Open your eyes this morning:
The rest of the world clearly sees we’re amid
“All eyes are on the financial system, and rightly so. If its collapse continues for much longer the very real risk is that the world faces an economic slump of the likes not seen since the 1930s, with all that entails: mass unemployment, economies shrinking for years rather than mere quarters, protectionism which provokes serious geopolitical turmoil – the possibilities are so horrific it is painful even to write them.”
But this isn’t a partisan disaster per se. The feeble Democratic factions in power went along for the ride, too. Consider:
But in election season terms, it still comes down to the fact that the Republicans have been in almost absolute power since 2000, and the long voting record of Senator McCain clearly shows his constant deregulation philosophy — the very philosophy that led us to the current disaster.
McCain was among those who precipitated this cataclysm; but even there, Bush is a far, far more caustic participant.
Two years ago, in that very essay, “Is the United States Bankrupt?”, Laurence J. Kotlikoff wrote:
“How are the Bush administration and Congress planning to deal with the fiscal gap? The answer, apparently, is to make it worse by expanding discretionary spending while taking no direct steps to raise receipts. The costs of hurricanes Katrina and Rita could easily total $200 billion over the next few years. And the main goal of the President’s tax reform initiative will likely be to eliminate the alternative minimum tax. This administration’s concern with long-term fiscal policy is typified by the way it treated the Treasury’s original fiscal gap study. The study was completed in the late fall of 2002 and was slated to appear in the president’s 2003 budget to be released in early February 2003. But when Secretary O’Neill was ignominiously fired on December 6, 2002, the study was immediately censored….”
In short, it was the relentless ideological thrust of the current Bush presidency that put us here.
All of us — in America, in the world.
President George W. Bush and his Administration shunned any and all possible means of addressing the collapse we now have upon us, and in fact cultivated it completely with their rapid and rabid deregulatory policies and absolute disembowelment of any overseers once in place.
Bush not only fired the likes of Secretary O’Neill. Remember, too, the
The claim that Spitzer was outed by some arcane but common scrutiny of the movement of bank funds — a mere $43,000, a speck in a rich man’s bank account — always rang utterly false for me.
Spitzer was a target; he was taken out by Bush Administration wiretapping and previously illegal practices. And America swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.
Thus, one of the few public officials willing to publicly take on the crisis — possibly in time to avert the disaster we’re now in (we’ll never, ever know) — was plucked neatly out of the arena. His sex life ravaged his public life, and now we’re all paying the piper. Blame Spitzer for being stupid, but blame the Bush administration for taking the man out.
Why?
Spitzer had just spelled out precisely what was going down, and the Bush Administration’s active nurturing of such fiscal lunacy.
In the TV interview noted in F. William Engdahl’s article linked above, Spitzer said,
“This could have been avoided if the OCC [the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] had done its job… The OCC did nothing. The Bush Administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it’s deflating we’re dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread was the subprime scandal… When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt.”
In Spitzer’s ‘fatal’ Washington Post text (linked above), “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers”, Spitzer spelled it all out:
“In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks… Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye… When history tells the story of the sub-prime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favourably.”
Don’t be deluded. Check the facts, folks.
Check your mailbox. How many credit card invitations showed up in your mailboxes this week? In your kid’s mailbox? How many commercials have you seen in the past two years for predatory lending, credit and credit relief firms?
This environment didn’t cultivate itself — it was fostered by the ongoing erosive deregulation of all firewalls and regulations that once protected us. The GOP finally stripmined FDR’s New Deal to the bare marrow, greedily sucked that all out from the bone, and here we are.
Bush and his cronies actively orchestrated this disaster; they eliminated any obstacles to their economic philosophies that presented themselves, within and outside of Washington; Bush neutered the states having any ability to address the mounting crisis; Bush and his cronies are only expanding the shock waves of this disaster; and there’s no way on God’s green Earth that a McCain/Palin Presidency will or can do anything except make matters worse.
I’ll go further: the pejorative ‘conservative’ should now be as fixed in the national consciousness as the pejorative ‘liberal’ was by the Reagan era.
The so-called ‘conservatives’ bankrupted America.
Period.
Look, Frank Zappa was a true conservative — note how abysmally low the standard definition of that word has sunk since Zappa’s death, in the subsequent era of radical extremist neo-con madness.
The Reagan era accelerated the plunge, the second Bush presidency should put paid to the label ‘conservative’ having any credibility whatsoever.
Rock movies had already provided entertaining, absurdist polar extremes of potential theocracies:
But enough of such tomfoolery ( I had to insert some levity into the post today):
We won’t survive another four years+ of this theocratic
It’s “a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military powers or occult spiritual hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for “few” (ὀλίγον olígon) and “rule” (ἄρχω arkho). Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children were heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy…”
Here’s our current oligarch of choice, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, some of you chose him. I sure didn’t vote for him. Blame me, if you must, for not opposing him more aggressively, more vocally, for not having done more to fight.
And I sure the hell won’t be voting for McCain/Palin.
I don’t see how any rational person could or can.
Here’s the man who bankrupted America.
McCain voted with him, says he voted for him, and has espoused the same agenda.
Any way you look at it, on Bush’s watch and reign, this disaster was cultivated.
It is making the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike look as geographically localized as they were and are.
President George W. Bush and his cronies, advocates, apologists and acolytes blithely, willfully, happily bankrupted America.
What does it take to open America’s eyes???
Yeah, there’s no doubt that they wanted to kill off Spitzer. Preferably without putting a bullet in his brain. The best way to do this is by way of the target’s penis and the trouble into which it gets the owner. Witness Bill Clinton. Sure, it’s a dirty trick, but the schmuck didn’t have to hand them the ammo!
Well, we taxpayers now own a trillion dollars of totally worthless debt pissed down the sinkhole by the plutocracy who rule us. They fucked up, and we got them off the hook. Why is it that only the super-rich don’t have to take responsibility? As I keep saying:
WE’RE GETTING WHAT WE BLOODY WELL DESERVE!
Bring on the zombie apocalypse!
It makes for a gripping headline, but giving Bush the credit for bankrupting America is too easy. He
is not Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom.
This stinking financial mess encompasses MANY villains, of both parties and previous administrations, all willing to play their part and keep silent when required or going out before the
media and shaking their fingers of moral outrage, as long as they are guaranteed their payoffs.
Obama is involved. The Clintons too. But the spotlight is on Bush…for now. When he has gone off to
his retirement on the ranch, he will be replaced by another. Democrat, Republican, there isn’t much
difference.
When a Ron Paul or Ralph Nader speaks to this outrage, they are marginalized and laughed at, as
Frank Zappa was twenty years ago. No one wants to hear the words of the prophet, or any such
discouraging word.
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But common sense and sober reflection reveal that
the corruption of big government is deep and well-rooted in this two-party system. When we move
away from a two-horse race and vote in members of “third” parties…Greens, Libertarians, etc.
it will make the actual governing of America a lot messier and louder, but it’ll be a breath of fresh
air compared to the clowns we have in power now.
I’ll support anyone who will truly represent and serve the people who elect him or her.
Know anybody who fits that slim criteria?
Libertarians are hardly anyone’s saviors. They back the destruction of any type of regulation whatsoever. They are the corporate pig’s finest friend.
And, yes, we can blame this on the Bush administration and the corporate puppets who came before, starting with that brain dead motherfucker, Ronald Reagan. It’s been one long effort to disregard any regulation that held back the corporate fuckers whose one goal in life is to steal everything they can lay their fucking hooks into.
USAmericans are a bunch of filthy, stupid fucks. The whole damned lot of us.
Sam, yes, there are many villains, and the corporate takeover of America dates back to the railroads of the 19th Century — but this catastrophe is emblematic of the Bush Presidency. It’s not just his watch, it’s in large part the doing of this administration.
This caps a horrific slide in American history, and you’re right, many hands paved the path and many hands were involved — but look at what Bush has on HIS hands, from the vindictive dismantling of the standing intelligence community to 9/11 to the so-called War on Terror and suspension of the Geneva Convention, from Gitmo to ‘extraordinary rendition,’ from the completely mismanaged war in Afghanistan and completely unjustified, criminal and absolutely botched War in Iraq, from the unforgivable lack of response to Hurricane Katrina to the cynical fleecing of the surplus on through to this financial disaster.
