Time to Apply the Whip

jacob

Our Fearless Fuckwit-in-Chief got on the teevee last night in a blatant attempt to fearmonger the nation into opening their wallets to Prince Paulson. Sarah “Golden Retriever” Palin told Katie Couric that we could be facing the next Great Depression. And Johnny “Don’t Wanna Debate!” McCain is rushing back to Washington (after dissing Dave Letterman and flirting with Couric instead) to Save the Day.

This, as far as I’m concerned, settles it. Wall Street’s in sorry shape, but we’re nowhere near a total collapse. When the Republicons scream that the sky is falling, what they mean is that a roof tile came loose, and you must give them $700 billion or else your whole house is coming down. Never mind the fact that all you actually need is a roofing nail, a hammer, and a ladder.

But there are disturbing indications that knees in Congress may be weakening. So it’s time for Yet Another Email reminding them that nobody’s buying this Chicken Little crap except those who stand to profit politically or financially from it.

This one’s arranged by Avaaz.org, and it goes out to Representatives Pelosi, Boehner, Hoyer, Frank and Bachus, and Senators Reid, McConnell, Dodd and Shelby. Give it to ’em with both barrels, my darlings. Let them know you see through the smokescreen.

If they really want to hand Wall Street $700 billion of our dollars, they’d fucking well better make sure there’s something in it for us, or that deal is going to utterly destroy them.

Enough fuckery. Fuck the fear mongering. We’re done here.

Time to Apply the Whip
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Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

John McCain has discovered yet another shark to jump:

It’s not at all unreasonable to wonder if there’s just something wrong with John McCain.

McCain suspends his campaign, and asks to postpone Friday’s debate, to address the financial crisis.

Both candidates have been marginal players; McCain, though, seems to have the potential to make himself a major one, and his move is a mark, most of all, that he doesn’t like the way this campaign is going.

But in terms of the timing of this move: The only thing that’s changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling.


Apparently, as McCain sees it, 10 days after the Wall Street crisis began, now he wants to head back to Capitol Hill to do some work. Of course, lawmakers and administration officials have been working quite a bit, but McCain, who has played no direct role in the negotiations thus far, wants to swoop in and tell everyone what they need to do. This from a man who
hasn’t shown up for work at all in literally months.

What’s more, after whining incessantly for months about the need for one-on-one debates, McCain has decided, just 48 hours before the first official debate, that everything should be postponed. And Barack Obama should go along with all of this, because McCain says so.

I’ve never even heard of a presidential candidate acting in such a reckless, compulsive, and ultimately haphazard fashion. McCain just decided to “suspend” campaign activities? This rivals picking Sarah Palin for the ticket on the list of desperation moves.


This might deceive some extremely gulliable voters, but I do believe the majority are going to see this for what it is: total fucking useless grandstanding. The last person capable of solving our economic ills is John “Keating Five” McCain.

Here’s what I think: he’s shit scared of Obama. He knows he’s going to get trounced in Friday’s debate. He knows his campaign is fucked beyond recognition. He’s watching his poll numbers sink like a 700 billion pound anchor, and this is all he can pull out of his ass. It’s pathetic.

Obama is, justifiably, quite amused:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) just gave a press conference responding to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) suggestion that they both suspend their campaigns, postpone Friday’s debate in Mississippi, and return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. Obama said that he would like to the debate to go forward as planned because “it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once”:

With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. I think there’s no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country.


I can hear a quiet chuckle under all that. It’s absolutely pathetic that a man who wants to be Commander in Chief can’t handle campaigning while also doing his job as a Senator. If the moron can’t multi-task, he’s unfit for the duty.

But that’s politics, you might be saying. What if Senator McCain is desperately needed during this crisis? Let’s see if anybody else thinks so.

Harry Reid:

A Democratic source says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just spoke to John McCain today, and told him on the phone that it “wouldn’t be helpful” for him to return to Washington.

Noper. Nancy Pelosi?

Today on NPR, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “Someone had suggested that he wanted the debate to be postponed so he could come here to work. I mean, he’s so rarely here that that would be interesting. But, nonetheless, I think there’s plenty of time for the debate to take place.”


Hell to the no.

