The Second Great Depression

By Ron Paul
Sept 30, 2008

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences – predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics – are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

* The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

* Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

* Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind – another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

Say “Hell No” To ANY Bail-Out Of Wall Street

The attack dogs are out in force. My Scar Watch (Joe Scarborough) this morning had Joe, Mika and guests all up in arms about how the Dems (Pelosi) made this a political issue and that is why it didn’t pass. To these asswipes, it is all about political posturing, then turn the fear factor on to scare the American people into thinking that they are about to lose their jobs, pensions, 401K’s, etc, etc, etc.

But let me tell you what the latest bail-out proposal did to protect these issues that concern them so much…

_______________________

Yep. Nothing.

There is not a single thing in the proposal that holds these very same criminals who did this accountable for their actions that got us into this mess, nor anything that holds them accountable for future rip-offs. It is simply giving them money to do it again, if they so desire. So, fuck them.

It does nothing to help protect your mortgage or to refinance your high interest rates. There is NOTHING in it to protect the American citizen from an even bigger loss. But they are protected from their previous loss and future losses because this does not change the system in any real way. Fuck them.

There is nothing in it that makes them do anything different than what they did to create this. And we are supposed to be worried and scared when they won’t be held accountable. Fuck them.

There is nothing in the bill that forces that the 700 Billion be paid back, except by the suggestion of the president. Sorry. Fuck them.

The fact is that if they were to bail these criminals out, we are simply rewarding them for their thievery.

Do not let the MSM scare you. Don’t let the imbecile “W” scare you (again).

Say no. Keep calling your congressmen and Senators and tell them “NO”.

Fuck them.

Empire Spending

On Wednesday, the House passed a mammoth defense bill by a 392-39 vote. It’s expected to clear the Senate with little difficulty next week.

It was part of a trillion-dollar stop-gap measure to keep programs running through next March, allowing lawmakers to skip town without passing a final budget. The Associated Press reports, “The legislation came together in a remarkably secret process that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a few lawmakers.”

In keeping with the tradition of recent years, Bush held a gun to his own head and threatened to pull the trigger if his demands weren’t met. According to the AP, “To earn President Bush’s signature rather than a veto, House and Senate negotiators dropped several provisions he opposed. They include a ban on private interrogators in U.S. military detention facilities and what would have amounted to congressional veto power over a security pact with Iraq.”

In other words, Congress also maintained recent tradition, swearing not to give Bush a blank check and then whipping out their pens and signing a blank check.

The number that the House sent to the Senate for “defense” — $612 billion for the coming year — is eye-popping. Imagine a stack of 612,000 million-dollar bills. Quite a pile.

That number’s a sham, however. The budget calls for $68.6 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. War costs this year totaled $182 billion, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

The House passed the Brobdingnagian spending measure 11 months after George W. Bush vetoed a bill — one passed with a lot of bipartisan support — that would have added $7 billion measly dollars per year to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, covering 4 million more uninsured children. You’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer sign of national psychosis.

Throw in a bit more than $50 billion for Homeland Security, around $20 billion for the nuclear arsenal in the Department of Energy’s budget, about $10 billion for the Coast Guard, a similar number for foreign “security assistance” and maybe another $125 billion — according to one estimate — in other defense-related programs scattered throughout the federal budget.

Bush also requested $91 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009, up from $72 billion just three years ago. A generation of damaged young men and women are going to cost more and more as the years go by — many post-traumatic injuries, for example, don’t manifest themselves for 10 or more years after people get out of combat. In 2000, nine years after the first Gulf War, 56 percent of those who had served in that conflict were receiving disability payments.

But wait, as they say on late-night infomercials, there’s more!

All of this only finances our current military adventures. We’re still paying for Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and the first Gulf War and Somalia and the Balkans and on and on. Estimates of just how much of our national debt payments are from past military spending vary wildly. Economist Robert Higgs calculated it like this:

I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending–military, veterans, and international affairs–to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending.

In 2006, he came up with a figure of $206.7 billion for interest payments on past militarism. Add it all up, and we’re talking about at least a trillion dollars in military and homeland security spending. If there were a million-dollar bill, you’d have to stack a million of them to reach a trillion dollars.

