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September 25, 2008
Palin on the Bailout

The thing scaring me is that there seem to be millions of people out there who really buy into this:

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans.
link

Then again, maybe a Dem like Reid or Pelosi would have formulated it better, but given who pays them the outcome would probably be the same.

Posted by b on September 25, 2008 at 19:32 UTC | Permalink
Comments

That 700 Billion Dollar number that everyone’s talking about? They just made it up out of thin air.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Well, at least the debates won’t get in the way. /snark.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2008 19:43 utc | 1

Doesn’t matter: looks like they passed it.

Posted by: Tantalus | Sep 25 2008 19:51 utc | 2

from video at b’s Palin interview link: It’s like the buffybot on parents’ day opening the 6th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, all of what’s going on is like Buffy/Slayer, except for lack of happy ending.(for bottom 99.999%)

Posted by: plushtown | Sep 25 2008 20:33 utc | 3

“Now remember, your 2008 tax returns aren’t going to change. Tax rate sheets might be changed at the last minute, but 2008 return forms and booklets are already printed. Your 2009 returns, now that’s a different story.” IRS informant speaking off record
Wait until you see your 2009 property tax and utility bills! Real US tax rate >50%!!

Posted by: Hoe Ho | Sep 25 2008 21:13 utc | 4

What Sarah says on any particular topic doesn’t address reality, and doesn’t matter. What politicians and pundits say, from this point forward, on any particular topic doesn’t address reality, and doesn’t matter in the long term.
The $700 Billion approved by Congress will actually be used up trying to stave off the collapse of the corporate Credit Derivatives market. That is $62 Thousand Billion in size, more money than has existed in all of human history.
It doesn’t mean shit who the next President is. That office has been thoroughly hollowed out.
Wall Street is the new capital of the United States, and Wall Street will gradually become the private property of persons dwelling in Shanghai, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Jeddah.
You? Your wealth is no longer currency or stocks or bonds. Those are utterly fungible, worth what someone you don’t even know says they are worth.
Farmland, buildings, machinery, energy, hands-on skills, and local friends take on more importance. Get some.

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 25 2008 21:16 utc | 5

Palin brings new meaning to the term “figurehead” — “airhead”, that is!

Posted by: Cynthia | Sep 25 2008 22:23 utc | 6

No surprise, now they are saying the banking system needs $500 billion in addition to the bailout $700 billion. So now the taxpayers are up to $1.2 trillion. And once the govt get their foot in the door, it never ends.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26885559

Posted by: Ensley | Sep 25 2008 22:37 utc | 7

Being robbed blind by gangsters, pirates or corporate CEO’s? Does it really make a difference? Well here’s an interesting take on 21st century pirates.

Pirates of antiquity were the rock stars of Europe — Blackbeard, Sir Henry Morgan and their brood relished notoriety, all the better to terrorize their prey into ready submission to their distinctive pirate flags. But today’s pirates tend to hide their identities, and if they do have a public persona, it’s a mask of grave probity and aristocratic pretension. But if we had to put a poster child’s face on the pirate enemy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would do nicely.

snip

Henry Paulson represents the virtual merger between the world of piracy and government. High government officers such as Henry, Robert Zoellick, and Rubin routinely cross back and forth between Goldman Sachs and government, all the while financing national campaigns from their pirate treasure (Henry gave over $336,000 to Republican candidates between 1998 and 2006). Piracy and government form a seamless web.

But I think it will still feel the same no matter we name these thieves. What ever happened to rule of law? It seems Bank Robbery is now part of the Orwellian newspeak lexicon.

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 25 2008 22:50 utc | 8

LET THEM EAT FEATHERS!
Whoever the shoo-in is in November, their nationwide stimulus effort must include creation of a National Energy Corridor Reconstruction Act to increase the country’s overall energy-bus throughput, rebuilding and expanding the national electric grid with spur lines to known-reserves mining sites for coal, uranium and strategic metals, spur lines to known-capacity national wind and solar corridors, redundant lines to urban areas likely to migrate largely over to electric transportation, and new water, wastewater and fuels pipelines to replace aging infrastructure.
No matter what Toyota says, our US electric grid isn’t capable of supporting electric automobiles, not even capable of supporting population growth at normal electric demand! On a national level, to reach near 100% electric transportation would require a 400% increase in electric transmission capacity, a feat unprecedented in history.
These powerline and pipeline corridors will put a good portion of soon ~15,000,000 homeless Americans to work, hopefully for more than the “25¢ and found” their Great Depression forebears earned on the FDR Wild West dam projects. With that employment will also come a renewed housing boom, essential if the construction business is to survive, since this bailout underwrites artificially-high housing prices, while declining tax revenues will mean higher fees for government permits and services, and higher finance-carry charges will slam materials and home mortgage loan costs, combining to push housing even further out of the reach of most Americans, even as the oversupply of houses continues to grow by millions due to looming foreclosures.
Face it, the end-of-fossil-fuel-revolution just got pushed back a decade by this lousy bailout, (that’s the real underlying reason for their urgency, the American Halliban’s laissez les bon temps roulez party is being pushed out of office), but without a national energy corridor, any future hope for renewable energy will fizzle and fail, so that a decade from now, when we’re just getting back on our fiscal feet, we’ll be right back in chains and shackles as wage-slaves to the Saudi oil mongers and our Wall Street-Paternoster Square usury-overlords.
And, ahem, that’s exactly what they want!

Posted by: Pater Noster | Sep 26 2008 1:20 utc | 9

I agree with Palin on one thing: we have to rein in federal spending. And since “defense” spending is over half of federal operating outlays, that’s the obvious place to start.
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
Of course, nobody really knows what DOD spends, since they’ve never been audited. But the House gave them $612 billion today, not counting military spening outside the “Defense” budget. Wall Strett must think they deserve an equivalent amount, hence the $700 billion figure.
One thing is certain: both will disappear into the same unauditable black hole.

Posted by: JohnH | Sep 26 2008 2:31 utc | 10

In the news today, the Hadron Super Collider folks announce
their collider will remain shut down indefinitely. Insiders
reveal the initial startup test did in fact generate a tiny
black hole, that quickly bored through the earth, and came
up somewhere on Wall and Broad Street in New York City, just
as our outrage will disappear into an inaudible black hole of its own.

Posted by: Harold Halliburton | Sep 26 2008 3:46 utc | 11

it appears Washington Mutual is the next casualty.

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 26 2008 5:09 utc | 12

NYT: Talks Implode During Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved

But once the doors closed, the smooth-talking House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, surprised many in the room by declaring that his caucus could not support the plan to allow the government to buy distressed mortgage assets from ailing financial companies.
Mr. Boehner pressed an alternative that involved a smaller role for the government, and Mr. McCain, whose support of the deal is critical if fellow Republicans are to sign on, declined to take a stand.
The talks broke up in angry recriminations, according to accounts provided by a participant and others who were briefed on the session, and were followed by dueling news conferences and interviews rife with partisan finger-pointing.
In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.
“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”
…
“You can have all the meetings you want,” this Republican said, referring to the White House session with Mr. Bush, the presidential candidates and Congressional leaders, still hours away. “It comes to the floor and the votes aren’t there. It won’t pass.”
House Republicans have spent days expressing their unease about a huge government intervention, which they regard as a step down the path to socialism.

For once – thanks to those Republicans …

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2008 5:47 utc | 13

Feh. The House Republicans are holding out because they aren’t getting enough power or perks or payoffs out of the treasure chest being shoved through the system. They want a bigger cut, more action out of what’s coming, and they won’t play ball until they get it.
Edward Teach (Blackbeard) used to have the same problem with some of his hangers on and crew. He finally put them all on a little wooden ship, and left them behind.
The pirates atop our government do not argue over principles, as a rule. They argue over money and power, and access to money and power. These people who hold the national purse strings consider it their purse, their country, their banks, their assets. Their first concern is getting something for themselves every time they lift a finger, or flush the potty.
The taxpayers will go along with the delay, and with whatever deal eventually comes out of this dogfight, because they will be told it was something else than a free for all at the public trough. They will be told it was a heroic negotiation involving the fate of the free world, when it was clearly just pig-faced pirates biting and cursing over pieces of eight.

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 26 2008 7:07 utc | 14

If the dems had any sense they would simply submit their plan, then walk away and let the thugs own what ever they do.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 26 2008 8:52 utc | 15

Right on Cynthia, why do I get the image in my mind of a pirate ship with Palin’s face, carved into the figurehead body on the hull of an American clipper, breasts exposed and menacing like a carved harpy, naval bastion or the tip of an old Soviet icebreaker bringing on the full on maleficence, opening up America like Commodore Matthew Perry opened up Japan?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 26 2008 8:56 utc | 16

They argue over money and power, and access to money and power.
Maybe the upcoming election and the uphill battle for many republicans to hang on to their house seats (and the money and power that comes with it) has got the house republicans thinking? Of course, some suitcases of euros might solve that.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Sep 26 2008 16:36 utc | 17

I notice that “Antifa” thinks that “Wall Street will gradually become the private property of persons dwelling in Shanghai, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Jeddah.” This is quite logical for someone calling themselves “Antifa”, isn’t it? I mean, it fails to mention Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, London, or Moscow.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Sep 27 2008 14:05 utc | 18

Antifa at 5 – yes ‘n no.
It does matter, in some sense. Not, or only a tiny bit for bail-outs, for health care, for infrastructure, railroads, or minimum wage (just to pick a few random topics) but personal character, personal contacts, and hubris do still count, particularly in foreign policy. The leeway exists, it depends on what the incumbent want to make of it, how he or she can use it.
Gore would not have condoned 9/11 on his watch (Ok I am making many assumptions, big stretch, who knows really…) – possibly that is why he was not elected or secretly did not wish to be. Bill Clinton would not have either, and Obama, if one could imagine such a thing, the future tossed back into the past, neither. Not then, that is 7 years ago. Now..?
I am not being fuzzy cuddly pro-dem, they are frightening (Pelosi! arrgh!), I despise them (as I do the French Socialists, though as they are closer I have more understanding and sympathy) but big decisions do sometimes rest on a cigarette paper or the look across the table.
If Palin becomes president the US will not only be the laughing stock of the world but many leaders will react very negatively to her personally. She, and her backers, whoever they are (as she was not chosen by McC) are not equipped to deal with that. I’m not sure that disaster can be avoided.
Palin on Israel recites the talking points she was given, and what she says does count, no doubt almost everyone has seen it:
you tube, couric int.
Ynet, title: Congressman: Choosing Palin an insult to Jews .. snippet:
Akov invited Palin to visit Israel and the governor expressed her desire to do so. She also reportedly told Akov that Alaska’s residents love Israel.
link

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 28 2008 15:07 utc | 19

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