It might be a good idea, then, for McCain to give up on the idea of riding to Wall Street’s rescue and turn his attention to figuring out how he’s going to make Sarah Palin capable of answering questions from the press:

John McCain and Sarah Palin met with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and in a break from preferred campaign policy, reporters were briefly allowed into the room for the photo-op. Big mistake.

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin (“Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?”) but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say “No.”


[snip]

The McCain campaign apparently believes the Republican vice presidential nominee is some kind of child, under strict instructions not to speak. Palin has no doubt been receiving extensive briefings on a variety of subjects, and could probably handle a random question or two, but the McCain gang is so convinced of her incompetence, they’re just not willing to take the risk — even after a genuine media backlash has begun in earnest in response to the campaign’s heavy-handed approach.


You know, if you’re chosing a running mate, it seems like a good idea to pick one that’s capable of facing that nasty liberal media instead of being kept in a protective bubble. Just sayin’.

Of course, when she is allowed to speak to the press, you can kind of get an idea as to why the campaign would rather she keep her mouth shut:

In her interview with Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) tonight, CBS’s Katie Couric noted that the governor has said, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” “Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?” Couric asked. Palin, however, refused to answer the question directly, instead going on about how McCain is seen as a “maverick.” When pressed further by Couric, Palin was unable to name any examples of McCain pushing for more regulation:

PALIN: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time – not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.


Brilliant. She’s not a pit bull with lipstick: she’s a golden retriever.

The McCain campaign’s habit of endless lies, political showboating, and denying press access is causing some folks in the press to draw parallels to other countries – you know, the kind of countries we excoriate for their political and human rights abuses:

Yesterday, media covering Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) visit to the United Nations revolted when the McCain-Palin campaign tried to back out of its promise to allow journalists to cover
the governor’s meetings with various world leaders. Last night on MSNBC, chief
foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell compared the whole affair to her experiences trying to cover the regimes in North Korea, Syria, and Sudan:

MADDOW: You have covered these sort of high level meetings with foreign dignitaries, getting at least one editorial staff member in the room to represent the entire network is standard practice, right?

MITCHELL: It is standard practice. It’s standard for the White House, for the State Department. And often we are in foreign countries where it is not standard practice, like in Pyongyang or in Damascus.


When the McCain campain reminds reporters of the repressive habits of dictatorships, it’s really not a good sign.

Happy Hour Discurso

We're About to Cough Up $700 Billion – and it May Not be Necessary

jacob3 Comments

File this under “Oh my fucking god:”

Let’s dispel the Henny Penny idea that if we don’t act in the next 10 minutes, the sky will fall. The argument for a government bailout goes something like this. If the finance sector crashes, the credit market could lock up and businesses won’t be able to get the short-term credit they need to stay afloat. A large chunk of our businesses depend on short term loans and would fail in a matter of weeks or months after such a lockup. Its really not the financial industry per se, then that’s the problem, its the many businesses which rely on short term loans that would dry up if the investment banks fail. There’s one problem with this line of argument. The connection may not be there.

Both conservatives and liberals are beginning to have doubts. For instance, Alan Reynolds of the Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the far right Cato Institute writes:

The financial storms over the past year have — before last week — been largely confined to securities markets and to interbank loans among commercial and investment banks. Bank loans to commercial and industrial business, real estate and consumers continued to expand nearly every month. Commercial and industrial loans exceeded $1.5 trillion this August, up from less than $1.2 trillion a year earlier. Real-estate loans exceeded $3.6 trillion, up from less than $3.4 trillion a year ago. Consumer loans were $845 billion, up from $737 billion. Credit standards are tougher, which is surely a good thing, but interest rates for creditworthy borrowers remain low.

The ongoing slow but steady availability of bank credit helps explain the much-remarked contrast between Wall Street and Main Street — the shaky condition of exotic financial markets compared with relatively benign statistics for industrial production, retail sales, employment and the rest of the nonhousing economy. Most people go about their business without depending on investment banks or exotic varieties of commercial paper.

From the left, NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston writes:

Ask this question — are the credit markets really about to seize up?

If they are then lots of business owners should be eager to tell how their bank is calling their 90-day revolving loans, rejecting new loans and demanding more cash on deposit. I called businessmen I know yesterday and not one of them reported such problems. Indeed, Citibank offered yesterday to lend me tens of thousands of dollars on my signature at 2.99 percent, well below the nearly 5 percent inflation rate. That offer came after I said no last week to a 4.99 percent loan.

