The New York Times highlights a report from two prominent economists that indicates that the various Federal actions in the wake of the economic collapse substantially improved the situation. In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Bush administration’
The intervention worked
Posted: 28th July 2010 by Brant in biz, politicsTags: Bush administration, economy, Obama administration, stimulus
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Torture quote of the day
Posted: 13th July 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush, Bush administration, civil liberties, justice, terror, torture
They [George Bush and Dick Cheney] should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It’s [...]
Shameful quote of the day (updated)
Posted: 3rd June 2010 by Brant in politics, sadTags: Bush, Bush administration, justice, Obama, Obama administration, torture, war
Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I’d do it again to save lives. –Former President George W. Bush, speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Wednesday. It is amazing to me that a former president of the United States can speak so openly and proudly of violating US law, US treaty obligations, and general human decency. [...]
Obama = Bush Light
Posted: 22nd May 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, justice, Obama, Obama administration, torture
The Obama Administration continues following the lead of the Bush Administration in regards civil liberties and pursuit of what used to be called the “war” on terror. Most recently, the Obama DOJ argued successfully that foreign nationals held by the United States in prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan have no habeas corpus rights [...]
NSA’s warrantless wiretapping ruled illegal (updated)
Posted: 31st March 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, DOJ, justice, Obama administration
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Finally. A federal judge, Vaughn R. Walker, has ruled that George Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was in fact illegal. This despite the efforts of the Obama administration to fight the result. In a 45-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance [...]
Political quote of the day
Posted: 16th March 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, Rove
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Can you spot the hypocrisy in this quote? I think this is part of a broader problem with the Obama administration. … We saw it in Honduras. Where rather than monitoring the situation, they [the Obama administration] let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the [...]
Waterboarding is torture
Posted: 9th March 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, CIA, civil liberties, justice, Obama administration, torture
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If you have any doubts that waterboarding is torture, take a look at this article from Salon which summarizes the contents of internal CIA documents recently released. The documents … lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee [...]
Saving the economy or falling prey to grifters?
Posted: 25th February 2010 by Brant in biz, politicsTags: banks, Bush administration, economy, Obama, Taibbi, Wall Street
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Matt Taibbi has a new article in RollingStone outlining the amazing similarity between the way Wall Street made money,during the collapse and through today, and classic grifter cons. As usual, his article well worth a full read. The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In [...]
Economics quote of the day
Posted: 24th February 2010 by Brant in biz, politicsTags: bailout, banks, Bush administration, economy, politics, Wall Street
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I’m seeing a series of ideas suggested involving major government intervention in the housing market, and these things are usually presented or sold as a way of helping homeowners stay in their homes. Then, when you look at them more carefully, what they really amount to is a bailout for financial institutions or Wall Street. [...]
Department of Justice reports on Yoo/Bybee (updated)
Posted: 20th February 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, justice, torture
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What can one say? The ethics review of the opinions issued by John Yoo and Jay Bybee conducted by the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the two should be referred to their state bar associations for possible discipline. However, that report was overruled by a career lawyer within the DOJ. As the New [...]
Does Cheney know what he is saying? (updated)
Posted: 15th February 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, Cheney, justice, torture
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Here is a quote of what Cheney said over the weekend on national TV: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. Jonathan Turley points out this is a very dangerous thing to say, since waterboarding is a crime under international law. We have now come to this: a Vice President who feels perfectly comfortable in [...]
When is a terrorist not a terrorist?
Posted: 6th February 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, Democrats, republicans, terror, torture, wackos
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Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, points out that if a government asserts that someone is a “terrorist” that does not mean that the accused in fact is a terrorist. The idea that if a claim of “terrorist” is made means anything can be done to the accused (torture, indefinite imprisonment, deportation, etc.) is what helps [...]
American (in)justice
Posted: 2nd February 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, justice, torture
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After months of delay the Office of Professional Responsibility report regarding the legal advice provided to the Bush administration is about to be released. Newsweek reports: While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did [...]
FBI broke law in phone record search requests
Posted: 19th January 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil liberties, privacy
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Here is another depressing story, from the Washington Post, highlighting the misuse of emergency terrorism legislation to wrongfully request telephone records from 2002 to 2006. The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide [...]
Getting away with torture
Posted: 3rd January 2010 by Brant in politicsTags: Bush administration, civil rights, justice, Obama administration, torture
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The case of Maher Arar, a Candadian citizen, is appalling. David Cole, writing in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, outlines the terrible injustice done by the United States to this man, and the shameful failure of our court system to provide justice for violations of national and international prohibitions on [...]