Boy Games

And they call women drama queens! Let's see what's happening: The governor of Illinois is testing his ability to rile within the political arena by appointing a replacement for Barack Obama after being arrested for trying to sell the seat he has just given to Roland W. Burris, a former Illinois comptroller and attorney general. Who just so happens to be African American! And if the Senate allows him to take his seat, he will be the only African American Senator.

Bad boys behaving badly so that they can upkeep their public presence while the storm of history swirls by?

“Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat,” Mr. Obama said. “I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it.”

According to the New York Times, "[A]s governor, Mr. Blagojevich has the authority under the Illinois Constitution to appoint Mr. Obama’s replacement. But on Dec. 11, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said: “If the allegations in the criminal complaint against Governor Blagojevich are proven true, he has clearly abused the public trust. No appointment by this Governor could produce a credible replacement.”

Then there is Hamas and Israel in another squabble, asking for "Daddy Obama" to settle their latest dispute before too many innocent people get killed in the cross fire.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Thailand?

Will Obama be able to take a moment to breathe? Pick out the colors for the private quarters of the White House? Choose the puppy for his daughters?

And ironies of ironies: AIG, once the world's largest insurance company, now owned by the American public and nearly worthless, might have to pay off in the Bernard Madoff scandal for the losses resulting from the fraud. Read here and laugh. We always end up losing.

I Want to Be Sedated!

While my daughter and I attended the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker last night at Lincoln Center, I missed the inspiration of the season: 60 Minutes of Barack Obama's rise from an obscure Illinois State Senator to President-Elect of the United States of America.

I adore The Nutcracker, although I must say that I had to take a hiatus for several years when my daughter reached those creepy mid-tween years. My friend Nicky helped me out and took her for two years. But this year, my daughter and I went together, got great seats last minute, and surrounded by little princesses in their velvet smocks, accompanied by their mothers with admirable bodies, we enjoyed George Balanchine's first choreographed full length ballet, danced, of course, to Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky's score.

It's over the top, but at the last scene, I cried, as I always do. The ballet is thrilling.

What we missed, however, was the 60 Minutes show about Obama. This afternoon an old friend called to wish me a happy New Year.

"A new year, a new war," I moaned as I surfed through the newest headlines about Gaza.

"I'm sending you a link. Watch it!"

And I did with my husband this evening while he made dinner. It worked. I feel much more optimistic again. With Obama on vacation in Hawai'i, I had lost confidence that we could ever find our way through the morass.

So I want to share it with you, too, click here for the link.

Need a Job?

At 6:40 am EST, the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, ran an advertisement for people to apply for the clandestine service of the CIA!

What's With the Republican Party?

I somehow brought myself to watch several YouTube.com videos of "Barack the Magic Negro," a CD version of which Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, sent out to Republican leadership. One that I can't find this morning made the message of this, I don't want to call it a parody, a too tame description, by Paul Shanklin obvious: to connect Barack Obama with less admirable African American men: Al Sharpton, Snoop Dog, and Jesse Jackson. The parody, aired by Rush Limbaugh, originally came out in the Spring 2007, just at the point when Obama was raising his profile and visibility in the Democratic campaign for president.

It's racist, pure and simple. The visuals available on YouTube might be homemade by others, but the lyrics and the intent of the song are despicable.

When the Obama campaign connected McCain with the wrongs of the Bush administration, it wasn't done by saying both men were white.

And that this racist message is being used in the Republican Party as a tactic to elect its new leadership exposes just what's wrong with that party. Especially now when there are no black Republicans in Congress.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and African American himself, famous for his role in creating a disputed Ohio election in 2004, dismissed the fuss as “hypersensitivity.” Michael S. Steele, another African American who is running for the position, the former Maryland lieutenant government and a frequent guest on Bill Maher's weekly HBO show, said Saltsman’s attempt at humor was misguided. “Our actions and our words are oftentimes used to define who we are as Republicans,” Steel said.

As well it should!

Keeping Church and State Separate

Every time Barack Obama tries to inject his campaign and now incoming administration with evidence of his Christianity, he blunders. First, it was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his often incendiary rhetoric, a story broken by ABC News in March, 2008. Those videos distributed on YouTube.com thrust the issue of race front and center, and led to Obama's insightful and calming Philadelphia speech on race. It also led Hillary Clinton to affect a twang and insinuate that she was the candidate of white America. We know how that ended.

Now Obama has made the strange decision to ask Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, to give the invocation at his inauguration despite Warren's rather public and condemning stand on homosexuality. And just at the time when Proposition 8 is dividing California and the country, and the bioflick "Milk" is reminding us that twenty years ago a bunch of homophobic idiots tried to remove homosexuals from the teaching profession.

The Obama controversy led Warren to remove from the Saddleback Church's website the language previously noted that said that homosexuals could not be members of the Saddleback Church. That could be perceived as a good thing, a gesture of conciliation, perhaps.

NO! Watch Rachel Maddow take us through the timeline of the controversy to Rick Warren's December 22nd posting on the Saddleback website of his "unscripted" and "untruthful" retelling of his views on homosexuality. His latest meandering discussion is frankly disturbing and disingenuous. Listen to his December 22, 2008 News & Views post, if you dare.

Or read through Frank Rich's column today in the New York Times on Obama's decision to ask Rick Warren to perform such a prominent role in the inauguration.

Which leads me to conclude that this pandering to the religious elements of the American electorate must stop. The Heritage Foundation has been trying to rewrite American history with revisionist analysis that "proves" the Founding Fathers were indeed Christians, yes, and intended to keep religion in American government. NO! There is a reason why we need to keep the two separate, and that was why there is a First Amendment that contains not one, but two limitations on government and religion: the establishment and the free exercise clauses. The document, not a sacred document, but a foundation of our government, doesn't use Christian language, but uses secular language to establish the strcutre of America.

So after watching eight years when global warming, science, evolution, birth control, environmental protection, to name just the obvious, were disregarded, distorted, and denied, isn't it time to recognize that using religion as a justification for these delusional views was an insane tactic and one that might lead to the destruction of the planet?

All the while, of course, that sin of Christianity--greed--was allowed to fester as evidence of the vitality of the free market system.

Bush's War on Women Continues

The Washington Post reported on December 26, 2008, that the CIA is handing out Viagra, yes, Viagra, to cooperative older Afghani chieftains in exchange for information about the Taliban. The little blue pill is now ten years old, and is being celebrated by becoming a tool in the "war on terror."

