Pitchforks and torches, my friends

William Greider ably lays out the stakes:

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: Dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses — many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public — all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called “responsible opinion.” If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics — exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

And that’s really what it comes down to.

If Obama agrees to this nonsense, I will not vote for him — it’s as simple as that. In fact, I will not support any Democrat who gets on board with this. They will have lost any goddamn credibility as even semi-responsible stewards of my tax dollars. Of all the shit sandwiches that Bush has force-fed us for the last eight years — from the Iraq war to the disastrous response to Katrina to deficits fueled by tax cuts to rich people — this may be the stinkiest and slimiest one yet. Bush is asking us to fork over $700 billion to purchase worthless assets just so his Wall Street friends won’t have to own up to the miserable decisions they’ve made over the past two decades.

Make no mistake, this massive bailout will slow economic growth for years to come and it will make financing much more important and worthwhile projects incredibly difficult. It will put us further in debt with China and will make us less competitive in the global economy. It will give the treasury secretary vast new powers with absolutely no checks and balances. Christ, even some of the dim bulbs at the National Review understand this:

I’m not an economist, and I wouldn’t pretend to be one, but just as an observer of Washington, and as someone who has worked on the Hill and at the White House, it is simply apparent from this draft that this program will get completely out of control very quickly. It gives the Secretary of the Treasury essentially unlimited power to use $700 billion to make purchases the scope of which is defined very loosely and vaguely.

If there was ever a time to stand athwart history and yell “EAT ME!!!” it’s now. Democrats, give Bush the finger on this bailout plan or you’ll completely lose my support. And then I’m going to start busting out the damn pitchforks and torches.

 

Comments: 176

 
 
 

Hey, you must be channeling my comment from the end of the last thread.

 
 

Jennifer said,
Here it is again:

September 22, 2008 at 2:26

Well, if you really want to stop this from being a total sellout of the American people, contact your Democratic Senators and Representatives, and the Obama campaign, and tell them that if they allow the blank check Bush plan to go through, you’re staying home on election day.

Brad’s right. There’s no point in voting if they get on board with this. Might as well let the Republicans have the whole stinking shitpile and ride it into the ground, the sooner the better.

 
 

Brad, I don’t pretend to know enough to decipher the ramifications of all this. But somehow I think the American taxpayer will get it in the neck, bailout or not.

 
 

Athenawise – you are correct, we will.

But if the Dems allow this to go through as is, or sans massive shit sandwich bitter pills for the responsible parties, there’s no point in supporting them.

 
 

I fully agree with everything you say, Brad, and at the same time wonder what in God’s name the answer is. If the gov’t doesn’t bail the financial industry, the economy will implode and more innocent citizens will lose their jobs, their homes, their security etc. Businesses will start tanking left and right. The consequences of this sans a bail out are almost unimagineable. This is worthy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road applied to the economy.

I might go along with a bail plan if the fat cats who profited – indeed, anyone who profited from subprime – would be turfed on their asses without a dime and without their pensions, bonuses and assets. Criminal charges also need to be filed on every person/corporation who broke the law.

I fear the gov’t will blithely go ahead and citizens will turn a half closed disgusted eye because they know the bail will in some ways protect them too. It’s all just too sickening for words.

 
 

This deal is so bad even Nancy Pelosi is against it, so is Obama. the Dems have decided to fight it… I think, or least to give the appearance of a fight. I don’t know for sure, no one does really.

 
 

Anybody remember those missing pallets of $100 dollar bills? $8 Billion missing, god weren’t those the good old days?

 
 

Urgh at the threats of staying home in November.

Obama and the House Democrats are making the right noises right now but in any case “Urgh” at the idea Democrats would pout over another of Bush’s screw-ups that we could literally take control of in four months and Republicans excited by Palin would show up in throngs.

We really have the stupidest leftists in the world, I am afraid to say.

 
 

For what it’s worth, Obama came out with a decent 7-point plan today that opposes the worst provisions of the plan. And apparently he’s been on the phone this weekend, because Pelosi said pretty much the same thing.

Of course, these are the same people who have caved before, so who knows. But it’s worth noting that McCain is also claiming to be against the Paulson plan, so maybe that’ll stiffen up Democratic spines a bit.

 
 

You don’t seem aware that the Dems’ leadership were involved in the negotiations, so it’s a done deal AFAIK.

Here’s my prediction (IANAE): the whole $700 billion is snapped up faster than you can say “this asset isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on” and “responsible opinion” will be demanding more money for all the other shit paper the banks are currently pretending is worth something.

 
 

We don’t have time for your effete elitist liberal whining.

For the good of all American people we must right now give absolute unchecked authority to the Bush guy who utterly mishandled this crisis to give away $700 billion at a time (it’s a rotating credit account!) to anyone he sees fit and we have to do it within a few days no questions asked or else the universe blows up immediately GIVE ME THE MONEY!!!

 
 

“I’m going to start busting out the damn pitchforks and torches.”

I recommend looking more closely at bridge foundations.

 
 

And here’s the thing we should be asking. These MBS went bad because tons of poor people couldn’t pay the loans they were conned into believing they could afford (and the arranging banks lied about their ability to afford). Where was the fucking state then? Where was their $700 billion?

 
 

Criminal charges also need to be filed on every person/corporation who broke the law.

That’s the problem, Lesley–there were no “laws” to break.

Urgh at the threats of staying home in November.

Benjamin, if the Dems cave and pass this plan as is, there is quite literally no point in voting for them.

 
 

Yep. Guillotines also would not be remiss here.

 
 

I fully agree with everything you say, Brad, and at the same time wonder what in God’s name the answer is.

I suppose that under a different administration you let the stock market do what it’s going to do. Then you use the power of the state to get things done. Nationalize what needs to be nationalized, order essential industries to stay in business, and then put people to work for the government. There is plenty of trash to pick up. The state can also easily freeze the assets of the guilty parties if they really want. The state has a lot of options. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. Bush is probably watching football and getting plastered.

 
 

What is all the rush? Is there an oncoming Train about to smash into a bundle of bad mortgages?

What the fuck is the rush?

 
 

Hey, is it time for America’s Editorial Page Editors to lecture us again on how mean old Hugo Chavez is forcibly buying out some major national industry? They sure did whine a lot this past month as he moved to buy out the Mexican-owned cement company Cemex since no one else was actually bidding on their sale offer.

That mean, old Socialist Hugo Chavez. He is a mean, mean old man who hates Capitalism and the Free Market. He should stop interfering in the economy because that is the wrong thing to do, and America should tell him that very clearly so that he can understand it.

Stupid Hugo Chavez, meddling in the Free Market!

 
 

Bush is probably watching football and getting plastered.

May he choke on a pretzel.

 
 

@Lesley:

This is a crisis caused in part by falling home prices and stagnant real wages for wage earners under the multi million/year level. Fix either problem and things start getting a lot better. To solve this without giving away three quarters of a trillion dollars to the bankers who created this mess,

1. Put a price floor under residential property by bailing out homeowners in default and by buying up unused houses.

2. Raise wages for the average American through by imposing extreme marginal tax rates on income above $500,000/year and redistributing the income downwards through tax breaks for the middle class and tax rebates for <$20,000 wage earners.

3. Punish the hell out of business owners who hire illegal immigrants and normalize the status of current illegals so they won’t work for below minimum wage.

None of this is hard economics. The hard part is forcing the aristocracy to surrender their death grip over everyone else.

 
 

Forget it.

They’ll smile, and fight to keep the status quo.

They’ll give the industry the 700 Billion, and then another trillion after that.

They’ll say there’s no money for health care, or infrastructure or education.

We lose. We always lose. Only a revolution can change it.

The good news is they didn’t plan for this. Perhaps in the end, the revolution is a little closer. In the meantime, don’t talk about what YOU want. You ain’t gonna get it. You are NOT in the negotitation, and your interests are NOT represented. The sooner you accept that the sooner you’ll begin to understand not only what’s at stake here, but what you’re going to have to do, and how much you’re going to have to sacrifice to make things right again.

Here’s a hint. It’s not tear gas and fire hoses. This will be a live fire exercise.

The question remains. How much shit are you willing to eat before you make your case on the streets??

mikey

 
 

Hey, where are all those clever pundits who used to mock Reagan’s close friend Mobutu Sese Seko, CIA-installed tyrant of Zaire, for being such an incorrigibly obvious kleptocrat? Not that he wasn’t, but I’m not sure even he ever actually asked for a $700 billion blank check.

 
 

They’ll dole out that cash faster than I can write this post (and mock the Patriots at the same time).

 
 

A re-working of Roosevelt’s New Deal is acceptable so far as “Bail Outs”. A BLANK CHECK to anyone, ANYONE at all in the most corrupt least able Administration in the history of the World: NO NO, NO NO, NO NO NO!

And Obama must STAND UP today, NOW and say it loudly.

 
 

Oh come on now.

The $700 billion check is merely a small downpayment.

Heck, it probably covers interest-only for the first six months.

 
 

In the wake of an epic financial meltdown that threatens to derail the U.S. economy for years, Barack Obama announced he was ending his run for President of the United States, declaring to a stunned nation, “Man, this is bullshit.”

http://www.1001words.com/2008/09/obama-to-nation-im-outta-here.html

via pharyngula

 
 

It’s a big moment for Obama, and so far, he’s acting properly. Let’s see if he follows through.