If the problem is toxic mortgages then how come they are still being offered all over the Internet? On the main page AOL generates for me there is an ad for a 1.9% loan (which means you pay that interest rate and the rest of the interest is added to your balance due.) Why oh why or why would taxpayers be bailing out banks that are continuing to sell these toxic loans?

Good question, Rocko! If we the taxpayers are supposed to cough up endless cash, putting our chance at affordable healthcare, clean energy, and a better life out of reach, then the fucking assholes we’re bailing out had better fucking need it desperately, and they’d better stop the fuckery that got us into this mess to begin with.

If we find out after the fact that these ratfucking greedy sons of bitches never needed a bailout in the first fucking place, I think we’ll be within our rights to demand they be thrown into Guantanamo Bay as enemy combatants and subjected to some of that “enhanced interrogation” John McCain cleared the way for.

I hope to fuck that Congress doesn’t lose its spine today. I know a huge number of Republicons and nearly all the Dems are smelling a rat and digging in their heels. If they smell smoke, they’d better realize that the only fire they’re dealing with is the rat Bush just set on fire to try to scare them into letting him and his cronies raid the Treasury on the way out the door.

(I’ve added links to the referenced articles. Read them both. Your energy costs will go down – you’ll be steamed enough to boil water on your scalp, thus negating the need for a stove. Feel free to eviscerate Alan Reynolds’ right-wing deregulation bullshit in the comments – the paragraphs quoted above are the only ones that remotely make sense, and the rest is just a lot of nonsensical bleating about how deregulation didn’t get us into this mess. Funny, but none of the non-partisan economists seem to agree. Gee, I wonder why that is?)

We're About to Cough Up $700 Billion – and it May Not be Necessary

Campaign of the Absurd

jacob1 Comment

Are you sitting down? Are your drinks fully swallowed?

Good.

I know the McCain campaign jumped the shark a long time ago, but somehow, they keep finding more sharks to jump. They’ve lied so much there’s now a website dedicated to tracking their lies (as of this moment, the count stands at 63). They held a conference call with the press to cry over the New York Times calling them out on their lies, and lied continuously throughout. They’ve lied so much that even McCain’s biggest fans in the media have stopped bringing him donuts and started reporting the lies.

And now we learn that even their “grassroots” efforts are nothing more than factories for lies:

“You can be whoever you want to be,” says an inviting Phil Tuchman. “You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!”

I volunteer in political campaigns now and then. After a series of outings for Obama and a first mission as a phone banker for John McCain, I returned to McCain’s headquarters in Arlington, Va. The offer was too alluring to delay — they wanted to put me into action as a ghostwriter. Next to commercials and phone banking, writing letters to the editor is the most important method of the McCain campaign to attract voters. At least that is what’s written in the guidelines that McCain campaign worker Phil Tuchman presents to me.

[snip]

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want — as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain.

Un-fucking-believable.

The “talking points” the ghostwriters work from include some screamers, including Palin’s former 80% approval rating (which was true – up until Alaskans got a good look at her and didn’t like what they saw). Let’s remember that when Bush first took office, his numbers were high, too. Now he’s Mr. 19%.

They also repeat that bloody Bridge to Nowhere lie that’s been debunked endlessly. In fact, if we had a dollar for every time that howler’s been disproved, we could very nearly pay for Paulson’s bailout plan.

You’d think there’d be some embarrassment, shame, and plausible denials put forth by the campaign after such a revelation. A normal campaign would say, “We had no idea this was going on. This was not authorized by the campaign, and the person responsible for it has been tossed out on his ear. We stand for truth, justice, etc. etc.”

But we all know the McCain campaign is anything but normal. Caught blatantly manipulating public opinion by getting hacks to write fake letters to the editor (in the best tradition of the National Enquirer, most of whose stories are made up on the spot), they didn’t express faux outrage. No, they went with their old standby: yell at the journalist who exposed their lies and then lie some more:

Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, said that Oostveen did not properly identify herself to campaign workers in Arlington. “She did not represent herself as a journalist to the people who work in the mid-Atlantic office.” Ostveen, who also wrote a column about an earlier stint phone-banking for the McCain campaign, says she twice explained to different workers in the Arlington campaign office that she might be using her experiences as a volunteer in her columns for the NRC Handelsblad.

