Indict Bush Now

The crimes of the Bush administration must be proclaimed, acknowledged and remembered because their disastrous human consequences, dictatorial tendencies, subversion of Constitutional government and violation of the rights and dignity of humanity. They include wars of aggression, the crime against peace and the "Supreme International Crime," war crimes, and crimes against humanity, genocide by military violence "with intent to destroy in whole, or in part, a national... or religious group," authorizing and condoning massive violations of the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and other Amendments, international treaties including the U.N. Charter, Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Convention Against Torture, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Geneva Conventions.

The clear duty of the American people and their elected representatives -- on which the changes in U.S. government policies essential to achieve a peaceful, decent and humane future depend -- is the vigorous pursuit of the indictment of former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other high officials who have participated in their crimes, followed by rigorous criminal prosecution wherever the evidence, having been fully and fairly presented to a federal grand jury, results in their indictment.

The indictment of George W. Bush and other high officials is the challenge facing 'We, the People.' Will we rise to meet it? This is not a matter of politics or partisanship. It is the defense of the basic tenets of the Constitution.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark,
Former U.S. Attorney General

Failure Bonuses

AIG in the news again. Hundreds of millions of dollars have to be paid out in three payment for bonuses and retention to employees of the company AIG which has received the largest amount of any financial institution from government bailout money paid for by American tax payers. What kind of financial system you have going that you have to pay bonuses to people who ran your company into the dirt. In most companies an employee would get fired for losing a lot less money than these people getting bonuses lost for their companies.

"Liddy said he had "grave concerns" about the impact on the firm's ability to retain talented staff "if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury." Washington Post."

It would seem that in my uneducated opinion that these people can't be all that talented if they drove your company into the ground requiring hundreds of billions of dollars in tax payer's money to bail you out and keep you in business.

From the start I have felt that these institutions should have been allowed to fail and not have been bailed out in the first place. If we would have did that these institutions that have for only one conceivable motive, greed, would have had to down size, be more modest in their profits, and/or fold. Any institution following in their wake would be much more cautious in their approach of bad lending practices and be more fiscally responsible with everyone's money.

At the very least, the companies that are failing this bad need to have most of their upper executives fired and if they do get hired back, hired back at a rates that reflects their value, not reward them for bankrupting the institutions that they work for. If they were all fired the companies would not be under any contractual obligations to pay people for failing so miserably.

I finally agree with a Republican, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa who made the statement:

"I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little better toward them [AIG executives] is if they follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, 'I am sorry,' and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," he said. "And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide." "Cedar Rapids, Iowa, radio station WMT"

Pretty much sums up my feelings about the subject.

Catching Up

It's been awhile since I've wrote. There were quite a few things going on since January, many things worthy of writing about. A close friend of mine father died and it seems like I kind of got in a rut after that. My own father died about 13 years ago and I still miss him a lot. We had kind of a rough time during my teenage years and we were just starting to get to where we enjoyed each other's company and respected each other's differences shortly before he died. There is a lesson here for all you that still have your fathers around.

Some of the things Cheney was saying during TV interviews before Obama come into office I was really surprised that Bush didn't pardon him or the rest of his buddies before he left office. Cheney pretty much admitted that he approved the torture of detainees and a lot of the other illegal things that went on while he was in office. Cheney complained publicly that he was pretty upset with Bush not fully pardoning Libby who was involved in disclosing the name of the CIA agent who's husband spoke out against starting the war in Iraq. I was amused when Cheney was in a wheelchair at Obama's inauguration, supposedly from moving boxes. Think about it, here is a guy that was second in command, and arguably maybe first in command, moving his own boxes when he left office. Why do you suppose he was moving his own boxes? Could be that he didn't trust anyone else carrying his boxes because of what was in them? You know that was kind of suspicious when he had a fire in his office too. I never did hear what they figured was the cause of the fire. I bet there is a place somewhere that a lot of papers were burned to keep them from ending up in the wrong hands, and I'm not talking about the hands of would be terrorists.

I also been watching what's been going on with Obama's Administration to see which direction he is going to go and how much he will, or be able to fix from the Bush Administration. While Obama has been doing much to try to fix what was wrong from the Bush Administration, he is still trying to preach that we should be looking forward and not back when it comes to the illegal activities of the Bush Administration. I still feel that this is the wrong decision on Obama's part. We can not go forward without finding what all it is that needs fixing. If we let Bush and his buddies get away with the things they did while in office, future presidents will figure that they have the right to do the very same things as Bush did. At least hope isn't fully dead as many people both in and out of politics are still pushing that we need to investigate what all the Bush Administration done behind closed doors and if there are illegalities charges brought up. We can only hope that Obama will do the right thing in this situation and appoint an independent investigation on this topic. Actually for a lot of this they don't need more investigations because they already have reports from past investigations concluding that Bush took us into war illegally on false information.

There are other things I disagree with the Obama on, but in general I agree on many of the things he's doing. At least Obama is trying a different path instead of the stay the coarse plan that Bush pretty much stuck with. I'm ok with the closing down of the secret prison in Cuba and not sending detainees to countries that do torture. I agree of the process of telling everyone involved that torture is not an option. What did we gain with the Bush Administration's approval of torture? We got some of the worse criminals outside the Bush Administration that we can not try in court because of the torture. I also agree with the gradual getting our troops out of Iraq, a place that we never should have been in the first place.

Maybe this is enough for now to get the creative juices flowing. Don't forget to check back again.