Of course, very little of this is “defense.” This is empire spending, pure and simple …

What’s that? You want health care, education, affordable housing, 21st-century infrastructure?

Sorry, we’ve got other priorities.

B’Man’s Patriot Watch: Dennis Kucinich

Bailout Plan Will Fail to Keep Families in Their Homes:

Treasury will own troubled assets without any control

Terms of bad mortgages cannot be changed absent controlling share of underlying securities

Dear Colleague:

If you are tempted to vote for this legislation because you think it will keep people in their homes, think again: in fact, Treasury will not be able to change the terms of bad mortgages because the Act does not require Treasury to purchase a controlling share in the underlying mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. The Secretary will be powerless to make any real and substantive change in the terms of mortgage. The Secretary will have NO power to avoid foreclosures and keep families in their homes.

I commend to your attention a letter I received last night from Frank Alexander, Professor of Law at Emory University. Professor Alexander testified before my Subcommittee on Domestic Policy on targeting federal assistance to help neighborhoods affected by the foreclosure crisis. He is an expert on housing law and community development.

Professor Alexander clearly demonstrates that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act will not fulfill its stated goal of preserving homeownership. Unless the Secretary of the Treasury is required to prioritize assets that will give the Treasury a controlling share in the underlying whole mortgage, the Secretary will hold bad assets with no power to make them solid again.

Because the rule prohibits amendments, and we do not have the opportunity to correct this terrible oversight, I must encourage you to oppose this bill so that it can be reworked and the oversight addressed. To be sure, the recent past has taught us the valuable lesson that action in haste can be more destructive than delayed action.

Sincerely,

Dennis J. Kucinich

Member of Congress

Good Morning America! It’s Monday 9/29/08

Good morning! Welcome to Monday September 29, 2008 – day 273. Have a great week out there and be safe in whatever you do.
History on this day September 29

1789: A regular army was established by the U.S. War Department with several hundred men.

1829: The first public appearance by London’s re-organized police force was met with jeers from political opponents. The force became known as Scotland Yard.

1849: 1st passenger train service to Peekskill NY (New Haven Railroad)

1930: Lowell Thomas made his debut on CBS Radio. He was in the radio business for the next 46 years.

1953: “Make Room for Daddy” premiered on ABC-TV.

1960: “My Three Sons” debuted on ABC-TV.

1963: “My Favorite Martian” premiered on CBS-TV.

1963: “The Judy Garland Show” premiered on CBS-TV.

1983: The War Powers Act was used for the first time by the U.S.Congress when they authorized President Reagan to keep U.S. Marines in Lebanon for 18 more months.

1994: The U.S..House voted to end the practice of lobbyist buying meals and entertainment for members of Congress.

September 29, 1982
The Tylenol murders

On this day, a sick 12-year-old girl in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, unwittingly takes an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule laced with cyanide poison and dies later that day. She would be one of seven people to die suddenly after taking the popular over-the-counter medication, as the so-called Tylenol murders spread fear across America. The victims, all from the Chicago area, ranged in age from 12 to 35 and included three members of the same family. Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, launched a massive recall of its product and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible.

Investigators soon determined that the tainted Tylenol capsules hadn’t been tampered with at the factories where they were produced. This meant that someone had taken the bottles from store shelves, laced them with poison and then returned them to grocery stores and pharmacies, where the victims later purchased the tampered bottles.This led drug makers to develop tamper-proof packaging, which had been largely nonexistent before the Tylenol Terrorist struck.