He’s acting like the head of the Democratic party, and others are treating him as such.

I hope so, because I can set out for a new country, but right now I have dependents who cannot. Besides which, dammit:

It’s my country, and I want it back.

 
 

Anybody remember those missing pallets of $100 dollar bills?

Uhm, well, uhhh…..there aren’t any in my basement. Especially over in the corner by the washing machine, where that little door is to the crawl space under the garage.

There aren’t any of those things downstairs at my house, nosiree, Bob.

 
 

By the way, if Obama supports it, are you voting for McCain, Nader or Barr?

 
 

Mikey: I think they knew exactly what was going to happen. Its probably part of their Fascist plan. But it happened too soon, they can’t blame the Democrats (well, they can try, and of course a certain element of the D party is complicit). Crisis times can bring out a saviour/Roosevelt type. Maybe Obama can fix things. A landslide win for Dems in the House & Senate, and the State governments too, and who knows?

Break up the monopoly in Media ASAP. Modernize energy policy.

Rightards can squeal “Socialism!” as loudly as they want, it won’t reverberate.

 
 

owlbear1 wonders:

What is all the rush? Is there an oncoming Train about to smash into a bundle of bad mortgages?

What the fuck is the rush?

According to the Mostest Craptacular President Evar, we have to act fast to Restore Investor Confidence. Why? I don’t know. That’s the fucking buzz phrase. Maybe if we don’t RIC they’ll start jumping off buildings and snarl up traffic in NYC.

Seriously. This shithead has sunk so low he doesn’t even bother with “Let me do whatever I want or you’ll be killed.” Now we get “Give my friends a shit ton of money right now because they’re feeling a little un-fucking-confident. No, I don’t know if it’ll make a difference. No you can’t ask what they’re going to do with the money. Shut up and hand over the dough, you’ll make them feel worse!”

If a guy built like a defensive line backer came up to you with that crap you’d beat the living hell out of him even if you had to crawl out of a god damned iron lung to do so.

I know at times like these we’re supposed to talk about marching on the Capitol and I’d love to have ya’ll out here but fuck that shit. No one can afford it anyway.

Instead I say everyone should get their fed up friends and associates together and proceed to the local office of their Congress Critter. Make it clear that when he or she comes home for vacation there will be nothing but a shit storm of scorn if they aid and abet Bush Bandit and his trusty steed Paulson.

 
 

After WWII there was an inconsistently applied and often undercut policy of de-Nazification, but there seemed to be at least the general understanding that you didn’t just need to replace the Nazis and other fascists, but really weed them out.

(In reality, U.S.-backed authorities were much, much more active at destroying the leftists who had actually fought the Nazis and fascists on the home turf as Partisans and the like, but, hey, reality is for wimps.)

In a sane world we’d be looking at a decade-long process of national de-Republicanization.

 
 

1) Brad – preach on, brother.

2) El Cid – you misunderstand. Socialism / meddling in the free market / totalitarian badness is when you give money to a corporation and *expect something in return*. (Nationalization without compensation being, like, not even conceivable.) True capitalist politicians, on the other hand, just hand cash out to the big banks and corporations like it grows on trees, rather than the backs of workers – and spend the rest of their time doing everything in their power to ensure that the working class remains vegetative.

 
 

What makes you think that a revolution would result in anything better? The whole process was summed up brilliantly in The Who’s “The New Revolution”:

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that’ all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the next war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
No, no!

I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parking on the left
Is now the parking on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

 
 

Remember the end of the Soviet Union? Is Obama being set up for the Gorby role? That is, some useful reforms that led to a military coup that almost succeeded and then a populist who couldn’t handle it and a dictator who could.

Mikey, I think the answer to your “How much shit are you willing to eat?” is “More than this.” (That’s political analysis, not personal preference.) And after that, who has the most guns?

Meanwhile … I guess we go on with the vote …

 
 

Q: Is the problem with the blank check that it is blank or that there is a check in the first place?

I think how one answers that question probably says a lot about how one feels about pitchforks.

It looks like Obama and Pelosi think the problem is with the blank, not the check. I think I might agree with them because the chances of my future vanishing is probably greater with no check than with a highly punitive check. I’ll go another $5K in hock to the Chinese if it means I have a chance of buying my first house in the next decade or being able to find a good job. I don’t yet know if that fear is justified. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe we all need to learn how to hunt moose.

We need the bigwigs to learn that this kind of nonsense is bad for them in the long run, and it’s going to take more than loosing the second LearJet in order to get that across. But to be honest, I am more worried about my future than I am about their greed going adequately punished.

 
 

This is not a choice between doing nothing and handing the Bush thieves and their Wall Street friends $1 trillion to play with.

There are awful consequences predicted if nothing is done.

There will be awful consequences for you, yes you ordinary people, if $1 trillion is handed away to a bunch of thieves than if $1 trillion dollar reform, public investment, and bankruptcy takeover plan is launched.

If we do nothing, there might be some sort of collapse really soon.

If we hand these idiots $1 trillion to do nothing but postpone the crash for a few more months, we don’t have an infinite number of trillions to hand out from broke middle class taxpayers (’cause no one’s asking the rich yet) when this f***ing bogus sh*t ‘solution’ fails.

A trillion dollars is not just a lot of money to give — it’s a lot of money to take — and you can dress it up in any kind of scheme you want, ‘oh these are assets the public will get back,’ and yet you know as well as I do that once committed you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see a dime back that you give to the Bush Jr. administration to give to Wall Street.

 
 

The bailout as-is is not good. But, doing nothing is horrible. We need a better bailout plan, but we all need to accept that it needs to happen otherwise we are truly screwed and America as you know it is over (and not just us, but people all over the world will suffer). All us economists that have seen the numbers are truly scared. You should be too. There is no way you can let them all fall and think that your life will still resemble anything remotely similar to what it is today.

And to the above, yes, basically there is a train about to crash into them.

And to Vagrant, although those all sound great, none of them will stop the train. We have a few days to figure this out. I’m actually surprised we made it through last week.

So get to the phones and get our leaders to make this deal as painful for those who are responsible as possible, but also accept that we are all going to have to pony up to avoid the next great depression. At this point, that is inevitable.

 
 

I’m sorry — doing nothing may not be an option.

But there’s absolutely nothing about this ‘plan’ whatsoever which indicates we will avoid another Great Depression — simply that Wall Street will have another trillion dollars of capital injection to play with until that’s blown too, so maybe it hits in the first year of Obama’s Presidency rather than right now.

But we won’t have another trillion to throw around so ‘easily’.

You know — a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

 
 

Yay! I just got my power back after 8 days in the dark. What’s this about a bailout? Will I get any money? Will my candle fund be replenished?

 
 

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Well, real change comes from within, even political change. You and the people around you have to change internally. For the better or the worse. And things have changed for the better in some ways. There is a black man running for prez, gays are generally accepted in society, with a few hold outs and there is massive opposition to war that has left only a few thousand of our soldiers dead as compared to 60,000 in Vietnam. We are not looking at nuclear Armageddon with the USSR, it doesn’t exist any more and China is for all intents and purposes a capitalist country with a fig leaf of Marxism. These are good things.

It isn’t enough and it’s too slow of course, but it is change for the better.

 
 

we have to act fast to Restore Investor Confidence.
If I were an investor, nothing would restore my confidence more surely than the knowledge that the ultimate custodians of my money were capable of such epic incompetence that they were 0.7 trillion dollars in debt. Unless, perhaps, it was the knowledge that none of them were receiving any kind of negative feedback for their incompetence.

 
 

In a sane world we’d be looking at a decade-long process of national de-Republicanization.

Yes, indeedy, but we don’t live in a sane world.

Yet.

On that note, I must take my brain off “full boil” so I can get some sleep. May we all wake to a truly new day.

 
 

The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (1971).

 
 

“But, doing nothing is horrible. We need a better bailout plan, but we all need to accept that it needs to happen otherwise we are truly screwed and America as you know it is over (and not just us, but people all over the world will suffer). All us economists that have seen the numbers are truly scared. You should be too. There is no way you can let them all fall and think that your life will still resemble anything remotely similar to what it is today.”

i dont give a motherfuck whether my life will resemble what it is today. we are 150% royally fucked EITHER GODDAMN WAY.

i will shit in the fucking woods and hunt with a goddamn atlatl if need be. whether we give these lying, dickless, rapacious thugs their money or not, WE ARE STILL GOING TO BE FUCKED. better sooner than later, that way we can get back to rebuilding that much sooner.

 
 

What is all the rush? Is there an oncoming Train about to smash into a bundle of bad mortgages?

Shorter Entire Bush Administration:

I’ve just totalled your car. Quick, give me the keys to your house.

 
 

I might hate myself later for some bit of optimism from this, but, for whatever it’s worth:

As they plotted an endgame strategy, Democrats said they planned to consider the bailout proposal separately from an economic recovery program that would include new public works spending, aid to states and added unemployment and food-stamp benefits. Congress could consider that plan as well as a stop-gap funding plan for the entire federal government before getting to the Treasury proposal later in the week.

In other news, Goldman and Morgan are to become bank holding companies such as CitiGroup.

Being a bank holding company would also give the two access to the discount window of the Federal Reserve. While they have had access to Fed lending facilities in recent months, regulators had planned to take away discount window access in January.