Having just finished reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns," the second novel by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote "The Kite Runner," the use of Viagra is yet another notch in the belt of the Bush administration's war on women. Hosseini is an Afghani emigre to the United States, trained as a doctor, who brought to us in 2003 the wondrous novel "The Kite Runner," giving a face, flesh, and body to the turmoil in Afghanistan. In 2007, he published "A Thousand Splendid Suns," because he wanted to focus on the plight of women in tribal and Taliban Afghanistan.

Illiterate young women, many still girls, in tribal areas, are regularly wed to older men. That's bad enough. Now with access to Viagra, these practices take on such cruel and horrifying aspects that they should be added to the list of war crimes mounting against the Bush administration. It's rape, it's often a form of genocide.

Radical Change or Nothing

Some of my dearest friends chipped in and bought me a Kindle for my sixtieth birthday. It's on back order so I have some time to get accustomed to this new electronic device in my life. I'm a reader: I subscribe to The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and I get the New York Times delivered on Saturday and Sunday. My daughter's subscriptions to The Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair were sent to me this fall since she was studying abroad. Unlike my husband, I do not read every article in every magazine. I skim, I cherry pick, I only read what keeps my attention.

I read several books at a time. I have a well-worn library card, because I have a forty minute each way commute to work and am addicted to books-on-tape, now books-on-cd. I refuse to buy them, because they are far too expensive. Instead I pressure my local library to improve the quality of their purchases, so that I have more choices. This week I am listening to Toni Morrison read her new book A Mercy. Not an easy task since it is breathtakingly sorrowful and so poetic that sometimes I don't quite understand what is happening, and have to wait patiently, until Morrison is ready to fill in the gaps.

With a Kindle, I will have to download books, for a price, from Amazon.com, abandoning my allegiance to my local independent book store and the library, except for my books-on-cd, although I understand I can download those and listen in the car from my Kindle.

Having spent a lifetime touching books--my grandfather, the same one who taught me about opera, gave me a book every time he saw me, using the Kindle will be a radical change for me. I once spent a dismal plane ride, circling Philadelphia for hours because we couldn't land at LaGuardia, seated next to an artist who designed the interior of the bookstore I never opened. Way before anyone else did it, I thought about having a book store and cafe. But like my idea to have a singles bar in a laundromat, I never got around to it.

I won't be touching books anymore, but will have the opportunity, according to my friends, to underline and write notes, and store multiple books on my Kindle, so that I can access them later. I do deface books regularly, which is the reason why I buy many of them instead of relying solely on the public library.

Eating Christmas dinner with friends last night, we talked about what needs to happen in order to change the course of this downward tailspin: retail sales down 5-8% (much of it the result of falling gas prices); Bergdorf Goodman, the most luxurious department store in New York, having an on-line sale advertized on nytimes.com, sharing its spot with the film "Doubt,", Neiman Marcus, and "Revolutionary Road"; daily reports that this charity, every college and university, or that social justice organization begging for funding because of the hedge fund collapse, Bernie Madoff, or the dive in the world stock markets; labor unions panting from the accusations lodged against them after they worked so hard to elect Barack Obama, mostly because unlike most of us, they have fixed-benefit pensions still. The list could go on forever, I suppose.

What we concurred on was this: despairing times call for radical change. It's the only time radical change is feasible. So dump Caroline Kennedy as the choice for New York's new Senator and absolutely forget about Jeb Bush as Florida's Senator in 2010. Haven't we learned that dynasties are a waste of time. Read Paul Krugman about the need to have radical change, but squeaky clean radical change. Read Frank Rich in his suggestion that the brightest might not be what we need right now.

This is our opportunity to think outside the box. To be radical. To move the stream.

The Price of Oil Might Mean the Demise of Sarah Palin

There are some unintended consequences to the drop in oil prices. Yes, number 1 is that we can drive again, that the price of everything is dropping, and that we had a taste of what we have to do in order to save the planet, our water supply, and atmosphere.

Then there is the demise of Sarah Palin. Remember her? According to the Pew Research Center on the People and the Press, Tina Fey's characterization of Sarah Palin, especially her parody of the interview with Katie Couric, was responsible for the American public questioning her credentials to serve as vice president to a 72 year old man who was abused during his imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton.

As governor of Alaska, now she has to deal with the fact that oil from Alaska is selling for as low as $30 a barrel.

Will she be able to govern when Alaska isn't rolling in oil dough?

And when is the wedding already?

Where Has All the Money Gone?

In the turmoil of the collapse of the world financial markets, the Bernard Madoff scandal, and the lesser Mark Dreier scheme, the question is obvious: where did all of the money go? Who knows how much money the banks have lost. What we do know is that TARP has already given the banks $350 billion out of a possible $700 billion bailout, not including the other $140 billion the Federal Reserve provided banks by a little noticed change in the tax code. Bernie Madoff claims to have lost $50 billion in his ponzi scheme and Mark Dreier, who remains in jail, stole $380 million. This doesn't include the loss of funds to the down trend on the world stock markets, the loss of 401 (k) assets, pensions, and savings.

In addition to the losses that have left college endowments depleted--Harvard, Wellesley, Yale, to name a few of the prestige schools have sent out letters to students and alumni about losses, there is Yeshiva University that lost $110 million to the Madoff ponzi scheme. Anthony Romero sent out an email alert to contributors to the American Civil Liberties Union claiming that it lost over $850 million in grants from two foundations for the uncoming year. One of those funding sources is no doubt the JEHT Foundation, known for its progressive funding of criminal and social justice programs--$26 million last year alone--which closed its doors after the Levy Church family lost its family fortune to Madoff.

This morning the New York Times ran a story about the Sandlers, Herbert and Marion, who started World Savings Bank, sold to Wachovia in 2005, and seen as one of the causes of Wachovia's near collapse.

World Savings Bank developed something called an option ARM — and named “Pick-A-Pay” by World Savings. Pick-A-Pay allowed homeowners to make monthly mortgage payments that were so small they did not cover their interest charges. That meant the total principal owed would actually grow over time, not shrink as is normally the case.

