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The Wall Street Bailout Plan: "An audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods"

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Better Believe It Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 02:48 PM
Original message
The Wall Street Bailout Plan: "An audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods"


The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust
Written by Chris Floyd
September 29, 2008
Empire Burlesque

The vote by the House of Representatives to defeat the Wall Street bailout plan is the first act of political courage that the Congress of the United States has mounted in the last seven years. The fact that it was due largely to right-wing Republicans afraid of going down with the sinking ship of the witless leader they have followed blindly throughout his reign is a delicious irony -- but the whys and wherefores of the vote are not important. What matters is that one of America's moribund institutions has flickered to life long enough to derail a disastrous action that would have shoved the nation even deeper into the pit of corruption and ruin where it has been mired for so long.

The New York Times called the House vote "a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who had put the full weight of the White House behind the measure." But this is manifestly untrue. As everyone but the nation's media -- and the Democratic Party -- knows, George W. Bush has no "political weight" to use, or lose. Yes, he still retains the authoritarian powers that the spineless Democrats have given him with scarcely a whimper of protest (and often with boundless enthusiasm); but as a political force -- i.e., someone whose opinions and statements can sway popular opinion -- he has been a dead and rotting carcass for a long time. He is the most unpopular president in American history; and I can report from first-hand, eyewitness knowledge that he is thoroughly despised by some of the most rock-ribbed, Bible-believing, flag-waving, down-home, John Wayne-loving Heartland types that you can imagine. Even his own party -- a party fashioned in his own image, the Frankensteinian melding of willfully ignorant religious primitivism and rapaciously greedy crony capitalism that he has embodied in his twerpish person -- kept him away from their convention this year.

Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- could be politically safer than opposing George W. Bush. And yet the entire Democratic leadership, Barack Obama included, lined up to support a cockamamie plan proposed by this scorned and shriveled figure, a plan that was transparently nothing more than an audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods and yet another authoritarian power grab by a gang of murderous, torturing, warmongering toadies. This was the plan and these were the people that the Democrats decided to fight for.

I still believe it is unlikely any genuinely effective program -- one that could manage and mitigate the now-unavoidable effects of the Wall Street/Washington-induced disaster -- will ever get enacted. After all, the Democrats are largely owned by the same corrupt and greedy elites now seeking a handout. And it seems reasonable to assume that the Bipartisan Bailout Bunch will eventually find some kind of sugar to tempt away the two dozen votes they need for their next "compromise" on the Bush-Paulson plan.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1618-the-shadow-of-the-pitchfork-elite-panic-attack-as-bailout-goes-bust.html
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polichick Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 02:49 PM
Response to Original message
1. "a cockamamie plan proposed by this scorned and shriveled figure"
:rofl:
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Karenina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 03:30 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Chris Floyd is a treasure!
Edited on Tue Sep-30-08 03:31 PM by Karenina
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #1
9. Perfect
:rofl:
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pnwmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 02:57 PM
Response to Original message
2. Let's see. Who should I trust? Obama or some unknown blogger?
To some people that might seem like a tough choice.
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Better Believe It Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 03:03 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Do You Disagree With The Writer, Unknown Poster?
Edited on Tue Sep-30-08 03:03 PM by Better Believe It
If so, what points do you dispute in the article?

I take it you also disagree with the Democrats who voted against the Wall Street giveaway.
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pnwmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 03:40 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. I don't know what to think about this whole mess. But I trust Obama more
than your guy.

I think Obama's supporting the rescue plan now as the best we can manage politically until he and the new Congress come into office.
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Better Believe It Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 03:39 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. Chris Floyd, the "unknown blogger ????!!! :) :)
Right. He's just an "unknown blogger" with no academic or writing credentials.

