[Above: my silhouette, northwest Missouri, 1977-ish. Photo by my father.]

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.” - President Barack Obama, yesterday

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

I’m in 100% agreement with David Broder :

“I thought the most damaging to the American people — both those living now and those yet unborn — was placing the entire cost of Bush’s ambitious, if not misguided, national security policy on the tiny fraction of American families with loved ones in the armed services.

Iraq and Afghanistan are the main fronts in the fourth major war of my lifetime, following World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and the first in which nothing was asked of the civilian population — no higher taxes, nothing to disrupt the comfort of daily life.

…

But in that moment [after 9/11], when the country was truly unified and the people were more than ready to sacrifice, Bush asked for . . . nothing. He spoke of the need for “patience” and “resolve,” but at a news conference at Camp David on Sept. 15, 2001, he was asked, “Sir, how much of a sacrifice are ordinary Americans going to have to be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines?”

Bush’s first words were: “Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever. We would like to see life return to normal in America.”

…

Over the next few years, families of active-duty, National Guard and reserve volunteers sacrificed mightily in the form of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and involuntary extensions of tours of duty, not to mention deaths and wounds by the thousands.

As for other Americans, as John McCain repeatedly noted last year, the only thing they were asked to do was “go shopping.”

I’m convinced that had he done more than this, had he called for a shared American sacrifice across the board 8 years ago - rekindling a common sense of national spirit not seen since World War II - he would be remembered as a far greater president today & in the future, even with the disasters of Katrina & Iraq.

He blew it.

FURTHER READING: Bob Woodward on the 10 lessons of the Bush Presidency any future president from any party would do well to heed.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Click here to view the embedded video.

See the entire speech above; read the text here.

I, for one, am glad to see this particular mindset go:

“As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I’ve often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.”

8 years of our government viewing the world in such stark, either-or terms has been nothing but the opposite of beneficial for our long-term safety.

Yes, good exists in the world, & we should always strive to be as good as we can.

& yes, evil exists, & we should do everything we can to snuff it out.

But I think the fallacy in this way of thinking is the belief that a person, a group, or a country is completely good or completely evil. Each human being has the capacity for both, & just because a person is capable of committing evil does not mean we should brand them as totally incapable of goodness.

& by the same token, branding ourselves as completely good creates a blind spot for recognizing our own capacity for committing evil.

This dichotomous worldview is a comforting one to wear, but it’s not that simple.

The far more difficult challenge facing us is to maximize the capacity for good in every instance - but not writing off an evil act as the mark of an evil person, justifying their eradication.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

President Bush delivers his farewell address tonight.

[How do you think he did? Grade his performance in our webpoll here at the NewsChannel9 main page. I'm taking this poll down late this afternoon. You only get one vote per computer.]

After the jump, clips of three other presidential farewell addresses, so you can compare notes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

#43

Click here to view the embedded video.

#40

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

#34 (2 parts)

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Read a good roundup of what the President said here.

8 more days.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: clips of Presidents 43 & 44 on the Sunday talk shows yesterday.

I thought Obama’s handling of Cheney’s point was deft.

& thought the opposite was true for Bush’s labored defense of torture.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The former presidential adviser, in the Wall Street Journal this past week:

“Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation.

Like most myths, this is entertaining but fictional. In reality, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the principal culprits of the housing crisis, and Mr. Bush wanted to rein them in before things got out of hand.

Rather than a failure of capitalism, the housing meltdown shows what’s likely to happen when government grants special privileges to favored private entities that facilitate bad actors and lousy practices.”

Barry Ritholtz of the economic blog The Big Picture on the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph above:

“Wrong. Fannie and Freddie were cogs in the giant mortgage machine, but they had nothing to do with the abdication of lending standards from 2002-07. That was a function of the Lend-to-Securitize business model of the sub-prime mortgage originators. THAT was the primary cause of the housing boom and bust, along with Ultra-low rates and a lack of Fed regulation of these sub-prime lenders.”