The Sandlers walked away from the sale of World Savings Bank with $2.3 billion in cash and stock in Wachovia. The ARM--Pick-A-Pay that made World Savings such a mortgage giant, although it didn't sell the mortgages like other lenders, is now under federal investigation. Far too late, since everything World Savings did was quite public for a very long time. (Also in this morning's Times, is a story about how few criminal prosecutions for stock fraud the Bush administration has initiated.)

Which places another progressive funding source in jeopardy: Sandler Family Foundation. After the sale of World Savings, the foundation received a gift of $1.3 billion in cash, the second largest charitable gift in 2006. However, according to Herbert Sandler, the foundation is fine, it's his personal fortune that has diminished because he and his wife retained ownership of stock in Wachovia, which has tumbled. That will diminish the size of the Foundation after the Sandlers die; they are both in their late 70s.

The Sandler Foundation is a primary source of funding for ProPublica.org, the investigative journalism website--up to $30 million over three years--, as well as the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress, started by John Podesta, who is now heading up Barack Obama's transition team.

Progressive funding is never easy to find. Organizations that try to change the power dynamic, want to examine and eliminate the causes of poverty, ill-education, despair, aren't easy sells to wealthy peoiple who often made their money exploiting these faults in the system. But with banks, corporations, and now private family foundations decimated, our philanthropic infrastructure is fragile and failing.

Barack Obama issued a Christmas statement this morning, in text and video, which speaks about working for common purpose at this time. It's really the only solution: for us to work together in our own communities and not wait around for government to reform itself and start working again.

Retire Bush or Jail Him?

The Nation is running a fascinating contest: in 25 words or less suggest what George W. Bush should do in his retirement. The contest is going on until December 31st, so there is still time to enter. Winners will be announced on January 12th. Click here to read the contest rules.

The contest entries will be judged by a prestigious panel: Victor Navasky, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Richard Lingeman.

And the prize is an original drawing by Edward Sorel, depicting the winning retirement idea.

My husband suggests that Bush should eat shit and die.

So far, these last weeks of the Bush-Cheney administration are leading to the inevitable: that Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and other federal crimes. Cheney has admitted on television that he authorized torture, i.e. waterboarding of suspects. The Senate Armed Services Committee has pointed a bi-partisan finger at Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials for bringing the SERE program to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, leading to the top-down policy of torture and prisoner abuse. Now, according to Marty Waas, a secret FBI report reveals the true role Dick Cheney played in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

What role did Bush play? It appears that Cheney is daring the incoming administration to investigate and possibly prosecute him, unless he is counting on a preemptive pardon. Was Bush the decider, or merely a puppet of Cheney?

With the film Frost/Nixon playing, we are reminded of the arrogant statement made by Richard Nixon during the series of post-retirement interviews that if an act is committed by the president of the United States, it can't be illegal.

Maybe it's time to find out just how false that statement is.

Al Franken Ahead by 48 Votes and Why We Need Him

Last Thursday my daughter pulled me away from my computer and announced that I was taking myself far too seriously. She seized control of my laptop, went to NetFlix.com (I didn't know that members can download television episodes directly onto a computer and watch), and downloaded the first episode of the first season of "30 Rock."

She made me watch it.

As soon as Alec Baldwin appeared as "Jack," the pompous executive in charge of programming at NBC, promoted out of the microwave oven division, I was hooked. Yes, Tina Fey was funny mocking Sarah Palin, yes, the writing on SNL improved under her direction, but she is brilliant as the creator and writer for "30 Rock."

Thursday, Friday, and Sunday I watched the entire first season, that's twenty episodes, and began the second last night.

Despite Bernie Madoff, the sinking economy, the quarterly statement from my retirement fund, the state of my body, the dreadful cold and wind, all of the revelations about just how incompetent and corrupt the Bush administration has been, I was able to laugh with Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan.

Which leads me to say that we need Al Franken to be the Senator from Minnesota. I was heartened today to see that he was leading the recount by 48 votes, even without the challenged 1600 absentee ballots.

We need Al Franken because we need to laugh during these difficult times, and frankly, Al has a great sense of humor.

When he was on Air America in the afternoon, I would purposefully run errands for work just to listen. Actually I would listen by streaming the show through my computer often. Twice I've gone to Praire Home Companion shows, because Al was performing upon his return from a USO tour in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was wrong about the invasion of Iraq. But he apologized. He admitted he was wrong. And he did it with a great sense of humor.

And like Jon Stewart, whose hiatus along with Stephen Colbert's is now being soothed by my new obsession with 30 Rock, Al can interview someone with opposing views and not be insulting.

We've had actors, wrestlers, bodybuilders in politics. Why not a comedian? Good luck, Al. Our family donated to his recount campaign, a modest contribution, but some thing to help out with all of these legal fees.

Opera, Passion, and Secrets

My grandfather came here from Roumania when he said he was sixteen years old, got a job in the fabric business, and made and lost a lot of money. Morris was a gambler, as anyone would be, who upped himself and left his country of origin, leaving his siblings and parents behind.

What I remember most about my grandfather were his hands and his stories. Rather than tell us about the old country and the hardships he experienced, my grandfather would tell us the stories of Shakespeare and the operas (no one could talk on Saturday afternoon when he listened to Texaco Performances from the Met Opera live), and as he hummed the arias, he often wept from the depth of feeling these stories and their melodies elicited.

After my grandfather was dead for many years, my father discovered that his father had come to the US under an assumed name, was older than he admitted to, and we suspect that he left another "family" in Europe. My grandfather died with many secrets undiscovered.

Opera is not for the young. I was much too busy trying to experience life myself to be engrossed in a bunch of overweight divas singing in a language I didn't understand.

But Morris did lay the foundation for my learning to appreciate opera as I got older.

In the late 1990s, with my friend Riccarda and our wise and knowledgeable friend Nicky, we occasionally met for "opera breakfast," when I would make some decadent egg dish, we would listen to an opera, and Nicky would explain what we needed to know to appreciate the recording. Then we might actually go see a performance of the opera at the Met or the New York City Opera.

My husband hates opera. My daughter barely tolerates it.

Last night amidst my "Bernie Madoff" obsession, I met Nicky for dim sum at Shun Lee Cafe and a five hour plus performance of Tristan & Isolde by Richard Wagner at the Met.

This is the second year in a row that the principals have become ill and substitutes have been placed. Linda Watson was replacing Katarina Dalayman in the role of Isolde. Tristan was performed by Peter Seiffert.

