I'm With This Guy

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: November 10, 2008

DailyMail: Megaleledone setebos: A relative of octopuses

The Bush Administration secretly issued an order in 2004 that allows our government to attack Al Qaeda in many countries. I want to know why they released this secret now. Getting ready for pardon week, perhaps?

In another secret move in late September, while Congress and the country agonized over the bailout bill, Hank Paulson's Treasury Department and the Bush Administration secretly changed a 22-year-old bank regulation to give banks a $140 billion dollar tax break. Bush is going to break the bank before he leaves office, just to leave Obama in as big a hole as humanly possible. Pigs at the trough.

The Bushies are also planning to throw more billions to AIG. Who's palling around with socialists now? Jerome a Paris at dailykos asks, can Obama stop the looting? Before it's too late?

In more bad economic news, Circuit City filed for bankruptcy (can't believe that their genius plan of firing the experienced salespeople and hiring no-knowledge newbies didn't work!) and DHL is laying off thousands.

Obama meets President Clusterfuck in the White House today. Here's Obama's account of his first meeting with Shrub. What a weirdo.

Get Calling -- Beggars Can't Be Choosers

This is your brain on dope
John McCain on 60 Minutes last night.
"I think the [bank] deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy."

Contacting Congress

You can get the telephone numbers of your Congressperson & Senators at this link.

I just finished my calls, and didn't get one busy signal.

Get calling, people!

I made two points:

(1) No blank check for those crooks on Wall Street, and

(2) Don't include foreign banks in the bailout!

-- Foreign banks like Phil Gramm's UBS Bank -- a Swiss bank! -- have lobbied to be included in the bailout proposal, and yesterday Treasury Secretary Hank Paul[Son of a Bitch] said he would be in favor of that.

Obama On the Stump in Daytona Beach

On fire yesterday:

John McCain Wants to Bring Banking De-Regulation to the Health Insurance Market

McCain and his chief economic adviser, lobbyist Phil Gramm. In 1998 Senator Gramm wrote the bill that deregulated banking.

Yes, John McCain's chief economic adviser blew up the economy.
Heckuva job, Phil.

[A] correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. [2008] issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Paul Krugman, NYTImes: McCain on Banking and Health

If you have been thinking about writing a letter to the editor to your local newspaper, I'd start with this quote. Let's blow up health insurance, just like Republican deregulation just blew up the banking industry.

This puts the lie to all McCain's claims that he will fix our problems. He is one of the problems. He loves deregulation. He loves the giant corporations that flood his campaign with money and lobbyists. The only Americans he has ever really cared about are the rich ones. He's their man.