The regulation by the Federal Reserve brings a host of accounting rule changes that should benefit the two banks in the current environment.

In return, they will submit themselves to greater regulation, including limits on the amount of debt they can take on. When it collapsed, Lehman had about a 30:1 debt-to-equity ratio, meaning it had borrowed $30 for every dollar in capital it held. Morgan Stanley currently has a debt-to-equity ratio of 30:1, while Goldman Sachs has one of about 22:1.

 
 

Come on, Republicans in the House. Stand with President Bush. Stand with him as you have these last 7.5 years. Stand with him, and then go back to your districts and tell your constituents how you stood up to those liberal elitists by backing the president’s plan to bailout the Wall Street firms that speculated on the mortgages for the homes your constituents are having trouble retaining and to pass off the cost of the bailout on your very constituents.. Do it. This isn’t time to blink.

 
Really Really Angry Liberal
 

I’m going to start busting out the damn pitchforks and torches.

Guillotines also would not be remiss here.

Yeah, somebody get on that, okay? I’ll be right here, with everyone else, sitting on my ass and keyboarding my outrage into the blogosphere.

 
 

The question remains. How much shit are you willing to eat before you make your case on the streets??

A lot, it seems.

 
 

Denninger warns of US political failure

Every now and then I have enjoyed reading Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker on current events. His most recent video, which he warns may be his last, warns that the line crossed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve in creating new money to bail out Wall Street will – if unchallenged – lead to the political failure of the United States and its constitutional government as a representative democracy. He makes some very good points.

The Potential End Of America’s Government

 
 

Brothers and Sisters.

I bring you grave news. The Lord has come to me (again, he gets bored you know) and said that unless I can raise eight million dollars, he’s going to call me home.

Ha! That doesn’t seem like too much money now, does it, suckers?

 
 

What is all the rush? Is there an oncoming Train about to smash into a bundle of bad mortgages?

What the fuck is the rush?

Only three months left to finish looting the treasury. Damn, their only regret is that they didn’t get Social Security too.

 
 

On the plus side, we might look at this as neoliberalism last big blowout performance as the United States’ hegemonic political economy. I guess it’s to be expected that it won’t slink away quietly.

 
 

Long long ago, geological eons ago, last Friday in fact, the news coming out of the States was all “Now we have bailed out recapitalised the largest US insurer, crisis has been averted. We have turned the corner and seen light at the end of the tunnel. Yay us!”
Then I went away and spent the weekend in the New Zealand heartland,* away from newspapers. Come back to find that the news coming out of the States is all “We need to bail out recapitalise umpteen investment banks. Then crisis will be averted. We will turn the corner and see light at the end of the tunnel. Yay us!”

Also there is no crisis in the US economy, and if there is a crisis it’s all Barack Obama’s fault for talking trash and doing the dozens about the economy’s mother, but just to make sure there isn’t a crisis we should sprinkle $ 0.7 trill. around like magical pixie dust.

Perhaps I should go back to Ohakune.

* Ohakune, brussells-sprout capital of NZ.

 
 

their only regret is that they didn’t get Social Security too.

No, that’s the funny part.

It used to be that they thought they’d have to privatize Social Security in order to hand a trillion dollars to Wall Street.

Ha! Turns out, all they had to do was demand the money straight out!!!

They didn’t need the Social Security subterfuge at all!

 
 

The bailout as-is is not good. But, doing nothing is horrible.

Oh yeah? I keep hearing this.

Know what I DON’T keep hearing?

Any explanation of either why it’s true or what horrible outcomes we’d be facing.

Let’s see. “We have to invade iraq or the terrorists will do horrible shit!!”

“We have to abrogate the fourth ammendment or horrible things will happen!”

“We have to lock these people up without due process or contact with lawyers or their family or simply awful things will come to pass!!”.

AHEM.

At what point are we going to ask for just a tiny bit more information before we roll over and expose our throat to these rapacious mother fuckers?

mikey

 
 

Around midnight Eastern, David Axelrod will be exposed for his astroturfing and his possible violations of campaign finance law.

We know that Axelrod violated the law with the pro-Obama 1984 ad, pro-Simon “independent” spending, and that Axelrod works for a lot of slimy causes.

Tonight, the veil is lifted.

Also, ask David Axelrod how much work he has done for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. The Media won’t.

 
 

Take a look at this though. It seems the Dems might have grown a backbone on this one. Let’s hope so.http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/21/news/economy/bailout_proposal_Sunday/index.htm

 
 

Oh, fuck.

A trillion bucks won’t do a damned thing (particularly the notion of handing out to foreign banks) when there are 650 Trillion bucks worth of nearly worthless derivatives sitting out there waiting to shit the sheets.

I spoke to a fund manager pal of mine earlier today and he told me that tomorrow is going to be a hellacious bear of a day, with big, big, big selling going on. I checked the Dow futures chart ( http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/ ) and it shows an opening of -121 (as of this posting). Opening at -121? WTF? And from there it goes….?

People, get your houses in order, so to speak. Don’t sit there with your thumb up you ass, make moves to protect your family. And if you’ve got a moment or two? Call your Congresspeople and tell them “Washington offered me this bailout…and I said…thanks, but no thanks!!”.

 
 

What’s this about a bailout? Will I get any money? Will my candle fund be replenished?

Oh, it’s all vague threats and gibberish at this stage. I just let it go in one ear, out the other.

No, you will not be getting any money. You’ll actually have to contribute some.

As for your candle-related needs – we have an assortment of hand-dipped tallow wicks for your illuminated enjoyment. Beef-scented, even. It’s like hanging your head over the fry-o-lators at McDonald’s.

 
 

Here’s the thing. The repubs are so worried about the financial sector.
Are they worried enough to let a Democratic Secretary of Treasury handle it? Seriously, Paulson resigns and a new Secy is nominated this week to administer this new program. There are plenty of capable dems.

 
 

Can we practice with the pitchforks on every right wing pundit and troll defending Bush and McBush?

 
 

The good news is they didn’t plan for this.

Dream on. This has been in the works for many years now, likely since well before 2000. I think the worst mistake you could make regarding this crisis is to think that it’s all nothing more than a colossal blunder. You’re ascribing an innocence to these people that just isn’t there … they don’t give a shit whether their target is Chile, Poland or the USA – only that trashing it gets them what they want: more power & more money. It’s working quite well for them so far, isn’t it?

That $700 billion is just the beginning.

For BushCo & their “base” this is payoff time, & I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Bush veto a modified plan simply to accelerate the implosion. The REAL payoff only comes AFTER the mega-crash, when all that capital & real estate is up for grabs, for pennies on the dollar – & when a terrified & desperate populace yearns for a stronger government, human rights be damned. Bush has literally nothing to lose at this point. His reputation is already in the toilet & he’s there to do a job for “the base” – not to be a hero.

This is what disaster capitalism looks like.

as an observer of Washington, and as someone who has worked on the Hill and at the White House, it is simply apparent from this draft that this program will get completely out of control very quickly.

The “get completely out of control” factor isn’t a bug – it’s a feature.

The ugly truth: the Wall Street panic is no accident for BushCo – it’s a vital component of their planning, without which these sorts of extreme conditions (total secrecy, immunity from criminal investigation, ad nauseam) would never have a hope in hell of passing … they likely wanted this to shake out a bit sooner (i.e. farther away from election-day) but c’est la vie, baby – they’ll take it as it comes.

I think now is an excellent time for Americans – & those who know & love America from afar – to take a moment to reflect on those who have fallen in sevrice to their country & cannot be present to witness the fruits of their labors.

 
 

Smut Clyde said,

September 22, 2008 at 4:05

we have to act fast to Restore Investor Confidence.

I know the perfect man for the job.

Financial expert Harry Hutton.

 
 

Paulson resigns and a new Secy is nominated this week to administer this new program. There are plenty of capable dems.

Barney Frank would be teh awesomest. He even mumbles, and is mostly incomprehensible, so it’s really a natural gig for him.

 
 

That’s the real Gary, folks. If anyone figures out who you really are it’s time for hanging you from a lightpost. Sweet dreams, Gary.

 
 

Brad, This isn’t going to end up good, but however this ends up, I’m voting for Obama. NO CHOICE. Fuck you.

 
 

Barney Frank would be teh awesomest. He even mumbles, and is mostly incomprehensible, so it’s really a natural gig for him.

He won’t wear his dentures. My dad does that, and he’s sorta nuts. Barney needs to bite the bullet and get implants, dentures, or something but you can’t go on national TV and do that.

 
 

The good news is they didn’t plan for this.

As Jim sez just upthread – ain’t no accident.

Stirling Newberry, that lovable geek, has a semi-comprehensible piece that’s been pretty widely read all day over at teh Great Orange Satin that puts it all in context. He also identifies a couple of easily-implemented first steps to deal with teh current shit, while also applying the brakes on the more panic-driven and ludicrous elements of this latest coup attempt.

Must read.

All hail, Dark Lord Kos.

 
 

Either you vote to save America’s economy from liberalism by supporting this measure, or you vote for a depression. Simple as that.

 
 

That’s the real Gary, folks. If anyone figures out who you really are it’s time for hanging you from a lightpost.