Can you believe these fuckwits? They’re beyond pathological – I’ve known compulsive liars, clinically mentally ill pathological liars, no less – who have more respect for the truth than these assclowns.

There’s no way America can elect these buffoons and keep its self-respect.

Campaign of the Absurd

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Who’s for the bailout? Anybody? Anybody? Beuller?

Today, Vice President Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten spent the day in Congress trying to convince conservatives to accept the administration’s bailout package. Politico
reports, however, that “House Republicans rose up en masse against their vice president.” ThinkProgress has compiled a list of conservatives who have declared opposition to the administration’s $700 billion bailout:

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

[snip]

“I don’t know anyone who’s sold on this rescue plan,” said Rep. Wally Herger
(R-CA).


O-kay. Nobody in Congress. How’s about regular Americans?

A new Rasmussen poll conducted on Monday finds that 44 percent of Americans oppose the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout plan, up from 37 percent a day earlier. Twenty-five percent support it, and 31 percent are undecided. Thirty-five percent believe it will help the economy, while 30 percent say it will hurt it. (HT: LA Times)

So. Basically. It’s only the quarter of the country that’s stupid enough to like Bush that likes the bailout.

Something tells me this was a really fucking bad idea. But hark! A right-wing editor has an answer!

Yesterday on Fox News, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes blamed Democrats in Congress for causing the Dow Jones industrials to close Monday down 372 points. “I think it was Congress stepping in and saying, ‘We’re going to settle the terms of how the Treasury Department acquires these illiquid assets,’” Barnes said. Then, citing opposition to the Bush administration’s proposed plan to bail out Wall Street, Barnes offered Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson some advice: Just don’t call it a “bailout,” call it a “rescue”:

BARNES: We would be in a better situation, or at least the Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson would if this were known as “rescue” rather than a “bailout.” “Bailout” sounds terrible. Who is for a bailout? A lot of people are for a rescue.


N-no. No. Still sounds like an incredibly stupid fucking idea. You know what they say about lipstick on a pig…

I think this is taking the Bushies a bit by surprise. They are, after all, used to getting everything they want and more when they scream that the sky is falling. And they’re no strangers to manipulation for political gain – you remember all that haggling over timetables for Iraq? You remember how, instead of Obama’s 2010 plan, they went for 2011? Yeah:

Negotiating the post-UN mandate security agreement with Iraq, Bush argued for more time and both sides ultimately agreed that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, not 2010, even though Bush has said previously that “if they were to say, leave, we would leave.”

Why did Bush go back on his word? A source tells ThinkProgress that White House communications staff were concerned that Maliki’s
endorsement of the 2010 time line would damage Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign. Indeed, during an interview with Iraqi television last week (according to an Open Source Center translation),
Maliki suggested that the U.S. presidential elections played a role:

Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they asked
for a cha
nge [in date] due to political circumstances related to the [U.S] domestic situation so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date.


Uh-huh. Couldn’t make Bush III look bad, now, could we? Not even to save American lives, much less respect the Iraqis. Way to support the troops, there.

And speaking of not wanting to make themselves look bad, McCain’s famous Straight Talk Express has become the No-Talk Express:

Earlier today, the McCain-Palin campaign backed out of its promise to allow print journalists from reporting on Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) U.N. meetings this afternoon. Instead, the campaign wanted to turn it into an elaborate photo op, deciding to allow photographers and a CNN camera crew only. According to Politico, the press have begun to revolt:

But the imbroglio began developing Tuesday morning when Palin’s handlers informed the small print press contingent covering her campaign that the print reporter designated to cover the events, Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal, would not be allowed to cover the sprays. […]

The campaign also at first moved to bar CNN, the television network designated for pool duty, from sending its editorial producer – basically a hybrid print/video journalist – though the campaign budged when the network threatened to withhold its cameras as well.


With increasingly negative press coverage over these events, the campaign eventually allowed Holmes into the Karzai event for a whopping 29 seconds, and has now agreed to let her cover the next two “sprays” before Palins’ meetings with Colombian President Uribe and former U.N. Secretary of State Kissinger. Earlier in the day, the networks had voted to ban any use of photographs and videos from the event, to protest the lack of editorial presence and deny the McCain-Palin campaign of a free photo op.


