on to it forfuture reference:

From ClusterStock, Oct. 1, 2008:

Now that the government has been terrified into rubber-stamping the bailout, what happens now?

In our opinion, here's the most likely scenario:

• Hank Paulson & Co. survey the banking industry and decide who will stay and who will go. JP Morgan (JPM), Citi (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) will stay. Goldman (GS) will probably stay. Morgan Stanley (MS) might stay. Everyone else in trouble could go. The government doesn't need to save all banks. It just needs to save some.
• Within a month or two, Paulson buys $250 billion of worthless assets. He pays more than market value, but not an egregious amount more (because the public will be watching these early rounds). Over the next six months, he buys $700 billion of assets...and then he--or his successor--asks Congress for more money.
• Confidence improves modestly, but banks continue to hoard capital and credit markets stay tight. Loans stay expensive and hard to get. This keeps pressure on the economy.
• The credit crunch filters through to consumers: Credit cards, home equity loans, mortgages, car loans, etc., get more expensive, putting more pressure on consumers and forcing them to cut back further.
• The economic news continues to get worse: American consumers continue to pull back, housing continues to fall (as of July, the year over year declines were still accelerating), companies begin to cut back, which leads to layoffs--which puts more pressure on consumers.
• The global economy continues to weaken: Europe, Asia, and, eventually, emerging markets. This is already happen, and everyone else is later in the cycle than we are.
• The stock market continues to fall, as corporate earnings come under increasing pressure and hope for an early 2009 recovery fades. Analysts are still expecting huge growth in S&P 500 earnings for next year.  These estimates will get cut by at least a third.
• The government enacts further measures to try to stop the fall in asset prices (stocks, houses)--including an expansion of the bailout plan--but these don't work.  Governments always try to do this. They never succeed. All they do is delay the inevitable.
• A new round of white-collar prosecutions send a new posse of corporate villains to jail. Some will be guilty. Some won't. All will be hated.
• The government announces a new New Deal, finally investing in the country's infrastructure, in the hopes that this will stimulate the economy (which it will). Investments include broadband, green tech, wireless, physical infrastructure, et al.
• Eventually, asset prices will bottom: Housing down 40% in real terms, the stock market down at least 50%. With luck, this will happen by early 2010, so the recovery can begin.  Warren Buffett loads the boat with stocks, but by that time, most people are too depressed (and poor) to follow him.
• Unlike Japan, we finally force our banks to write down assets as far as they need to be written down...and then recapitalize them. This is what we should have done in the current bailout, but we'll get it right next time (we hope). 
• We gradually begin a long-term economic recovery, one in which consumers save a greater percentage of income, thrift and saving again become admirable qualities, we gradually begins to wean itself off international oil, and the bacchanalian decades of the 1990s and 2000s become an embarrassing memory.
• The stock market finally begins a new, long-term bull market, in which stocks once again return 10%+ per year.  Unfortunately, most Americans will be so sickened by the stock losses they've sustained since 2000 that they'll miss many years of it.