Let me find the phone number for the FBI

 
 

The ugly truth: the Wall Street panic is no accident for BushCo – it’s a vital component of their planning,

It’s a vital component of their ideology, according to Naomi Klein. Deregulate industry for the maximum greed experiment. When it all goes to shit, bail the criminals with tax dollars. When all the tax dollars are spent under the guise of “rescuing industry” and “giving citizens more free market choices”, announce that you have to privatize social security too because there’s no public money left. It’s socializing the very wealthiest people. How many of these pigs have been feeding off the public trough for the past eight years in military and Iraq-infrastructure contracts. How much money has been wasted and abused by unmanaged, unregulated, and unaccountable corporate thieves? The same people that claim to support the free market and less government.

 
 

Remember, real patriotism includes robbing your country blind and leaving it broke and staggering, because it’s not really your fault, because the country knew damn well that you had been drinking and you were all stressed out over money issues, and the country knows that really you only hurt it because you love it so much.

 
 

Dream on. This has been in the works for many years now, likely since well before 2000. I think the worst mistake you could make regarding this crisis is to think that it’s all nothing more than a colossal blunder

Oh fer crissakes, that’s just stupid. Explain to me the methodology, the goal, the endgame, the planning, the management.

Y’know, the LAST thing anybody needs at this point is some vague, generalized conspiracy theory. It doesn’t make any sense, and sorry pal, they ain’t that smart.

They were a greedy, rapacious parasite and they damn near killed the host. Did they have some sense that they’d never pay a price for their destructive greed? Yeah, pretty sure they did. Did they want it to turn out this way? Of course not, that would be stupid. They were drinking at the trough – they never thought the trough would dry up. And they DAMN sure didn’t want it to. They never thought they’d actually KILL the goose that was pounding out all those golden eggs. Now sure, they get off with their millions, but anybody who thinks THIS was the desired outcome needs to have their meds adjusted.

Christ, you people are stupid enough to deserve what they’re shoving up your asses…

mikey

 
 

Go read the top post at MoonOfAlabama.org. This is nothing but theft and the biggest power grab in our history.

 
 

This is hugely important, and I will be furious if the Democrats let this one go, but I will NOT sacrifice Roe for this. I simply won’t do it. Neither should you. Vote for Obama, dammit, there are other things at stake here. Give him hell, but staying home on election day because of this is hugely irresponsible.

 
 

Yeah, I’m still stuck with wanting Obama elected because even if they pull this sh*t off, it’s better than McCain. I know, I know, I wouldn’t be voting my ‘conscience’ and all the brave people would see this as some sort of surrender and what not, but really, it’s just a vote, just a rational choice between two and only two options, and in that context it’s pretty damn clear that yes, I prefer a sane and competent manager than the McPalins.

 
 

I know, I know, I wouldn’t be voting my ‘conscience’ and all the brave people would see this as some sort of surrender

You know, we really need to stuff that self righteous crap in a closet for the next two months. If Obama doesn’t win in November there’s no chance in hell that any of the insane shit that’s been happening for the last 8 years will ever stop. This truly is our last chance.

 
 

If Obama Humphrey agrees to this nonsense, I will not vote for him — it’s as simple as that.

fxd kthnxbai

 
 

Nine tenths of the law that
Is possession
Life expressed in matter is a blasphemy
Success defined by acquisition stinks!
So busy trying to make a living i forgot about living
Yes i do
So busy trying to make a living i forget about life
The best things i found in life were my birthright
Green fields mean more to me than a brand new car
Will you swap your hi-fi for a clear blue sky?
Will you cash in all your shares for Gods clean air?
Is your answer yes,or no,to these painful truths?
Is your answer yes,or no,to these painful truths?
Do you grovel to your master?
Do you beg like a dog?
First things first,repeat to yourself
AHHH MONEY!, Money is not our GOD!
Mine!
The best things in life are free
Mine!
I own the beach and the blazing sunset
Mine!
I own the waves and the fresh air
Mine!
I drink the milk of the stars in this beautiful moment
Say to yourself
ALL THESE THINGS ARE MINE!
Repeat after me!
Money’s not our God
Do you grovel to your master?
Do you beg like a dog?
First things first,repeat to yourself
AHHH MONEY!

jaz and killing joke, saying it right. and:

 
 

Shorter Gary

“I have idea what Liberalism is”

 
 

Ten percent of the land
Is the hand that pulls the strings
Be the privileged few (to have to own to hold)
Power over the people yes yes
Power over people
Be the privileged few to have to own to hold
Money property assets before lives
Green gestures of a dying planet
An endless debate only too late
An appetite for gluttony
The only way is up the only way is up
But when you are up you have to try and stay there
So you stamp and cheat on people
Champagne breakfasts (rewards for the killing)
And a fast waist bulging
Indulging, in what you call good living
But most of all there is too much fat on your heart – pig
A lifestyle of cholesterol
Cross collateralized cholesterol
Saving what’s left from profit margin
For what?
I’ll tell you what for
For some irrelevant conscience easing charity – Why?
Just to justify! Just to justify!
Look at this utopia
A society based on solid foundations
Educate our children – educate them well
To feather the nest and fuck the rest
(Yes yes feather the nest and fuck the rest)
The waste expands
(As your waist expands)
While others stand at the back of the queue
I mean you
Still the same old security
For your creature comforts
Exchanging the hours of your life
For the cash you’ve already spent
Eating rubbish so you can pay the rent
Table wine once a week if you’re lucky
In comparison
Privatise the people’s lives
Be part of the company (or fade!)
The appliance of science to privatise their lives
Water is our business
Electricity is our business
Gas is our business
Lives are our business
Business is our business
Your money – my time
Your stinking industrial bathwater – my wine
Imbalance induces hate
How will you fill the gap
Between the endless buffet
And the scraps of food I have
I feel hate I feel hate
I feel hate I feel hate
(Don’t be afraid to show your hate, hate!)
You just treat me like a commodity
You didn’t know I couldn’t even afford to feed my family
I just want to kill
I just want to take a gun
And put it to your head
And pull the trigger

The Age of Greed–Killing Joke.

if there is a more apropos song about how i feel right now, please someone tell me what it is. everyone should go put that monster on endless replay.

 
 

mikefromtexas said,
Go read the top post at MoonOfAlabama.org. This is nothing but theft and the biggest power grab in our history.

MikefromTexas, a lot of that stuff is over my head, the gist seems to be that this hasty bail out plan is nothing more than protection for the cobags who brought this on in the first place. It’s not going to prevent the shit tsunami from occuring, just slow it down a little.

 
 

mikey,

So these wallstreet wizards, these best and brightest, completely lost sight of history, economics, politics and set about shredding the financial system like frenzied piranhas, with only a vague inkling of consequences and no hope of a neocon-sanctioned bailout?

I would almost welcome the most wild-haired conspiracy theory over that.

Peace, bro, and welcome back, btw.

 
 

I agree with grolby and gbear and others who say we need to vote for Obama. There truly are other things at stake here. I don’t know what the solution is for this. It may well be that there is no solution, or no good solution, at any rate. But I don’t want that crazy bible thumping loon Palin and Grampy McCain presiding over our downward slide. It’s vaguely possible that an Obama administration might be able to come up with some way to arrest the slide, maybe even turn it around. We know for a goddamned fact that a McCain administration can’t do it, and won’t even really want to, as long as they’ve all still got their goodies safe under lock ‘n key and protected by Blackwater forces.

This is a horrible fucking situation for sure. I have a sixteen year old son, and I am absolutely horrified by the future he may be facing. What we can’t afford to do is to make a bad situation worse by allowing a Rethug president to get another four year crack at it. We just can’t. This may be beyond politics. It may really be time for the revolution. I don’t know. But what if it isn’t? What if things do turn around, hell, maybe the rest of the world will decide that a wounded U.S. moose with a huge nuclear arsenal at its disposal is more dangerous than a healthy U.S. moose and bail us out with free money, and what then? What do we do when Grampy and Tina Fey’s evil twin get around to forcing the Xtian equivalent of Fake Gary’s Shania Law on us all? I don’t want to take that chance.

This won’t stop me from emailing the Obama campaign and signing petitions and threatening to not vote for him, though, if he caves on this deal, but I don’t think he’s going to cave. He’s long-sighted. There’s no future in capitulating on this, not for Obama. I’m not sure McCain will even do it. But hey, I’ve been wrong before. I really hope I’m not wrong this time. I have to say that this feels like the real deal, like things are coming to a border that, once crossed, will lead us into some vast wasteland with no familiar markings. Well, at least we live in interesting times. I don’t think events are going to be boring anytime soon.

 
 

So these wallstreet wizards, these best and brightest, completely lost sight of history, economics, politics and set about shredding the financial system like frenzied piranhas, with only a vague inkling of consequences and no hope of a neocon-sanctioned bailout?

This is a comment that made me think.

As an insurance professional, my understanding of what is happening is that people who had no understanding of insurance got involved in insuring risk. Insurance is a seductive business – people give you large amounts of cash now in exchange for a contingent promise to pay in the future – and it’s always very tempting to charge premiums that are too low. That’s why insurance is regulated – to make sure that premiums are sufficiently high to pay claims. But Congress prohibited regulation of credit default swap transactions and what happened is what you’d expect: the insurers cut premiums, and justified their actions by systematically underestimating risk. Since there was no history of losses for these instruments, the risk analysis was entirely speculative anyway, and could easily be manipulated by those whose self-interest consisted in entirely in maximizing cash flow.