Daniel Barenboim made his Met debut by conducting the orchestra. He was once married to the British cellist Jacqueline du Pre and not very sympathetically portrayed in the film Hillary and Jackie, 1998.

He was also a very close friend of Edward Said and has insisted on Israeli - Palestinian peace talks, often criticizing the Israeli government.

For anyone who might think that opera crowds are stodgy, forget-about-it. The audience went wild for Barenboim every time he walked to the podium to conduct--the opera is in three acts. The audience went bananas at the close of the opera, the last performance of Tristan & Isolde for the Met season, and kept the performers and Barenboim on stage bowing for almost twenty minutes.

The opera is very long, yes, but it is also extremely beautiful and passionate in that distinguished, classical sense. Wagner wanted to create an opera that was the definitive statement about love. But of course, Wagner was German, and love had to be forbidden, and infused with pain, betrayal, and death. Like most opera, Tristan & Isolde is about love, murder, betrayal, forgiveness, more murder, miscommunication, and a lot of bad timing.

The music is passionate, compelling, and the performances so talented, especially by Linda Watson and Kwangchul Youn, King Marke, that twice I cried. OK, the first time, some tears dripped down my cheek, but the second time, I wanted to openly weep. Only good breeding inhibited me.

As Isolde sang the final Liebestod "Love death" I understood the passion of my grandfather, I understood the depth of despair felt by many in the Met audience, whose own lives are so filled with secrets, with betrayals, love, forgiveness, and more betrayals, that the only safe place to feel all of those feelings was here in the pristine and elegant setting of Lincoln Center on a Saturday night.

The Status of Being Ripped Off

According to articles, some full of pseudo-psychology, that are appearing in various newspapers and in blogs--New York Times, The Daily Beast, even Paul Krugman--Bernard Madoff didn't want to rip anyone off, he just wanted to be accepted and win people's approval by making them lots of money. Or as Krugman asks: How is Madoff's scheme any different from the rest of the delusion that infiltrated our economy?

Madoff is now confined to his apartment in Manhattan and has been ordered to have his wife pay for 24/7 private security guards. With his scam reaching beyond Manhattan, the Hamptons, West Palm Beach, Hollywood, all the way to Europe, the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and finally China, there are a lot of people out there who have lost millions, perhaps billions, and I would think that Madoff's life is indeed in danger. His curfew prevents him from being out after 7:00 pm, but let's face it: what restaurant could he safely eat dinner in now?

However, the psychology of the victims interests me, too.

According to folks who were approached by Madoff, back when, there was a lot of status involved in being able to say that you had enough money to invest with Madoff. He didn't accept clients without a certain minimum, once a million, and apparently, at the peak of his fame, that minimum was $20 million. Less affluent groups of friends and colleagues would pool their assets so that together they could reach the threshold. Now they are all broke together.

But for a decade or so, they got to drop hints at cocktail parties or on the greens, that they were successful enough to be a Madoff client. And they were getting a 10% return on their "investments."

The Daily Beast's post focuses on how Madoff himself wanted acceptance, and it looks like his clients did, too.

People paid a lot of money for bragging rights. But now we will, too.

Cheney Dares Obama to Prosecute Him for War Crimes

Last week the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report, a bi-partisan report signed by Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), finding Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush officials responsible for implementing procedures in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib that permitted torture and humiliating treatment of prisoners.

It wasn't just a few rotten apples. It was a rotten administration.

Now Dick Cheney has publicly confessed on ABC News to having participated in the decision to violate domestic and international law; essentially he has admitted to war crimes.

Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared." He further emphasized his point by saying he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects.

CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three al-Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

Finally the New York Times in a December 17th editorial calls for prosecution of those Bush officials responsible for authorizing and justifying the use of torture.

"A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse," the Times advocated.

The credibility of the United States is at stake here. Cheney might have been so arrogant in his interview, believing that he would be preemptively pardoned by Bush on the evening of January 19th. Read Marjorie Cohn, a Constitutional Law professor, expert in international human rights, and current President of the National Lawyers Guild, in a new piece posted on truthout.org today:

"First, a president cannot immunize himself or his subordinates for committing crimes that he himself authorized. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high-level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet."

Ms. Cohn goes on to remind Obama that he is about to take an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the country, and guess what, getting government lawyers to create a rationalization for the use of torture, authorizing torture, and then implementing it is violative of Geneva Conventions as well as domestic law. The US Supreme Court has already rebuked the president's disregard for the constitution and international treaties in every case about the "war on terror" that has come before it.

We can't use the excuse that this will demoralize the men and women selflessly serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only people who have been punished so far are the foot soldiers, certainly the least culpable. Won't it be more important to the morale of American troops to know that their asses are covered?

Now, Mr. Obama, it's time to reconstitute the country's reputation and show the world what it means to abide by the rule of law.

SEC Vacations for Eight Years Under Bush

ProPublica.org reports that Bernard Madoff's nemesis, Harry Markopolos, an independent fraud investigator and derivatives expert, tried in 1999 to replicate the returns on the Madoff mix of investments and found it impossible after several of his clients asked for comparable investments. Markopolos approached the SEC in 1999, 2001, and again in 2005 with analysis that questioned the validity of the Madoff formula.

His nineteen page 2005 submission is called "World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud," and contains 29 "red flags." A link for download was posted yesterday and is also available on ProPublica's webpage.

The SEC's opening and closing report has been posted by the Wall Street Journal and is available for download on ProPublica.org.

The SEC concluded that there was no evidence of fraud. But it never subpoenaed anything from Madoff.

When greed has been listed as a deadly sin for thousands of years, what led to the delusional belief that the financial markets could self-regulate?

Pandering to the Right

Why doesn't anyone ever pander to the Left? Because we are tolerant or more patient, is that why? This morning we woke up to the news that Barack Obama had chosen Rick Warren of Saddleback Church to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration.

Why did he have to do that?

Rick Warren is an evangelical who, yes, has focused the Christian population on things other than same sex marriage and abortion, things like Darfur, poverty, the environment, and HIV/AIDS, but... .

And this is a very big, BUT... .

Rick Warren did compare gay marriage to incest, pedophilic marriage, and polygamy. Click here and listen for yourself.