Chris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. For more than 11 years he wrote the featured political column, Global Eye, for The Moscow Times and the St. Petersburg Times in Russia. He also served as UK correspondent for Truthout.org, and was an editorial writer for three years for The Bergen Record. His work appears regularly CounterPunch, The Baltimore Chronicle and in translation in the Italian paper, Il Manifesto, and has also been published in such venues as The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Ecologist and many others. His articles are also featured regularly on such websites as Information Clearing House, Buzzflash, Bushwatch, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. His work has been cited in The New York Times, USA Today, the Guardian, the Independent and other major newspapers.

Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. His career began in the hills and valleys of Tennessee and down in the piney swamps of southern Mississippi, covering moonshine raids, shotgun murders, drug-running evangelists, racial conflicts, the economic ravages of the Reagan Administration, and the relentless, turbulent campaign of the Religious Right to gain political power and cultural dominance throughout the "heartland." He returned to his home ground in the late 1990s, where he won awards for his coverage of a deadly hostage shootout and a bloody melee between county officials – swapping charges of corruption and adultery – at a school board meeting. He also won two awards for column writing during his stints on Tennessee papers.

Floyd spent several years in the depths of the military-industrial complex, working for a security-restricted federal research laboratory on projects dealing with energy conservation, global warming, space travel, transportation, robotics, artificial intelligence and military logistics. On the side, he published fiction and poetry in small journals and taught Russian literature at the University of Tennessee. Later, he annotated Shakespeare, 19th century British poetry and American literature for a start-up company producing multi-media CD editions of literary works for colleges and schools.

From 1998 to 2000, Floyd was the editor of Science & Spirit, an Oxford quarterly journal dealing with the contentious relationship between science and religion. His work there included interviews with such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, V.S. Ramachandran and others. He also worked with contributors from around the world – Islamic scientists, Jewish theologians, militant atheists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and authors such as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Lisa Jardine, A.N. Wilson, John Polkinghorne and others. Since 2000, Floyd has worked as a freelance journalist and as a writer and researcher for Oxford University.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/chris-floyd.html
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pnwmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 03:41 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. And his economic background is . . . what? Who is advising him
on the economy?
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Better Believe It Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 04:19 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. I Do Know That Robert Rubin Is A Key Advisor To Obama
And Robert Rubin was one of the key Wall Street people who pushed for and won deregulation of Wall Street speculators.

Sorry .... I can't name any Wall Street crooks who are advising the author. I don't think he has any.
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pnwmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 04:28 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. Obama has consulted quite a number of economic advisors. Rubin is one
of many.
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-01-08 04:18 AM
Response to Reply #10
16. Which of them are for Paulson's POS bailout bill?
Where can I read their defense of Paulson's POS bailout bill?
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depakid Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-01-08 04:21 AM
Response to Reply #7
17. Zippo
just like a lot people who argue against keeping the credit market situation from spiralling out of control.

Hell, most of them don't even know what the credit market is- much less how it works, or why it's important to thousands of companies in every sector of the economy- or that their payrolls might fail (which may well include one of their very own paychecks!



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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-01-08 04:16 AM
Response to Reply #2
15. I'd say trust yourself ...
at least to most people.
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The Backlash Cometh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 04:39 PM
Response to Original message
11. If the Wallstreet gangsta's could rap, I wonder what the lyrics would say.
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Better Believe It Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 05:02 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. It Would Probably Start With: "Gimme da money" :)
I'm not a rapper so someone else will have to fill in the lyrics.
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The Backlash Cometh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 05:10 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. I'm a bad man on Wall Street
'said a bad man on Wall Street
Greenspan's mah ho
and to no one I owe
Rather you throw down to me
'cuz I'm a bad man on Wall Street
So let the markets be free.

As you can see, I'm not a rapper either.

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dixiegrrrrl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-30-08 07:55 PM
Response to Original message
14. The Democrats are largely owned by the same corrupt and greedy elites now seeking a hand
Sad to say.
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moodforaday Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-01-08 04:31 PM
Response to Original message
18. K & R & thank you (nt)
:kick:
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