Birthdays:

1547: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra – author: Don Quixote

1904: Greer Garson actress – Mrs. Miniver [ Pride and Prejudice, Goodbye, Mr. Chips

1907: Gene Autry - "The Singing Cowboy" actor: 100+ cowboy westerns; singer: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer only person to have 5 Hollywood Walk of Fame stars

1913: Trevor (Wallace) Howard - actor: Gandhi, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Count of Monte Cristo

1913: Stanley Kramer - director:Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

1935: Jerry Lee Lewis - singer: Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On, Great Balls of Fire

1942: Madeline Kahn - actress: Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein

1943: Lech Walesa (Nobel Peace prize-winner [1983]: founder of Polish solidarity

1948: Mark Farner – singer: Grand Funk Railroad

Notable deaths:

1822 – 1895 Louis Pasteur dies at 73.
A French chemist and microbiologist, he is best known for remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of disease. His experiments supported the germ theory, also reducing mortality from (childbed fever), and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to stop milk and wine from causing sickness; this process came to be called pasteurization. Pasteur is regarded as one of the three main founders of microbiology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch.

Chart toppers:

1971: Go Away Little Girl – Donny Osmond
Maggie Mae/Reason to Believe – Rod Stewart
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – Joan Baez
The Year That Clayton Delaney Died – Tom T. Hall

1979: My Sharona – The Knack
Sad Eyes – Robert John
Rise – Herb Alpert
It Must Be Love – Don Williams

Ponderable for the day: If you keep looking back, you’ll soon be going that way.

Word of the day: Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\, noun – The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

Quote of the day: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin

Stuff……….you should know.

- Actor Charlie Chaplin made 81 movies over a career that spanned 50 years.
- Actor Jim Carrey’s favorite cartoon character is Deputy Dawg.
- Actor Sylvester Stallone once had a job as a lion cage cleaner.
- Actress Grace Kelly’s movies are banned in Monaco by order of Prince Ranier.
- Actress Lillian Entwistle committed suicide by jumping from the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign.
- American actor Jack Nicholson, and American singer Bobby Darrin were raised believing their grandmothers were their mothers and their mothers were their older sisters.
- Bruce Lee was so fast, that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves.
- Elizabeth Taylor has appeared on the cover of Life magazine more than anyone else.
- Famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio appeared on the educational children’s program “Romper Room” when he was three years old.
- Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana.
- In 1916, Charlie Chaplin was making $10,000 a week, making him the highest paid actor of his time.
- The oldest actor to win a Best Actor Oscar is Henry Fonda. He was 76 when he won it.

I Got Me Some Apolitical Blues

and I just don’t want to talk to ‘em now…

Apolitical Blues

Lowell George

Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
You can tell him anything
‘Cause I just don’t wanna talk to him now

I’ve got the apolitical blues
And that’s the meanest blues of all
Apolitical blues
And that’s the meanest blues of all
I don’t care if it’s John Wayne
I just don’t wanna talk to him now

B’Man’s Patriot Watch: Trevor Lyman @ ThirdPartyTicket.Com

September 28, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

Trevor Lyman is the man who organized the Ron Paul money bombs. One Lyman money bomb raised $4 million in one day. Another raised $6 million in one day. Now, Lyman is at it again. Lyman wants to hold a third party debate in New York City. Lyman was inspired by Ron Paul’s press conference a couple of weeks ago. At that press conference, Paul called on his followers to ditch the two major parties and throw their support to one of the independent or third party candidates. So, we all need to support Lyman’s push for an alternative debate now. If Lyman gets 10,000 pledges by October 8, he and the other sponsors will organize a debate in New York City. All major candidates — Nader, Barr, McKinney, Baldwin, Obama and McCain will be invited. Already, with no publicity, Lyman has close to 1,000 pledgers. So go to thirdpartyticket.com now. And add your name to the pledge list. You don’t have to say how much you are pledging. Just add your name. The Commission on Presidential Debates won’t let Ralph debate. So, let’s get behind Trevor Lyman’s push now. Let’s crank it up. And get it done. Onward to November The Nader Team PS: Third partyticket.com is being sponsored by Lyman’s group breakthematrix.com, the Chicago-based Free and Equal Elections, and Open Debates.

Bail-Out Is Imminent: America Loses Again

The Washington Post tells us that we are about to pay for the abuses of the ultra-rich. We are being held accountable for their thievery. I hope you understand this.

Lawmakers Reach Accord on Huge Financial Rescue

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration this morning said they had struck an accord to insert the government deeply into the nation’s financial markets, agreeing to spend up to $700 billion to relieve Wall Street of troubled assets backed by faltering home mortgages.

