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And do not dare look back. Forget about the 100% certainty we were given that Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were in cahoots. Forget about the 100% certainty we were given that the Iraqi dictator, a signature member in the “axis of evil,” had weapons of mass destruction, and that we dare not wait until the “smoking gun was a mushroom cloud.” Forget the assurances we were given that “The United States does not torture,” and that “In order to wiretap, you have to have a court order.” Forget that Senator McCain, along with Rumsfeld and the Bush cabal, told everyone Iraq would be “easy,” that we would be “greeted as liberators,” that the cost to the American taxpayer would be “minimal,” that the major costs would be covered by Iraq oil revenues.” And most of all, forget, that in a matter of a few months following the invasion, that George Bush claimed “Mission Accomplished.”
(PS — You ought to also forget that, although you might be out of a job and prices are rising like water over a crumbling dam, anyone ever said “the economy [not to mention John McCain’s ‘fundamentals’] is strong.”)
Nope, as was the case of going to war with Iraq, no doubts are reasonable doubts, and questions about the decision-makers and the decision only serve to embolden our enemy, which in this current instance is doubt itself. With all that that should provide extraordinary confidence that those who claimed they knew what they were doing then (“Heck of a job, Brownie.”), we’re expected to feel they actually know what they’re doing now.
President Bush assured us last week that he “expects to get all the money back, eventually,” and Secretary Paulson, yesterday, said he “hoped that the government would recoup much of the cost of buying distressed mortgage-backed securities.”
WOW! You talk about FDR or Churchillian confidence-building oratory: “expect,” “eventually,” “hope,” and “much” . . . but likely not all mind you. In the Paulson’s own words, “It doesn’t mean it will stop there [at $700,000,000,000] and we won’t ask for more. We’ll ask for what we think is a right amount to give us plenty of flexibility.”
This past weekend, Senator John McCain, in a spirit of reaching across the isle non-partisanship, asked all Americans to “put aside petty partisan differences, to come together to work on the crisis that confronts us,” and to also remember that “Senator Obama was in the thick of this mess, that he profited from it,” and that, “unlike Senator Obama’s wasting time putting together committees [you know: like every major financial and economic guru from business and academia] to study the issue,” because what is needed is the sort of “strong, decisive leadership” that would “ELIMINATE GREED!” “There will be no greed on Wall Street, or in a McCain White House! My friends, you can count on that!”
And do NOT concern your pretty little heads about what’s behind the McCain curtain. That until he made an oral gaffe, the fellow who was Senator McCain’s top economic advisor was ex-Senator Phil Gramm, the senator who slipped the “Enron loophole” exempting oil and gas futures trading from federal oversight or regulation, the senator whose wife was a member of the Enron Board of Directors. Additionally, don’t put too much weight on the fact another of McCain’s highly touted economic advisors is Carli Fiorina, the ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard; ousted from her job after she drove the corporate stock value down 50%, and was rewarded for her stunning performance with a $45 million golden parachute bonus! No GREED there, or there. Nor is there any “greed” in the rumblings of today’s bailouts-to-be CEOs threatening to sue if their hundreds of million-dollar-golden parachutes are not respected, once their companies have been saved from the abyss’s they steered them toward.
(PS — While everyone is at it, everyone ought to also forget about Charles Keating. The greed-fed grasping and $200 billion S&L bailout are “old history” now.)
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Finally! And this is the one that ought to set everyone back on their heels: Precisely what is being proposed is the most exquisite definition of fascism; socialized private enterprise, ostensibly for the preservation of the society, but in stark reality, for the benefit of the corporations! Conservativism and conservative Republican philosophy at last the canvas spread over the land.
And everyone is cheering madly, mad being the operative root of the adverb.
As I said: completely nuts!(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