This is not the way to keep your base happy. And when the media’s your base, if the base ain’t happy, your coverage is gonna suck. And if your coverage sucks… Let’s just say you’d better hope to fuck that the American public suddenly loses all concern for the economy, health care, the war in Iraq, the scandal-plagued fuckwit you chose as a veep, and everything else, because reporters are going to take a fuck of a lot of satisfaction in telling Americans just how toxic your history is, and how insane your vision for this country would be.

It’s about fucking time America got to hear the truth.

Happy Hour Discurso

A Little Levity is in Order

jacob

This is the first good laugh I’ve had all day:

Obama to Nation: “Fuck this shit, I’m outta here”

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.”

In a boisterous and hastily-called press conference, Obama detailed his reasons for the decision. “I was prepared to fight global warming, reform the health care system, repair our crumbling roads, create a 21st century electric grid, find Bin Laden, end the war in Iraq, and bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians. But now you tell me I have to clean up the worst financial mess since the Great Depression too? One that’s going to plunge our economy into a recession for most of my administration while I take the blame? Fuck that. That’s fucking ridiculous. You guys clean up your own shit. I’m outta here.”

I’m glad someone’s sense of humor hasn’t been bludgeoned out of them by the relentless, criminal stupidity of the right wing.

And, I have to say, if Obama chooses to make this parody a reality, I won’t blame him a damned bit.

(Tip o’ the shot glass to PZ)

A Little Levity is in Order

America: You Really Want Us to Love It or Leave It?

jacob6 Comments

Cons have this cute little conversation-stopper they use when liberals and progressives are demanding improvements to America. “Love it or leave it!” they crow.

As if wanting to improve something means you don’t love it.

As if love means never questioning your country.

“Love it or leave it.”

All right.

What if we did?

What if we decided that, yes, the fact that America isn’t perfect means we shouldn’t live here anymore? What if every single liberal packed up and moved to a country with a saner political system tomorrow? What if we left America to the cons who “love” her?

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her blue skies and clean water. We progressives were the ones who ensured that those things were protected. The Republicons, with their big bidness buddies, will take all of the brakes off of pollution – Beijing’s air will start to look downright breathable compared to what will be left here. And it’s very hard to drink the water when it’s so polluted you can set it on fire, FYI.

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her abundant wildlife, her hunting and fishing, her wilderness. Because the Republicons, with their big bidness buddies, want to fill that wilderness with coal mines and oil wells and leave nothing but toxic waste behind. They’ll be happy to blast mountains apart and chop down every tree. Last I checked, the salmon and trout and deer and bears don’t rent apartments in city centers. And the cons will learn soon enough that the caribou love of oil pipelines is nothing more than a myth. They’ll find out just how much the progressives protected for their shooting pleasure.

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her opportunity. For every self-made man who becomes a multi-millionaire, there will be thousands toiling at thankless jobs, without the education or the assistance to have a shot at pulling themselves toward the upper middle. And those thankless jobs won’t include a minimum wage, so you’d best hope the corporate overlords will somehow find a heart and pay you enough to survive on. Don’t count on it, though – all of those whose compassion trumps their greed will have left. (That’s assuming all of the jobs haven’t been shipped overseas, mind you.)

I hope the cons didn’t love their Social Security, their health insurance, or any other program that the Republicons want to privatize. The progressives have tried to ensure that the government programs that keep us from starving or dying of preventable disease aren’t eviscerated. We won’t be here to save them.

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her innovation. The Republicons have never been fond of either funding or teaching science. The progressives have ensured that science education maintains some reasonable standards, and that science has money to innovate. Without us here, creationism will rule the schools, science funding will dry up, and Americans won’t be able to compete globally against people who have the education and the science to invent.

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her Constitution, or her freedoms, or her democracy. Without the progressives to protect those things, they won’t survive as anything more than a memory.

I hope the cons didn’t love America for her preeminent place in the world. After a few years of unfettered Republicon rule, America will be nothing more than a has-been bully. And she does not have the military might to bomb every nation into submission.

If everyone who loves America enough to want to make her the best she can be leaves tomorrow, there soon won’t be much left of her for the cons to love. Where would your “love it or leave it” rhetoric be then?

