03.19.09
The United States Constitution, R.I.P.
A favorite Beltway buzzphrase for the past few years has been “connect the dots.” If ever it was time to do just that, it’s right now.
First, you had the Community Reinvestment Act, the boom in subprime mortgages and the “everything-is-fine” rhetoric coming from “affordable-housing” snake-oil peddlers such as Barney Frank and Maxine Waters.
Then you had the inevitable crisis resulting from that.
Then you had the U.S. auto industry careening into a similar crisis, largely due to union – ah, here’s an opportunity to use the word in a legitimate context – greed.
Then you had a president prone to mush-headedness and wobbliness (W) and his Treasury secretary (Pauslon) going for bailouts and TARP funds that invite blurring of the lines between private economic activity and the proper purview of government.
Then you have an influential senator (Dodd) sneaking an executive-bonus provision into the bailout package for the insurance giant AIG.
Then you have the election of a president and a majority in Congress from a party dedicated to destroying freedom, prosperity and American sovereignty as quickly and completely as it can.
Then you have the new president’s chief of staff saying that you can’t let a crisis go to waste.
Then you have the public revelation of the AIG bonuses staged and timed so that Congressional leaders, incuding Dodd and Frank themselves, can put on a show of outrage, including a show-trial-type dressing-down of the government-appointed CEO of AIG.
Then you have a vote in the House to target these bonuses for special taxation at a rate of 90 percent, in a clear, punitive misuse of the tax code, which exists – or did – to raise enough revenue for the federal government to carry out its constitutionally-outlined functions.
When I come across a list of the names of the scared-little-rabbit Republicans who didn’t have the balls to risk being called facilitators of “greed,” I’ll either post it or link to it.
This nation’s future gets darker by the hour.
MR. Dings said,
March 19, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Sounds like a FUBARred mess that took many crooks to spoil the brouhaha.
View the criminal line-up here, and, yes, the American consumer is included:
Twenty Five People to Blame for the Financial Crisis:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350,00.html
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 20, 2009 at 12:37 pm
One could give TIME a few points, I suppose, for even-handedness. Franklin Raines is, after all, on the list. But, as always, they lose me when they start harping on their “not enough regulation” meme. Phil Gramm point that repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the suprime mortgage loan:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/3/31/phil-gramm-i-didnt-cause-the-subprime-crisis.html
THe main poin here, though, is that the Freedom-Haters are positively licking their chopsto use this perfect storm of crises to transform the United States of America into something else entirely.
It is no longer simply a matter of “fixing this mess.”
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I’d be willing to bet we could find excuses from each and every one of the presumed guilty. FUBARred. Finger pointing has replaced our helping hands in this country. And Bloggie can’t wait until a majority tires of the current fix by the freely elected powers that be, calls it a conspiracy to end freedom as we know it. Until the see-saw raises”his people” up again.
http://conservativecommand.com/bill-clinton-again-denies-blame-for-the-economic-crisis/
Curry: “You know this week people are gonna be reading this article in Time magazine that lists you as number 13 as, on the list of who to blame for our current economic crisis in the United States, Should you be 13 on the list, is what I’m asking?”
Clinton: “Oh no! But let me as you this, my question to them is, do any of them seriously believe that if I had been President and my economic team had been in place the last eight years, that this would be happening today? And I think they know the answer to that is, no.”
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Take heart, this may be good for art. And, imhfo, the hippies were right about everything except that ridiculous damned free love thing, LOL.
In 1968, there was art everywhere and there were artists on the streets and crashing on the floor, and there was new music, new poetry, new enthusiasm for secondhand clothes, street theater, and lots of love, not exactly free, but love anyway. There was also a recession and a stupid war started by pudgy-faced white men.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101158662
Poet on Call
by Andrei Codrescu
Economic Hard Times May Be Good For Art
Listen Now [2 min 32 sec] add to playlist
All Things Considered, February 25, 2009 · “I will be happy to see every American become a construction worker and a solar-panel installer. I mean, I will be happy to watch them do that because every American who won’t put on a hard hat will have to do something easier and funnier — like Art…..”
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 20, 2009 at 3:58 pm
No, that war we were fighting in 1968 was started by singelmindedly determined Communists of oriental, Slavic and Caucasian ethnicity.
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 4:13 pm
and now some call North Korea the last remaining bastion of Leninism, just read it the other day but I forget where.
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 4:31 pm
and so it goes…
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere
–TS Eliot, East Coker (II of IV Quartets)
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 5:29 pm
http://www.johnkennethgalbraith.com/index.php?display=10&page=articles
We also now know that Kennedy that same spring ordered the Pentagon to plan to have all US troops out of Vietnam by early 1965, shortly after what he assumed would be his re-election–and further ordered that the troop pullout begin by the late fall of 1963. But he did not, of course, live to see their withdrawal.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 20, 2009 at 6:56 pm
So that’s the last word on whether it was right to stop Communist takeover of southeast Asia?
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Just found it very interesting. Whatever. That thing was the very working definition of FUBARred.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 20, 2009 at 8:07 pm
That’s probably an accurate assessment.
MR. Dings said,
March 21, 2009 at 3:32 am
Well, bloggie, I think you might be right.
Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck
He wants to Radically Reinterpret the Constitution to Redistribute Wealth!! In a 2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview Obama is discussing the best way to bring about a Redistribution of Wealth!!! This Video Exposes the radical underneath the rhetoric!!! He says redistributing wealth is an administrative task.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 21, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I know. I first heard that last summer. I smelled what this guy was about from the get-go.
MR. Dings said,
March 21, 2009 at 6:26 pm
It appears as if great minds, if not great legs think alike.
This from black commnentatrix Star Parker on the Editorial page of today’s Repubbie Ubbie Ubbie http://hneolive.therepublic.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TheRepublic&BaseHref=TRP/2009/03/21&PageLabel=&EntityId=Ar00601&ViewMode=HTML
I have been looking through a new study, released by an organization called the Property Rights Alliance, called the International Property Rights Index. The study examines 115 nations worldwide and examines the correspondence between prosperity in a country and how secure private property is there.
It shows a practically perfect correlation. The more secure private property is in a given country, the more prosperous it is. Countries rated in the top 25 percent in secure and safe private property have on average nine times more income per person than those in the bottom 25 percent.
The easier it is to steal in any given country the less likely the economy will function well there.
You really don’t even need a fancy business degree to predict this. One of the Ten Commandments, transmitted so many thousands of years ago, instructs us not to steal.
Yet, basic truths such as this are becoming increasingly lost in our country and this is what should be driving our outrage. That we now live in a country where our private property is no longer safe and the very government that supposedly exists to protect it has become the thief we have to worry about.
View vids of Star here: http://www.urbancure.org/article.asp?id=3140
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 22, 2009 at 12:04 am
Star Parker rocks. She wrested herself out of a life of abortions, dope and welfare to become one of the most important thinkers in America today. Thanks for contributing this to the conversation here at BN.