From uExpress
By Ted Rall

I miss Bush.

Stop the presses and shut off the RSS feeds: the bashiest of the Bush-bashers is starting to appreciate the Exile of Crawford.

I haven’t forgiven George W. Bush for stealing two elections, starting two wars, bankrupting the treasury and doing his damnedest to turn the U.S. into a fascist state. He deserves one of hell’s hottest picnic spots for refusing to lift a finger to bring the 9/11 murderers to justice. Bush was stupid. He was vicious. He should be in prison.

He was the worst president the U.S. had ever had. Until this one.

On major issues and a lot of minor ones, Obama is the same as or worse than Bush. But Bush had an opposition to contend with. Obama has a compliant Democratic Congress. Lulled to somnolent apathy by Obama’s charming manners, mastery of English (and yes, the color of his skin), leftist activists and journalists have been reduced to quiet disappointment, mild grumbling and unaccountable patience.

I don’t care about window dressing. Sure, it’s nice that Obama is intelligent. But policies matter–not charm. And Obama’s policies are at least as bad as Bush’s.

Guantánamo was but the beginning of Obama’s betrayals. First he ordered the camp closed–not immediately but in a year. Now he’s expanding the U.S. concentration camp at Bagram–where 600 innocent men and children are being tortured–so he can send the 245 Gitmo prisoners there. In the Bush era, Gitmo POWs received legal representation. Obama has ordered that the POWs sent to Bagram not be allowed to see a lawyer.

Read more Sorry

From The S.F. Chronicle
By Mark Morford

Remember the good old days? When the air was thick like curdled paste and the days were long like sad, lonely sighs and evil — sweet, dependable evil — was like some sort of predatory perfume salesgirl and we were all trapped in the same apocalyptic department store?

It used to be so easy. Every day, every headline, every pronouncement or misunderestimation from Dubya brought a new opportunity for your colon to clench and your breath to turn sour and the universe’s skin to crawl. A single glance at Karl Rove and you were instantly swarmed with visions of tiny worms eating through the flesh of a sweet little bunny until it turned black and rotten and Rick Santorum. You had but to utter the words “Trent Lott” in the presence of children and the screaming wouldn’t subside for three straight days. Remember?

Oh, what a time it was. Evil was everywhere. Evil was a our global modus operandi, our de facto worldview, the way we brushed our teeth in the morning. Hell, evil was so prevalent, there was an entire axis of it. We had evil tyrants and evil dictators and evil mullahs, all lighting their Cuban cigars with a burning American flag, each hell-bent on out-eviling each other in some sort of wacky game of Pin the Tail on the Cheney.

But now, well, not so much. The Age of Obama has brought both a terrific upswelling of general positivism and a concomitant grand lightening up/toning down of outrageous verbiage and ranting extremism among the hotheaded-dictator set, and with it the strangest thing of all: an apparent global decline in overt, easily identifiable flameballs of tangible evil.

Read more Lack of Evil

From uExpress
By Ted Rall

The calamari salad was world-class. Still, my friend the CPA’s face screwed up. “You know what still has me pissed off? The bailouts. All wasted on CEO bonuses. But nobody cares!”

I told him I thought people cared, but they didn’t know what they could do about it.

“I’ll tell you what we should do,” he fumed. “Stop paying our taxes. And our mortgages. They can’t throw us all in jail! They can’t evict us all!”

What should we demand?

“The bailout money. Make ‘em give back every cent to us, the people who need it.”

How would the money from The Mother of All Clawbacks be distributed? Equally? Should people in foreclosure get more? Or those who pay higher taxes? He didn’t know.

So some details need to be worked out. But the point remains: it’s time for a revolt.

Read more Bailout

From The S.F. Chronicle
By Mark Morford

This much we know: Hand evil a big, sticky gob of power, and it quickly becomes a feral monster, dangerous and cruel and willing to sell its own shriveled heart and the heart of its very remorseful mother for a shot at everlasting infamy, even more power and maybe some fresh, raw kitten blood, intravenously, just for the hell of it.

Oh, but take that same vile leviathan and suddenly strip away all its power and influence and capacity for wickedness, and watch it deflate like a wheezing circus tent, quickly turning into a trembling caricature of its former self, a tiny, elfin thing small enough to fit into a shoebox of panic and pathos and residual Godspit.

Behold, this delightful rule in full effect with the once portentous, now pitiable Republican party. Watch in wonder as gaffe follows gaffe, astonishing pronouncement follows childish meltdown, ludicrous statement leads into pure comedy of errors followed by moderate 40-year veterans of the party splitting for bluer, less abusive pastures. What a scene.

There is much good news to be found in the ongoing GOP implosion; their obsession with ‘wedge issues’ like abortion and gay marriage, along with hilarious claims of socialism and fascism are proving to be the absolute best news for the nation as a whole. Because as the GOP wallows in juvenile spectacle, Obama and the Dems are leaping headlong into one of the most ambitious, invigorating, nation-altering agendas in American history.

Read more Insane

From The Virginian-Pilot
By Daryl Lease

A few questions and answers about the economy…

Q. I keep reading that some state legislatures are turning down federal stimulus money for unemployment compensation. Florida’s lawmakers just turned down $444 million, a few weeks after the Virginia General Assembly refused $125 million. Louisiana and other states, mostly in the South, are apparently considering the same. What’s going on?

