Rook's Rant

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great." Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo "shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama's young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously--and may even have continued--a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

(KSTP TV) Former Senator Norm Coleman told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Chief Political Reporter Tom Hauser late Sunday he will not be running for governor in 2010.

He will make the official announcement on his Facebook page. He released the following statement to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS ahead of the announcement.

"I love Minnesota and I love public service, but this is not the right time for me and my family to conduct a campaign for Governor.

The openly gay teen, who came out to his parents at age 14 and has had a steady boyfriend for the past seven months, said he first began to suspect he might be different last year, when he started feeling an odd stirring within himself every time he passed a church. The more conservative the church, Faber claimed, the stronger his desire was to enter it.

"It's like I don't even know who I am anymore," the frightened teenager said. "Keeping this secret obsession with radical right-wing dogma hidden away from my parents, teachers, and schoolmates is tearing me apart."

Friday Blogaround

We're only a week into this year and it's already getting weird... thudding iguanas? Here's how the LC saw it.

- A Blog Around The Clock: Are you ready for ScienceOnline 2010?
- All Facts and Opinions is back with a personal note.
- archy... and it has palm trees!
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: tea and loathing.
- Bloggg: the secret ingredient.
- Dohiyi Mir: Gaza freedom update.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: the individual mandate.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: how others see us -- Florida politics from the outside.
- ...I Am A Tree with memories of forgotten days.
- Left Is Right with bits and pieces for the week.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web with the Pink Glove Dance.
- Rook's Rant meditates on the new (?) year.
- rubber hose with observations from afar.
- Scrutiny Hooligans: zero growth.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: waiting for the adults.
- The Invisible Library and the heretics of Dune.
- The Yellow Something Something: Do you feel safer? D'oh!
- WTF Is It Now?? more bad news for Obama.

Stay warm... I know the feeling.

(Salon.com) While I'm loath to write a top-10 list, if only for fear of falling short of Dave Letterman's legendary bit, I'm making an exception in this first week of 2010 -- a moment when we get to not only make New Year's resolutions, but resolutions for the new decade. As we make those prospective pledges, let's take a moment to look back at the top 10 quotations from the last 10 years -- the ones telling us some painful truths about our country, society and worldview; the ones that might inform us of what we need to do as we move forward.

10. "They frankly own the place." -- Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in 2009 admitting the taboo about banks' influence in Congress.

9. "Haven't we already given money to rich people ... Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?" -- President George W. Bush in November 2002, acknowledging to advisors that he knew his tax cuts were giveaways to the super-wealthy.

8. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." -- Anti-healthcare protester at an August 2009 congressional town hall meeting in South Carolina -- the single most succinct sign that our country has become an idiocracy.

7. "We did this for the show." -- Falcon Heene on Oct. 15, 2009, telling CNN that the Balloon Boy chase was a hoax. The declaration demonstrated that the media's 24-7 knee-jerk sensationalism is irresponsible and proved that America's culture of celebrity aspiration is completely out of control.

6. "As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know they're some things we do not know. But there're also unknown unknowns; the ones we don't know we don't know." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Feb. 12, 2002, effectively telling us that the government had no idea what it was doing by invading Iraq.

5. "Bring 'em on." -- President George Bush on July 2, 2003, daring al-Qaida to attack U.S. troops -- yet more proof that the elite defines "toughness" as politicians flippantly sacrificing young American lives for Washington's hubristic ideologies.

4. "The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown." -- Daniel Fass, chairman of Obama's financial-industry fundraising party on Oct. 19, 2009, insisting that despite wrecking the economy and then being handed trillions of bailout dollars, Wall Street is a victim.

3. "$500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus." -- Wall Street compensation consultant James Reda on Feb. 3, 2009, giving the New York Times a good example of just how totally out of touch the super-rich really are.

2. "I didn't campaign on the public option." -- President Obama on Dec. 22, 2009, expecting the public to forget that his presidential campaign platform explicitly promised to pass healthcare legislation giving all Americans "the opportunity to enroll in (a) new public plan."

1. "It doesn't matter." -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Nov. 5, 2006, referring to polls repeatedly showing the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq war -- a sign the ruling class truly does not care about the demands of the public.

These epigrams expose a nation that has internalized and accepted the forces of avarice, corruption, dishonesty, incompetence and insensitivity. Some of them are darkly funny, some of them are gut-wrenchingly sad -- but all of them are warnings. Whether we listen to them or not will be the difference between repeating the last decade's folly or learning from it.

Here's to resolutions for the new decade that finally choose the latter.

Friday Blogaround

Good-bye 2009, hello 2010. Here's how the LC saw the last week of the Oughts.

- A Blog Around The Clock: Science vs. Politics.
- archy has a few comments.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof looks back and forward.
- Bloggg finds a helpful Trader.
- Dohiyi Mir: Sam makes his first plane trip.
- Echidne Of The Snakes on Janet Napolitano facing facts.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: "Corporatism" is discussed on the air.
- Musing's musings updates us on his sleeping places this year.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web offers an alternative end to The Wizard of Oz.
- Rook's Rant: if he only had a heart....
- rubber hose: and noz jr. makes three.
- Scrutiny Hooligans: If you're going to sin...
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation discovers that all liberals really want is to be naked.
- The Yellow Something Something finds out that life is better.
- WTF Is It Now?? Feeling Rush's and Karl's pain.

And the beat goes on.

Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A one-page proposal gaining traction in Congress could turn back the clock on Wall Street 10 years, forcing the breakup of banks, including Citigroup Inc.

Lawmakers in both parties, seeking to prevent future financial crises while soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses, are turning to an approach that's both simple and transformative: re-imposing sections of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.

Those walls came down with passage of the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act of 1999. A proposal to reconstruct them, made by U.S. Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell on Dec. 16, would prevent deposit-taking banks from underwriting securities, engaging in proprietary trading, selling insurance or owning retail brokerages. The bill could also force the unwinding of deals consummated during the financial crisis, including Bank of America Corp.'s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Hat Tip: Susie Madrak via C&L