House and Senate negotiators from both parties emerged with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. at 12:30 a.m. from a marathon session in the Capitol to announce that they had reached a tentative agreement on a proposal to give Paulson broad authority to organize one of the biggest government interventions in the private sector since the Great Depression.

Full details of the plan were not immediately available. Lawmakers said their staffs would be working through the night to assemble the package and post it on the Internet.

“We’ve made great progress, but we have to commit it to paper before we can formally agree,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has pledged to make the plan available to the public for at least 24 hours before the House votes on it. A vote could come as early as tomorrow in the House, with the Senate expected to follow soon after.

“We’ve been working on this a long time. We’ve still got more to do to finalize it, but I think we’re there,” Paulson said. “So far, so good.”

Let me interrupt here to say that if that crooked bastard, Paulson thinks this is a good idea, we should do precisely 180 degrees different. “So far so good” means that they feel like they have duped us.

Think about this again, they provided an absolutely atrocious plan to get it all taken care of by the tax payer. By doing this, by asking for it ALL, they knew that they would end up with enough to sink us and bail them out.

I say fuck them and that horse they are riding in on. But before we nasty our dicks on the skank, let us look at what HAS been agreed to and how that equates to my insistence that they are getting exactly what they want because they asked for what they knew would not be given to them. Anything less is a win for Big Money and a loss for real Americans.

… A senior administration official, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the plan, said both sides had made significant concessions to achieve compromise. The Bush administration has agreed to accept a number of Democratic demands, including:

· The money would be dispersed in segments, with Paulson receiving $250 billion immediately, $100 billion upon White House certification of its necessity and the final $350 billion only after Congress has been given 15 days to object.

· Firms participating in the bailout would be required to grant the government warrants to obtain nonvoting shares of stock, so taxpayers can benefit if the companies return to profitability.

· Firms taking advantage of the bailout would be required to limit compensation for senior executives, with especially severe limits on “golden parachutes” at failing firms. The compensation limits will be enacted primarily, but not solely, through the tax code by reducing tax deductions for firms that pay executives more than $400,000 a year.

Thanks goodness for the acceptance of the Bush Administration of the Dem plan. He is such a leader. With his record of leadership, the Dems should be falling all over themselves to do anything he and his crooked administration asks for.

Think about this. Every day for the last week, these firms have been borrowing $188Billion per DAY. How far do you think that &00Billion will go at almost $200B per day?

Then this, “so taxpayers can benefit if the companies return to profitability”

What a god damned big assed “IF” in that sentence.

Or this, “Firms taking advantage of the bailout would be required to limit compensation for senior executives”.

What a god damned big assed “limit”. Let me explain a better plan. You fire those fuckers, put their asses in jail and put new ones in. Any person who has received any compensation regarding these firms that have failed or have been taken over by the FDIC should be forced to return ALL monies and be charged with the theft and the destruction they have caused.

The administration also agreed to Democratic demands that the financial services industry should help pay for the program. Under the agreement, the president would be required to propose a fee on the industry if the government has not recovered its money through sales of the assets within five years.

Democrats also made a number of concessions, abandoning demands that bankruptcy judges be empowered to modify home mortgages on primary residences for people in foreclosure. They also agreed not to dedicate a portion of any profits from the bailout program to an affordable housing fund that Republicans claimed would primarily assist social service organizations that support the Democratic Party, the official said

Really? The people who did this should have to help pay for it? I will be damned. What an amazing leader. But wait 5 years (just long enough for the entire system to crash and become a barter system).

And you Dems. Gave up on helping the people who are going to pay for this? Just like a dime-store pimp, who beats the fuck out of the people paying his bills, we the American people are now the country’s elite’s hos.

…Bush attempted to address criticisms from the right and left that the plan would bail out irresponsible financiers while doing nothing for regular Americans. Echoing frequent comments by him and his aides, Bush said allowing Wall Street to collapse further would pose greater dangers to the economy, perhaps triggering a “deep and painful recession.”