Bush is hands-down the worst President of my lifetime, and (though I’m still reading up on prior presidents) perhaps the worst (certainly among the worst) US Presidents of all time.
Sam, say what you will — but Bush was the man at the helm when America was bankrupted. The news today: the estimated cost of the bailouts is already at $700 billion, MORE than the current cost of the wars.
I’m with Sam. Dumping it all on Bush is too easy, and what’s worse, suggests that getting rid of Bush is a solution of sorts. And it ain’t.
Here’s what I wanta know (and I doubt if anybody here can tell me, jiust commenting):
I’m sick of hearing all the financila gurus explaining how the elusive paper trail of bundle mortgages and stock trading and speculating work. My fucking money is real money, not just pretend money. And a lot of it is gone now. My 401K has lots thousands.
Where is it? Can anybody point me to an article that follows the money? That’s a LOT of money to just go poof and disappear. I know millions of it are in the criminal CEO’s pockets (and why is this not a criminal act, mismanaging something so badly that taxpayers have to bail you out?) – probably billions could be tracked to CEOs, politicians and consultants, and money lent out to “grow” the housing market by building houses that are way more than the people buying them can afford. But there must be a few billion that nobody can account for.
Oh well. At least Barack will send me $500. Or is it $1000? That’ll buy me a couple of months’ heating oil, maybe.
Nice talking to you.
No, wait. I’m gonna predict the old Oversight and Transparency chestnut is coming. I totally agree, those should exist. But I can’t believe that they will exist any better without Bush. Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong in the next few years.
‘Dumping on Bush’ isn’t the point, per se — but there IS culpability in all this, and given the last seven+ years, anyone willing to let the current president and his administration, cronies and allies off the hook is wearing blinkers, perhaps willfully.
If you read my post, you’ll see I’m not just suggesting “that getting rid of Bush is a solution of sorts.” You’re right, Pumpie, “it ain’t.”
I’m quite explicitly stating that voting Republican is beyond the pale at this point in time. I explicitly state that voting for McCain/Palin is only going to aggravate the no-longer-tenable procession of crisis after crisis. This past week, it’s official: the GOP has successfully run out their string. They’ve had cart blanche to enforce and play out their so-called ‘free market’ (an oxymoron in the corporate state, where only the rich and powerful have any ‘free’ market clout) ideology to its current conclusion. We are America, A.B. (After Bankruptcy), and it’s all downhill from now.
What you’re indicating is you “can’t believe that they will exist any better without Bush” is a setup for failure for whoever follows the travesties of the past seven+ years.
WHOEVER is elected will inherit one of the most disastrous situations in US history — let’s hope they’re at least up to the challenge on the level of an FDR.
But this also requires an American public willing to hold those to task who led us down these primrose paths to hell — the Bushes, their clan and their circles; the CEOs who pocketed trillions collectively (that they still collect on annually!), the pundits and economic advisors and the entire industry of non-news propaganda (Fox, etc.) and their ilk who have been proven WRONG and WRONG time and time again over the past seven+ years.
I agree, too, that the CEOs are involved in utterly criminal behavior, but that culture and its extremes of the past decade lay in part with the Bush clan and administration, too, as the Enron debacle demonstrated to anyone willing to really scrutinize that precipitous rise and fall.
But Bush and his circle are most certainly responsible for the very real crisis we’re now amid — as much for willful REFUSAL to address/act upon encroaching reality as for their ACTIONS. Keeping the real cost of operations off the table has been a primary tactic (not a single dollar of the Iraq War has EVER been on the annual Federal budget since 2003 and the war’s beginning), as has obfuscation and blocking action (ostensibly in order to enforce the inability of a perceived “Democratic majority” to get anything done, though I’ve little sympathy for the spineless Democratic leaders of the past seven+ years, either).
And remember, too, before 9/11 and ANY of these wars/storms/crisis situations existed, Bush and Bush’s circle turned Bill Clinton’s biggest surplus in U.S. history into the largest deficit in U.S. history. So much for fiscal conservatives — from their first six months in office, the Bush circle has been intent on squandering and fleecing the riches of their stations.
