Today is a day of transition and, I'm optimistic about the new direction we're heading even if we've got a lot of rough road ahead.  It feels like a day to think about the future, but in the interests of not repeating history, I'd like to take one last moment to think about what we've been through in the last eight years. 

The fundamental lesson here is that our understanding of how the government is supposed to work isn't necessarily how it actually works.  For example, throughout our civics lessons in school we come to understand the notion of checks and balances.  We don't learn about signing statements.  We don't learn that party loyalty can effectively give a President unlimited power.  We don't learn about the theory of the unitary executive. 

I think though that it's all too easy to put the blame for all of what happened on Bush.  To sacrifice him for our sins and pretend we weren't party to it.  We got comfortable with our nation as it was and thought the party could go on forever.  That's not how it works and now we will pay the price for decades of overindulgence that merely reached their pinnacle under Bush's watch.  We will learn that while America is unique and great, that does not make us invulnerable.

It is only through our collective effort that the country becomes great.  It is only through engagement with our politics and with our communities that this country is strong.  We forgot about that for a while, but I have hope that we've relearned this lesson. 

Government is important.  Civic involvement is important.  When we ignore this, we end up with people like Bush in charge.  I have tremendous optimism about what Obama can accomplish, but we still have to hold his feet, and those of congress, to the fire.  We must stay engaged and make sure that Obama's talk of change was more than just hollow rhetoric.  We can trust, but we definitely need to verify.

From the Boston Globe's big picture series:

It seems that Bush is continuing to press for some kind of permanent presence in Iraq.  Not a shock.  Here's what I don't get:

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

In order for this agreement to have any binding weight on Obama's presidency, it would have to be passed by the House and Senate.  Bush can make all the executive agreements he wants, but they are not upheld by the force of US law unless the Congress signs off on it.  I see at tremendously unlikely that you'll get any such bill through this Congress, so why all the kvetching?

Besides, Bush was able to ignore the Geneva Fucking Convention without a hint of consequence, so why couldn't Obama just ignore this, congressional approval or not?  I mean wouldn't this be part of his Article II war powers, to decide what the military is going to do?  To be clear, I really don't want to see another President pulling BS like that and I don't think it will come to that point because this won't pass.  Still, it does illustrate how the president, though he has much power, it is ultimately far more transient than the power of the Congress.

So Scott McClellan has a new tell all book out that basically reinforces a lot of existing memes about the Bush presidency.  That the Iraq war was not started for the claimed reasons.  That Bush was deceptive.  It's nothing we don't already know, it just acts as some validation of what we did know.

I was listening to a talk show this afternoon, and they were talking about the impact of this book.  The reality is there will be ZERO impact from this book.  Is anybody who, today, supports Bush and his actions going to read this book and turn against him?  No..  Is this going to push anybody against Bush who was previously on the fence?  Who at this point is even on the fence?

The reality is that you go into reading this book, assuming you even read it, with a set of preconceived notions about the truth of the situation.  If you're supporting Bush you can read this as nothing but a tabloid tell all to make a quick buck, which it is.  If you're against Bush you read this as a validation of all that you've been told up til now, which it is.  Really though, most people won't read this book and instead will get their side's flavor of spin, ending up right where they are today.  I know I'm not reading it.  I just don't see anybody being moved to change their opinion based on this book.

There was some supposition that this book would hurt McCain because t's an attack on Bush and McCain is being tied to Bush.  But I don't think this is going to drive down Bush's approval levels any lower than they are.  McCain's Bush problem is the same today as it was a week ago.  The only bright side for McCain is that it would be hard for public opinion of Bush to get any worse than it already is.

One other note about his book.  Somebody was questioning the timing of the book in relation to the campaign, suggesting on some level that McClellan was trying to screw up McCain.  Hog wash.  This is the perfect time to release this book if your primary motivation is to make a buck.  If I was the publisher, this is exactly when I'd want to release it.  They knew from early on that there wouldn't be a lot going on in the campaign right now.  They also knew that releasing a Bush tell all after the election wouldn't get the same reaction because we'll have moved on.  As expected, this is getting a ton of coverage on cable news because they've got nothing else to talk about at the moment.  So from a publicity and money making perspective, you'd be hard pressed to beat this release date.

Bush, from an interview on the Today show:

Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy is adjusting. On the other hand we’re just about to kick out 157 billion dollars to our taxpayers……what would have been had we abandoned Iraq when times were tough and let those soldiers die in vain..

Wow...  Just wow.  I still hope sometimes that he talks like he's a fucking idiot, not because he IS a fucking idiot, but because he thinks it plays well for him politically.  Like maybe he says something so incredibly fucking stupid, then goes to Ben Bernanke and starts talking about the intricacies of fed policy.  That maybe, just maybe, it's all a charade and he'll explain how he's really too clever by half in his memoir.  Like he can write...

Anyhow, it's fair to say that whomever wins the Presidency will be an infinite site better than Jackass McChimponaut.

So here's a fun fact for you:

• Estimated inflation for 2006 - 4.3%
• Estimated growth in wages for 2006 - 4.3%

So this means that wage growth was flat when averaged over the economy.  The thing is that wages have been growing faster at the higher end of the market, so that means a lot of people are experiencing wage decreases relative to inflation.  If you go in for your annual review this year and get a 3% raise, you just took a 1.3% pay cut.  Congrats.