“The rescue effort we’re negotiating is not aimed at Wall Street — it is aimed at your street,” Bush said. “And there is now widespread agreement on the major principles. We must free up the flow of credit to consumers and businesses by reducing the risk posed by troubled assets.”

Democratic leaders have emphasized to rank-and-file members that Paulson has told them that he could only spend about $50 billion a month on the securities purchase program. Of the $700 billion figure, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said: “Nobody believes that’s going to be the final cost.”

Really, Harry? No one believes any of this shit except you complicit thieves who are putting the final death knell on this Wall Street rip-off of enormous size.

Like I said before, if George W Bush says something, please do the opposite. If you want to save yourselves and this country, you MUST insist that we stop the bail out, completely. Bush said it was good. You know it is bad.

Ron Paul Says Civil Unrest Could Lead To Martial Law

Wake Up, rednecks.

From Paul Joseph Watson at Prison Planet
Friday, September 26, 2008

Congressman Ron Paul says that the bailout bill is likely to pass, heralding a 10-year plus economic depression for America and the potential for martial law should civil unrest arise as the financial meltdown worsens.

Speaking on The Alex Jones Show, Paul said of the bailout, “They want dictatorship, they want to pass all the penalties and suffering on to the average person on Main Street,” adding, “We will have a depression or recession, it’s locked in place due to previous Federal Reserve actions.”

“When they say that if we don’t do exactly as they say and turn over more of our money and more of our liberties and exempt themselves from any court in the whole nation, they’re trying to intimidate us and lead us into doing the wrong thing,” said Paul.

The Congressman added that serious problems would arise if nothing was done to address the problem, but that more serious consequences would follow should the bailout be passed.

Paul warned that the only question was whether the meltdown would last one year or ten years and how much liberty would be lost in that time frame.

“It looks like from I see in Congress, that they’re opting for a decade plus of depression rather than saying let’s correct our ways, let’s balance the budget, let’s bring our troops home,” said Paul, adding that the same course of printing money would continue – prolonging the agony and preventing a necessary correction.

Asked if civil unrest was a possibility in the midst of an economic depression, referencing a recent Army Times report concerning the use of active duty military being brought back from Iraq for “Homeland patrols” and “crowd control,” Paul questioned, “Are we going to have martial law or are we going to have more freedoms? The more problems that we have, the more likely it is that we’re going to have martial law, so I do think they anticipate and they plan for these things.”

Read the rest at Prison Planet.

He goes farther to say that Greenspan and Bernanke should be charged criminally (which is true). But each and every complicit Big Money Thief needs to relainquish every nickel they stole and do jail time equivalent with a pot head’s possession charge, ensuring they never get out again.

Pieces of shit.

Now focus on the link from The Army Times, which I mentioned earlier in the week. This is the setup for our very own military to come into our homes and take control. Do you rednecks truly understand how close to total military control we are?

The Police State: Jailed For Farting On An Officer

Jonathon Turley shows us that farting on a police officer is now a criminal act.

Yet it is ok for them to spray us in the face with chemicals?

Flatulent Felony: West Virginia Man Charged with Gaseous Battery on Officer

Jose Cruz was being charged with a DUI in South Charleston, West Virginia when he intentionally or negligently expelled gas in the presence of the arresting officer. The result was a charge for battery upon an officer, who noted in the charge form that it was particularly potent.

Putting aside Cruz’s manners, the charge is clearly an abuse of authority by the officer. The question is whether any action will be taken to educate this officer that such rude behavior is not covered under the criminal code and that criminal charges are not there for cathartic expressions of disgust.

For the full story, click here.

O’Neil said…….

“When you violate fundamental principles of economics you can get away with it for a while, but eventually it’s going to get you.”

O’Neill: Bush Doesn’t Get Financial Crisis, ‘It Shows’
The President’s Former Treasury Secretary Speaks Out About $700 Billion Bailout

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said today that our nation’s leaders — especially President Bush — are “in a panic” and haven’t thought through the $700 billion bailout plan in a rush to pass it by the end of the week.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill today told ABC News that President Bush doesn’t understand or “knows much about any of this” crisis “and it shows.”
“I don’t think he understands or knows much about any of this and it shows,” O’Neill said, adding that current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “knows a lot of about this, and it’s good that he’s there.”