&

OMISSION: Bush thwarted attempts to make lenders behave responsibly: Gee, somehow Mr. Rove forgot this one. Bank regulators had proposed new guidelines for writing risky loans. These were internal administrative rules; had they been enacted, the worst of the housing and credit crisis might have been avoided. The Bush administration backed away from proposed crackdowns on the subprime, no-money down, interest-only mortgages that were critical contributors to the credit and housing crisis. According to the Associated Press, pressure from banks (many of whom have since failed) was the reason:

“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. ‘These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed-rate mortgages,’ David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.”

What was so damning was these proposals were all stripped from the final administrative rules by the Bush White House. None required congressional approval; they did not even require the president’s signature.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: October 6th, 1981. The last time all current & former presidents met at the White House.

Read a good account of this encounter here.

It’s happening again today with President Bush, the President-Elect, & the surviving presidents having a White House lunch.

Read more about that here.

& this reminds me of one of my favorite Presidential jokes:

Q: Which 4 U.S. presidents aren’t buried on U.S. soil?

A: The four that are currently alive.

(this joke changes to “5″ at 12pm, January 20th)

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.

Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what’s wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

The simple answer is the rule of law. Our Constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. It was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that. This new nation would recognize that every individual has an inherent right to personal dignity, to justice, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

We have preached these values to the world. We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being. That pledge was written into the oath of office given to every president, “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” It’s what is supposed to make our leaders different from every tyrant, dictator, or despot. We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force.

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”

-Leon Panetta, the man chosen by Barack Obama to head the CIA, writing in Washington Monthly last year.

As someone put it today, “This is a good day for America’s soul.”

FURTHER READING: Marc Ambinder on Panetta’s greatest challenges.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“It is awfully late in the day for Rove — and, presumably, Bush — to assert the president’s intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol’ boy persona and picking up the ol’ bifocals one. But the books themselves reveal — actually, confirm — something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks — and sees — vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake, one that metastasized into a debacle. Absent is Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” Tom Ricks’s “Fiasco,” George Packer’s “The Assassins’ Gate” or, on a related topic, Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side” about “extraordinary rendition” and other riffs on the Constitution. Absent too is Barton Gellman’s “Angler,” about Dick Cheney, the waterboarder in chief.

Bush read David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter,” which is about the Korean War, but not on the list is Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” which is about the Vietnam War. Bush read some novels, but they are mostly pre-movies, plotted not written, and lacking the beauty of worldly cynicism. I recommend Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard.” Delicious.

My hat is off to Bush for the sheer volume and, often, high quality of his reading. But his books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows. The caricature of Bush as unread died today — or was it yesterday? But the reality of the intellectually insulated man endures.

I’ve read the Ricks & Packer books, & whole-heartedly recommend them.

The Mayer & Gellman books are next on my list.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Click here to view the embedded video.

Francis Bacon:

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, & some few to be chewed & digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts;; others to be read but not curiously; & some few to be read wholly, & with diligence & attention.”

&

“Read not to contradict & confute, nor to believe & take for granted, nor to find talk & discourse, but to weigh & consider.”

(both from “Of Studies,” 1625)

Karl Rove:

“It all started on New Year’s Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year’s resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who’d gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, “I’m on my second. Where are you?” Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

By coincidence, we were both reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book’s pages — its “Total Lateral Area.”"

Seriously?? “Total Lateral Area???” Why not add up the ISBN numbers to see who has the highest, as well?

Now, I’ve never been a fan of this president, but I’ve always refuted one critique when in the presence of fellow detractors: that he is ’stupid.’

This president is not stupid. You can’t be ’stupid’ & be president. Now, he’s made plenty of decisions that ultimately be called ’stupid,’ but I think that can be attributed more to a deficient emotional intelligence rather than a literal one.

&, taking Rove’s statements at face value (guardedly, though, considering we are in the midst of ‘legacy-building’ season) the president is to be commended for his intellectual curiosity. I just wish he’d do it for the fun of it, rather than for “beating the pants off Karl.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates calls this ‘competition’ (appropriately) laughable:

“Anyone who actually reads books knows that reading the words off the page is half the job, at best. The hard part is digesting the book, getting to its essential themes and then weighing them against your own body of knowledge. Look I love books, was raised in the business of publishing books and printing books. But watching a pundit–or president–brag about reading a book a week, is like watching a freshly-minted 21-year old get smashed at a wine-tasting. Only a rookie would set that sort of goal–and then brag about it.”

Full disclosure: my hobby (9 years & counting) is reading the works of world literature in chronological order, based on the birthdate of the author.

I began with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This is what I’m reading now.

But like all the others, I’m taking my own sweet time.

Read a book a week? Where’s the fun in that?

Yes, that’s geeky. I admit it. But I do it to enrich my own mind, not to brag about it to others.. which, I guess is sort of what I’m doing right now, isn’t it?

Touche’, George & Karl.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“In the process, he’s not only damaging our country, our financial systems, and capitalism, he’s continuing to damage conservatism (as I’ve discussed in a previous post) and future prospects for conservatives. A whole new generation believes that George W. Bush = the Republican Party = Conservatism. On the basis of that belief, as they reject GW and his failed policies, they reject the Republican Party and conservatives… and once something like that happens, it is incredibly hard to undo. Take that from one who came of age in the early 80’s and believed that Jimmy Carter = Democratic Party = Liberalism, and thus became a lifelong Reagan conservative.”

What do you think? Is Bush as toxic to the conservative brand as Carter was to liberalism? Or, are you like me, & believe the damage Bush did to his party is far greater than what Carter did to his?

Post a comment!

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Note this quote in the above exchange from Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl:

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

That’s not true, according to last week’s bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on the topic:

“In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel’s Office had already solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions.”

They were trying to figure out how to torture prisoners before any prisoners existed.

George Packer says we need to make sure this vast strategic mistake isn’t repeated:

“The official sanction of torture and the woeful management of occupied Iraq are related pieces of a much larger epic: the first is marked by criminality, the second by bureaucratic ineptitude, but they are joined together as expressions and outcomes of the ideas and habits of mind of the highest officials in the Bush Administration.

Eventually the country will need, even if it won’t entirely want, the whole story to be told. The best way to tell it would be to reproduce the 9/11 Commission—to convene a single bipartisan panel, with the authority to look into the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of the war on terror, and give the panel full investigative power, even if its conclusions put some of the principals in legal jeopardy.

The next Administration and the next Congress will have to decide whether it’s worth the agony to look back. The agony will be worse, sooner or later, if we don’t.”

& Glenn Greenwald decries the lack of coverage this story has gotten:

“Just ponder the uproar if, in any other country, the political parties joined together and issued a report documenting that the country’s President and highest aides were directly responsible for war crimes and widespread detainee abuse and death. Compare the inevitable reaction to such an event if it happened in another country to what happens in the U.S. when such an event occurs — a virtual media blackout, ongoing fixations by political journalists with petty scandals, and an undisturbed consensus that, no matter what else is true, high-level American political figures (as opposed to powerless low-level functionaries) must never be held accountable for their crimes.”

An Illinois politician caught being corrupt? How many times has that happened?

An administration willfully disregarding the most fundamental tenets of not only our nation but our fundamental nature as a civilization? How many times has that happened?

Finally, an 18-year-old reader writes to Andrew Sullivan:

“I’m 18 years old. My politics are still amorphous, shaped largely by my parents’ prejudices (both are liberals). I’m pro-life. I come from a prosperous background; I’m suspicious of big government and increasingly likely to support tax cuts. I’m becoming more viscerally opposed to the ‘nanny state’ as I study law; the rhetoric of many liberals on personal responsibility is becoming increasingly objectionable to me.

And yet, I can not, within the reasonable future, support the Republican Party? Why?

Torture.

I still haven’t come to grips with the idea that American soldiers, those who our culture is brought up to value and respect, could commit acts of torture, on the orders of an American administration. The internet is a libertarian place.

