Nobody's Fool
New political lines are being drawn in Washington-- and it's a thrilling thing to behold.The House failed today in its effort to giveaway $700 billion of your money. John McCain and Republicans blamed Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Barney Frank, Chris Matthews, and Arianna Huffington blamed John McCain and Republicans. McCain lost. Obama lost. Bush lost. The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate both lost. Wall Street lost BIG. And the American people won!
Greedy Wall Street speculators, the culprits of our current predicament, went immediately into pouting mode after being faced with, for the first time in memory, a finger being placed in the dike of corporate socialism. The Dow had shed 778 points by day's end, the biggest single day loss in more than two decades.
What we witnessed leading up to-- and immediately following-- the House vote was consistent with the thesis of Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. She refers to it as "Disaster Capitalism in Action." Wall Street corporatists and their Washington errand boys preach Left Behind-style economics, causing many Americans to turn jittery. Then they attempt to transform their manufactured economic crisis into a public mandate for pushing through radical pro-corporate policies.
But their tactics didn't work in the Congress this time! We may have finally established a ceiling for how much money Wall Street can mug from the American taxpayers-- a number roughly equal to the cost of an economic plan in which we give $100 to each person on the planet. You can steal from the American people 23 out of every 24 months, but don't try to do it five weeks before election day. It just doesn't leave enough time for lawmakers on the take to spin their votes.
I'll be surprised if anybody this week frames it better than Dennis Kucinich did yesterday--
"The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?
"Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls."
If you follow too closely behind the bulls, you're going to wind up stepping in it. The corporate media didn't consider Kucinich a viable presidential candidate. They ignored Ron Paul, and are now ignoring Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. But now, upon the most important vote of this year and several years, these individuals find themselves on the side of the American people, and the center podium candidates are scrambling to pick up the pieces.
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The roll call of today's vote. Iowans Leonard Boswell and Dave Loebsack in support. Bruce Braley, Steve King, and Tom Latham opposed.
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Other Paul Newman movie titles considered for tonight's heading:
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys
Exodus
The Hustler
The Prize
The Outrage
Winning
Sometimes a Great Notion
Pocket Money
The Sting
The Towering Inferno
When Time Ran Out
Absence of Malice
The Verdict
The Color of Money
Empire Falls
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Hidden cameras recorded a portion of the Bruce Springsteen concert we saw in Kansas City last month.
posted by CM @ 8:34 PM
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