By Dave Lindorff

If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you’ve chosen to sit
amongst your bone-headed, slacker friends, don’t turn to them for help
when you can’t figure out of any of the answers. They may all tell you
the same thing, but they’ll all be wrong.

By Dave Lindorff

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party
and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the
presidency and dragged the US into the utterly pointless and incredibly
bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and
ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party,
shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the
American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who
thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for
progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip
of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

By Dave Lindorff

The Democrats in Congress have sold out their supporters in the
labor movement by giving up the so-called “card-check” feature of the
embattled Employee Free Choice Act, which makes the “reform”
legislation that has been billed as labor’s “number one issue” much
less of a reform. Instead of being hammered into line on this issue by
party leaders and by President Obama, who has long pledged to back
EFCA, conservative Democrats in the House and Senate were allowed to
join Republicans in opposing the measure, leading to its replacement
with a vague plan to require quicker secret-ballot elections in
union-organizing drives.

Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, little known to the country, will lead the charge against Obama's Hispanic nominee, Sonia Sotomayor of New York
by Glynn Wilson

By Dave Lindorff

I don’t know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court Justice or a bad one.

She certainly is a lousy judge for writers and other creative
people, having ruled (and been overruled by an appellate court and
then, when that reversal was upheld, by the US Supreme Court in a case
called New York Times Inc. v. Tasini) that the Times and periodical
publishers could reprint, without any additional compensation, any
freelance works they contracted on the basis that they had a general
copyright on each entire issue they publish.

By Dave Lindorff

What’s wrong with this picture: Four groups invest in a company.
One group puts in a 55% investment, a second puts in a 20-35%
investment, a third puts in an 8% investment and a fourth goes in for
2%. The group putting in the 20-35% stake gets three seats on the
company’s nine-member board of directors, which will be appointing the
new company’s management team. The group investing 8% gets four board
members, and the group investing 2% gets 1 seat. Finally, the group
that will hold the majority stake in the company, 55% of the shares,
gets…the one remaining seat on the board.

Why would anyone buy a majority stake in the company and accept
only a 1/9 representation on the board, and thus virtually no say in
the selection of management or in management decisions?

President Obama has filled the vacancy for First Dog by nominating Bo, a 6-month-old Portuguese water from Senator Ted Kennedy.

Malia Obama and Sasha Obama are expected to offer expert testimony to the Senate on his unique qualifications for this important position, as soon as they complete their vetting [ugh].

Washington wags [double ugh] are wondering if Senate Republicans will wage a cani-buster [triple ugh] to block the appointment, but most observers believe their bark is worse than their bite [ok you can shoot me now].

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff says AG Eric Holder wants to "release three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects." So what's the problem?

U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration official familiar with the debate. "Holy hell has broken loose over this," said the official.

Holy hell? No, un-holy hell, particularly for those who mourn the crucification of Jesus.

By Dave Lindorff

George Santayana once famously said, “Those who cannot learn from
history are doomed to repeat it.” But what about those who don’t just
ignore history, but who hire and take counsel from those who committed
historic follies in the past?

Back in November 1999, Congress passed legislation pushed by then
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), rescinding the Depression-era Glass-Steagall
Act. The measure, backed by the Clinton administration, and
overwhelmingly passed by the Senate (90-8) and the House (362-57),
opened the way for banks to merge with investment banks and insurance
companies, and led directly to the current financial cataclysm.

By Dave Lindorff

The actions of Obama's Chief Financial Adviser Larry Summers and
his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in permitting the payment of $165
million in bonuses to AIG executives (Summers, according to the Wall Street Journal, actually pressed Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT, to secretly remove a bar to the
payment of such bonuses from the bailout bill) and storm of public
outrage that has followed public disclosure of those payments, provides
President Obama, whose administration is stumbling badly on many
fronts, to turn things around and avoid political disaster.

He should promptly demand Geithner's and Summers' resignations, and
should also fire the CEO of AIG, Edward Liddy (as 80% owner of AIG, the
US has the power to do that anytime). It would also be a good idea at
the same time to fire the CEOs of all the leading banks that are at
this point surviving on government bailouts.