O’Neill, who served as Bush’s first treasury secretary until being fired over diverging views with the president about tax cuts and other issues, didn’t have favorable things to say about the economic policies of either presidential candidate, Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain.

“I think most of what has been said by both campaigns about economic stuff is ill-informed and ill-advised,” he said. Asked for specific problems, O’Neill said: “Everything.”

“Hopefully, whichever one of these two people ends up being president, my prayer is that they will be better than what they have said in the campaign,” O’Neill said in an interview with ABC News this afternoon.

“We have spun ourselves into a position where intelligent people don’t believe they can tell the people the truth and still get elected, so they pander,” he added. “One can only hope that they understand the difference between campaigning and governing, and that their governing will be better than what their campaign said.”

The Bailout Plan
O’Neill said that “we do need to do something to avert a complete collapse of the credit system” but added the administration’s bailout plan shouldn’t be the only option.

“It is possible to re-liquefy the credit system without ‘We the People’ owning $700 billion worth of homes,” he said.

Instead, O’Neill would like for the government to calculate the present value of the mortgage-backed investments and then insure, rather than own, those assets.

Essentially, O’Neill said, we run the risk of become the largest owner of foreclosed properties in the world.

“We have notoriously no capability to do anything like that,” he said. “There is no agency of government that could actually do that job.”
O’Neill is pegging his hopes on Congressional leaders to investigate that option, because the Bush administration has the “door locked and they haven’t taken on any new ideas.”

So why is the president and his administration pushing so hard for this plan?

“I think it’s because they’re in a panic and they haven’t thought about it very well,” O’Neill said.

The bailout process risks being bogged down by a number of “sideshow issues,” O’Neill added, including executive pay and aid for homeowners.

“Not a lot of people are saying, ‘Slow down.’ They’ve actually done something a lot worse than say, ‘Slow down.’ They’ve introduced a whole bunch of sideshow issues like executive compensation and oversight committees,” O’Neill said. “All of that stuff is not relevant to the central problem of re-liquefying these financial instruments.”

He said there is “flagrant overcompensation” of CEOs but that is a separate issue that is not relevant to the crisis.

“This is a sideshow, and it’s frankly irritating as hell that the political process is so incompetent that it can’t differentiate the important from the trivial,” O’Neill said. “Right now, we have a kind of stay of execution, and workable, meaningful legislation is the only thing that is going to keep us from getting executed.”

Helping out homeowners is also a separate issue in O’Neill’s mind.

“It’s not to say that you don’t feel compassion and sorrow for people that have got financial problems,” he said. “But if your solution is to give them more money, then you’re going to have to take it away from somebody who’s got it.”

Having this crisis hit right before a key election is not helping.

“It complicates it because [Congress is] wanting to rush out of town &133; and get reelected,” O’Neill said. “So rather than doing this in a deliberate way and hearing from a lot of different, careful points of view, they desperately want to be able to leave town on Friday and not come back until the day after the election.”
Mortgage Meltdown Causes
O’Neill said we got into this mess because bankers were not making prudent decisions, because they believed that by reselling mortgages to Wall Street they weren’t going to be stuck with the problems.

“We suspended disbelief and said we can take people with no known source income or wealth generation and we can give them a $500,000 mortgage,” he said. “I think there’s a very important thing: When you violate fundamental principles of economics you can get away with it for a while, but eventually it’s going to get you.”

“I wish I was there two years ago became I think I would have blown the whistle on these unbelievable loan practices and we would never gotten to today,” he said. “That might be wishful thinking. It’s not possible to really know that. But I’m a detail guy and I think I would have been paying enough attention to the details that I would have stopped the music.”

O’Neill has been asked by the Obama campaign “on several occasions” to take part in conversations with the candidate on the economy with the understanding that his participation doesn’t represent an endorsement. He said he would be willing to offer the same help to McCain but hasn’t been asked.