Now, take that and check this out.  From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. employment posted its smallest increase in over four years last month as the housing downturn continued to take its toll, while the jobless rate hit a two-year high, indicating a weak finish for the U.S. economy in 2007.

...

Average hourly earnings increased $0.07, or 0.4%, to $17.71. That was up 4.3% from a year earlier, indicating some pressure on wage costs from relatively tight labor markets.

Huh?  So the article starts off with talking about unemployment going UP, and then talks about a tight labor market because wages are barely keeping pace with inflation.  What kind of drugs are they taking at the WSJ and where can I get some?  I grant that you can have wage driven inflation in an economy, but given that there's been obvious inflation in commodity prices, it doesn't really make sense to think that wages are part of that.  It especially doesn't make sense if unemployment is ticking up.

Oh and apparently Bush, Wunderkind that he is, is talking about an economic stimulus package.  I don't know the details, but odds are it will involve tax cuts for the rich.  Bush, you shmuck, WE HAVE NO MONEY!  We're deeply in debt right now, so where are you planning to find this "stimulus".  Sweet jesus he is dumb. 

A quote from Bush today:

"There is one thing I’m not going to do. I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

Excellent.  So umm, what is the mission precisely?  I keep forgetting

Has anybody else noticed that Bush's common theme on international diplomacy is that an imperfect status quo is, by definition, a problem?  When he came into office, we had an agreement with North Korea that wasn't perfect but was keeping things relatively stable.  In Iraq, Saddam was in power still, but we had him well contained. 

I can see that sometimes an apparently stable situation can be an unstable situation brewing.  That perhaps it is best to destabilize a situation in the short run to establish a better status quo.  The trouble is, in this administration, they seem to have any foresight about the negative consequences of such actions.  They kick over the hornets' nest assuming it is currently unoccupied.  

It is fair to say that had the Bush administration been willing to allow an imperfect situation to continue in Korea they would not have a nuke today.  Had they continued to work directly to further the original agreed framework and expand it to include controls on Uranium enrichment, we'd not be where we are today.  Now we have a new status quo, North Korea with a functional, if not entirely effective, nuclear weapon.

In Iraq, it is fair to say that eventually Saddam would have fallen, and it's possible that the anarchy we see there today would have happened anyhow.  Perhaps one could reasonably conclude that us being directly involved in his removal would empower us to help control where the pieces fall and minimize the damage from his collapse.  The trouble is, it's quite clear that the administration didn't think there'd be any damage to cleanup as their plans called for a rapid withdrawl.  So why was our intervention even necessary given that the WMD thing was a hoax.

I'm somewhat of a believer in Realpolitik.  I think on some level, to achieve a modicum of peace and stability you need to be willing to pick your fights and sometimes let an imperfect status quo continue.  Do we want Kim Jung Il with obvious nuclear amibtions in charge in North Korea?  Of course not.  But perhaps it might have been smarter to buy time, maintaining the status quo there while we were distracted with other problems.  Now North Korea is acting, more or less, with impunity, knowing we are in no position to stop them.  How is this better?

On the subject of Bush's torture proposal and Colin Powell's objection to it:

Snow last week attributed Powell's opposition to confusion on the part of the president's former secretary of state. He tried to retract the charge, but the president piled on anyway, dismissing Powell's missive by saying that he'd seen "all kinds of letters" about his plan and suggesting that Powell had somehow equated the United States with terrorists.

Here's a tip for the Bush administration.  You'd best be careful when you start impugning the reputation of the people who know where the bodies are burried.

If this is true, this is HUGE.  We have a potential link between bush and torture, but even worse, torture of a mentally ill man just to support Bush's assertion that this man was a high ranking Al Qaeda official.  Check out the article here.  An excerpt follows...

The Bush administration has had this long running habbit of taking large chunks of the budget and making them supplementals. So if you look at Bush's budget you'll see nothing about funding the Iraq war. Instead that is passed as a seperate supplemental to the tune of $80 billion or so. This has three main advantages:

1) It allows them to provide budgets numbers that sound better than they are
2) Nobody digs into the supplementals as much as a full budget. There's large numbers of people that do nothing but dig up details on the budgets, but not so on the supplemental
3) Who would vote down a supplemental to "support our troops". This means they can sneak in little things they want to go through and make everybody vote on it or risk getting admonished as hating the troops or flip-flopping or what have you.

It seems that on point 3, Bush is about to get his comeuppance:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) will attach the legislation as early as Wednesday to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with President Bush, who has vowed to veto any bill delaying or stopping Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.

So Bush will either have to sign a bill that kills the port deal or veto a bill that "supports the troops". Nice to see him being put through the wringer for once.

Having said that I think killing the port deal is a bit extreme. What we need is an actual thorough review of the deal. The problem we face is that we cannot trust the administration to do this. The deal as it now stands went through their review and got passed with little effor to really investigate it. Coincidentally, the head of the review committee, Snow, from Treasury, has $30 million worth of options that vest when the port deal closes (due to a previous sale of those ports to P&O from CSX when he worked there).

So in the grand schem if my choice is no port deal, or a port deal with no serious vetting, I prefer no deal.

A meeting of the minds: