History, truth and the insane belief in mainstream politics

"'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
"'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'
"'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'"
- from "1984," by George Orwell (Part 3, Chapter 2)

If you have paid any attention to the Chuck Hagel, SecDef nomination hype, you probably heard the former Republican Senator's detractors calling him "out of the mainstream," when it comes to Israel, Iran, and involving the US in talks with terrorist organizations.
Witness Thursday morning's exchange between Hagel and Sen. John McCain, during the former's confirmation hearing. Hagel, as a Senator, made statements against Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq, equating it to a potential quagmire, a word used often to describe the war in Vietnam, where Hagel served and was wounded. McCain, himself a prisoner of the Vietcong during that conflict, insisted that the surge was a success and wanted his former colleague to take it back, to admit his previous position was a mistake.
“I’m not going to give you a yes or no,” Hagel told McCain. “I’ll defer that judgement to history."
"History has already made a judgement on the surge," McCain insisted, "and you’re on the wrong side of it."
This insistence on defining history as mainstream truth is a revisionism worthy of Orwell. Honest and frank answers are eschewed for blind allegiance and party fidelity. Engaging in "You're either with us or against us" tactics, especially when it comes to what's true or not, endangers our republic, because it attempts to supplant evidence with conviction.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE>>>

Protecting a lead – Campaign reform and the SCOTUS hedge

In his article in the current issue of the New Yorker, describing the Supreme Court's machinations in the 2010 Citizens United decision, Jeffrey Toobin informs readers that the attorney for the plaintiff, Ted Olsen, had a specific goal when he was presenting his case to the court in September, 2009. Since this was the case's second go at the Court, it indicated a majority of justices was looking for a way to do more than rule on the funding for broadcast media campaign ads in the context of the 2002 finance reform law known as McCain-Feingold. It was looking for reasons to overturn the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in its entirety.
"Olson could tell... that the Court was leaning his way—heading for a ruling that was far broader than the one he had originally sought," Toobin writes. So, he says, "Olson argued cautiously, as if protecting a lead."
That lead was a major factor in taking the GOP to a sweeping victory in the 2010 elections, and has already played a huge role in this year's GOP presidential primaries. Indeed, one could argue that Chief Justice Roberts' Court showed that, in fact, it was not the impartial umpire he claimed it would be during his confirmation hearing. "Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them," he famously said, "The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules." But if the Citizens United ruling was about making the right call, then Roger "the Rocket" Clemens has nothing to worry about. The Courts' decision makes it seem as if the umpiring crew conferred, and decided that, for the good of the game, human growth hormone is gear, and better performance is every ballplayer's right.
Toobin's article makes it clear that the outcries of "judicial activism" by those who supported the restrictions of McCain-Feingold were more than just sour grapes, more than the tit-for-tat critique of a decision that didn't go their way. He describes how, after the case was first argued in March, 2009, Roberts wrote a narrow opinion for the majority that Justice Anthony Kennedy broadened, and then Justice Antonin Scalia argued they could broaden it more in a way that would overturn even the most recent precedents, and thus the law itself. It was only then they decided not to issue a ruling in June and, instead, scheduled the case to be re-argued.
Now, more than two years after Citizens United v. F.E.C., lower courts and city councils, state legislatures and even Congress itself are making progress in efforts to restore at least some form of campaign finance reform, mostly through limiting contributions and requiring donors' names to be revealed - particularly those who contribute tremendous sums to campaigns.
On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals, in Washington, declined to stay an order by a lower court that requires making public the names of those who finance election ads, including those who donate to political action committees (PACs). According to an article in the Los Angeles Times:

Pending a September appeal, "groups that run a type of ad known as 'electioneering communications' will now have to disclose all of the donations they received since the beginning of 2011, or set up a segregated account to pay for the commercials. "Electioneering communications are television spots that refer to federal candidates but stop short of advocating for their election or defeat and air within 30 days before a primary and 60 days before the general election."

This ruling directly affects groups with tax-exempt status, and "there is no question that it complicates the political plans of heavyweight players such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an array of well-financed, conservative, nonprofit groups such as Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity that have taken the lead in a costly air war against President Obama and congressional Democrats. Liberal tax-exempt groups, which spend far less on the type of ads in question, will also be affected," the LA Times article says.
Although the California State Assembly, on Tuesday, killed a measure in committee that, according to the LA Times, "would have urged Congress to call a constitutional convention to pass an amendment to limit 'corporate personhood' and declare that money does not constitute free speech," some local governments are moving forward with challenges to Citizens United.
The Daily Northwestern reports that the city council of Evanston, Illinois, voted unanimously, on Monday, for a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would reverse many of the unpopular results of the Supreme Courts' decision. They were the first in the Land of Lincoln to do so, "join[ing] other municipalities and states that have passed similar resolutions addressing the 2010 decision on the constitutional rights of corporations." The resolution supports the action of Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL), the state's senior senator, who is a co-sponsor to legislation that would set such an amendment in motion.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Capitol, the man who's name has become synonymous with campaign finance reform, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), has come full circle, and is now in negotiations with Senate Democrats to be the first Republican to lend his name to the latest version of the Disclose Act, introduced in March by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The bill, as reported in The Hill, this morning:

"would require any group that spends $10,000 or more on election ads or other political activity to file a disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours. Reports would detail the nature of expenditures over $1,000 and reveal the names of donors who give $10,000 or more. "The legislation would also require that outside group advertisements include 'stand-by-your-ad' disclaimers listing the biggest donors."

The Disclose Act, though, stands little chance of making it through both Houses of Congress - this session, anyway. In the meantime, Politico reports, "With little fanfare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his top lieutenants are crisscrossing the country from the Southwest to the Big Apple, meeting with billionaires, high-level business executives and union leaders in a mad scramble to raise money for Majority PAC — and perhaps save their slim Senate majority."
Of course, they're not the only Democrats doing it. But, as long as the umpires are saying it's okay to juice up, may as well play both sides of the hedge and go for the long ball. The "major scandal" that McCain warned The Hill about can happen later. Maybe then, Karl Rove will replace the Rocket on the witness stand, and it will be a whole new ballgame. -PBG

Related articles

• John Roberts' Gilded Age SCOTUS (salon.com)
• Jeff Toobin on Citizens United (scotusblog.com)

Post Traumatic Bush Disorder

How John McCain was screwed twice by the 43rd President of the United States

The experts say that the condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows up three to seven years after a veteran's return from war. Five-and-a-half years since the beginning of the Iraq War, seven years since the abuses at Enron and the shock of September 11, could the stock market's crash last week and the country's humongous deficit be symptoms of a serious national psychiatric disorder, a dysfunction that happens to a country when its leaders choose to ignore the stress potential of our looming housing and credit crisis? In other words, my friends, our economy - and maybe our entire country - could be suffering from a collective case of PTSD.

We have already stopped listening to the words of calm the president and his minions offer up as as if it were a narcotic salve for our economy's ills. Wall Street itself has begged the administration to just shut the heck up. As the NY Daily News put it in an October 10 report:

"Just as he did on Monday and Tuesday - and three other times last week -Bush told the country he was on top of the growing crisis. Each time,the market tanked."

If the trauma inflicted by George W. Bush has had this kind of effect on us, pity poor John McCain. Bush's shortcut to the White House in 2000 ran right over him, before body checking Al Gore, and systematically dismantling the financial infrastructure of our country for the benefit of his cronies. Now the actions of the lame duck Bush administration have put their Haliburton supplied truck in reverse to run over him again. They must have something against him. I bet that's the way McCain feels.

What must it be like to be locked in a Viet Cong prison more than thirty years after you were physically released? This is an idea that came from one of my friends who does counseling: John McCain suffers from PTSD. Really, it would explain a lot about his legendary rages and his manipulability at the hands of his masters - I mean campaign staff.

Sarah Palin was just another emotional outburst for Johnny Mac. Now that the zealots her rhetoric has inflamed are talking about anger and violence, Senator McCain is doing a little anger management style calming, deflecting their rage as he has learned to deflect his own.

Back in May, 2008, when the McCain campaign released the candidate's medical records, it was only since 2000, and did not "speak directly to the [psychological] effects of his years as a prisoner of war," according to several articles published at the time.

But these accusations are not new to McCain. According to a May 2008 article on salon.com:

"During McCain's first White House run, his unsuccessful battle with George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 1999 and 2000, he faced a whispering campaign from rivals that suggested his Vietnam ordeal had permanently damaged his psyche -- specifically, that his famed outbursts of temper might be a sign of something serious, like post-traumatic stress disorder."

While I do not subscribe to a "whispering campaign" tactic, especially one prosecuted by the likes of Karl Rove (whose 2000 "dirty tricks" may have actually contributed to McCain's current condition), there are questions that need to be answered.

It is hard to imagine what McCain's five-and-a-half years of deprivation, torture and broken bones in the Hanoi Hilton may have done to the senator's young mind. It is also hard to imagine that every time he tries to raise his damaged shoulders, he is not reminded of his time in captivity and his two suicide attempts.

The McCain campaign assured the Washington Post that their candidate "has never received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder," even though salon.com points out that "they failed to note that it would have been impossible for McCain to receive such a diagnosis -- since the term 'post-traumatic stress disorder' was not in use until seven years after McCain's release from captivity."

That is something left out of the Washington Post's pre-analysis of McCain's May release of medical records. They cite research from the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, which follows its mission, "to aid, comfort, and ease the repatriation of past and future prisoners of war by means of lessons learned from the evaluation of former prisoners of war." The Post story says that the Pensacola based the Navy research center found that Vietnam fliers were somehow different:

"The naval aviators who were imprisoned in Vietnam are in their 60s and 70s. Both now and in the years immediately after their release, they have seemed unusually resistant to psychological damage from the experience.

"The lifetime prevalence of PTSD in all the Pensacola POW studies [since World War II] is 24 percent. In the naval aviators, however, it was 4 percent from 1979 to 1983, when the disorder was most likely to appear."

They go on to say that the center has found an anomoly in officer POWs as a whole. "Research on World War II prisoners found that officers as a group had far less psychological trauma than enlisted men."

This exception may have been what Cindy McCain was referring to in a recent interview with Fox News reporter Marie Claire. In response to a question about her husband's POW related trauma, whether or not he had "night sweats," the senator's wife said, "The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing."

Other researchers, however, have found that while PTSD may not be prevalent, they were able to "identify something called 'late-onset stress symptomatology' or LOSS, which came to light after 562 combat veterans -- about 300 of them POWs -- answered a long questionnaire. The syndrome involves the return of troubling memories late in life, along with emotional anguish and guilt, often triggered by retirement and friends' deaths."

A 2007 study by Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, and National Center for PTSD at Boston University describes LOSS as:

"a phenomenon observed in aging combat veterans who (a) were exposed to highly stressful combat events in their early adult years, (b) have functioned successfully throughout midlife with no history of chronic stress-related disorders, but (c) begin to register increased combat-related thoughts, feelings, and reminiscences commensurate with the changes and challenges of aging."

So is John McCain suffering from PTSD? It is difficult to say, however it is entirely possible that he has shown, is showing or will show signs that he is suffering from LOSS as he ages and encounters "the challenges of aging." Perhaps his scrapes with the politics and policies of George W. Bush present the Republican nominee wityh just such a challenge.

One can only hope that when we are a lifetime away from this presidency, that we are further along in our recovery than the soldiers who have been traumatized by the wars they fought when they were young.

-PBG

Managing the Conversation for Change

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.—Niccolo Machiavelli

If national elections in the United States are about one thing, that thing is change. We change from liberal to conservative, from peace to war, from a strong domestic commitment stressing economic equity to a commitment to economic disenfranchisement. We give entitlements to the poor or we give tax breaks to the wealthy. We secure the futures of our working class or gild the parachutes of CEOs and CFOs, and grant them pardons when they do to their employees what our government cannot. We vote. We change.

The thing is, you can go three or four presidents and - unless there's a war or an economic collapse - not notice a thing. Sure, you may get a little more or a little less money back from your taxes, and there is the occasional media sensation or scandal, but as long as your working, life goes on; the paychecks come in; you fill your car with gas and take your vacations and love your family and take this wonderful American routine for granted.

It should come as little surprise then, that Americans tend to wallow in the rut of secure sameness, holding on to the day-to-day like a toddler to a binky. The times that allow this static lifestyle are numbing, so much so that politicians and purveyors cannot resist taking advantage of a lulled populace, picking our futures from our pockets like back alley thieves.

Indeed, it could be said that some Americans get to choose change, while others have change thrust upon them.

Just because Bush and Cheney have run our country over the cliff in a barrel of mismanaged change does not mean we are doomed to to splat like Wile E. Coyote on the stark floor of the Painted Desert, while they peer over the edge and dusts off their hands in satisfactory glee.

Admittedly, the news of the day is not good: Wall Street is teetering; McCain has been bumped up by throngs of white men in love with the legs and lies of Sarah "Peggy Hill" Palin (or her husband); gas is over four dollars a gallon again. But all that is what happens when "change" is unfurled like a "Mission Accomplished" banner. It's not change we can believe in; it's change they want us to believe. It's the kind of change where things are really just the same, which is what they really want. Our kind of change, Barack's change, really scares them, and their chants of "burn baby burn" (oops!) I mean "drill baby drill", in turn, scare us.

I may just be paranoid, but I fear that Palin especially - with her neocon church beliefs - is using words like "some of these CEOs and top management people" as code when she says they are "addicted to other people's money." I fear that Palin will foment an atmosphere of anti-Semitism disguised as classism. That is why we have to pull together behind Barack Obama.

Obama and Biden are challenging us to believe in change and be their agents in affecting it. If this change is going to happen, we must make it happen. Unlike the current administration that just wants us to go shopping and fill our cars with four dollar a gallon gasoline, the Democratic ticket wants us to have a hand in determining the course of our own democracy. What a radical idea!

"...creating change starts with creating a vision for change and then empowering individuals to act as change agents to attain that vision. The empowered change management agents need plans that provide a total systems approach, are realistic, and are future oriented. Change management encompasses the effective strategies and programs to enable those change agents to achieve the new vision." from Managing Change: An Overview, by Nancy M. Lorenzi, PhD and Robert T. Riley, PhD, published by JAMIA, Mar-Apr 2000

Unlike the populist politics of Obama, I think that when Bush 41 had his vision of "A New World Order" he was counting on the participation of multinational corporations, NATO, the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank to help create it. They are who he wanted to "empower." Not the people. God no.

Forty-one's legacy staff in Bush 43's White House wanted to continue in that direction. Even after 9/11 happened, they still went to Haliburton and Blackwater to help fight this stupid war in Iraq. They didn't ask anything out of us except to "go shopping."According to a 2007 article published in Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (who conspiracy folks think are in on this whole mess), "George W. Bush has revived George H. W. Bush's call for a 'new world order' -- by creating, in effect, a new new world order." But even this cabal isn't sure the world is ready. "Because the U.S. government is viewed as having undercut many global governance structures in recent years, any effort by this administration to rewrite the rules of the global game is naturally seen as yet another attempt by Washington to escape the constraints of international law."

Included in the JAMIA "Managing Change" article there is a table entitled "Reasons for Contemporary System Failures" which lists ways in which change implementation fails in a corporate environment. One does not have to look far to find the failures of the Bush-Cheney administration in their efforts to change the USA's approach to global politics. Of course, these (in italics) are just my associations and interpretations. Feel free to use your own:

Category	Examples
Communication	Ineffective outgoing communication
	Ineffective listening President’s August 2001 Daily Briefing: “Bin Laden Determined to Attack” Phoenix FBI Pet Goat
	Failure to effectively prepare the staff for the new system Condi and the NSA Differences with Colin Powell, Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill
Culture	Hostile culture within the information systems organization Facts don’t matter; politics do. We'll make the facts fit. The Cheney push to reclassify documents, including a “new” kind of classification Outing Valerie Plame
	Hostile culture toward the information systems area They don’t have to know what we do, just what we say. We’ll make the press afraid to speak against us.
	No strategies to nurture or grow a new culture Could have used the opportunity after 9/11 to reach out to the rest of the world and unite to find a way to resolve the terrorist situation in a statesman like manner. Instead, things like “Dead or Alive,” “Bring it on!” Also, dissolving the Iraqi Army, not guarding the borders. Basically not having a strategy for peace.
Underestimation of complexity	Missed deadlines and cost overruns It’s hard to be president. Surplus to deficit How many billions has this war cost us?
	Lost credibility Mission Accomplished. Katrina: You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie. Medals for the idiots who planned and mishandled Iraq. Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson
Scope creep	Failure to define and maintain original success criteria Find WMDs Welcomed as liberators It will pay for itself
	Failure to renegotiate deadlines and resources if criteria do change Refusal to deal with Iran Refusal to re-evaluate relationship with Russia Refusal to acknowledge the bad intelligence, even before March ‘03 Refusal to allow the UN inspectors to do their jobs
Organizational	No clear vision for the change Holding on to the Cold War mentality of an evil enemy that must be vanquished. Holding that everyone longs for democracy and freedom – also a Cold War legacy
	Unintended consequences 5,000 dead soldiers Longest war the US has ever fought Loss of credibility in the rest of the world Shifting allegiances to try to find a suitable ally among the sects of Baghdad. Huge deficit.
	Ineffective reporting structure Abu Ghraib Reporting to Cheney and not the Pres.
	Staff turnover
	Staff competency
	Provision of a technical “fix” to a management problem Gonzales and Rove firing Federal Prosecutors Visiting Ashcroft in the hospital to get his approval for illegal wiretaps rather than agree with the acting AG
	Lack of full support of “boss(es)” Powell was against it; Lack of support of the American people, and we are the bosses
	Roles and responsibilities not clearly defined or understood by everyone Scott McClellan Richard Clarke The US Military W did not ask us to play our part; he felt as though he didn't need it. "Go shopping," he said.
	Several people vying to be “in charge” Cheney, Ashcroft, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld (remember Rummy’s wanting to co-opt all intelligence for the DoD?)
	Adequate resources not available from the beginning Rumsfeld’s refusal to acknowledge the need for more initial forces - "You got to war with the army you have, not the army you want." Not enough intelligence, both the spy kind and the brain kind
	Failure to benchmark existing practices Well, there have been benchmarks. They just haven’t been met.
	Inability to measure success “When they stand up we’ll stand down.” They do keep moving the line lower. Can you say “everybody limbo!”?
Technology	System too technology oriented Too complicated for simple minds
	Poor procurement
	Lure of the leading (bleeding) edge Democracy anywhere will bring democracy everywhere. We fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here. A small force ought to be enough to do it.
	Inadequate testing Did anyone think this through, I mean with their brains?
Training	Inadequate or poor-quality training
	Poor timing of training—too early or too late
Leadership issues	Leader too emotionally committed “Bring ‘em on!”
	Leader's time over committed It’s hard to read stories to kids and saw logs in Crawford.
	Too much delegation without control Haliburton, Blackwater and Dick Cheney
	Failure to get ownership in the effort No call to join in the effort. Just go shopping.
	Leader's political skills weak duh
	“Lying” to get initial approval WMDs Spurious ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda Nigerian yellowcake Downing Street’s “Dodgy Dossier”

Again, the italics are mine. The rest is from: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2000 Mar–Apr; 7(2): 116–124. Copyright © 2000, American Medical Informatics Association

Like I said, these are just my ideas. I'm curious to know if you have your own. Let me know. Even the briefest internet search brings a handful of past news stories illustrating the issue of Bush trying to shift us to this change of his:

"Members of the Bush administration keep talking about what a promising moment for peace this is. The suggestion is that the departure of Saddam Hussein, and the arrival of a new Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen, has changed everything. It is hard to see precisely how Saddam Hussein was preventing the Israelis and Palestinians from making peace. What has really changed is President Bush himself.