A. Lawmakers, predominantly visionary Republicans, say the money comes with too many strings. For instance, the states would have to start covering part-time workers who lose their jobs and extend the length of time that people in job retraining programs can draw unemployment.

Q. What’s so awful about that?

A. As the majority leader in Florida’s House of Representatives says, it’s “an unfunded mandate from the Obama administration.”

Q. Um, hello? $444 million? $125 million? Isn’t that “funding”?

A. Technically, yes. And it’s not actually a mandate, per se. It’s a temporary program, lasting two years. But we all know it’s hard to end something like this once it starts.

Read more Q and A

From The Virginian-Pilot
By Daryl Lease

For days now, I’ve been standing rather sheepishly amid an angry mob of American taxpayers, awkwardly shifting my pitchfork from hand to hand, unsure what I’m supposed to do with it when I’m not waving it in the air.

Now, at last, I know.

The answer was inadvertently supplied to me by JPMorgan Chase. It’s been in the news lately for its plans to spend almost $120 million to buy two new corporate jets and another $18 million to renovate a hangar at Westchester Airport outside New York City.

When ABC News aired a report on JPMorgan Chase’s plans, the angry mob of American taxpayers – still fuming over all those bonuses at AIG – began a-grumbling and agitating anew.

The financial giant, you see, received $25 billion in federal bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. And this – this – is the thanks we get? Two fancy new jets and a fancy hangar?

“It’s a remarkably boneheaded decision,” corporate watchdog Nell Minow told ABC. “It’s completely tone deaf.”

But the folks at JPMorgan Chase quickly barked back at the watchdog and ABC’s riffraff-rousing report. A bank spokesman told The New York Times that the new jets are merely replacing two of JP-Morgan Chase’s four existing corporate flying machines.

Read more Pitchfork

From The Virginian Pilot
By Daryl Lease

Pig poo, encased in acrylic.

An unpleasant image, yes. But it just might save taxpayers a little money – and rescue a struggling industry, too.

Like many of you, I watched from a safe distance as Congress wallowed through a $410 billion spending bill that included roughly 8,000 earmarks.

Earmarks, as we know all too well, are expenses slipped into budgets by individual lawmakers without a full review by a congressional committee and/or the federal agency affected.

Sometimes, these items are pure pork – a little fatback for campaign contributors. Other times, they’re tasty ham sandwiches for voters back home.

When Republicans controlled the pigpen, Democrats could be relied upon to snort and squeal at the sight of sausage not of their own making. And Republicans – at least those not under indictment for peddling pork futures – would dutifully struggle onto their hind legs and strike an indignant pose.

Now that Democrats dominate the pen, the roles are reversed. GOP lawmakers portray themselves as noble protectors of our tax dollars, while the Dems dive snoutfirst into the slop.

Read more Piggishness

From The Virginian-Pilot
By Daryl Lease

Leave it to the dullards at the IRS to scrub all of the romance out of the Swiss bank account.

I’ve never had one, of course, but I’ve always imagined what a grand and elegant experience it must be just to open an account.

I pictured myself striding confidently into a big old marble building, strolling nonchalantly across a big old marble lobby to a big old marble teller window, where I’d hand the teller – probably not marble – a big old Samsonite suitcase stuffed with all my pre-rolled pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.

After completing the transaction, I’d suavely nod my approval and help myself to a piece of Swiss chocolate from a big old marble bowl as I departed. Two pieces, if I was quick about it.

But, alas, it appears the experience is far more furtive and stealthy than I’d envisioned.

I know this after reading a 305-page IRS affidavit outlining allegations of wrongdoing by the Swiss banking giant UBS AG.

The IRS, as you may know, is waging a battle against wealthy Americans who hide their assets in overseas accounts to avoid paying taxes.

Read more Hunting

From The Virginian-Pilot
By Daryl Lease

Show some glee, Warren G.

Mope no more, Millard Fillmore.

And cheers to you, Grover Cleveland One and Grover Cleveland Two.

For far too long, our nation has blithely accepted Presidents Day, a hybridized holiday commemorating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

On Monday, we should rise up – late, long after the alarm clock would ordinarily go off – and holler, “No more!”

Oh, I understand the rationale for the consolidated celebration.

It suits our schedules better if we all pretend that George’s and Abe’s mommas conveniently went into labor on the third Monday in February and bestowed upon a grateful nation an opportunity for a three-day weekend, plus two pretty good presidents.

But it is an abomination nonetheless, an insult to Nos. 1 and 16 and all those after and between.

Read more Love

From The Seattle PI
By Tom Teepen

As Barack Obama’s presidency hit its three-week mark recently a chorus of kibitzers already was ranking it somewhere between a disappointment and a failure. And though some were granting a technical possibility the administration could be pulled up and righted, most seemed to think the chances of that happening were few and long.

Hadn’t Obama, as a candidate, promised to change Washington? To carry us past the dug-in, rancorous partisanship of the last couple of decades to fields of sweet clover? Yet in the initial big test case, as the economic recovery bill made its first pass through the House and Senate, the president could troll up only three Republican votes.

It did not seem widely considered that the problem might lie in some degree with Republican intransigence rather than alone with a default in the president’s previously touted communication skills. Ronald Reagan was immediately re-confirmed as the Great Communicator.

Yet at the same time, polls showed that the public approved of the new president’s performance so far by 70 percent, give or take a point. And showed that it trusted him nearly two-to-one over congressional Republicans to chart a way out of the recession.

Read more Judgment