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We’re all in this together?
We do not support government bailouts of private institutions
This is taken directly from the 2008 Republican Platform:
We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.
Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Prunes
Your Urgent Help Needed
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
The Presidential Candidates are Tools
OnlyKnives has come out with two Presidential Multi-tools — The “Maverick” and the “Change”:
The McCain Maverick features:
- An electric drill, so you can “drill baby drill”
- A clothes hanger, to anger pro-life and pro-choice voters alike
- A Geiger counter
- A pry bar, to get rid of that pesky Bush legacy
- An abacus, to help balance the budget
- A defibrillator, to keep that heart going
- And lipstick, suitable for various barnyard animals
The Obama Change features:
- A celebrity love meter that displays Obama’s Q score
- Super glue, to keep the Democratic Party together (formulated especially for former Clinton supporters)
- A muzzle, for loudmouths and former pastors
- A spatula for flipping waffles
- An elephant prod, suitable for disgruntled Republican Congresscritters
- A money clip, for all those campaign contributions
Is Congress perhaps growing a proto-spine? Hell No!
Bush is currently trying to ram his $700 Billion give-away to Wall Street down the throat of Congress, the same way he rammed the Iraq war and the Patriot act. But as Electoral Vote puts it:
Even legislators who were easily cowed during the run-up to the Iraq war are beginning to show something that might, given enough time, possibly, eventually develop into something resembling a proto-spine.
I’d love to say that it is the Democrats who are finally growing some, but even Republican Congress members are resisting the bailout.
However (and this is a big however), one has to suspect that the reason Bush is trying to fast track this legislation is not because they want it to pass, but because they want Congress to not pass it. Most people (including economists) expect the financial situation to get worse, and assuming it does, then the Republicans will be able to say that they tried to fix the economy with the mother of all bailouts, but Congress (now controlled by Dems) didn’t do anything.
In other words, even in the middle of an economic crisis, it’s politics as usual.
Rachael Maddow has an interesting metaphor for the bailout: “your kids ate all the candy, and now we are out of candy so we need to give them more candy”:
Late Night Political Humor
“Financial experts are saying we are entering a new chapter in the American economy. I believe it’s Chapter 11.” –Jay Leno
“President Bush had a press conference today outside the Oval Office to talk about the economy. He would have had it inside, but, you know, the bank has foreclosed on it. ” –Jay Leno
“To give you an idea how bad the American economy is, Mexico is now calling for a fence along the border. Stay on your side!” –Jay Leno
“I tell you, I went to my ATM machine today; it gave me an IOU.” –Jay Leno
“The federal government, you know them, they announced a plan to spend, like, a trillion of taxpayer dollars to buy out bad mortgages and debt. Wall Street was surprisingly enthusiastic about the plan to save their asses with other peoples’ money. It was either that, or Sarah Palin’s idea to sell it all on eBay.” –Bill Maher
“Yesterday, the federal government announced a massive plan to bail out a number of banking institutions. One expert said it might cost Americans more than a trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, ten Bill Gates and 35 Oprahs still don’t add up to a trillion dollars.” –Jimmy Kimmel
“Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lawrence Ellison topped the Forbes list of the top ten richest people in the U.S., having a combined wealth, as of Friday, of nearly $8,000” –Seth Meyers
“You know these Sunni militias in Iraq that we’re bribing not to shoot at us? Now they want to be paid in Euros.” –Bill Maher
“President Bush has issued a new warning to Iran that it faces new economic sanctions, after reports by the UN Atomic Watchdog Committee that Iran is still enriching uranium. President Bush promising new economic sanctions. And believe me, if there’s one thing the president is an expert on, it is ruining a country’s economy.” –Jay Leno
“The other financial genius, John McCain, said the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and then yesterday he wanted to fire the head of the SEC — except you can’t as president fire the SEC chairman, it’s a non-governmental job. Sarah Palin said today one more gaffe from McCain, and she’s going to drop him from the ticket.” –Bill Maher
“Can you imagine if she was president right now? They hacked into her email account. She couldn’t even keep that safe. Somebody hacked into her Yahoo! email account. They don’t know who did it. They know it’s someone who understood technology and was interested in her background. So we can rule out McCain.” –Bill Maher