You’d better be godsdamned grateful we love America enough to stay.

America: You Really Want Us to Love It or Leave It?

Email Your Congresscritter

jacob2 Comments

The American Freedom Campaign has made it easy to tell your representative just what you think about this insane bailout that Bush and his fat cat friends swear we must give him.

Everything I’m reading today makes it abundantly clear that this bailout as it stands is noxious on a variety of levels. It’s going to cost us far more than $700 billion in the end. It’s going to ensure our national debt is so insanely high that we won’t have anything left over for the social programs that could have made our lives better. Once again, the Republicons bring us to the brink of bankruptcy and walk away with their sacks full of cash, laughing while the Dems tighten the nation’s belt, count its pennies, and tell us that in order to balance the checkbook, we’re going to have to make sacrifices.

It’s not even clear this is necessary in the first place.

And now the fuckers are talking about how they can demand we do this, and then vote against it so they can use it against the Dems in the election (h/t Digby):

Every Democrat should read Patrick Ruffini’s post from yesterday at NextRight. He is, I strongly suspect, perfectly reflecting the game that Republicans, including Team McCain, want to play with the Paulson Plan:

Republican incumbents in close races have the easiest vote of their lives coming up this week: No on the Bush-Pelosi Wall Street bailout.

God Himself couldn’t have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. That’s why I want to see 40 Republican No votes in the Senate, and 150+ in the House. If a bailout is to pass, let it be with Democratic votes. Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say “No” and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress….

In an ideal world, McCain opposes this because of all the Democratic add-ons and shows up to vote Nay while Obama punts.

History has shown us that “inevitable” “emergency” legislation like the Patriot Act or Sarbanes-Oxley is never more popular than on the day it is passed — and this isn’t all that popular to begin with. All the upside comes with voting against it.

Ruffini is exactly right about the politics of this issue, especially for Republicans. Think of this as like one of those periodic votes on raising the public debt limit. It has to pass, of course, but there’s zero percentage in supporting it for any one individual. The speculative costs of the legislation actually failing are completely intangible and ultimately irrelevant, while the costs it will impose are tangible and controversial from almost every point of view. For McCain and other Republicans, voting “no” on Paulson without accepting the consequences of that vote is the political equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe: it will please the conservative “base,” distance them from both Bush and “Washington,” and let them indulge in both anti-government and anti-corporate demagoguery, even as Democrats bail out their Wall Street friends and big investors generally. You simply can’t imagine a better way for McCain to decisively reinforce his simultaneous efforts to pander to the “base” while posing as a “maverick.”

Democrats are right to demand significant substantive concessions before offering their support for the Paulson Plan. But just as importantly, they need to demand Republican votes in Congress, including the vote of John McCain. If this is going to be a “bipartisan” relief plan, it has to be fully bipartisan, not an opportunity for McCain to count on Obama and other Democrats to save the economy while exploiting their sense of responsibility to win the election for the party that let this crisis occur in the first place.

I cannot express to you my outrage that these goatfuckers are planning to use the crisis they encouraged in order to score politically. They’ve proven that they’re nothing more than common fucking criminals. This is what criminals do: blame the victim for their own lawbreaking. We need to do everything in our power to ensure they don’t get away with this.

So send your emails. Make your phone calls. And be sure to tell absolutely every right-leaning friend, acquaintence, and stranger on the street just how stupid the cons think they are.

***

In case you’re interested, this is the email I sent my Congressman, attached to the pre-made one from the American Freedom Campaign:

The more I read about the consequences of this bailout package, the more it terrifies me. The lack-of-oversight concerns attached at the bottom of this email are only the most obvious.
1. There’s a lot of crowing in right-wing circles about how this can be used to destroy Democrats. The basic premise is that Republicans will vote no while you vote yes, and then they’ll put on their fiscal conservative hats and run against you.
2. Every credible economist – right, left and center – despises this bill. And all of them are saying that $700 billion is only the beginning.
3. Paulson demands you pass a “clean” bill, and yet spent this weekend stuffing it with extras for his Wall Street pals.
4. And the saddest part: by simply bailing out the rich kids who got burned, we’re doing nothing to ensure that the rest of America has anything left over. If we don’t attach requirements that ensure the American people get something out of this deal, how are we going to pay for health care, for science, for social programs? How are we going to afford a better future if all we buy are toxic, worthless assets?
Congressman Inslee, as I sit here, I’m watching our future die. And I am bitterly, bitterly angry that the greedy bastards who murdered it are about to walk away scot-free, not a penny poorer.
Please, please fight this. Please fight for us. Make sure that there is oversight, make sure America gets a chance to earn back some of that $700 billion, and make sure that the irresponsible idiots who brought us to this pass are responsible for helping set things right.
I know I can count on you. You have never let me down. Thank you for all you’ve done, and all I know you will do.

