Dem sellouts fell for the same Bush hurry-up and pass the bill crap that Dubya used to sell the Iraq war, but this time, the Bush plan to rip off America was far more obvious and the Dem failure to listen to and protect constituents was even more glaringly obvious. Change that from Dem failure to to listen and protect to Dem intentional betrayal of constituents.

::::::::

Dem sellouts fell for the same Bush hurry-up and pass the bill crap that Dubya used to sell the Iraq war, but this time, the Bush plan to rip off America was far more obvious and the Dem failure-to-listen-to-and-protect constituents was even more glaringly obvious. Change that from "Dem failure-to-listen-to-and-protect" to Dem intentional betrayal of constituents.

Both liberal Progressives and conservative Blue Dog democrats voted for a Bush Wall Street rescue bill that did next to nothing to protect or help mainstreet, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that 25 of 47 Blue Dogs voted for the bill and 46 of 75 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted yes.

The same article reported that 14 of 22 members of the Hispanic caucus opposed the bill and 20 of the 38 black caucus members opposing it, saying, "the legislation didn't include sufficient help for people facing foreclosure or those struggling to pay for food and health care."

It's disappointing to see such hypocrisy among the purportedly fiscally conservative Blue dogs, since the bill didn't pay for itself, which Blue Dogs claim they demand of legislation. Why piss around with litle ten, or hundred million or billion dollar balanced budgets when you piss off on $700 billion? What a farce. And these are the ones who were blamed for blocking Pelosi from stopping funding for the war. Partners, I'd say.

Then we have the progressive caucus. What happened? The US is facing an enormous economic crisis and Bush hands us a totally garbage "solution" that strictly serves Wall Street. A handful of progressive members of congress spoke up. Looks to me like most of them just threw away their progresive credentials when it counted, going with the Pelsi Hoyer Emanuel steamroller.

A lot of people-- a real lot-- are saying throw them all the fuck out. Well, there were 95 Dems who opposed the bill (see how your rep voted here.)

I know that the house switchboards have been overloaded and the calls have been betwen ten and 100 to one opposing the bill. What did the 140 who voted for the bill think they were doing, opposing so diametrically what their constituents wanted? Who do they think they are. I haven't met any geniuses in congress yet-- glib smooth talkers, socially bright people with 115-130 IQs- no brainiacs, no economic geniuses. So who the hell do they think they are going against such strong constituent opposition?

I'll tell you who they are. Sellouts. This was a big test, maybe bigger than the war. It was a test because there's so much money involved and, from what Matt Stoller reports, very little, if any control over where it will go.

"Despite their shit-eating grins, Democrats nearly got rolled today, but a mixture of luck and bad faith from Republicans saved them. How do you know that the Wall Street types were trying to steal from us, other than the fact that they said that the refusal to hand over money was akin to a terrorist act? Treasury officials had a secret conference call with Wall Street executives. Unfortunately for them, some bloggers were on the call. The 'Treasury boys' on the call made it clear that "the tranching is a mere formality, and the Treasury boys as much as said so. They could take the $700 billion max as soon as the bill has passed." That was always obvious.

And they admitted that "the exec comp provisions sound like a joke, They DO NOT affect existing contracts, they affect only contracts entered into during the two years of the authority of this program and then affect only golden parachutes." Both of these provisions were 'concessions' sought by Democrats. Of course, no one could have predicted this bill's 'concessions' to Democrats were farcical. No one at all. "

What we saw yesterday was a replay of the disastrous failure of leadership the Democrats enacted when they bought the emergency WMD threat George Bush, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and associates sold back in 2003, when the Dems voted to give Bush powers to go to war with Iraq.

Thank goodness for the Jewish Holidays, which both parties used as an excuse to go back home and raise money and campaign for two days. IF they REALLY thought the situation was so urgent, they'd have gone ahead with working on making something happen. That's what the Israelis would do if there were a true emergency on a Jewish holiday.

Today, the Wall Street Journal observed that one reason the stock market tanked so deeply yesterday was because "there had been so many dire pronouncements about what voting down the plan might do, quoting Harvard Economist Kenneth Roboff. 'The administration, leaders of the congress, the secretary of the Treasury and head of the Fed all stated emphatically that there is going to be a disaster if the bailout plan is not passed,' he said. What we're seeing now is panic.'"

That's what teachers call the halo effect-- you get what you expect. In this case, Bush, Paulson and colleagues CAUSED the record selloff yesterday with their "dire pronouncements." And the Pelosi-Hoyer crew helped them.

Today, the market has already come back about 270 points. Yesterday's panic has abated. There will probably be more panics ahead- the fearmeisters have planted seeds that have yet to erupt. Wall street interprets the rise as a recovery based on rising bailout hopes. I don't see it that way. I think that people are seeing that the sky has NOT fallen today. Life goes on.

But yesterday, about $1.2 trillion in stock value evaporated. Let's blame that on Bush and Paulson for proposing a very bad, over-reaching, excessively Wall Street serving proposal. And let's blame the Dem leadership for not totally rejecting it and coming up with real solutions, rather than taking the lazy, cowardly way of just reacting to Bush's proposal.

For now, we have a few days to let the crisis breath. That's a good thing, what the Sunlight Foundation called for on Sunday-- a chance for people to study the proposal and come up with ideas.

When it comes down to it, and I've said this numerous times in the past week, the main challenge is liquidity and keeping credit flowing, and should not bailing out Wall Street. The Dem leadership in congress ignored and sold out its constituents on Monday, trying to give this pig legislation the bums' rush. They failed. They have an opportunity to correct their major error. For some it will be too late. Any Republican who opposed the bill on Monday will be a fool not to make this a major issue in the coming weeks of their campaign. It will cost some Democrats AND some Republicans their seats. They deserve it. Americans deserve better than the short shrift these patsies for Bush's latest rush job gave them.

Frankly, the dems did more on Monday to help the Republicans than anything the Republicans could have done for themselves. Nancy Pelosi, Stenny Hoyer, Jerrold Nadler, by panicking and pushing exactly what Bush wanted, what made him so happy to see them approving on Sunday, probably cost the DNC at least half a dozen seats they might have held or won. They failed to learn anything from their massive 2003 error. For me, two strikes should put them out.

I'm also hoping the sane, unpanicked members of congress will take a look at the newly merged behemoths that have been created with Bush Admin help. These monsters could prove to be very dangerous. The three biggest of these new entities-- Bank of America Corp., J.P. MorganChase & Company and Citigroup Inc. have grown from holding 21.4% of all US deposits to 31.3% of all US deposits. Like Bernie Sanders says, "any company that is too big to fail is too big to exist."

Today, I'm still a Democrat, but I'm feeling more like a screwed sucker who's been duped and used, and I'm getting sick of it.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation