Where's the Outrage?

Monday Evening News Roundup

My five-year-old grandson learned today about Martin Luther King. He asked his mom to call me so that we could talk. You see, my grandson is white and I’m black. It has been the topic of a few conversations because not much gets by five-year-olds. As a grandfather, it is my duty to buy Legos, Transformers, a super train set and Ironman for the Xbox 360. So how do you explain racial discrimination to a five-year-old who admires his grandfather?

• Ann Coulter went on The View today and ran into a group of women who don’t cower when she gets loud and boisterous.

• Barack Obama has formally asked President George Bush to release the rest of the financial bailout money. George Bush must request this money from Congress. It’s not clear to me what happens if Congress says no. Larry Summers has sent a three-paged proposal of what the Obama administration plans to do with the money and (this is important) how to track the money to make sure that it is being spent as intended.
• There’s been a lot of speculation and handwringing among progressives over Guantánamo Bay. Barack Obama has been intentionally vague. Today, the New York Times reports that Barack Obama will issue an executive order closing Guantánamo Bay in his first week in office. I suspect that the handwringing will continue until Barack Obama decides what he’s going to do about torture, renditions and legal domestic spying.
• According to magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, super-crook Bernard Madoff is not a security or flight risk. He therefore remains free on bail. This is the same guy who wrote $173 million in checks to friends and family. It sure seemed like he could have been trying to stash money to get out of the country. Maybe he just felt like his friends and family needed money.
• Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase all finished lower today. They helped drag the stock market down approximately 2%.
• The Washington Post has finally gotten around to saying what economists and I have been saying for over three years. From an economic standpoint, the Bush administration has done very little to help the economy.  “President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the US economy in decades.”
• Hackers tried to take down Soapblox as I mentioned earlier. Jeffery Tobin has the story. 
  

Tags: Bush Administration, Congress, Domestic Spying, Economy, Torture // View Comments