... often someone who was an officer of an organization, but not the top dog, will have very different views about how things should be run. But since he's "in the belly of the beast" he's not in a position to (publicly) go against the big dog's decision. The best he can do is try and guide things towards a less destructive path from within.

Mikhail Gorbachev was an insider in the Communist party. He did things very differently once he was the guy in charge. Dick Cheney was Bush 41's defense secretary; on military matters, once he was the one in charge, he did things very differently.

There is always a balance to be struck between keeping experienced people around (not only because they presumably "know their stuff" but also are familiar with the organizations in their current state, and know the various power relationships and personalities and all the stuff you need to get stuff done) and clearing out people who have made a mess of things. In my experience, failed policies are seldom actively due to second- or third-bananas.

1. Fire Dick Cheney

2. Appoint Obama Vice-President

3. Resign

If what Bush has done does not constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors," if his behaviour has not been grounds for impeachment, what possibly could?

You know, not impeaching him will have consequences for decades to come. Hitler figured he could get away with genocide because he knew no one had ever held the Turks accountable for the Armenian genocide.

Let it get worse and worse in the waning days of the Bush Administration. Don't shut the coop until ALL the chickens have come home to roost.

Even today, we hear people talk about how the Great Depression was drawn out longer than it otherwise would have been, because of the New Deal. (This, invariably from people who are trying to dismantle the last few bits of the social safety net.) After all, if the Great Depression was partly FDR's fault, then it can't have been all Hoover's fault. And if it wasn't all Hoover's fault, then Hoover wasn't so bad, and so we should take a few pages out of poor, unjustly maligned Herbert Hoover.

If the US economy is anything but dead by January 20th, the right-wing ideologues will be back in ten years instead of fifty, rewriting history, talking about how George Bush wasn't so bad, how those no-good liberals have been trying to tarnish his good name, how he is the most underrated president in history. And, of course, how we should bring back some of those good ol' George Dubya Bush economic policies.

Good idea. I'm going to go get inuberated.

so if someone understands this stuff better than me, feel free to correct.

But it seems incorrect to say that the mortgage meltdown caused the current recession. More properly, the mortgage and housing bubble (and arguably, before that, the Internet bubble) was simply concealing the fundamental economic weakness of the United States and other countries. The failure of the mortgage market REVEALED the broken economy--it didn't break it.

The root of the problem is that there is no real economy in America anymore. Bit by bit, the business of making things and creating wealth has been offshored; the products are bought with borrowed money or (at best) money earned working in services or retail. Wal-mart workers making minimum wage buy stuff on credit from Target, paying the minimum-wage salaries of Target employees who go on to buy stuff at Wal-Mart.

When you have an economy that is 70% dependent on consumer spending, and those consumer dollars are being spent at retailers and service shops that pay minimum wage or a shade above, and the actual manufacturing is being done in another country, I just don't see where the wealth is being generated here. I can see where the MONEY is coming from--it's being fiated into existence by credit card companies and equity lenders, that machinery is crystal clear to me. But where is the WEALTH being produced? In burgers? Manicures? Haircuts? Lube jobs? Web sites? All of these things are ephemeral--they represent money spent, not capital invested. (So are cars and roads, by the way.)

Try this idea on for size: consumer spending and robust house prices are POSSIBLY INDICATORS of a healthy economy. That is, if the economy is healthy, these numbers will be healthy but having good consumer/mortgage numbers does not necessarily indicate a strong economy. And it certainly doesn't create one.

Yeah, everyone is breaking out their recession wear. The roads near my place are crowded with jalopies piled high with furniture, driven by sallow-faced okies fleeing the dust clouds on the horizon. And, dude--check this out--I'm sure I saw a woman breast-feeding a grown man!