Feel free to steal any/all verbiage for your own efforts.

Email Your Congresscritter

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

There’s one Senate Democrat, at least, who’s not willing to give the Bushies carte blanche to rob taxpayers:

Over the weekend, Paul Glastris had an interesting item, explaining the temptation on the part of some in Washington to line up behind the Paulson bailout plan, not necessarily because it’s wise or prudent, but because it seems like the only idea on the table to prevent the complete meltdown of the financial world.

To that end, the Washington Post’s Sebastian Mallaby explored some competing approaches to the Bush’s administration’s no-strings, no-questions, no-oversight $700 billion proposal, and this morning, Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, took a big step in the right direction with a competing plan of his own.

The legislation requires Treasury to take an equity stake equal to the purchase price of the assets being bought. If the company isn’t publicly traded, the government would take senior debt instead, placing it in the front of the line of debt holders for repayment in the event of a bankruptcy.

Dodd’s proposal also would create a five-member oversight board to supervise the Treasury secretary’s purchase and sale of distressed mortgage debt.

It would consist of the chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as two members from the financial industry designated by congressional leaders.

The board would be authorized to set up a so-called credit review company consisting of Treasury employees to study the soundness of the purchases. Under the plan, the government would be required to obtain an equity stake equal to the value of the debt that is purchased from the companies, including those whose shares are not publicly traded. The Treasury secretary would also be required to issue weekly public reports on the amount of assets bought and sold by the U.S.

Dodd is proposing to penalize executives who take inappropriate or excessive” risks. The executive compensation and severance packages could be reduced if that is “in the public interest,” the proposal says. It would also force executives to give back profits they earned that were based on company accounting measures that are later found to be inaccurate.

The Politico has more on Dodd’s provisions, including extending authority to bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure.


Much, much better. Now let’s see how long it takes Republicons to force Dems to cave by screaming bloody murder and election mayhem.

Bush, of course, wants nothing less than full capitulation:

Today, the White House released a statement criticizing Congress’s potential plan to limit CEO compensation at the companies the federal government is bailing out, firmly standing against any “punitive measures”:

We certainly understand and are sympathetic to the sentiment regarding the pay of CEOs and senior management of these firms, but we have to focus on the problem, and the problem is that we need these firms to participate in the program and sell us this debt. Having punitive measures would provide a disincentive for firms to participate, and that would make the program much less likely to succeed.

CEO compensation and corporate governance in public companies are very important issues — especially when receiving taxpayer support — but we need to be focused on fixing this problem in our markets right now. We can and should return to those issues once we get this legislation passed.


President Bush also released another statement earlier today warning Congress against inserting any “unrelated provisions” — such as help for struggling homeowners — in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

I think we should all tell himself to fuck himself with a baseball bat. Aluminum. Pre-heated. When he says we can revist these issues later, what he means is, “Give me unlimited power so I can tell you to fuck off when you try to take it back again.”

And how’s McCain doing as a “take on the crooks on Wall Street” rhetoric? Not too good:

The only consistent element of John McCain’s recent rhetoric on economic issues is that he’s just not thinking things through. In
the latest example, McCain has been, in true populist style, railing against “golden parachutes” for CEOs.

The more lavish compensation packages are part of McCain’s economic pitch, the more likely he’ll face questions about former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s golden parachute. And yet, as of this morning, he was apparently caught completely off guard.

On NBC’s “Today,” Meredith Vieira told McCain, “You have said, senator, that there are a lot of reasons for this financial crisis, but you have said, bottom line, it’s those fat cats. It’s the greed of Wall Street. And you said, you promised … to crack down on CEOs who walk away with huge severance packages. And yet the person that up until recently was your public face really on your economic policies was Carly Fiorina…. She was fired in 2005. But she left with what I think was a $45 million golden parachute while 20,000 of her employees were laid off. She’s an example of exactly t
he type of person you say is at the root of the problem.”