 
 

Can we just abolish Wall Street now please? I mean, can someone explain to me exactly what useful purpose they serve in the modern economy?

 
 

yes, you will vote for obama because there are only two sandwiches you can eat in this election. one is a sammy made with rancid mayo, 6 day old fungal toe cheese, two pieces of hardened feces for bread and all washed down with a bucket of pig’s blood soup mixed with vomit.

the other is a BLT. not too good, not terrible. if what happens happens (dems give in on this ,as is inevitable) then the sammy will be a shit sandwich. please note that even a shit sandwich is better than the above, so my asshole friend you will fucking suck it up and eat your shit like a goddamn man. or woman. i’m not trying to be sexist here.

 
 

And RB, yes, that is exactly what happened and why derivatives are such nightmare. They have no intrinsic value, their notional value is tied up in the obligation of the counterparty and your confidence in their ability to meet that obligation. Of course, since all the models to price the things are based on past events, they have a bad tendency to fall apart and leave someone holding a pile of worthless shit.

Long-Term Capital Management back in ’98 was the dress rehearsal for this mess.

 
 

But Congress prohibited regulation of credit default swap transactions

A Republican-dominated congress or was it a mixed bag. And why would they do this? Why?????

 
 

one is a sammy made with rancid mayo, 6 day old fungal toe cheese, two pieces of hardened feces for bread and all washed down with a bucket of pig’s blood soup mixed with vomit.

Can I get that toasted, please?

 
 

Can we just abolish Wall Street now please? I mean, can someone explain to me exactly what useful purpose they serve in the modern economy?

The US Fed seems pretty damn useless too. Greenspan knowingly sat on this shit for years.

 
 

Exactly right, Robert Green. Exactly right, if somewhat inelegantly phrased. But then again, these are not elegant times.

Note that if not for the aforementioned son, I’d be the first in line for the pitchforks and torches. I’ve never had a lot to lose.

 
 

OK, I was going to post a different comment, but I’ll get to that in a minute, because I just have to note that this:

Gary Ruppert said,

September 22, 2008 at 4:41 (kill)

Around midnight Eastern, David Axelrod will be exposed for his astroturfing and his possible violations of campaign finance law.

smells suspiciously like Real Gary.

 
 

A bus driver speeds and weaves in and out of traffic on a busy freeway until he crashes and overturns the crowded bus.

McCain passes by and says to his driver that those people wouldn’t have gotten hurt if only they’d all been driving cars.

Obama stops his car, calls 911, starts looking for ways to get the people out of the bus, but lets the driver escape.

Brad stands screaming at Obama from the curb because the driver got away.

gbear sends letters to his congresscritters and crawls off to sleep with the pillows over his head.

In 8 hours, the sun will come up.

 
 

It’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with $1 trillion, and you see it 20 times, and you think, my goodness … is it possible that there were that many billions in the whole country?

 
 

A Republican-dominated congress or was it a mixed bag. And why would they do this? Why?????

Just taking “Congress prohibited regulation of credit default swap transactions” into Google yields this:

But Gramm’s most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. “Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it,” says a congressional aide familiar with the bill’s history.

 
 

The US Fed seems pretty damn useless too. Greenspan knowingly sat on this shit for years.

The Fed actually has an important role in controlling inflation in the economy, but this isn’t an inflationary problem so there was little they could do.

Not to defend Greenspan, but he’s not the one who deregulated all this shit… Phil Gramm come on down!

 
 

candy

i’m not elegant. neither, obviously, is my wife. we’re pissed the fuck off and we aren’t here to carefully structure lovely discourses on why things are all gone to shit.

they are all. gone. to. shit.

because idiots vote for other, richer idiots. who then take the first idiots’ money and convert it into large houses, hookers, war machines and subscriptions to national review and the WSJ.

 
 

For those prepared to say “fuck you Obama” let us note that anti-McCain voting has ALWAYS been the deal.

 
 

I don’t disagree with you Robert. Not at all. Things are most probably in an irreversible downward spiral into the shitter. I’m sure it’s going to get a fuck of a lot worse before it gets better. But I do hope I’m wrong. I really, really want to be wrong about this. Reading about the downfall of a civilization is fascinating. Experiencing it is gonna be something else altogether.

solutions? Cause if there are some, I’d love to hear them. Time feels really short.

 
 

RB, I just saw that article. McCain’s top economic advisor is up to his trans-continental eyebrows in this shit and is trying to game the bailout so he gets to keep his millions. Pitchforks are too kind for the likes of Gramm.

 
 

candy, there are plenty of useful proscriptions, starting somewhere at robert reich’s and ending somewhere more to the populist end of that.

but the issue is getting past the people what already got to get to the people what need. since we have an entire class of assholes who are paid not to understand a lot of things (and paid well), there is no countervailing force that is taken seriously that is ready to take this FUCKING OBVIOUS opportunity to come in with a real left critique of capitalism and randism and miltonfriedmanism and jeffreysachsism and so on. no one. no substantive person. maybe one congresscritter who won’t even put his name on his e-mail.

 
 

ah Phil Gramm, the same sociopath who called Americans whiners two minutes ago. Thanks, RB for that slice of Republicamericana.

Barf-inducing thoughts from Henry Paulson:
“this is a humbling experience to see such fragility in capital markets and to ask how did we ever get here,” Mr Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press. (as if he doesn’t know…oh it’s one big mystery how you got here.)

He also urged other countries to adopt similar schemes to shore up confidence. (As if other countries are going to take advice from one that failed in regulation and oversight. Fuck you, Paulson)

Once this difficult period was over, Mr Paulson said, the government’s next task would be to overhaul bank regulations. (Afterward…you have to be shitting me.)

 
 

McCain’s top economic advisor is up to his trans-continental eyebrows in this shit
Which reminds me. Any news about NY A-G Cuomo’s fraut suit against UBS, the bank in question?

 
 

there is no countervailing force that is taken seriously that is ready to take this FUCKING OBVIOUS opportunity to come in with a real left critique of capitalism and randism and miltonfriedmanism and jeffreysachsism and so on. no one. no substantive person. maybe one congresscritter who won’t even put his name on his e-mail.

Yes, that’s the crux. I have absolutely no hope that any countervailing force – at least not one credible to the vast T.V. nation out there which has been taught to worship consumerism as the High Holy – is going to emerge anytime soon, either. More likely to be just the opposite given the current state of affairs.

 
 

Man, I bet for $700 billion we could have had like space stations and a space elevator. Maybe even a Moon base. Too bad. At least the money’s going to good people who need it.

 
 

Dream on. This has been in the works for many years now, likely since well before 2000. I think the worst mistake you could make regarding this crisis is to think that it’s all nothing more than a colossal blunder.

Well, yes, in this regard:

How many times over the past 5 or 6 years have we heard the phrase: “Housing is still going strong; it’s the engine driving the economy”?

A shitload, that’s how many.

Now, think about this: how would it be possible, in any kind of sanely regulated system, for people who are too broke and maxed out on credit card debt to buy shitty consumer goods at Wal-Mart to be buying fucking houses, particularly when the values were being inflated beyond all reason? Does that make any fucking sense at all? No. No, it does not.

Was it a big secret that it didn’t make sense? No, it wasn’t. But it was allowed to go on for one reason and one reason only: it was the only fucking thing keeping the economy out of recession. And that was more important to the powers that be in the Bush administration than the high probability of a total financial system collapse when the chickens came home to roost.

The mortgage lending free-for-all was no accident. It was a feature, not a bug. And lots of people knew it was going on. Me, for one, who kept wondering how it was that I was so big of a loser than I was never able to buy a tiny 950 sf house until I was 30 years old, and then only with my parents co-signing, when 10 years later I was seeing all these kids fresh out of college buying up McMansions. It didn’t make sense; I knew there was no way those 25-year-olds could afford that much house, and kept thinking, “is it possible that all these kids have wealthy parents who are buying these houses for them?” Turns out I was right – those kids couldn’t afford those houses, and a lot of them are now sitting empty.

And that’s just me, an outsider to the whole mortgage lending and real estate industries. The people on the inside – literally millions of them – knew about this shit all along. And still the band played on, because there was no one to tell them they had to stop.

 
 

A sparkle pony in every stable, and an ounce of pot for every chicken . . .

Come to think of it, $700 billion could buy a lotta dope. Bone China, my friends.

 
 

I’ve got to agree with the quote-unquote conspiracy theorists here. The mechanism is pretty simple — speculation culture preferences greed over everything else, and modern corporate culture prioritises maximising short-term shareholder gain over long-term company stability, profitability, productivity, or anything else. That’s why deregulation lets loose the piranhas. This kind of wholesale looting and massive upward transfer of wealth has actually happened a bunch of times before, as far as I know, in other countries (Argentina comes to mind), and IMF “austerity plans” amount to basically the same thing — loot the public treasury for the enrichment of a wealthy few and/or foreign investors.