Last Friday, he was on the telephone with an Obama meeting that involved the candidate, his running mate Sen. Joseph Biden, investor Warren Buffet, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former treasury secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, and the former chairwoman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Laura Tyson.

“I’m happy to be part of that kind of opportunity to talk about serious issues and bring the knowledge I have to bear on what people are thinking,” O’Neill said. “I’m happy to do that, and I’d do it for either party.”

Great article. I love the part where Obama’s campaign is listening to his advice, but McLame hasn’t the sense to do anything but showboat. I also love how he discusses alternatives to simply buying all these assets. Of course, the Congressional morons are in such a hurry to go home, they aren’t paying attention. If thgi is such an emergency, why aren’t they willing to stay and work out an intelligent fix.

The World Falls Apart… and I Still Laugh

Say what you will about The Onion, but sometimes they do stuff so outrageous I can’t help but laugh (even when the truth of the matter is so horrible). I would never celebrate John McCain’s torture or what he may have done for his country serving… in that he is commended and respected.

But The Onion’s new War For The White House Blog falls to new ‘heights’ of hilarity when they use a pseudo like “Dac Kien, Retired Vietcong Torturer” to explain the psychology of John McCain (since they had such a long, intimate and sharing relationship):

About This Blogger

Dac spent 12 years fighting for the Vietcong to unify his country. For five of those years, he tortured John McCain and developed a deep and intimate view of the Republican nominee in the process. Read his posts from the beginning, or return to the main blog.

In this case, Dac is discussing Sarah Palin and her “electricity”:

Boy, Sarah Palin has really energized the campaign of the senator John McCain hasn’t she? There’s this electricity about him that I haven’t seen in decades, maybe even not since the last time I clamped jumper cables to his scrotum and ran 5,000 volts through his scrawny American balls.

Yes. Sarah Palin is that exciting!

What a great thing for Mr. McCain. To think of all he’s been through to get where he’s at today, how he’s risen from the fetal position, quivering and crying in a pile of his own feces, to be this close to the White House. You will make America proud John, so proud! Just don’t let the American people see what a huge pussy you are when it comes to being slapped in the face with turpentine-soaked rags for ours on end, and you’ll make them proud.

Ha, ha, ha, pussy!… (read the rest here)

DAYUM!

You know, I probably have a sick sense of humor…

Financial State of Emergency First Two Weeks In October

Follwing up to my Bush Dictatorship post I wrote this morning, I wanted to share some information regarding the Presidential Bulletins, NSPD51 & HSPD20.

On May 24, 2007, The Chattanoogan offered an Op-Ed regarding these two directives (and that is one of the few places in print you can find it easily). In light of the oncoming Financial “Disaster”, one may want to consider the powers Bush will have with the simply utterance of the word.

Bush Makes Power Grab – And Response

posted May 24, 2007

President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

The “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,” with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator.

That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.

The directive loosely defines “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

When the President determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the President can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an “enduring constitutional government.”

Translated into layman’s terms, when the President determines a national emergency has occurred, the President can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.

What you need to understand is that these directives supersede a perfectly good act, The National Emergency Act that provides for this, but makes sure that the president must go through Congress. What Bush did with these two directives (strokes of his pen) is render the Congress moot, simply by issuing a national emergency.

The directive issued May 9 makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created there for the National Continuity Coordinator with the National Emergency Act. As specified by U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 34, Subchapter II, Section 1621, the National Emergency Act allows that the president may declare a national emergency but requires that such proclamation “shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.”

A Congressional Research Service study notes that under the National Emergency Act, the President “may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.”

The CRS study notes that the National Emergency Act sets up congress as a balance empowered to “modify, rescind, or render dormant such delegated emergency authority,” if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately.

NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position.

NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 also makes no reference whatsoever to Congress. The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any a requirement that the President submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.

Bush has basically set up himself for a dictatorship, if certain things happen (and they all are progressing towards that end from every indication). We are already being blasted by him and the media about the dire emergency the Financial Crisis could cause, and I submit that this IS the emergency that is planned.

The Army is being given orders to set up shop within the borders, to control the civilians (goodbye Posse Comitatus) the first of Oct.