McCain replied, “I don’t think so.” When pressed, he added, “I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don’t know the details of her compensation package.”

Reminded that Fiorina received a $45 million golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off, McCain stumbled a bit before concluding, “I don’t know the details of what happened.”


This man is an absolute fucktard. I just hope my fellow Americans aren’t stupid enough to fall for the empty populist bullshit.

I am not, however, holding my breath.

But let’s see if we can get this simple message through: A VOTE FOR McCAIN IS A VOTE AGAINST AMERICA.

That should be easy enough for even the lowest information voters to grasp.

Happy Hour Discurso

Throw These Fuckers Out. Never Give Them Power Again.

jacob2 Comments

I don’t have enough profanity for these motherfuckers who are killing my country and quibbling over the carcass. I just don’t.

You need to read the entirety of Devilstower’s “Three Times is Enemy Action.” It lays out the whole history of the Republicon rape of this country’s economy, from Keating to the present day. I’m just going to share the paragraphs that left me incandescent with rage.

One:

Following the S&L crisis, the Resolution Trust Company was formed to swallow up the debt of Lincoln and 746 other S&Ls gone wild, and taxpayers were left with the $125 billion bill. The resulting budget deficit forced cutbacks in other programs. The artificial real estate boom collapsed and housing starts fell to their lowest levels in decades. Finally, the whole nation settled in for a period nasty enough that three years later someone could still campaign around the idea “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Two:

Thanks to this fortunate trifecta of Gramm-crafted legislation, Enron was able to create “EnronOnline” and trade electricity in California with absolutely no oversight or transparency. They quickly worked out how to game the system. Previously, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout in the history of California. Within months, the system had been manipulated by traders to generate 38 such blackouts and wholesale electrical prices had gone up more than 3000%. Despite production capacity equal to four times the demand during winter, energy traders even engineered a blackout in mid-January.

During the confusion of these deliberate “shortages” and “price spikes,” the California administration of Gray Davis — blind to speculator manipulations because of the walls erected by Gramm’s legislation — was forced to sign energy contracts at enormous rates. There was little choice, because most of California’s public utilities were on the brink of bankruptcy from the rising wholesale prices.

Three:

Credit default swaps did allow the banks to share risks. So much so, that banks raced each other in an effort to find more risks. They made it possible for the down payment on homes to become 3%, 1%, 0%. Skip the credit check, avoid the employment requirements, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! We’ve got a credit default swap, we can do anything!

[snip]

How big did this market become? Here’s business correspondent Bob Moon and host Kai Ryssdal on American Public Media’s Marketplace from back in the spring.

BOB MOON: OK, I’m about to unload some numbers on you here, so I’ll speak slowly so you can follow this.

The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion.

The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion.

The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion.

OK, you ready?

The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion.

KAI RYSSDAL: That’s a lot of money, Bob.

As in three times the whole US gross domestic product, Bob. And the truth is that Moon probably underestimated. The unregulated and poorly reported credit default swaps may have actually passed $70 trillion last year, or about $5 trillion more than the GDP of the entire world.

So, are you starting to get an idea of just how big a genie Phil Gramm and his pals unleashed?

Bang.

This is enemy action. This is a bullet deliberately fired into the economy by men willing to exercise their ideology regardless of the cost to taxpayers. Men who have every expectation that they can plunder the system again and again, while the public picks up the tab. John McCain may not have had his finger directly on the trigger, but he was there. He assisted. These were his personal friends and philosophical comrades. He may not be the high priest, but he has been a loyal acolyte in the cult of deregulation.

They destroyed our standing in the world. They eviscerated our civil liberties and our Constitution. They’ve laid our economy to waste.

Three times, Republicons have pulled the trigger, and America bleeds. I’m staring down the barrel of a gun aimed at my country, and it’s held by smiling Republicons getting ready to deliver the coup de grace into America’s head.

If our country survives this assault, we can never again place these criminals in charge of her again.

Never. Again.

Throw These Fuckers Out. Never Give Them Power Again.