This bailout thing is actually a really similar scam to the one that has been run in Canada for the past 25 or so years, thanks to the Bank of Canada financial wizards out of the University of Manitoba’s neo-Straussian School of Economics; that is, claim there’s a big financial crisis going on regarding the national debt, divert most of government revenues to debt service, and then claim there’s no money left for social services or infrastructure, which you then cut to the bone. Bonus points if you’re a real neocon like Harper or Mulroney and you can simultaneously sell tax cuts along with it. Double bonus points if your government has been posting federal surpluses the whole time you’re crying poverty. To give an illustration of how pervasive this scam is, and how the neocons are doing this all over the world, at one point in the late 1980s or early 1990s, Bay Street — Canada’s answer to Wall Street — was begging international financiers to downgrade Canada’s AAA credit rating to make the debt manufactroversy more plausible. They refused, of course, but the point stands.

The endgame is, of course, for the ones who like political power to have their own personal fiefdom(s) with the trappings of the United States, and for the ones who prefer wealth to politicking to take their purloined loot and retire somewhere far away, preferably somewhere where US dollars go a long way and US extradition treaties don’t.

 
 

I really like the Kos diary by Stirling Newberry The Way Forward. It sums things up without resorting to conspiracy theorizing and exaplins how to get out of this mess. Writen in simple, clear language.

It gives me hope.

 
 

The mortgage lending free-for-all was no accident. It was a feature, not a bug. And lots of people knew it was going on. Me, for one,

Fuckin’ A. I was a low level mortgage company employee at a couple of different companies over this time (customer service, home equity loan processing, legal files) and I kept trying to express to friends and family how peculiar the whole situation was. I had no real inside knowledge at all, and I could see the whole structure was unsustainable. (Home equity lines of credit used to raise the hackles on my neck.) There is no fucking way the big dogs didn’t know this was coming.

 
 

And lots of people knew it was going on. Me, for one, who kept wondering how it was that I was so big of a loser than I was never able to buy a tiny 950 sf house until I was 30 years old, and then only with my parents co-signing, when 10 years later I was seeing all these kids fresh out of college buying up McMansions..

Yes, lots of people knew and were told, too.

TORONTO — Merrill Lynch & Co. should have listened to its own chief economist. For years, David Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill, has been telling anyone who would listen that the fallout from the U.S. housing bust on credit markets and the underlying economy would be huge.

Mr. Rosenberg, a Canadian who started his career on Bay Street, is one of only a few economists who rang alarm bells while the rest of Wall Street whistled its usual “don’t worry, be happy” tune.

Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at the Stern School of Business and co-founder of economics Web site RGE Monitor has been another prescient bear, forecasting in February that “one or two large and systemically important broker dealers” would “go belly-up.”

At a stop in Toronto in April, Mr. Roubini called that month’s market bounce a “sucker’s rally,” said the U.S. economy was facing a 12-18 month recession and that commodity prices would sink 20% to 30%.

Mr. Rosenberg predicted way back in 2004 that the U.S. housing market was in a classic bubble that would ultimately be popped. At a presentation to a mutual fund in Texas in 2005, he almost got laughed out of the room.

“The CFO got up in front of 20 people in the middle of my presentation and said you are dead wrong on the housing market,” he said in an interview yesterday. “‘To show you how wrong you are my Nanny just bought a 2500-square-foot split-level house in the suburbs of Houston,’ he said. In my
mind I was saying ‘exactly.'”

The next shoe to drop will be the U.S. consumer, Mr. Rosenberg predicts. He forecasts a U.S. recession towards the end of the year and a long period of very weak growth as U.S. consumers are forced to rebuild savings.

 
 

I gotta say, I’m pretty goddamn pissed right now. I’m near the ‘torches & pitchforks’ stage.

There are awful consequences predicted if nothing is done.

You really think having U.S. Treasury bonds loose their AAA rating internationally isn’t pretty fucking awful? That there, friends, is serious 3rd-world shit happening, and if the U.S. sinks a trillion dollars into debt that we know is bad, that’s pretty much the result you can expect. May not happen tomorrow or next week, but there are a lot of pissed off Chinese and Russian bankers who will most definitely not eat any more shit sandwiches.

The difference between “doing nothing” and “doing something phenomenally stupid”is that if we do nothing, then at least the people who engaged in bad behavior will see some measure of punishment, whereas if we do something really stupid, we all get to suffer, and the multimillion-dollar-salaried CEOs that got us into this mess get to walk away and crap all over something new. Or, it less profane language, a bailout would not prevent catastrophe, it would simply be the largest, most visible moral hazard of our lifetimes. That’s really all that’s at stake, because either way, the economy is going to be stagnant, credit will be tight for the next three years (go look at the Alt-A reset schedule for a laugh), U.S. currency will be weak globally, and inflation will remain brutal. The means and methods will be different depending on what is or isn’t done, but the end result is pretty clear.

Greenspan’s “house=ATM” plan back in the early years of this decade bought us seven years of time to repair the economy. Instead, it all got pissed away into two wars and into the pockets of a lot of people who were already very rich.

Oh, and to Mr. Gary Ruppuert, the people you claim to support, the ideology you claim as yours, that’s what was in the White House, and running Congress, and the SEC and every other regulatory agency for the years building up to this. This is the legacy of modern republican rule. This is the logical extension of what Regan began in the 80s. So tell me, Gary, are you proud of this?

 
 

Cash for Trash,” sez Krugman.

 
 

we have to act fast to Restore Investor Confidence.
Is this offer also open to other sectors of society? Suppose that politicians (for example) had been issuing promises which suddenly turn out to be meaningless, raising the prospect of a Widespread Loss of Confidence in the leadership classes… and someone comes up with the idea that the crisis will be averted if the government simply absorbs the cost of those bankrupt promises, and hands out a blanket amnesty to everyone responsible. Would anyone take that policy seriously?

Well, President Ford got away with it. But apart from that.

 
 

the_millionaire_lebowski said,
If the current financial conditions were a house, it would look like this.

You know what that is? The soul of the Whitehouse.

 
 

Frank Rich has an editorial up that condemns McCain: Truthiness Stages a Comeback.

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.

 
 

Bless Krugman. I hope someone listens to him and tells Paulson to take flying leap. All he and Bush want to do is protect their criminal friends. They’re asking for immunity and a “clean slate.” Fuck that. Nationalize the banks if you have to, Congress, and kick the bums out.

 
 

I don’t want to wax nostalgic about Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but when they finally bailed out the Savings & Loan collapse from the earlier round of banking deregulation, they actually took over the failed banks themselves.

As I had been mumbling angrily the entire weekend, and Krugman writes about, this time they’re only talking about taking over the bad debts without owning the bank in return.

When you’ve got to look back on Bush Sr. as a model of economic propriety, you know you’re in good times, good times.

 
 

Y’know, it’s been nagging at me for a couple of months now. When it finally happens, it will likely as not send me into an aneuristic frenzy that will have me pining for the fjords. Still, I have to wonder about the specifics.

What, exactly, is the list of signed-on-the-way-out-of-the-Oval-Office going to look like come the end of January? Is it going to be a garden variety affront to justice and actually be a list of beneficiaries, perhaps with a sealed and classified list of offenses for which the Get Out Of Jail Free cards are good? Or will these tools, one last time, take the Nixon era as a mere failed template for their vision of government, and blanket-pardon every. fucking. thing. that anybody has done over the last eight years? Perhaps they’ll limit it to specific industries, like energy, financials and paramilitaries. I suppose they’d have to throw in every Republican government employee, too, probably under the auspices of Executive Privilege.

Seriously, though. Does anybody think that they are planning on allowing the DOJ to just come back to life on the day after the inauguration? I really do have to wonder just what the final, cynical shit they are going to take on the Constitution is going to be.

Meh.

 
 

Corporate Welfare News:

Goldman and Stanley change their status to qualify for greater Federal protection

Why don’t they also get a few cows, declare themselves dairy farms and qualify for agricultural subsidies?

 
 

Interestingly enough, Hugo Chavez is now bragging how Fidel Castro asked him 7 years ago to see where Venezuela’s foreign reserves were invested, and when he found that they were in the U.S., he began moving them out. Reserves that in the past decade he claims grew by almost 300%.

 
 

The fact is I love it when the real version of me shows up.

 
 

Note to self: Invest $700B in farm equipment & torch-making companies, first thing tomorrow.

 
 

And anybody who thinks that it’s just fine and dandy to have Paulson appoint whomever he pleases to do whatever the hell he wants with said trillions, and contract with whomever he likes for the same ends, needs to have this picture, blown up and printed on a medium-duty zamboni, shoved so far up their ass they spit hockey pucks.

 
 

Serial killers would give anything to be a bank these days.

 
 

700 Billion? Ha, ha, frikkin’ ha! This initial bullshit is gonna be at least 3 Trillion by the time they’re done. Why? Because these fuckers have quietly moved from asking the taxpayers to take on their bad real estate loans to loading us up with ALL of the shit on their books, from credit card debt to bad student loans, everything and anything will be put into the “someone else can pay for this” box by the villains and their lobby.

Of course, whatever the “bailout” ends up costing, it will all have been pointless. There are about 650 TRILLION dollars worth of nearly valueless derivatives out there, and what, you and I are going to get billed for those too? How many tens of millions of extra debt can each American taxpayer handle whilst losing their employment in a crushing depression?

 
 

If Obama agrees to this nonsense, I will not vote for him — it’s as simple as that. In fact, I will not support any Democrat who gets on board with this

Dude, John Cole knows how to skin a dog and plant corn. You guys are needed in Paulsville.

 
 

But come on. Just the other day I heard someone on the TV say that the US was too big to fail.