…

…I cannot imagine how anyone else of my age can look at these reports, look at these pictures — and then vote for the GOP in the foreseeable future. It’s beyond my understanding.”

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[above: Iraqi detainees suffering at the hands of the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib.]

Do these pictures upset you?

I hope so.

& even more upsetting than that is this bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on detainee abuse & how it became national policy.

It wasn’t just ‘a few bad apples,’ as was reported at the time.

No, the responsibility lays squarely at the feet of this man:

Andrew Sullivan:

“It is the most sobering indictment of high government officials in the U.S. since Watergate. And, in the gravity of crimes, it is a far more profound violation of the law and the constitution and the security of the United States than Watergate ever was. Bush’s crimes are far greater than Nixon’s - because war crimes are far graver than burglaries. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.”

[Sullivan's focusing (typically expertly) almost exclusively on this issue today, & he puts into words my feelings on this topic. Read more here, here, here, here, & here. (warning: the last link has a graphic photo).]

There is nothing, in my view, that recruits more terrorists to the cause than this scandal. & we had better start holding the highest-of-high-ups accountable for these crimes if we ever expect to defeat our greatest threat.

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Well, sheesh.

I think we can all agree this is quite disturbing.

Especially when you note the time it takes between the throwing incident & the Secret-Service takedown.

This represents a gesture of contempt in Iraq.

Read more about this incident, which has become the talk of the country, here.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

There’s no denying the man above had a failed presidency.

& while a case could be made that the blame rests upon his party’s principles, such an argument will likely cause Bush’s supporters to close their ears to a fatal flaw I’m highlighting below.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate which qualities President Bush didn’t live up to, so we never make the same mistake again.

& I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many areas where party didn’t figure into it one bit.

Newsweeks’ Jacob Weisberg presents Exhibit A, Bush’s ‘loyalty’ problem:

“Those who fixate on personal allegiance, like Johnson, Nixon and George W. Bush, tend to perform far worse in office than those, like FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan and Clinton, who can tolerate strong, independent actors on their teams.

The demand for absolute loyalty is a relic from the age of patronage, when political appointments were tied to the delivery of votes for a sponsor. A modern-media politician does not depend on this kind of machine for his existence and has political control over only a thin sliver of top-level government jobs. As the complexity of the government has increased, so too has the importance of expertise and experience.

This is part of what has made George W. Bush’s loyalty obsession such a throwback. Bush’s first job in politics was as an “enforcer” for a father he thought was too nice to discipline traitors and freelancers. His own fixation with loyalty was born from the experience of watching James Baker and Richard Darman put their own careers ahead of his dad’s. When his turn came, the younger Bush made personal loyalty a threshold test, and even came to regard private challenge as an indication of untrustworthiness.”

I believe President Bush, to his detriment, put far too great a premium on loyalty, & that because of that, truth became a casualty.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“In a sense, Bush’s inactivity is even less excusable than Hoover’s. Unlike Hoover, Bush could learn from the successes of New Deal and World War II-era programs to revive the economy. Keynes’s general theory of how to defeat depressions wasn’t around when Hoover was president, but it’s been with us now for 72 years. What’s more, virtually every reputable conservative economist, from Martin Feldstein on down, now supports a government stimulus program. But Bush, drawing on no known body of economic thought, remains opposed. (So does Republican House leader John Boehner, who seems determined to elevate stupidity to a party principle.) And with each passing day, the economic hole out of which we will have to climb grows deeper.”

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[above: Snow Geese & Blue Geese, October, 1973. photo by my father]

“One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group-think and everybody agrees with everything and there’s no discussion and there are no dissenting views. So I am going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House.”

.

“I think, at least from my administration, I think they’d be surprised at how our team has worked so closely together.”

Who said that?

Barack Obama & George Bush, both yesterday.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Recommended: Play them both at the same time: begin the bottom clip 1st, & then play the top clip at about 30 seconds in.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(above: the Pardon of Robert E. Lee, illustration from Harper’s Weekly)

Click here to view the embedded video.

