I Meant What I Said

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"So what?"-- George W. Bush, after conceding that the U.S. invasion brought al-Qaeda to Iraq.


Takes your breath away, don't it? Can you breathe again yet? OK, here we go.

Why should I want to reinvent the wheel? Well, I don't.

Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson has done a very good job of listing the biggies of GW's final parting gifts to us:

• Loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.
• They're using regulation to cement their deregulatory mind-set, which puts corporate interests above public interests, says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan group OMB Watch.
• [They will] prohibit federal agencies from taking climate change into account in weighing the impact of projects that increase greenhouse emissions.
• The best option for overturning the rules, ironically, may be a gift bestowed on Obama by Newt Gingrich. Known as the Congressional Review Act, it was passed in 1996 to give Congress the option of overriding what GOP leaders viewed at the time as excessive regulation by Bill Clinton. The CRA allows Congress to not only kill a new rule within 60 days, but to do so with a simple, filibuster-immune majority. De Rugy, the George Mason scholar, expects Democrats in the House and Senate to make "very active use of the Congressional Review Act."
• "It's going to be very challenging for Obama," says Bass. "Is he going to want to look forward and begin changing the way government works? Or is he going to look back and fix the problems left by Bush? Either way, it's a tough call."

Get those fingers limbered up to fly over the keyboard, boys and girls. (What I wanted to say here was, "get your pencil and paper out, boys and girls." But no one actually writes letters anymore.) Anyway, our representatives and senators MUST BE bombarded by our ideas.

We know what they will do if left to their own devices--we have seen it for 8 years. "Republican lawmakers followed Bush’s lead on every major legislative battle, from Iraq to tax and spending bills to anti-terror policies." Politico

Get busy. No excuses. I have given you all you need to find the "addresses" of your elected officials in my post of 29 November 2008. While you are there, re-read that post. I meant what I said.
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