I think it was Lily Tomlin who said, “No matter how cynical you get, it is just impossible to keep up.” I just… I dunno, I keep thinking there must be some depths to which even the current U.S. administration would not sink, and I keep being proven wrong. And everybody just goes along with it. It makes me wonder about my own sanity, it really does.
George W. Bush went on TV to tell us that the economy is in a terrible crisis – how can he face us, knowing that it was his “free market” policies that made this crisis possible? And then ask for $700 billion to bail out the corporate freebooters whose unbridled greed created this whole mess? Does this man have any sense of shame at all? Where was the bailout for all those people who lost their homes and jobs in the last few years, and the people who will be losing their jobs as Fannie, Freddie, AIG and Lehmann Brothers collapse? Why do taxpayers, who face such uncertainty in their own lives, have to bail out these obscenely wealthy parasites? What kind of solution is it, to lob money at people who demonstrably don’t need it, and leave the people who do need it to line up at the soup kitchens?
I just don’t get it. What am I missing here?
Song du jour of the day: They. By Jem.
alala 
September 25th, 2008 at 23:05
I missed that news conference, since we were watching a Red Sox game, and they didn’t interrupt the game for that. In some ways I think I’m better off. I don’t need the sickening stress right now.
September 27th, 2008 at 00:44
I don’t think you are missing anything. It is truly as awful as you say it is.
September 27th, 2008 at 18:44
leil has it exactly right. Think of the Karl Rove regime as the payoff of 25 years of conservative issue framing (taxes are bad, anything that remotely hinders profit maximization is un-American, etc.)… Republicans campaign on emotions (fear, first) with the goal of making themselves and their rich friends richer, while Democrats campaign on issues with the goal of making sure nobody has to live in poverty or at the mercy of a theocracy. Guess who wins. Apparently that has a lot to do with how the brain is wired, and only the red-staters have figured it out. My next book read will probably be “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” about why such a ridiculous number of Americans vote so strongly against their own economic interests. It’s been a good summer in my reading career. : )
October 1st, 2008 at 14:49
Eilliot Spitzer, before his own flaming meltdown said it best…”Never has so much been given to so few, who need so little”. (That was years ago, when he was the AG of New York, monitoring the SEC and GW insisted on tax cuts for his rich cronies, while telling the masses that the wealth would “trickle down”). Unfortunately his voice has been muted by his own excesses, but we’re still being trickled on, and when the giants fall, they fall on us.