The policy statement from the Saddleback Church: Because membership in a church is an outgrowth of accepting the Lordship and leadership of Jesus in one’s life, someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at a member at Saddleback Church. That does not mean they cannot attend church – we hope they do! God’s Word has the power to change our lives.

What I find so disingenuous about how he speaks here is that marriage hasn't been defined by every culture for five thousand years as between a man and a woman. Many cultures, including Christianity and Islam, defined marriage as between a man and as many women as he could buy.

And since when was Proposition 8 ever a free speech issue?

So I have to act cranky about Obama's choice here, because he could have asked a spiritual leader who didn't have such strong and divisive views about an issue as contested as gay marriage.

One strike, Barack.

Oy Veh, Not Another One!

Bloomberg.com reported on December 16th that AIG, the failing insurance company, once the largest in the world, somehow managed to give out bonuses, euphemistically named "retention pay," to over 7,000 employees. Some of these bonuses ran into the millions, $4 million, to be exact. They were based upon annual salary and in many cases, equaled annual salary.

Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, which is now 80% owned by the American taxpayers, was unapologetic, although hopefully, he will be hauled before a Congressional hearing to explain his actions.

Because, frankly, where are these AIG employees going anyway? Anyone in the financial services industry who has a job will likely not be moving anywhere voluntarily.

U.S. finance companies cut 220,506 jobs this year through November, placement firm Challenger Grey & Christmas Inc. said in a Dec. 3 report.

Entitlement rears its head again.

Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari, who supervises the U.S. financial rescue program, has called some of AIG’s bonuses “excessive for a failing institution.” Neel embarrassed himself last week when he couldn't answer many questions before Congress about just where the $350 billion has gone so far.

Sounds like what happened to the reconstruction money in Iraq. Ah, self regulation!

This might be the understatement of the week, in a week when Bernard Madoff has felled so many rich people, charitable foundations, and banking institutions.

According to talkingpointsmemo.com, in 2005, a submission was filed with the SEC by Harry Markopolos, a money manager and investment investigator, explaining how Madoff's hedge fund couldn't possibly be making that kind of money. Click here to read the actual document.

Since When Did Rich People Get So Stupid?

I learned today from a colleague about how Bernard Madoff operated. Yes, I admit I am obsessed: he preyed on his own people, he ransacked Jewish philanthropies, and consequently, many of the sources of funding for progressive social justice projects. Here on Long Island where I live, many charities are reeling. He preyed on people at two country clubs, Glen Oaks and Fresh Meadows. But this is the tip off. According to this colleague whose husband said no to Madoff overtures twice, he only offered investors short term capital gains.

Now that might be the hint that something was fishy. Short term capital gains are treated as ordinary income and therefore, taxed at the highest income level of the taxpayer.

If he had been offering long term capital gains, he would have had to keep better records. Because long term capital gains qualify for a better tax rate--15% currently unless eligible for a special even lower rate--the record keeping would have been open to greater scrutiny, in order to assure that no one was cheating the government out of its share of taxes.

Of course, no one knows, except for Bernard Madoff and his associates, when the investment firm became a ponzi scheme. It might have started off legitimate and gone under when the financial market tanked. Or it might have been a fraud from the beginning. That we will have to wait to find out.

Not only isn't the financial bailout program working, but neither is the "hope for homeowners." Read this critique in ProPublica.org, funded by the Sandler Family Foundation, which hopefully didn't invest with Madoff. However, ProPublica.org was funded by JEHT Foundation, which did close its doors, due to Madoff investments, just this week.

Extreme Financials--What's Happening to the Very Poor?

This morning The New York Times posted a list of the biggest losers in the Madoff ponzi scheme. The list includes a lot of very rich people, their charitable trusts, and banks throughout the world. My sadness is that the charitable trusts and consequently funding to charitable organizations have been ransacked by poor management and greed.

One very big victim is the JEHT Foundation, one of the most progressive funders in the country--$26 million was given away last year to social justice causes, often to organizations whose missions are just too scary for most foundations.

This entire story is about greed and a sense of entitlement that some wealthy people have: I'm entitled to a 10% return on my money. For what?

Since funding will be so scarse at a time when government and corporations, as well as individuals, have been caught in the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, many people will suffer.

The very poor are already suffering, and no one seems to be noticing.

According to the December 29, 2008 issue of The Nation, in 2007, more than 37 million Americans were living in poverty, that's 12.5% of the population. This figure doesn't include the impact of the unemployment rise that acccompanied the recent banking failures. 1.9 million Americans lost their jobs just this year. The consequence, is that between August 2007 and August 2008, the food stamp program caseload rose by 2.6 million people. One in five American children is living on food stamps.

This economic analysis was calculated by Robert Pollin from the University of Massachusetts in an article called "How to End the Recession."

He suggests, and it appears that Barack Obama was listening, that only massive spending by government can end the downward spiral.

35 days left of Bush. Will there be anything to govern by January 20th?

The Fight for Human Rights

I remember the afternoon in November 1978 when the news spread through San Francisco that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had been shot by former supervisor Dan White who had come back to City Hall to beg for his job back. I marched that night in the candlelight with thousands of other San Franciscans in quiet reverence. How could someone hate that much? Was it latent homosexuality in Dan White? Was he unstable?

Eventually White was acquitted of the more drastic charges and convicted of manslaughter, served some time, and then committed suicide.

Watching "Milk" last night brought back so many memories that I cried during most of the movie, which runs for 2 hours and 5 minutes. The gay rights movement in San Francisco was mostly a male phenomenon. I am not a man, and I am not gay. But everyone knew Harvey, because he was outrageous, outspoken, and unpredictable, a perfect icon for the times. And the perfect person to implore and convince gay men to come out of the closet after his own claustrophobic first forty years.

Sean Penn's performance is magnificent, nuanced, captivating, and certainly he captures the wild rashness that was Harvey's trademark. The film drags a bit as we are taken through all of the lost elections--runs for the board of supervisors before there were neighborhood districts so supervisors ran city-wide and therefore had no real constituencies--and another for the state assembly. But the time moves quickly because Penn knows how to act. He acts so well that at times I forgot I was watching Sean Penn.

What got me was the irony that in November 1978, the California ballot bore the Briggs Initiative, infamous Prop 6, which would prevent homosexuals or anyone supporting gay rights from teaching in the California public schools. It was defeated, despite Anita Bryant and the wacko Christian homophobes. Yet forty years later, we are immersed in the battle over Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage after the California Supreme Court held that to preclude gay marriage was a violation of the state's equal protection clause.

