It's War Baby and the War is On Now

The Republican fuckwads are not only sabatoging the stimulus package they are also sabatoging the Senator's call lines.

Interstingly the toll free numbers to the capitol switchboard aren't working. In addition, the Senator's mailboxes are full and the lines are busy.

The fucking GOP are going all out, using every one of their email lists to encourage their people to call in and oppose the package and support McCain's stoopid fucking substitute which is nothing but more tax cuts and military fucking spending. Every Puke Senator is going to the floor with all kinds of "evidence" claiming the McCain's substitute is the only stimulus that will work. Dicks.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. These Republican hacks are the very definition of insanity.

It is war - their people are calling and our Senators are getting nervous because the Dems are just not organized enough to email all of their lists. God they suck at politicking. It is a wonder that any of them ever get elected.

CALL NOW!! Tell these dumb asses that McCain's package is a fucking joke.

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Caption Contest...

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Do We Really Trust bu$h To Have Carte Blanche... Again?

Why don't I trust the bu$h administration on their rush to rescue our financial giants? Could it be that we were blindly hurried into the Patriot Act... or was it the fast moving attack on Iraq... hell, it's really both. And both have been huge blunders. The bu$h administration has a record of screwing the pooch on way too many items over the years... and we are supposed to just let him have Carte Blanche?
More after selections of the N.Y. Times article.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed a vast bailout of financial institutions in the United States, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from the private firms.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

“This is a big package, because it was a big problem,” President Bush said Saturday at a White House news conference...

Some Congressional Republicans warned Democrats not to overreach...

The administration’s plan would allow the Treasury to hire staff members and engage outside firms to help manage its purchases. And officials said that the administration envisioned enlisting several outside firms to help run the effort to buy up mortgage-related assets...

You have got to be kidding me right? "...unfettered authority...?" Like Cheney? Like Rummy? Like "Gonzo"? Like "heck of a job" Brownie? Sorry, I've been down this road before... you're incompetent bu$h and so is your staff. If Paulson was so great why has the problem gotten so huge?

bu$h telling me it's a "big problem" does not ease my fears or bode well with me... I don't trust the man. A man I call "King Midas in Reverse!" I can sense a real rip off of the American people here, name one thing he has successfully done for U.S. citizens. Or better yet, reel off all the things bu$h and his cronies have benefitted from when they expedite policy at the expense of the American public.

"Some Congressional Republicans warned Democrats not to overreach..." WTF? Who the fuck are they to tell our Democratic congressional leaders "not to overreach..." I hope they "overreach" and finally protect the electorate from bu$hco.

"...the administration envisioned enlisting several outside firms to help run the effort to buy up mortgage-related assets..." This sounds like outsourcing of jobs and special contracts to me, ala Iraq. How much will this cost? Who will be doing the work? The same schmoes who were working on Wall St. and got us into this mess?

In conclusion, I don't trust a fucking thing bu$h proposes, especially when he is trying to ramrod a plan down the American public's throat. We've been screwed too many times before.

Of course I'm no economist, but Paul Krugman is and he agrees with me: No Deal.

I hate to say this, but looking at the plan as leaked, I have to say no deal. Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets...

Here’s the thing: historically, financial system rescues have involved seizing the troubled institutions and guaranteeing their debts; only after that did the government try to repackage and sell their assets. The feds took over S&Ls first, protecting their depositors, then transferred their bad assets to the RTC. The Swedes took over troubled banks, again protecting their depositors, before transferring their assets to their equivalent institutions.

The Treasury plan, by contrast, looks like an attempt to restore confidence in the financial system — that is, convince creditors of troubled institutions that everything’s OK — simply by buying assets off these institutions. This will only work if the prices Treasury pays are much higher than current market prices; that, in turn, can only be true either if this is mainly a liquidity problem — which seems doubtful — or if Treasury is going to be paying a huge premium, in effect throwing taxpayers’ money at the financial world.

And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving.

I hope I’m wrong about this. But let me say it again: Treasury needs to explain why this is supposed to work — not try to panic Congress into giving it a blank check. Otherwise, no deal.

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"(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)"

With a big hat tip to iamcoyote, the republi-con hyprocisy is in high gear. (my highlights)

MINNEAPOLIS-- As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and lobbyist-paid parties this weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Many corporate sponsors and their lobbyists carried through with plans for lavish entertainment of GOP lawmakers and others despite calls from the campaign of Sen. John McCain that Republicans should tone down the convention festivities.

"We will be contacting corporations and others to ask them to be respectful of events in the gulf," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said Sunday afternoon.

Yet, last night lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and the American Trucking Association put on a raucus six-hour party at a downtown bar featuring music by the band "Hookers and Blow." There was no evidence of any actual prostitutes or cocaine.

No night off for these republi-con party animals... I'm convinced they were glad the convention got curtailed by an act of God!

And yes, after what this country has been put through for the last 8 years, I'm an intolerant liberal blogger.

One observant Democratic challenger was ready to go... as pointed out by DvilleDem at Daily Kos.

Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA), a GOP House deputy whip, was seen meeting with a group of lobbyists, who bemoaned McCain's call to tone down the parties which had already been paid for...

On the Sept. 1st Broadcast of ABC’s World News Tonight however, the Congressman can be seen arguing with reporters, fighting for his right to party.

Shuster’s opponent in the 9th Congressional district Tony Barr made the following statement. "We are saddened but not really all that shocked. At a time when the citizens of the Gulf Coast and literally running for their lives, and citizens here in the 9th District are feeling the pinch of an economy floundered by the policies of George Bush and Bill Shuster, where is our Congressman? Holding court with lobbyists who advocate the same failed polices that got us into this mess in the first place. At a time when drugs and drug related crime are the scourge of our streets, there’s Bill Shuster, partying with "hookers and blow!"

I can't wait for the pictures of this party.

UPDATE: Now we know why ATA was supporting a republi-con convention party. ATA (American Trucking Association) will support higher fuel taxes. The bastards...

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With the Delivery of a Sledgehammer

I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the East ...Why not spread its wings over the cradle of humanity, I asked myself? ... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the desert, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the Iraqi Constitution, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Iraq. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

- Mark Twain (paraphrased)

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