Mother Jones - Comments for "Selling the Bailout"

"The Bush administration has been fortunate in having 'sensible liberal' bloggers to help sell their kleptocratic bailout bill with the very same content-free fear-mongering that was used to sell the Patriot Act and the authorization to invade Iraq."

Blah, blah, blah. Talk about "fear mongering"?these insinuations and outright claims of betrayals to the cause and accusations of useful idiotism is straight out of the McCarthyist playbook and that of any other ideologically politically correct oriented partisan appartchik denunciation strategy. It's ugly, small-minded, and smells like the same sort of blackmail tactics our opposition is so willing to use at the drop of a hat.

Blah, blah, blah. Talk about "fear mongering"these insinuations and outright claims of betrayals to the cause and accusations of useful idiotism is straight out of the McCarthyist playbook and that of any other ideologically politically correct oriented partisan appartchik denunciation strategy. It's ugly, small-minded, and smells like the same sort of blackmail tactics our opposition is so willing to use at the drop of a hat.

Kevin, is former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill one of those Americans you plan to insult now?

He says the $700B Paulson bailout is "crazy" with potentially "awful" consequences for the U.S. economy.

"it would be approved 434-1 the next day"

Who's the naysayer?

Whatever their shortcomings, Gates, Bernanke, Paulson, Petraeus, and even Rice have been marked improvements over their Administration counterparts of say 2003.

Sorry, but that's just soft bigotry. Let's dust off some of Rice's greatest hits, shall we?

As early as January of 2003, Rice, as head of the NSA, took to the pages of the New York Times in absolute certainty that Saddam Hussein was in possession of nuclear, chemical, & biological weapons.

In September of 2003, as testimony to her certainty that Saddam had nukes, she famously said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

And Rice, noted Sovietologist that she is, remained absolutely silent in her current role as Secretary of State while both Georgian & Russian forces massed at their border in the run-up to their conflagration over South Ossetia & Abkhazia.

She's utterly & irredeemably incompetent.

The two wings of the Money party seem to favor imaginary wealth but the various wings of the unMonied party seem to want wealth they can see with their eyes and feel with their hands.
This bailout favors the sponsors of the Money party and ignores the others. There are, of course, many more unMonied voters than rich voters. See you in November.

Kevin - I thought your analysis was that opposition to this thing was attributable solely to Lou Dobbs and talk radio?

Is this the beginning of a more nuanced analysis on your part?

SecularAnimist,

I couldn't agree with you more.

Strange debate this is. Kevin and the "reasonable" Democrats in congress are pushing the Bush line. Meanwhile, Bush's own party is opposing him. The other day on Political Animal it seemed like the only one backing up your points was Fat White Guy. This whole thing reads like a chapter from the Book of Revelation - be sure to check the color of the moon tonight.

What a shocker. The fifth time the shepherd boy screamed about a non-existent wolf, the other shepherds failed to rush to his side.

I guess Bush's mother didn't have enough time to read that cautionary story to her kids. Too bad for all of us.

If anything, distrust of Bush ought to convince you that maybe this bill is necessary after all.

Crap.

If George Bush is standing on the same continent of a problem, he caused it and he is pushing hard to make it worse. Everything he thinks and does and everyone he knows all make America a worse place to live.

If Bush wanted the Paulson Proposal to succeed he should have gone to Brunei and held a press conference denouncing it as the result of a rogue Treasury Secretary. Or better yet, Bush might have simply disappeared into a bottle and drunkenly told the press he wasn't going to get involved.

It still looks like a case of end of term "Shock doctrine" to me. Bush has done everything he could to tie the next President's hands. (See Iraq Status of Forces Agreement.) What makes the current idiocy any different? This banking/credit crisis and it's timing are no accident.

So a lot of people are buying it? So what? A lot of people bought the WMD lies and bought into the stupidity of invading Iraq, too. A lot of people bought Bush's lies when he said he would rebuild New Orleans. A lot of people stupidly bought the Bush claims he wasn't involved during the short attempt to remove Hugo Chavez from Venezuela when he quickly recognized the four day government of the coup plotters. And Bush is Wall Street's man in the White House.

Trusting Bush, his minions, or Wall Street is utter stupidity bordering on insanity. When there appears to be a problem, they are at its root and any apparent attempt they support to "fix" the problem is a power grab.

kidkostar wrote: "This plan is a crock. Rep. Defazio's is far superior, and that ought to be the one supported by all Democrats."

Sensible liberal bloggers like Kevin know that they must never even mention DeFazio's proposal -- it would undermine their claims that there is "no choice" but to pass the Bush administration's kleptocratic bailout bill.

Instead of mentioning -- let alone discussing and analyzing -- the progressive alternatives to Bush's bailout bill, sensible liberal bloggers like Kevin know that they must call progressive Democrats who oppose the Bush proposal "Lou Dobbs populist know-nothing yahoo villagers with pitchforks" and other puerile names.

That's how they are helping the Bush administration and the Congressional Republicans push through a bill larded with wacko right-wing provisions that have nothing to do with the "financial crisis" and everything to do with enriching the Republican Party's ultra-rich cronies and financial backers.

The Bush administration has been fortunate in having "sensible liberal" bloggers to help sell their kleptocratic bailout bill with the very same content-free fear-mongering that was used to sell the Patriot Act and the authorization to invade Iraq.

In particular, "sensible liberal" bloggers have been helpful to the Bush administration by assiduously avoiding any discussion or analysis or even any mention of the alternative proposals being put forward by progressive Congressional Democrats, thereby deliberately creating the false impression that there is "no choice" but to pass the Bush administration's proposal.

From the third paragraph of the LA Times story: "[I]nstead of starting out by organizing a broad-based coalition to build bipartisan support and mounting a grass-roots campaign to explain the crisis ..."

I think I've heard that somewhere before.

So what on Earth makes you think their implementation of this plan is going to be any better than their marketing of it? In the past, the ONLY thing the Bushies have been good at is marketing. Now they can't even do that.

This plan is a crock. Rep. Defazio's is far superior, and that ought to be the one supported by all Democrats. The Dems tried it Bush's way, again, and all it accomplished was a big fat nothing.