The battle for human rights is never ending.

Gus Van Sant has made an important film that takes a charismatic figure, Harvey Milk, and uses that figure to raise the issue of gay rights forty years later. What still doesn't make sense is why gay rights and gay marriage especially might undermine the foundations of heterosexual families. That argument is prominent in the film "Milk" and is still alive and well, as we saw recently in the Jon Stewart interview with Mike Huckabee.

How Real People Are Managing

The Bernard Madoff scandal will not just affect rich people. Already NPR did a story this evening on a pawn shop in West Palm Beach that just examined a $500,000 yacht for a customer in dire straits. There are many people in places like West Palm Beach, Hollywood, the Hamptons, and Manhattan who might have lost a lot, or perhaps even everything.

Those people should have known better, but greed got to them. One woman interviewed this morning said that the statements Madoff sent quarterly never quite made sense to her, only a casual investor, but since the dividends kept on coming, she never questioned him.

But what about the Royal Bank of Scotland, or HSBC, of Elie Wiesel's charity, or that of Steven Spielberg, to name a few? Wouldn't we think that banks and sophisticated institutions like Yeshiva University might know a ponzi scheme when they saw one?

More importantly, how many people will lose their jobs in another wave of layoffs? When the government had the opportunity and the information necessary to regulate the financial markets, it chose to rely instead of "self-regulation."

Self regulation doesn't work, and we know it, hence, inspectors, police officers, accountants, criminal defense attorneys, and prosecutors. We know it because of the size of the federal code and every state's legislative history.

Last night I attended a community meeting organized through the Obama website. I went to a modest home a few towns over, where mostly people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies met, many veterans of political campaigns dating back to Adlai Stevenson, others novices who had just gotten so ashamed and so fed up they felt they had to do something. The only under 40 was the host--an African American single mother raising her children and working as a paralegal in the "foreclosure" business.

Two of the people in the room are on the verge of losing their homes. One because her partner lost her job of 17 years and they don't know how they will pay the $10,000 tax bill. The other is a retired couple whose savings got eaten up by the collapse of the financial markets. Neither the husband or the wife looked like they are hearty enough to go back to work full time.

How many more of ordinary people will be thrown into insecurity because of the greed of the rich and the delusion of "self-regulation?"

Vanity Fair is previewing an article by Nobel economist Joseph Stieglitz, which is available on truthout.org. The piece is called "Capitalist Fools," and it's definitely worth a read.

Just as the Soviet Union fell quickly and precipitously, although in hindsight not without warning, not because of Ronald Reagan, but due to spending way beyond its means, so goes the United States of America, bringing the western world down with it.

Stieglitz gives five reasons why we are where we are, and remember, he wrote this article before the Bernard Madoff scandal broke.

We need to understand what happened in order to regulate wisely.

Coincidence? I Doubt It!

This morning while working out I was watching CNN. It was before seven eastern time. The segment was on what to do if one is worried that she is about to lose a job. One of the suggestions posed, and it was emphasized as the most important precaution to take, is to take home the Rolodex, the PDA, and the laptop and download all of one's business contacts as a precautionary measure. Those are the contacts that might lead to a new job. And security won't allow that kind of access after the pink slip is issued.

End of segment, roll to commercial. And guess what? The second commercial of the break was for CardScan, a device that scans business cards into computer contacts!

Is CNN selling commercial time according to its news? It seemed too coincidental to be unintentional.

For a wonderfully intelligent distraction with some of the most bizarre product placement, rent "War, Inc." a film produced and starring John Cusack and his marvelous sister Joan. Released in 2008, I don't know how I missed this one. But it brings new light to privitizing of war. Yes, there are more private "workers" in Iraq than American soldiers. Blackwater and Halliburton are the way to "War, Inc." It's dark, it's funny, and it's worth an evening.

The Last of George W. Bush

In the January 2009 Harper's Magazine "Index," not yet available on line, but available in hard copy to subscribers, the editors have done something out of the ordinary. Instead of the usual one page of Harper's Index, the January issue features three full pages of numbers about the Bush administration.

Reading through these facts, I am struck by how effectively fear and greed silenced a nation.

Here are some highlights:

• Number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98
• Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2
• Date on which the GAO (General Accounting Office) sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current US energy policy: 2/22/02
• Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0
• Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney's Energy Task Force investigated Iraq's oil resources: 6

That's when I had to stop for a moment, and I was only a third down the first of three pages. Because just last week in his interview with Charlie Gibson, Bush claimed: "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." There are many in this country and abroad who believe that everything was cooked to justify an invasion to get a hold of that oil.

• Minimum number of laws that bush sighing sttements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
• Estimated number of US intelligence reports n iraw that were based n information from a single defector: 100
• Percentage of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4
• Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

I read that and could only imagine how much more trouble we would be in if he had been a harder worker!

• Portion of all US income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1% of earners: 3/4
• Number of White House officials in 2206 and 2007 authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the DOJ: 711
• Number of Clinton officials ever authorized to do so: 4
• Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60
• Days after Hurrican Katrina hit that Cheney's office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1
• Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sedning federal troops into New Orleans: 4
• Ratio of the entire US federal pudget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1
• Percentage change in US discretionary spending during Bush's presidency: +31
• Percentage change during Reagan's and Clinton's, respectively: +16, +0.3

And as if we needed more:

• Rank of Bush among US presidents with the highest disapporval rating: 1

Home and Bush Visits the Troops One Last Time

Signature Theater Company, housed in the Peter Norton Space on 42nd Street in Manhattan, has an extraordinary record as a company that focuses its season on one playwright or performer in remarkable productions. In years gone by, Signature has examined the work of Paula Vogel, Bill Irwin, August Wilson, Edward Albee, Charles Mee, and this year, the spotlight is on the Negro Ensemble Company.

Last night we saw "Home" written by Samm-Art Williams, which is more an epic poem than a traditional play. It ran originally in 1980-1981 and focuses on the life of an African American man who attempts to stay true to principles, through love, the Viet Nam War, prison, living in the big city, and his return to the small rural town where his life began.