“Sarah Palin’s husband has refused to testify in an abuse of power investigation in Alaska. He was given a subpoena, and he is ignoring it. … So it looks like this guy’s going to have no trouble fitting into Washington. He seems to pick it up right away. It’s like second nature” –Jay Leno
“Hillary Clinton cancelled an appearance at the UN next week, after learning that Sarah Palin was also invited. And after Hillary canceled, the group canceled Sarah Palin, saying they didn’t want any politicians. Which is a shame, because this would have been Sarah Palin’s first trip to the United Nations. Although to her credit, she has been to the International House of Pancakes.” –Jay Leno
“At a rally in Florida today, Barack Obama was interrupted by protesters called Blacks Against Obama. They all drove there together in the same car, a Mini Cooper, if I’m not mistaken. Actually, the members of Blacks Against Obama, pretty serious group. Although not nearly as militant as Bathroom Attendants Against Larry Craig.” –Jay Leno
“The group MoveOn.org has called on John McCain to release all of his medical records. In response, McCain told them, ‘Why don’t you just come down to the warehouse and look around for yourself? Bring a forklift, it’ll take time.'” –Conan O’Brien
“So now our attention turns to which candidate can best guide us out of this mess. But even more important than that is deciding which candidate we’d most like to eat nachos with. According to a new survey from the Associated Press today, more Americans would rather watch football game with Barack Obama than with John McCain, by a margin of 50 to 47%. Mostly because McCain has to get up every ten minutes to go to the bathroom.” –Jimmy Kimmel
UPDATE:
“I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5. So if anybody can help me be done playing this lady Nov. 5, that would be good for me.” –Tina Fey (on impersonating Sarah Palin).
SNL skewers McCain campaign ads
Apparently this skit was conceived of by Al Franken, former SNL regular and currently running for the Senate.
McCain campaign can’t tell the truth even when they try
McCain campaign convened a conference call today with reporters to complain about being called liars and to criticize the media for underreporting potentially damaging stories about Obama.
Ben Smith at Politico writes that McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt lied repeatedly during the call, forcing many reporters to conclude that McCain’s campaign staff can’t even tell the truth when they try. In fact, they misrepresented facts even when they didn’t need to. For example:
- Joe Biden’s son Hunter has worked in the past as a lobbyist. This could be potentially damaging to Obama since Obama rails against lobbyists. But instead of sticking to the truth, Schmidt claimed that Hunter Biden “is a lobbyist for the credit card and banking industry”, which is wrong. Hunter once worked for the credit-card issuing bank MBNA, but he never lobbied for them.
- Talking about William Ayers, Schmidt said that “Senator Obama began his political career in its early stages raising money at Ayers’ house”. While it is true that Obama once held a campaign event at Ayers’ house, it was not a fundraiser and Ayers did not contribute any money to Obama’s first political race.
- Schmidt also complained that one of Obama’s campaign surrogates, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler, had accused Sarah Palin of being a Nazi sympathizer. “Where is the outrage to that aspersion on the part of some of the biggest newspapers in the country?” Well, there isn’t any outrage, because Wexler never called Palin a Nazi sympathizer. He called Pat Buchanan a Nazi sympathizer, and attacked Palin for allegedly having endorsed him. (Palin denied ever having endorsed Buchanan, even though Buchanan claimed that she did).
When asked by reporters to back up their claims, McCain aides could not provide any evidence.
A separate report about the call talks about Schmidt slamming the New York Times over an article they published exposing that McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, was paid nearly $2 million to run an anti-regulatory advocacy group set up by now-failing mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Schmidt ranted that the Times is no longer a journalistic entity and has “cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition” in order to attack McCain. Note that the McCain campaign failed to point out any errors in the Times article, they instead resorted to the old propaganda technique of attacking the source.
Joe Klein over at Time Magazine sums the call up nicely, saying the McCain camp has “Jumped the Shark“. In his opinion, the purpose of the call was to bully the press so they will “try to seek false equivalences between the two campaigns” and to distract everyone from the real issues (like the current financial crisis).
UPDATE: The NY Times responds to the attack.