"Suddenly he is taking a strong personal interest in the peace process, and putting his own personal political capital on the line. But what motivates him is still a bit of a mystery."

-Bush's change of direction

by Jon Leyne BBC State Department correspondent

.........................
"Commentators have fixated on the invocation of 'preemptive' military action to counter enemies seeking 'the world's most destructive technologies.' Yet this is not the crazy idea it is often portrayed to be. To enforce a robust nonproliferation regime, preemption might actually make sense in certain cases. The real problem in the new strategy is not preemption but narrowness -- the focus on three wretched governments and terrorists, and the emphasis on force, coercion, and selective treaty enforcement as the main instruments of national policy.
Conservative defense intellectuals and officials deserve credit for highlighting the fact that effective nonproliferation requires changes in the policies or governments of states unwilling to abide by international laws and norms. Yet they then proceed to make the reverse mistake, looking only at the outlaws and ignoring the challenges posed by nuclear weapons in general. So long as some states are allowed to possess nuclear weapons legitimately and derive the benefits that flow from them, then other states in the system will want them too -- including, perhaps, the successors to the governments the Bush administration currently opposes. The proliferation threat thus stems from the existence and possession of nuclear weapons and theft-prone materials, not merely from the intentions of today's 'axis of evil.'

"The nonproliferation radicals recognize that the good guys of today can become the bad guys of tomorrow. So they say the United States must retain and 'upgrade' an enormous strategic arsenal forever to deter or defeat any adversary. At the same time, they argue that the new bad guys (rogue states and terrorists), unlike the old bad guys (the Soviet Union), cannot be deterred and contained and so must be eliminated quickly. The Bush administration thus essentially favors a strategy of repeated regime change plus a large, steadily modernizing nuclear arsenal.

"This bleak vision makes sense only if the determination to retain deployed nuclear arsenals forever does not exacerbate proliferation risks, and if the weapons being retained provide a necessary, usable, and effective deterrent against threats that are greater than proliferation. Since neither of these assumptions is valid, the strategy is flawed."

Bush's Nuclear Revolution: A Regime Change in Nonproliferation

George Perkovich

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2003

--------------------

BUSH: "We've got a plan in place. The plan says there will be elections in January, and there will be. The plan says we'll train Iraqi soldiers so they can do the hard work, and we are. And it's not only just America, but NATO is now helping, Jordan's helping train police, UAE is helping train police. We've allocated $7 billion over the next months for reconstruction efforts. And we're making progress there. And our alliance is strong. We're making progress.

"It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. It's hard work to go from a place where people get their hands cut off, or executed, to a place where people are free. But it's necessary work. And a free Iraq is going to make this world a more peaceful place."

from the first Presidential debate, Kerry/Bush-Sept 30, 2004

-------------------------------

"Our work in Iraq has been hard.

"Helping construct a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship is a massive undertaking. Yet we have a great advantage. Whenever people are given a choice in the matter, they prefer lives of freedom to lives of fear. Our enemies in Iraq are good at filling hospitals, but they do not build any. They can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope, and add to the progress of their country. The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death.

"Our agenda, in contrast, is freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. And by removing a source of terrorist violence and instability in the Middle East, we also make our own country more secure.

"Our coalition has a clear goal, understood by all -- to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations. America's task in Iraq is not only to defeat an enemy, it is to give strength to a friend - a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf. And the sooner this goal is achieved, the sooner our job will be done."

-- President Outlines Steps to Help Iraq Achieve Democracy and Freedom
Remarks by the President on Iraq and the War on Terror
United States Army War College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania--May 24, 2004

So I guess now that we have started re-regulating the financial industry, we're in for a newer new new world order. Can I order a new leader who listens to the people and not the New World Order?

-PBG