As HomeyM recently summarized it in our emails back and forth:
“1. $12 billion spent every month on the war in Iraq. We are leaving our children and our children’s children with over $3 trillion in war debt.
2. 47 million Americans without any health insurance. Enough said.
3. Over 90 votes filibustered by the Republican minority, effectively stymying any attempts to bring about change. Right now, Senate Democrats deal with an obstructionist Republican minority that has blocked more bills than any Congress in history. From withdrawing troops from Iraq, to rolling back tax breaks for Big Oil, to extending middle class tax cuts… in less than 2 years, Republicans have filibustered more bills than any Congress in history.”
This is a real barrier one to any lawful change by democratic, Constitutional processes. Furthermore, Bush has granted himself the right to write “signing statements” that allow him, according to the Constitution-busting principle of the “Unitary Executive,” to bypass any law passed by Congress, should anything slip through the “filibuster screen.”
According to this radical interpretation of the Constitution, the President does not even have to veto a law, but can just “sign a statement” that he is not going to enforce it.
Sources:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/30/bush_asserts_authority_to_bypass_defense_act/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/OPINION09/809150309/1004/OPINION
PS: Mark, you wrote:
“Where is it? Can anybody point me to an article that follows the money? That’s a LOT of money to just go poof and disappear. I know millions of it are in the criminal CEO’s pockets (and why is this not a criminal act, mismanaging something so badly that taxpayers have to bail you out?) – probably billions could be tracked to CEOs, politicians and consultants, and money lent out to “grow” the housing market by building houses that are way more than the people buying them can afford. But there must be a few billion that nobody can account for.”
Here’s the disconnect for me:
The Bush administration sanctioned these practices, cushioned these CEOs, and blocked any attempt (re-read the Spitzer WASHINGTON POST article from February 2008, linked in my post) to call those fuckers on the carpet. From Enron to this week, the Bush administration and the GOP has sheltered and protected and nurtured this obscene redistribution of wealth, and hence their complicity and culpability in all that has gone down.
That said, it’s a pleasure to read you finally articulating core issues. Love ya, man!
PPS: I will trace the world online articles/interviews this week, Mark, and see if I can compile a comprehensive and comprehensible springboard to answer that “where is it?” question you posit.
That said, this all dates back to the post-Watergate cabal of corporate powers who determined post-Nixon that it was time to coordinate their respective power bases, and do so in an environment explicitly outlawing citizens taking collective action against their corporate will. The Reagan presidency really goosed that process, and did so quite willfully: tracing, via the various Reagan biographies and surprisingly relevant (but superficially unrelated) works like the documentary THE LAST MOGUL, one sees clearly how Reagan’s elevation from studio contract player to increasingly powerful political roles in the entertainment industry to Governor of California and then the Presidency paralleled and perfectly served these corporate agendas. Point being: there’s a LOT of CEOs and highest circles of powers pocketing trillions of dollars from the past decade’s US economy and world economy.
“Following the money” is easier asked for than done. I fear any attempt to really answer that question will just have eyes glazing over completely — but that’s in part the problem. That story just isn’t appealing or entertaining in terms of 21st Century attention spans.
Something foul has become business-as-usual between lenders and borrowers, too, and that new ’status quo’ led us here — in spades.
Finally — remember, much of this info is at, and has always been at, the SEC website. Check it out.
“finally articulating core issues”?
sigh…
So what’s all this about McCain pushing for Fannie/Freddie regulations 2 years ago, and Obama being the 2nd most money-buttered F/F senator, after Chris Dodd? Do you know of what I speak? Sorry I ain’t got time to provide links, but surely you know about that. Can you de-bunk it?
F/F and their heinous mismanagement was the biggest turn of this particular snowball – or so the experts say.
And again, I can’t link it now (but may later) but weren’t Dems (along with Repubs, yes) putting the MOST pressure behind lowering the housing lending standards, to make it possible for “everyone to own a home”?
De-bunk, please. If you can. All of this makes me want to vote for McCain/Palin… and we can’t have THAT!!!
OK, back to work. Thank God you’re home today! It’s hard to find a minor distraction from photoshop work on the weekends whem sane people are out having fun!
PS! Oh yeah, thanks for taking the time. I did read all the other stuff. Still can’t see the Bush Admin being any more slimey in these matters than Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Kennedy, Nixon… but that is just argumentative. You do make some valid points.
Don’t conflate individual contributions with corporate contributions — which is just what Fox News is now doing, along with sites like this one –
http://speaknowamerica.org/2008/09/16/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-obama-dodd-biden-bidens-lobbyist-son-hunter–bill-clinton.aspx
– in extremist fashion.
Among the sources I found, this seemed the closest to the story initially breaking — “Obama, with far less time in the Senate, received $126,349, behind only Dodd. Almost all of Obama’s contributions came from individual employees and not political action committees.”
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/685863.html
The spin followed, attacking Obama, latching on to the first sentence quoted above and ignoring completely the second sentence. Individual employees can donate to whomever they wish.
Note the lobbying portion of the FM portion of the article:
“One immediate consequence of the government takeover: a powerful lobby has been silenced. Fannie and Freddie were ordered immediately to cease lobbying Congress. They donated $4.8 million to current members of Congress from both parties, with Democrats getting 57 percent of that amount. That’s according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbyist spending.”
Given the length of the campaign Obama has been waging — we’re past the one year mark — and the abysmal ratings both Bush and McCain had for the majority of that year (McCain’s fortunes only reversed a little over a month or so ago), the fact that a majority of individuals working at any large firm donated to Democrats shouldn’t be a surprise.
Give some scrutiny to the Republican funding issues while you’re at it.
Finally, lending standards is only part of the issue. Deregulation is still the key, and McCain was a major player in deregulation policies —
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091603732.html
I’m forever wary of McCain since his role in the 1990s S&L scandal —
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-11-29/news/mccain-the-most-reprehensible-of-the-keating-five/1
and
http://www.slate.com/id/1004633
– which you may recall, Mark, is when you and I even first started discussing any aspect of politics.
A little refresher: the Savings & Loan debacle was then considered the largest theft in world history, in which deregulation relaxed existing restrictions to such an extreme degree that S&L owners could lend THEMSELVES money.
McCain played a part, but tops on my shitlist from that slice of history is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush’s son and George W. Bush’s brother, who never served a nanosecond in jail for his role in the crime — as for McCain and Charles Keating: when Keating was asked if massive lobbying efforts had influenced the deregulation process, Keaton said “I certainly hope so.”
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/s&l
http://www.inthe80s.com/sandl.shtml
Why bring that up? First of all, despite his crocodile tears and contrition, McCain seemed to have learned nothing about the dangers of deregulation and its consequences — until, like, last week.
But more relevant are the behavior patterns. As with the George W. Bush presidency and the current financial disaster, the Reagan/Bush administration actively covered up the escalating Savings and Loan disaster via obfuscation and hindering the investigations required by law of S&Ls while viciously attacking political opponents sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. In fact, information about the S&L debacle was buried and kept out of the spotlight completely until after George H.W. Bush had won the 1988 elections.
This is too fucking close to current history, Mark, and given the George W. Bush presidency’s treatment of the likes of Treasury Secretary O’Neill –
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/history/secretaries/poneill.shtml
– and of alarm-bell-sounding, action-taking Spitzer, among others, it’s obvious in hindsight that the Bush administration has done all it can to keep this mounting crisis out of the public eye and to actively block/discourage/stymie any attempts to redress the pending disaster. Until, like, last week.
My guess was they were hoping the shit would hit the fan in the next presidential term, when someone else was in office.
Note, please, I have given links to Federal gov’t sites above and below to provide background info.
It was McCain, not Obama, who had Texan Republican Senator Phil Gramm as a key advisor until public outrage against Gramm’s ‘nation of whiners’ comment prompted McCain to rethink that association — and it was Gramm who was instrumental in passing The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which shattered the last of the FDR New Deal firewalls between banking, investment and insurance companies that precipitated the current disaster. McCain’s choice of allies must be scrutinized and assessed, especially given the behavior of the current administration.