And, God, did I want to slap the living shit out of them.

Then I wanted to puke up my liver.

 
 

The sad thing is the Democrats are all you have. Being a voter is like being a child at the mercy of parents who continuously fail to do as they ought. You can scream you hate them until you’re blue in the face and it doesn’t matter because the alternative is being homeless.

If they orchestrate this bail and the house of cards collapses anyway the country just might wake up and realize just how much bullshit they’re living with.

 
 

eidos, 9:39,

This is an interesting take
on that.

These guys are on the hook for more money than exists in the world… and the Fed let them skate by changing their North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code? I don’t mean to yell, but …. ARE YOU #$#@!*?$!! KIDDING?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man… these guys got balls so big you can see them from the International Space Station! All they did to get out from under this mess was declare that instead of being a 523110, they are now a 551111? That’s all it took?

That’s like burning down a house … with people inside it… then walking across the street to the cops and saying, “Don’t think of me as a murderer. I’m just a poor, misguided, pyromaniac. So you see, officer, I’m not really a criminal… I’m just sick. Here, will you give this child a decent burial while I go get some therapy? Careful now, she’s still smoldering.”

That’s nerve. That’s chutzpah. That makes killing your parents and throwing yourself at the mercy of the court because you are an orphan look like amateur hour. But you know what? That’s not the part that surprises me. What stuns me is the people who approved this are the same people who have the nerve to show up and point a gun at our heads and demand we fork over more money to them than we already fork over every year to the Pentagon!

Titled, I gotta lie down … monkeys just flew out of my ass.
Complete with graphic.

 
 

What is all the rush? Is there an oncoming Train about to smash into a bundle of bad mortgages?
What the fuck is the rush?

Part of the rush seems to be the fact that the SEC has banned short selling, and papered over the cracks while they grow larger, but the ban expires on Oct. 2nd. It is the equivalent of treating Tinkerbell’s lack-of-clapping-related illness by coating her with make-up.
We are all shocked to learn that the urgency in the flinging-around of money — why it cannot wait for congressional oversight, or promises from the recipients of what they will provide in return — was created by fiat.

 
 

If Obama agrees to this nonsense, I will not vote for him — it’s as simple as that.

I’m moving into a cave and eating toenails.

 
 

it doesn’t matter because the alternative is being homeless.

Elitist scum.

 
 

About that naked short selling ban.

I have to wonder if the SEC has actually enforced the ban this time. See, it’s just plain illegal in the first place and the SEC has done nothing about it in the past. I find it really hard to believe they’re suddenly chasing people down and … what? Asking them to stop?

It’s bullshit. We’re fucked and those assholes are engaging in open air shipboard furniture relocation exercises as the deck rises toward 90 degrees.

 
 

Vote for Obama, dammit, there are other things at stake here.

Yeah, like your Fourth Amendment protection against the government tapping your phone without a warrant.

Oh, wait a minute . . .

Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, Obama already used up his mulligan on the whole FISA bullshit a couple months back. He doesn’t fight this bullshit plan as hard as he can, then fuck it and fuck him.

I mean, what is it that makes you think he’d hold fast on Roe while caving to political expediency on these other vital issues?

 
 

Arky, short selling isn’t illegal in the first place.

“Short sales in certain securities may be limited or prohibited due to SEC rules and may be subject to buy in.”

That’s the message I’m getting now at my account.

 
 

I hear you, but NAKED short selling is what this ban is aimed at stopping. Any fathead screaming that the SEC has gone after plain old short selling and that’s wrong and making things worse is L-Y-I-N-G or doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

No one in power gave a crap about naked shorting until it started to affect the big companies. That’s why the ban only applies to 799 companies.

 
 

If there was ever a time to stand athwart history and yell “EAT ME!!!” it’s now.

You know, earlier when I saw all your commentors going all “I can skin a squirrel and grow corn” I mighta sggested you not say that, but then I realized they were just kidding too.

 
 

Vagrant said, “1. Put a price floor under residential property by bailing out homeowners in default and by buying up unused houses.”

Can’t do it; would take too much money, and why bail out homeowners? They’re far from the poorest people in our society, and they got in the pickle their in through their own decisions (yes, with the help of bankers, but they are themselves partly responsible).

Again, let me stress that it would cost far to much money. The amount of wealth is in the trillions of dollars.

Not possible.

 
 


Robert Green said,

yes, you will vote for obama because there are only two sandwiches you can eat in this election. one is a sammy made with rancid mayo, 6 day old fungal toe cheese, two pieces of hardened feces for bread and all washed down with a bucket of pig’s blood soup mixed with vomit.

Say, at that foto shoot your wife is all proud of goofing on, did she actually have the stones to stand up and tell McCain she thought he was rancid mayo, or did she just make a big joke about it later on the internets in order to promote her own career?
The former would be awesome. The latter not so much.

 
 

Short selling wasn’t illegal before last week, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a form of gambling and it’s relatively high risk, but it isn’t necessarily harmful. The big risk of short-selling is that the short seller faces losing a lot of money (potentially unlimited) if the stock goes up. So, short sellers really have to do their homework before entering into a contract.

Short selling puts a floor on stock prices, so it serves a useful purpose. It also allows stocks to get to the price floor more quickly. The ban on short selling is going to keep prices up for a while, but it isn’t going to make any difference in the long run, unless other steps are taken.

 
 

Again, let me stress that it would cost far to much money. The amount of wealth is in the trillions of dollars.

This is what happens when you combine Time magazine level information with a keyboard.

 
 

Short selling wasn’t illegal before last week, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a form of gambling and it’s relatively high risk, but it isn’t necessarily harmful.

More Time magazine level commentary.

 
 

Naked short selling is the same thing as short selling. And it’s still legal, except in the case of approximately 799 financial securities.

SEC Halts Short Selling of Financial Stocks to Protect Investors and Markets.

 
 

If Obama agrees to this nonsense, I will not vote for him — it’s as simple as that

and we all know a President McCain would be the best thing ever, for all kinds of things idealistic Dems claim to hold dear.

 
 

I know nothing about the share market (I have people to know about such things for me). But when the ban on naked short selling provides an immediate boost for the market indices, I leap immediately to the conclusion that the players are happy because the ban allows the Ponzi scheme to continue for a little bit longer… it sounds like a short-term ban on allowing Wile E. Coyote from looking down and seeing that he has run out over the edge of the cliff. This can’t be good (unless you are in the business of disaster capitalism, and you are using the prospect of the impending end of the ban as a tool for distracting people’s attention from the inequities of your market bail-out policy).

‘Ponzi’ would be an awesome name for a clown.

 
 

it sounds like a short-term ban on allowing Wile E. Coyote from looking down and seeing that he has run out over the edge of the cliff.

That’s a fine analogy.

 
 

Naked short selling is the same thing as short selling. And it’s still legal, except in the case of approximately 799 financial securities.

Nuh-uh.

 
 

That’s what your stock loan department is for, Arky!

 
 

cleek and others who have teed off on Brad and those of us who happen to agree:

You are totally missing the point.

The point is, if our Democratic Party is not willing, even now, to try to minimally protect OUR interests – you know, Barney Smith, not Smith Barney – there really is no longer any point in voting, for anyone.

We’re being ordered to hand over a blank check, sans oversight, restrictions, second-guessing, or any type of guarantee, to the same guys who for years said, “leave us alone, we don’t need oversight or regulation, we can police ourselves” and who proceeded to put the entire country in the shitter. It’s as if your teenager walked through the door, announced he just ran your car into a telephone pole because he was drunk, and asks for the keys to the other car, slurring, “don’t worry, I’m thober now.” And you hand over the keys to the kid, maintaining to onlookers that “it’s ok, he’s says he’s safe to drive.” When the kid wrecks that car, too, if you’re fortunate enough that he doesn’t kill himself in the process, you’ll still be riding the bus to work for a long time to come.

Obama made a step in the right direction by speaking out against the proposed stick-em-up or the economy gets it announced last week, but he didn’t go far enough. Even if everything he suggested gets added to the proposal, the bailout itself is going to cripple an Obama presidency. If he doesn’t at least stick to his guns with what he’s demanded, how serious can he really be about wanting to set things right? If he isn’t serious about that, you know this play already because we’ve seen it too many times: we end up owning a large part of THEIR failure.

So Brad and those who happen to agree with him have two main points, and they are both valid ones: first, if the Democrats are not willing even now to stand up for us and refuse to bend over for another Bush Treasury raid, they’re of no use to us. I’m not sure what your “right to choose” will be worth if no one can afford to avail themselves of it, and ditto for every other thing we’ve been telling ourselves is of vital importance. Second, if this thing isn’t correctly addressed, Krugman and others believe that we’re still going to go down the shitter, in which case, we’d all be better off that it not happen on OUR watch. As Obama himself said, it’s time for them to own their failure. And don’t kid yourself about our ability to put the blame where it belongs and make it stick: as you’ll recall, people were all too willing to blame the recession of 2001 on Clinton, because the Republicans told them it was his fault. You think they won’t do the same again? Only this time, it’s going to be oh so much worse, particularly if we give them what they are demanding.

