Bush Administration @ MindSay

1.) He froze the salaries of white house aids that make $100K and more a year.

2.) He has put in new rules for lobbyists and his aids:

"Obama's new lobbying rules will not only ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff. Those already hired will be banned from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they once targeted. The rules also ban lobbyists from giving gifts of any size to any member of his administration. It wasn't immediately clear whether the ban would include the traditional "previous relationships" clause, allowing gifts from friends or associates with which an employee comes in with strong ties. The new rules also require that anyone who leaves his administration is not allowed to try to influence former friends and colleagues for at least two years. Obama is requiring all staff to attend to an ethics briefing like one he said he attended last week."

AP News - Obama freezes salaries of some White House aides.

3.) He has signed orders to shut down Guantanamo and other facilities that are going over board with torture:

"Taken together, the orders would:

_Shut down the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within one year.

_Prohibit the CIA from using coercive interrogation techniques that already are banned by the Pentagon.

_Shutter secret CIA "black site" prisons abroad where terror suspects have been held.

_End the practice of "extraordinary renditions" that transfer detainees to countries where they can be tortured.

_Scrap every legal opinion or memo issued during the presidency of George W. Bush that justify interrogation programs, including the use of waterboarding and other techniques, the CIA's black sites and extraordinary renditions."

(Now, I'm all for torturing people if they are withholding crucial information...but what is going on at some of these facilities is above and beyond. They aren't doing it for us...they're doing it because they can. And that is wrong. If the US is going to rise above again we need to stop this "He did it first" bullshit [something I admit I've said before] if we're going to become an example for the rest of the world again. This is a step in the right direction.)

AP News- Obama signs order to close Guantanamo in a year.

4.) He's going to lift the federal funding ban on Abortion. ( *thumbs up* Take that. )

AP News- Officials: Obama to reverse abortion policy.

5.) He actually gets to keep his blackberry lol I know this isn't an actual 'political thing' but I say good for him.
AP News- Obama's personal win: keeping the BlackBerry

Under pressure from banking industry, U.S. government eased lending rules

ASSOCIATED PRESS: updated 2:43 p.m. PT, Mon., Dec. 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way...[CONTINUED]

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

-Barack Obama

I don't see anything wrong with his statement. It's the truth of the matter in relation to reality. The reason the right-wing media was such in arms over this statement is because Obama's words are true here.

So they have finally come out to tell us what we already know. But you know what the best part of this is? Only 2 channels covered this: MSNBC (sorta) and Comedy Central.



So what's worse?  (A)The fact that an administration fed us false information. (B)The fact that our free press dropped the ball. or (C)The fact that the only show that covered this news piece in depth was a self-dubbed "fake news show" on a basic cable TV station.?

Here is some blatant evidence of Bush Administration arm twisting to force Israel into a precarious situation that will further threaten the National Security of Israel against the wishes of over 60% Israeli citizens.

 

Secretary of State Rice claimed recently that a majority of Israelis wish to give up the West Bank to create a Palestinian State. The poll conducted by Israel Policy Center for Promoting Parliamentary Democracy and Jewish Values in Israeli Public Life also shows that 77% of Israelis believe the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cannot deliver on preventing rockets being launched from the West Bank if it is converted to a Palestinian State.

 

That means Hamas from Gaza allowing rockets to terrorize civilian cities in southern Israel and rockets from the West Bank terrorizing civilian cities as far away as Tel Aviv through central Israel. Such an occurrence from a sovereign nation would be an act of war. So why create a Palestinian State if Israel has to defend itself by invading a sovereign Palestine to prevent harm to Israel’s citizens?

 

Secretary Rice is obviously utilizing propaganda to convince Jewish leaders to acquiesce to the existence of a mortal enemy known as Palestine.

 

JRH