To date President Bush has pardoned 14 individuals & commuted 2 prison sentences.

Read more of who those people are (including a man from Rossville, Georgia) after the jump.

From the Washington Post:

“Bush has been stingy during his time in office about granting clemency, but more grants are expected.

Including these actions, he has granted a total of 171 pardons and eight commutations. That’s less than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their time in office. Both were two-term presidents, like Bush.

On the latest pardon list were:

_Leslie Owen Collier of Charleston, Mo., who pleaded guilty in 1995 to unlawfully killing three bald eagles in southeast Missouri. He improperly used pesticide in hamburger meat to kill coyotes, but ended up killing many other animals, including the bald eagles. Collier, who was convicted for unauthorized use of a pesticide and violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, was sentenced Feb. 2, 1996 in the Eastern District of Missouri.

_Milton Kirk Cordes of Rapid City, S.D. Cordes was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, which prohibits importation into the country of wildlife taken in violation of conservation laws.

_Richard Micheal Culpepper of Mahomet, Ill., who was convicted of making false statements to the federal government.

_Brenda Jean Dolenz-Helmer of Fort Worth, Texas, convicted of concealing knowledge of a crimeDolenz-Helmer, the daughter of a Dallas doctor accused of medical insurance fraud, was convicted in connection with the doctor’s case. She was sentenced Dec. 31, 1998 in the Northern District of Texas to four year’s probation with the special condition of 600 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine.

_Andrew Foster Harley of Falls Church, Va. Harley was convicted of wrongful use and distribution of marijuana and cocaine during a general court martial at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

_Obie Gene Helton of Rossville, Ga., whose offense was unauthorized acquisition of food stamps.

_Carey C. Hice Sr. of Travelers Rest, S.C., who was convicted of income tax evasion.

_Geneva Yvonne Hogg of Jacksonville, Fla., convicted of bank embezzlement.

_William Hoyle McCright Jr. of Midland, Texas, who was convicted of bank fraud.

_Paul Julian McCurdy of Sulphur, Okla., who was sentenced for misapplication of bank funds.

_Robert Earl Mohon Jr. of Grant, Ala., who was convicted of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

_Ronald Alan Mohrhoff of Los Angeles, who was convicted for unlawful use of a telephone in a narcotics felony.

_Daniel Figh Pue III of Conroe, Texas, convicted of illegal treatment, storage and disposal of a hazardous waste without a permit.

_Orion Lynn Vick of White Hall, Ark., who was convicted of aiding and abetting the theft of government property.

Bush also commuted the prison sentences of John Edward Forte of North Brunswick, N.J., and James Russell Harris of Detroit, Mich. Both were convicted of cocaine offenses.

Under the Constitution, the president’s power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Well, this is interesting - check out the surprisingly anti-Bush e-mail we just got from Senator Bob Corker’s office reacting to this morning’s unveiling of Obama’s economic team:

“I am glad that President-elect Obama has rolled out his economic team and would encourage them not to take this administration’s bait by coming to the rescue of the U. S. automakers without making them take the painful steps necessary to ensure their viability which probably include Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reorganization and consolidation. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made it clear they are willing to throw money at any problem as long as future generations are left paying it back.”

Interesting.

One possible reason Corker’s unsympathetic to a Big 3 bailout can be expressed in this picture:

Just think where we’d be if there were more Republicans in Congress who could have been willing to show candor like this sometime between 2000 & 2006. I’m convinced they exist, yet none had the gastrointestinal fortitude that Senator Corker displays above.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush says there could be more decisions like the government’s dramatic rescue of Citigroup if other institutions need help.
Bush also says he consulted with President-elect Barack Obama on the Citigroup rescue. Bush says “There is close cooperation” between his administration and the Obama camp.
Referring to the Citigroup rescue, Bush said “We have made these kind of decisions in the past. We made one last night and if need be we will make these kind of decisions to safeguard our financial system in the future.”
He spoke outside the Treasury Department after consulting with Secretary Henry Paulson.

Read more about the Citigroup bailout here.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08