News flash: Obama's top priority is NOT to ask consumers to go shopping!

(Photos are of my old city-planning classrooms at UC Berkeley's Wurster Hall during a recent alumni event -- note that our desks from the class of 1968 have all been replaced by computer terminals -- and of my daughter Ashley's first Thanksgiving turkey and baby Mena modeling "recycled chic")

I just finished reading an article by economist Mike Whitney -- wherein he made the following remarks regarding the direction that Obama's new Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and his new White House person in charge of economics Larry Summers will be most likely to take: "So how will Geithner and Summers deal with the problems they'll be facing just two months from now? They'll do whatever they need to do to stabilize the financial system and to get consumers spending again."

What!

Wasn't that George W. Bush's solution to all the economic problems he caused before, during and after 9-11? We were all supposed to go out and buy more and more STUFF? And isn't that exactly what got us into this economic mess in the first place -- people buying houses that they couldn't afford, Wall Street traders buying derivatives that they couldn't afford and GWB buying wars that he couldn't afford?

And hasn't all that unabashed spending already caused a huge credit crisis -- not to mention causing extreme planetary resource depletion and freaking global warming? Are these people nuts? We should be saving our money and hunkering down for the Big One, not buying automotive dinosaurs at the auto mall and running up our MasterCard bills at Macys.

Hell, I get all my new clothes out of the local free box. Works for me. "Recycle Chic" is in. And if it is not, then it should be.

And here's another thing that is truly pissing me off. From what I hear lately, GWB is busy as a little beaver right now -- firing progressives (and even some so-called "Center-Right" guys) in civil service positions and replacing them with neo-con moles. And he apparently is also writing presidential Executive Orders as fast as he can -- ones that will disable any attempts at REAL change that Obama may try to make during his first two or three years in office.

According to the blog www.cabdrollery.blogspot.com, Los Angeles Times reporter Rosa Brooks has been noticing "all the little gifts the Bush administration is leaving behind for the incoming Obama administration. The Federal Register is working overtime to keep up with all of the regulatory changes and executive orders which have issued in the past several months."

Brooks goes on to comment, "You really didn't think these guys would exit meekly, did you? These rules can be enacted by the outgoing Bush administration with relative ease and speed, but reversing them will be far more difficult for the Obama administration: extensive study, notice and comment requirements mean that reversals may take several years, during which a lot of damage will have been done."

What to do? Here's a great suggestion! "President-elect Obama, stop fiddling around with getting consumers to do more shopping and IMMEDIATELY consider establishing a blue-ribbon commission to thoroughly investigate the 2004 Ohio election instead. Check out everything -- Secretary of State Blackwell's illegal interventions, Diebold's illicit voting machine programs, massive voter intimidation, an embarrassing lack of both poll workers and ballots in Democratic prescincts only, shameless voter list-culling and more disappeared provisional ballots than you can count -- literally.

"But what if all the voting evidence from 2004 has already been destroyed?" you might ask. Then just hold the freaking election again!

Democracy must be protected. Period. That is our FIRST duty as citizens (it's even more important than going shopping) and if we don't safeguard our sacred right to vote, then America becomes nothing.

And then after the truth has finally been revealed and we actually find out officially that Bush DID lose the 2004 election, then Obama will simply be able to invalidate every single one of Bush's Executive Orders -- and every single one of his "presidential" appointments as well.

And when Obama gets done cleaning out the Agean stable in Ohio, then he can tackle the results of the 2000 election in Florida.

Unfortunately, however, even after Bush has been finally shoved out of our history books forever as America's 43rd president, no one will ever be able to undo the fact that Bush has already destroyed America's economy, killed over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan and let 9-11 happen on his watch.

But having GWB crossed out of America's history books forever would make ME feel better.