The role of Cephus Miles, once played by Samuel L. Jackson, is performed by a passionate Kevin T. Carroll. There were times that I slipped into wondering how Jackson might have handled the incredible passion of this character. It might have been our front row seats that led me to believe that he was over the top sometimes. However, the performances by the two women, Woman One, and Patti Mae Wells, by January LaVoy and Woman Two by Tracey Bonner had such breadth and range that I forgave the excesses of Carroll's performance.

The language is elegant, poetic, clear, poignant, magical, and epic, and that is what makes this play so effective. My husband thought it was a bit dated, but I found the story too timely to be dated and the language so elegant that I was lost in the rhythmic cadence of the poetry.

The run has been extended to January 11, and the wonderful thing about Signature Theater is that tickets are only $20.00, because of subsidies from Time Warner. There is no such thing as a bad seat in the house, either, because of the intimacy of the Peter Norton Space. Click here for more information about tickets.

The timeliness of this play focuses on the decision of the main character Cephus Miles to refuse to serve in Viet Nam, because of the Commandment--Thy shalt not kill.

President Bush is now visiting troops in Iraq this weekend at the same time that ProPublica.org and the New York Times are reporting that there is a draft official history of Iraq, over 500 pages of it, that condemns the Bush administration for its lack of planning, waste of money, corruption, and just plain stupidity in its escapade into Iraq. Propublica.org shared the story with The New York Times.

“Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here.

The report itself is not available yet, conveniently awaiting publication in February, 2009, after the inauguration of Barack Obama.

What's the Difference Between a Crook and a Corporate Executive?

This morning I learned that a woman a few years older than I am, let's call her Sylvia, was laid off on Thursday. For eleven years, Sylvia had been a rep for the big cosmetic companies, servicing the department stores along the Eastern Seacoast with perfume products . She is beautiful, charming, generous, and I can't imagine her not being great at her job, because sales involves charm, and Sylvia certainly has a lot.

Every time I meet her at the hair salon, Sylvia has been engaging, remembered what I might have told her the visit before, and just one of those people who is fun to be around.

In November, her husband was in a terrible car accident in Florida. She doesn't live in Florida. But this is the kind of person Sylvia is: she had sat next to a woman on the plane going down to meet her husband and the woman was with her when Sylvia learned of the accident. So for ten days, her new friend drove her back and forth to the hospital and gave her a room in her home, so that Sylvia could care for her husband until he was released and they could fly home.

Now that's the kind of person Sylvia is. So when on Thursday, she was called into Human Resources and laid off, she was horrified, relieved, angry, humiliated, a thousand and one emotions ran through her body. Yes, she is getting severance, and a generous package, but this is a terrible time since her husband is laid up with a broken leg and ankle. However, the anger was that her boss has no charm, has no humanity, so Sylvia was wondering how this company will continue without human beings making human contact and forming relationships. Relationships are what we believed make business possible and profitable.

But in this economic climate, what we are learning is that business is profitable because of scams, crookery, and bad judgment.

Take Bernard L. Madoff, the former head of NASDAQ who is accused of bilking $50 billion from hedge funds, little old Jewish ladies, and charitable foundations. (Another friend of mine's mother is a victim of Madoff's. She has been living on the proceeds of her investments with him for almost forty years. She might spend her last years on earth totally and absolutely broke!) Madoff founded the investment company in 1960 and even withstood an SEC investigation into his investment business in 1992. According to the latest indictment, his investments were always questionable, so we should be asking how he got away for so long, especially after the first investigation.

Which brings us to the automakers. Thirty years ago, when Chysler was bailed out, the Department of Transportation issued a report that essentially said: Detroit is not building fuel efficient cars, Detroit is not building high quality cars that people want to buy, Detroit's leadership is blind. Read Elizabeth Kolbert's piece in the December 8, 2008 The New Yorker.

Now Madoff is bringing down a lot of hedge funds and wealthy investors, allegedly to the tune of $50 billion. But how many people will the auto makers be bringing down? One estimate is that one in ten jobs is directly affected. What is the difference between Madoff's ponzi scheme and how American corporations have been run?

Hysterical again!

With General Motors announcing that it will close 20 plants in the United States, and the Republican Senators, the almost majority that will be no more once the new Congress is sworn in, refusing to bail out the Big Three auto makers, I began to hyperventilate again today.

One UAW member put it bluntly: These Southern Republican senators want to do away with the UAW and create a domestic automobile industry based on Toyola and other foreign manufacturers with plants in their states, those "anti-union" states.

And then it was announced by Fox that President -elect Obama's chief of staff, the very wily Rahm Emanuel, had indeed spoken several times with the disgraced governor of Illinois.

More anxiety. Read the timeline for the scandal here.

For a few weeks, we were infused with hope. Now what?

A First Tiny Step Towards Accountability

Today a bi-partisan report was released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Carl Levin (D-Mich) and John McCain (R-Ariz), after two years of investigation, finding former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and sites in Iraq.

According to the press release issued by Carl Levin's office, "A major focus of the Committee’s investigation was the influence of Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training techniques on the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. SERE training is designed to teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law. During SERE training, U.S. troops --- in a controlled environment with great protections and caution --- are exposed to harsh techniques such as stress positions, forced nudity, use of fear, sleep deprivation, and until recently, the waterboard. The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody. The Committee’s investigation found, however, that senior officials in the U.S. government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of U.S. and international law."

Senator Levin said: “The abuses at Abu Ghraib, GTMO and elsewhere cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples. Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable. The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees. Our investigation is an effort to set the record straight on this chapter in our history that has so damaged both America’s standing and our security. America needs to own up to its mistakes so that we can rebuild some of the good will that we have lost.”

The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody. It wasn't just Lindsey England at Abu Ghraib, acting as an irresponsible underling. It was Donald Rumsfeld, and I suspect even higher ups, who authorized such treatment of detainees, in violation of domestic and international law and common decency.

The 19 page executive summary is available at the bottom of the press release issued by Levin's office, along with the two preceding portions of the Armed Services Committee reports.

There are those who are urging the in-coming administration that it should continue to allow "torture lite" methods which don't appear to be so heinous when viewed individually. See Ray McGovern's piece in commondreams.org, dated December 11, 2008.

• force a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner;
• use hoods or place sacks over a detainee's head or use duct tape over his eyes;
• beat or electrically shock or burn them or inflict other forms of physical pain-any form of physical pain;
• use water boarding, hypothermia, or treatment which will lead to heat injury;
• perform mock executions;
• deprive detainees of the necessary food, water, and medical care; and
• use dogs in any aspect of interrogation.