See the Federal Trade Commission’s site,
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/glbact.html
and
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/glbshort.shtm
Though this is a more accessible resource and assessment on the subject:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html
No coincidence, either, the links with Texan Republicans across the board and the deep roots in the entire Enron debacle — which the Bushes, all of ‘em, had their hands in (and have done their utmost to distance themselves from since the Enron disaster).
The big money being made short-selling, selling ‘off the clock’ (a once illegal activity), mortgages sans collateral and the fortunes pocketed by CEOs is precisely the kind of activity Spitzer was targeting.
Don’t let the smokescreens being erected by apologists and pundits who don’t want the public to be looking back to even March blind you.
Yes, this stretches waaaaaaaaay back. Yes, both Carter (who initiated the deregulation process Reagan amplified) and Clinton played key roles in all this.
But there’s NO denying the Bush administration’s dominate and very active role in the past seven+ years. Bush and his cronies did nothing to alter the course of events, and in fact actively encouraged the course of events.
There’s enough blame to pepper both parties, but that can’t lead to any sane person take their eye off the most obvious facts — this disaster happened NOW, and is the direct result of seven+ years of the most recent gross mismanagement and corruption.
NOTHING excuses or deflects that.
Nothing.
PS: That’s all I’ve got time for now. I still can’t see how any of what’s happened this week could convince anyone McCain/Palin are even viable candidates. What’s the logic?
It’s easy slinging shit in the Obama camp. That doesn’t for a nanosecond change the fact — FACT — that we’ve had seven+ years of almost absolute Republican rule. Nobody raises the money needed to campaign in America today with clean hands; that’s a fact, too. But as far as the financial cataclysm we’re now in, I haven’t found a scrap of rational argument that the Democrats, much less Obama, can actually be held culpable for the events we’re in. They — he — didn’t have the power. Period.
Slinging shit is easy. That’s lazy thinking and lazy conversation. It doesn’t address the crisis, the causes, or the consequences.
I hope you guys in VT are helping the Dems’ efforts in NH. We need to win this election.
Excuse me, I have been busy. I’ll try to dig in later.
I’d appreciate it if you’d stop saying I’m a retreater (where is your answer to my “ad” question in the conversation that I was supposedly going to retreat from?) and saying things like “Slinging shit is easy. That’s lazy thinking and lazy conversation.” unless you are talking about both of us.
Thanks for all the links!
Quick reply: My bad on the ‘ad,’ I meant the phone campaign slurs. Took me a bit to backtrack and see where you asked about that, and where I misspoke.
I post in some detail about the economic disaster and trace culpability — you come back with Obama references that lead me first and foremost while searching to various Fox News sites/clips and extremist blogs slagging Obama, NOT any in-context conversation about the topic at hand. That, to me, is lazy conversation. No insult intended, but I’m trying to stay on topic, while still responding with relative depth to the diversions about Obama — that, BTW, is part and parcel of the ’smokescreen’ I’m referring to.
It’s almost pathological how this crisis is resulting in many trying to place the responsibility on everyone, anyone — particularly the candidate opposing McCain — rather than CLEARLY where it absolutely resides: the president and party in power for almost a decade. It’s fascinating how this is playing out, and the wriggling and rationalizing that’s passing for analysis.
This isn’t about Obama, nor have I found anything substantial linking Obama to the current disaster. It’s about seven+ years of Republican rule, it’s about the consequences of an ideology and its economic policies culminating in real-world catastrophe and a complete redefinition of our economy and the world economy. Relative to the immediate context of the Presidential campaign season we’re in, it’s about McCain’s clear record of deregulation, his and Palin’s links with the party/policies/ideology that caused this crisis, and the links of both McCain and the Bush family to the last economic catastrophe in recent history, the S&L scandal.
Hence, my comment about “slinging shit.” Unless someone has something cogent and traceable to say about all parties involved in light of this catastrophe, it’s a diversion and/or distraction at best, and ’slinging shit’ when it takes us into unrelated conversation. I’m happy to deal with it, but please don’t take offense when I’m candid about the nature of the diversion.
PS: We’re hustling in NH as best we can! That said, it’s astonishing how resoundingly Palin did reverse the McCain campaign slide — people are acting on their gut, not their head, in many cases. This real fiscal disaster, though, is prompting heated conversation on both sides of the Connecticut River.