Last of all, even if you don’t agree with Brad and others who are on board with his point of view, you should at least communicate to your elected Dem representatives and candidates that you are. Put the fear of god into them. Make some noise. Let them know you’re paying attention and you’re fed up and aren’t going to take it anymore. And let them know that if they don’t do what’s right, you have no intention of continuing to support them. It can’t hurt, and it might actually help.

 
 

With this coming so late in the Bush Error, you’d think that they fully expect to still be in power on January 21.

 
 

“You are totally missing the point. … there really is no longer any point in voting, for anyone.”

take a deep breath and think of the hundreds of things the Dems and the Republicans disagree on. or, just think of one: McCain would be perfectly happy putting Social Security money into the stock market; Obama wouldn’t.

the unfortunate thing about a two party system is, obviously, you don’t get ideal candidates: you must always choose the lesser of two evils. or, you can choose the greater of two evils. it’s your choice to make, of course. just be sure you choose what you really want, when you make it.

don’t want to vote for Obama? okie dokie. don’t come around whining about that President McCain enacted the things he campaigned on.

Last of all, even if you don’t agree with Brad and others who are on board with his point of view, you should at least communicate to your elected Dem representatives and candidates that you are.

already did it.

 
 

Last of all, even if you don’t agree with Brad and others who are on board with his point of view, you should at least communicate to your elected Dem representatives and candidates that you are. Put the fear of god into them.

Yes, absolutely. Sign the petitions, call your critters. Harrass them.

Obama is between a rock and a hard place. It’s his own fault, but I imagine he feels like he’s walking a tightrope here. He needed that sweet, sweet cash and he needed to convince the money machine that he’d play along to get it. He’s been taking advice from the wrong people, and money from the wrong people. All I can say is, if he wants to give lip service to the banking industry, while doing the right thing, that’s all good. If it’s the other way around though . . . well, then I guess I agree with Brad and Jennifer. This can’t be tolerated. It’s time to stand and do the right thing.

From the above linked article:

Obama has raised $9.8 million from investment houses (more than McCain). For economic advice, he relies on people like Bob Rubin — the NAFTA architect who gutted market regulations as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and who then tried to rustle up government favors for Enron as a $17-million-a-year executive at Citigroup, a bank embroiled in today’s implosion . . .

Sans aggressive opposition, McCain likens himself to Teddy Roosevelt and pledges support for tighter regulation — hoping America forgets his Keating Five past and March declaration that, “I’m always for less regulation.”

His surrogates, meanwhile, are on the cultural offensive. Even as they endorse the crony communism of Bear Stearns bailouts, conservatives are using Obama’s community organizing experience to depict him as an inner-city black socialist — a caricature invoking the geography, ethnicity and ideology that Republicans regularly rely on to prompt white backlashes.

Thing is, although some people seem to be waking up, not enough people are getting the message, and the press is not doing its job, although there are some hopeful signs of stirring there as well. But I’m afraid it’s all going to be too little, too late.

 
 

I don’t know when I’ve been so torn. The chances that I will stay home on election day are nil. I know that I, lifelong well-trained democrat that I am, will walk into my polling place on the first Tues. in November and vote for Obama, for the reasons cleek gives. It’s the best we have.

But I’ll understand others who won’t, if Obama goes along with this bailout. And I’ll blame Obama and not those who stood on principle. If he would run to the left, I think the results would be surprisingly positive. No one likes bankers. Here in Gary’s Heartland, people still remember the farm crisis. Stand up to the bankers, and I’d bet all the money I wish I had that it will garner more votes for him than it will lose.

But we can’t go with the shit sandwich we wish we had . . .

 
 

What’s this kerfuffle the allegedly real Gary is on about? I clicked a bunch of links to a bunch of winger blogs and they all talk about some tenuous link to some person who put some videos on YouTube, who may or may not have some connection to David Axelrod.

What are they on about?

 
 

Because of the hard-wired two party system, American elections always amount to deciding the lesser of two evils. As pathetic as the Dem congress has been, do you really want to allow McCain to restock the upper civil service with lobbyists? Do you want to ride in a plane with a dying pilot and with Saracuda in the co-pilot’s seat? Part of me would love to see President McCain drown in the shit pool he would inherit. But we owe the rest of the world something better than that.

 
LA Confidential Pantload
 

This economic catastrophe (and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what it’s going to be pretty much regardless of who is elected) actually gives even the most cautious politicians room to act. Unlike the GWOT, for example, there isn’t a full-blown Republican narrative to overcome – no need to prove you’re tougher or more patriotic or more full of horsehit or whatever.

That’s why there’s the big rush to push Paulson’s shitty plan through – it’s not so much the details of the plan itself (which are dreadful), but it’s establishing a narrative to which opponents must respond. The best thing Democrats could do with his proposal is ignore it and get their own proposal together ASAP. Don’t buy into the $700B figure; don’t buy into handouts for rapacious businessoids. There are plenty of intelligent ideas from moderate centrists, flaming lefties, and others in between.

Dems might actually do it this time. Wouldn’t that be a pleasat surprise?

 
 

Part of me would love to see President McCain drown in the shit pool he would inherit. But we owe the rest of the world something better than that.

Again, you miss my point. If they pass the plan as it’s been presented, we’re all going to drown in the shit pool anyway. And the rest of the world will be drowning with us.

 
 

Juan Cole rants in general about the history of the Bush administration.

 
 

If they pass the plan as it’s been presented, we’re all going to drown in the shit pool anyway. And the rest of the world will be drowning with us.

Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm.

 
 

I clicked a bunch of links to a bunch of winger blogs and they all talk about some tenuous link to some person who put some videos on YouTube, who may or may not have some connection to David Axelrod

The claim is, by some asshole over at Volokh Conspiracy or one of the other REEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY fucking nutcase blogs, that the Obama campaign is behind a series of ads and videos that really take Palin down a peg.

Like she’s relevant anymore…

 
The People of Haiti, Iraq, Iran, and 10,000 Teens Who Will Die of Back Alley Abortions
 

The point is, if our Democratic Party is not willing, even now, to try to minimally protect OUR interests – you know, Barney Smith, not Smith Barney – there really is no longer any point in voting, for anyone.

Phew! For a minute there I was worried you might have to compromise your principles.

 
 

Seriously. Sarah Palin is so last week. No wait — last week it was the son of a Dem state rep who hacked into Mrs. Lipstick’s e-mail. Sarah Palin is so two weeks ago.

 
 

I have said it here before and I will say it here again.

The Democratic nominee will get my vote in November. And I don’t care if he/she/it is a fucking werewolf.

I don’t care if the nominee comes and whispers in my ear, “hey, you know I’m the antichrist, right?” and then jebus comes over and says “it’s true, your party’s nominee is the antichrist,” I’m still voting Democrat.

I don’t care if space aliens come to eat our brains and one of them drops an invitation to a brain-eating social that’s signed by the nominee, I’m still voting Democrat.

There has been too much water under the bridge in the last eight years for me to do otherwise. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears, and I am open to persuasion, but if your idea is something like ‘fuck Obama and all Democrats — I’m withholding my vote,’ then I have absolutely no use for you or anything you have to say.

For that way lies a McCain Presidency, and I think you know that already.

 
 

Brad, I don’t pretend to know enough to decipher the ramifications of all this. But somehow I think the American taxpayer will get it in the neck, bailout or not.

That may be so—–but the most horrific thing about going THIS way (bailout) is is it basically tells every smooth talking slimeball on Wall Street that he can be as crooked, fraudulent, reckless and greedy as he wants, and guess what? IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE! You can ALWAYS get the good old t.p.er’s to scarf up the mess.

Pain and suffering I’m used to: I’m down to one meal a day and I live in a household where three adults share one decent car. But I’d like my daughter’s life to someday be better than mine. And if we don’t stand up to the pigs now, they will rule the day yet again, and we will be mired in infinite serfdom for the foreseeable future.

LET some of these fuckers pay the price for what they did! Let THEM default! Let THEM lose houses/yachts/spouses. Why should WE do all the suffering?

 
 

I mean, what is it that makes you think he’d hold fast on Roe while caving to political expediency on these other vital issues?

Sadly I must agree here. I mean, all the pro-choicers went for Bill Clinton (Mr. “Safe, Legal and Rare”) because the alternative had been Bush Sr who had become (belatedly, but still) unabashedly pro-life.

Yet…Clinton allowed denials of funding for abortions at military hospitals; he allowed 24-hour notification periods; he allowed regressive funding policies at the UN and other agencies. He supported parental notification laws that cost some teenagers their lives.

No the wretched two-party system has insured that we will always choice between two piles of shit and pull the lever for the one that stinks less. What we need to do is convert to a Parliamentary democracy so the left doesn’t get forced into caving in all the time.

 
 

I’m already working on the next career. I’ve started stocking up on pencils and apples, and have already begun scouting for a nice corner on which to set up my new American enterprise.

And as my new feudal overlords walk by, I’ll ask them…

?????????????????????

 
 

the bailout plan will be as successful in resolving the financial ‘crisis’ as the USAPATRIOT act is in resolving terrorism.

 
 

[…] guess it’s nice that the Democrats took Hank Paulson’s completely insane plan and have made it a mere three-quarters insane. But as good as it feels to have these […]

 
 

[…] ask that you call your Congresspeeps, too. If the bill passes anyway, then we start thinking about pitchforks and torches, ‘Tilden or blood,’ and building a new Bonus Army camp on Wall Street (where […]

 
 

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