IF our country is going to fall apart, it will happen within the first two to three weeks of Oct, canceling the elections and giving us Bush III.

Impossible you say?

With Bush and the NWO, anything is possible.

Could This Be The Beginning Of The Bush Dictatorship?

Everything this Bush Administration has had a hand in has turned to pure dee old shit. So, when he comes out and tells me one thing, I generally go for the opposite and I am safe.

And I did say “Everything”, which includes this country.

We are expected to bail out these high rollers when it is their blatant greed and thievery that is tearing it totally apart. But what about the timing of this? This ain’t nothing new and even this clueless redneck has been writing about it since March.

Then on March 19 I posted a video where Jim Rogers says the reason that Bear Stearns was being bailed out and not allowing their bankruptcy, 6 weeks after their officers were given $multi-BILLION bonues, so they could keep their bonuses. And that Big Money has decided to kill the dollar. See that 1 & 2 below are coming close to fruition.

Then I read today that this Paulson plan has been around for a while, but they had not presented it yet.

So think about the liars that are involved with anything ‘Bush’ and then reflect on everything happening… coincidences, maybe, but with these criminals everything is suspect.

Election upcoming and a new president after the first of the year. But what is the one thing that my little conspiracy mind keeps talking about is the possibility for some happening that would allow Bush to take us under Marshall Law and become a defacto Dictator. I have been laughed at and belittled for even thinking it, but consider…

I posted about the March 23 meeting that prompted some scary leaks with these warnings:

* The imminent collapse of the U.S. Economy to occur sometime in late 2008

* The imminent collapse of the U.S. Government finances sometime in mid 2009

* The possibility of Civil War inside the United States as a result of the collapse

* The advance round-ups of “insurgent U.S. Citizens” likely to move against the government

* The detention of those rounded up at The REX 84 Camps constructed throughout the United States

* The possibility of public retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses

* The location of safe facilities for members of Congress and their families to reside during massive civil unrest

What if McCain and Obama are prepping for the big hit and fallout? What if this move by McCain is a setup for a take-over?

Did you know that the Posse Comitatus act has been taken apart and that we will have active troops conducting operations in the US starting Oct 1.

What if this is the thing I have been warning about for 9 months?

What if this is the false flag ‘Shock Doctrine’ occurence that is needed to change our country into something the Constitution bans?

What if?

Are you ready?

McCain To Much A Pussy To Debate? Figures! Let Nader Take The Stage.

September 24, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

News Flash: Ralph Nader on Democracy Now! on Thursday.  That’s this coming morning, folks! Ralph Nader will be Amy Goodman’s guest on Democracy Now! between 8:10 AM and 8:30 AM Eastern time on Thursday, September 25th.  It will be viewable live at www.democracynow.org or available via podcast by 10 AM Eastern.  Be sure to tune in! Dear Nader/Gonzalez Supporter, The campaign released this statement to the press on Wednesday, September 24th. It’s Ralph’s reaction to the postponement of the first CPD “debate.” We thought you might be interested in reading it. NADER CALLS MCCAIN’S MOVE TO POSTPONE DEBATE ‘POLITICAL STUNT’ SAYS MCCAIN TO BLAME FOR FINANCIAL CRISIS Senator John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and participation in the first presidential debate is pure and simple showboating. The Washington DC bailout by Bush and his Congressional allies of the Wall Street crooks and speculators is not dependent on Senator McCain’s return to Washington. He has been an advocate of the deregulation that caused this debacle and offers nothing significant to address it. However, tens of millions of Americans depended on Senator McCain to show up at Friday’s debate in Old Mississippi. They expected him to do so and have arranged their plans to watch him interact with Barack Obama. By turning his back on at least 50 million American voters anticipating Friday’s debate, he has dishonored his commitment and undermined the respect which he hoped the American people would accord him during his presidential campaign. I urge him to restore his honor and self-respect by ending this political stunt and maturely fulfilling his commitment on the presidential debate stage this Friday. Should he choose to maintain his present, impulsive course and leave an empty chair on the stage, I would be most pleased to take his place as the number three Presidential candidate in the race.