However, as Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover found in their groundbreaking report, released November 2008, "Guantanamo and its Aftermath: US Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Former Detainees," the cumulative effect of these procedures amounts to torture, unequivocally. This is torture. This is inhumane treatment. This must be stopped. There is no justification for use of these procedures.

Workers' Rights in the Age of Financial Crisis

The union did what unions have historically done: after six days of a sit-in in the Republic Windows and Doors in Illinois, the two banks that had cut off funding to the owners, agreed to lend them the money needed to pay severance and vacation pay in accordance with federal and state labor laws, so says the New York Times this morning.

The sit-in was peaceful and drew attention to the dysfunction of the Bush administration's bail out plans.

If the banks are getting all of this money, why aren't they lending it so that the workers, out of jobs now, can get what the law provides: severance pay, vacation pay, and consequently, some breathing room?

The union: Local 1110, of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Bravo!

The banks forced to do what banks are supposed to do, lend money: Bank of American and JP Morgan Chase. Boo!

Yesterday lawmakers put a first eye of scrutiny on the TARP, the $700 billion bail out for the financial services industry and what was revealed is this: there is no plan to rescue the US economy. Paulson is shooting from the hip and changing course. If the purpose was to instill confidence in banks, the many changes of course without justification or rationales has undermined any possibilities of raising confidence. Put everything left under our mattresses! And there is no oversight, which has allowed companies like AIG to continue to give out bonuses to failing executives. Listen and weep.

Read the piece in propublica.org that gives an even more detailed account of the testimony, and the obvious holes in the testimony, before Congress.

What the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America did in Illinois is what people did throughout cities during the Great Depression. When sheriffs came to evict tenants, other tenants would surround the area and prevent the sheriffs from acting. Don't think that FDR's economic recovery was all top-down. It wasn't.

It shouldn't be now either.

Jon Stewart's Interview with Mike Huckabee Last Night

Today all gay people were supposed to refuse to go to work so that we could feel their absence from our lives. The gay people I work with all came to work, because they are all out and already know how important they are to all of us.

The deal the New York State Democrats made with the three holdout Democratic senators to assure an effective majority fell apart today, thankfully, because some senators had the balls to say that no one should bargain away the opportunity to have a reasoned discussion about what is really at stake if New York doesn't just recognize another state's gay marriage, but allows gay and lesbian couples to marry here.

I'm not sure anything is at stake, frankly, except for antiquated ideas about the value of human companionship and love.

And that was what Jon Stewart was getting at last night in his divine interview with former Republican presidential candidate, and a very smart man, I might add, Mike Huckabee. Stewart started by saying that he could understand his opposition to abortion, but he couldn't fathom what the problem was with gay marriage. Click here for the first part of the interview. Stewart is dogged and not nasty in any way for pressing Huckabee, disturbed that Huckabee has a rigid idea of what marriage is despite the fact that marriage, like all living things, is evolving.

But then again, was Huckabee one of the Republicans who raised his hand and said he didn't believe in evolution? Click here for the second part of the interview.

Sixty Years Ago

Sixty years ago the United Nations, with the United States taking the lead under the direction of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sixty years ago, December 10th, 1948.

Sixty years ago, again because of efforts by the United States, the Convention on Genocide was adopted, December 9th, 1948.

Yet it was the United States, under the failed leadership of George Bush and Dick Cheney, that created a "war on terror" expanding the power of the executive branch through secrecy and fear to nullify the Geneva Conventions, the Conventions Against Torture, and the Declaration of Human Rights. In calling these acts of violence a war, Bush and Cheney avoided the due process requirements of a criminal prosecution against the perpetrators.

Not coincidentally, but very intentionally, a report has been issued in November 2008 "Guantanamo and its Aftermath: US Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Former Detainees." Both an executive summary and the entire report are available on the website of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at UC Berkeley Law School. The primary researchers are law professors Laurel E. Fletcher and Eric Stover.

The Report is based on two years of interviews with 62 former detainees, 50 base personnel including interrogators, and 18 lawyers who represented detainees held at Guantanamo and other "dark" sites. For review, there were a total of 780 detainees at Guantanamo; 520 have been released, 250 remain. The Report tells the very personal, although anonymous stories of how damaged, stigmatized, plagued by debt, doubt, and depression these men are. It is believed that a third of the men picked up were picked up because of bounties. At least half of the men who ended up in Guantanamo should never have been sent anywhere becaue they were picked up because someone else was paid to capture anyone.

In addition to shackling, beating, sleep deprivation, overstimulation with music, humiliation, and nudity, most of the detainees suffered from isolation and solitary confinement. The cumulative effects have been devastating: an inability to return to living normal lives once they have returned to their countries of origin.

We must hear these stories. The International Center for Transitional Justice has outlined just how the US can inquire into human rights abuses in the "war on terror." Go to this webpage and scroll down to "policy work." Download the document and read it. Take action. Write to President-elect Obama and to your Senators and Congressperson and demand nonpartisan inquiries into how the war on terror destroyed American values and people's lives. Our credibility as a nation depends on accountability. Our legacy to the world does, too.

It Really Is That Bad

As we count down the days until he leaves office and can't do any more harm, propublica.org has launched "Bush by the Numbers" to calculate just how bad it's been. It's interactive, so if you have additional statistics to add, with sourcing, of course, because this is propublica.org, now eligible for a Pulitzer Prize nomination, go to the site and submit your favorite Bush stats.

Start weeping!

The National Debt rose from $7.1 to $10.6 trillion in just eight years. Our children and grandchildren will be reeling from this mismanagement. Well, the entire world is reeling now.

As the unemployment rate rose, so did the percentage of Americans without health insurance. That figure rose from 14% to 15%.

High school graduation rates rose, that was surprising, due in part to the poor economy and to "No Child Left Behind," which did put pressure on poor performing schools. In 2000-2001, 71.7% of students graduated. Last year 74.4% did. One for W!

Two figures are extremely telling. First, the number immigrants deported from the US rose from 110,000 in 2001 to 350,000 in 2008.

And perhaps the most telling of this secretive and incompetent government is this figure: Freedom of Information requests increased from 2.2 million in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, to 21.8 million in 2007.