Bush explains ‘Free Enterprise’

Bush bails out more of his buddies; McCain still thinks banking deregulation is just peachy and Paulson could give a good-god-damn about the US taxpayer.

Bush explains ‘Free Enterprise’

Simply put: it’s not ‘Free’ – not for the taxpayers, anyway.

President Bush: “Our system of free enterprise rests on the conviction that the federal government should interfere in the marketplace only when necessary. Given the precarious state of today’s financial markets and their vital importance to the daily lives of the American people, government intervention is not only warranted, it is essential.”

Essential to maintaining the position of the unscrupulous wastrels, socio-pathic mega-gamblers, and the morally bankrupt business elite, that is.

John McCain weighed in, as well. The Straight-talking Senator was asked by Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’ if he still defended his support of deregulating the financial industry in light of the fiasco on Wall Street.

Scott Pelley: “In 1999, you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?”

Sen. McCain: “No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.”

It should be remembered that McCain’s former advisor on economic affairs, Phil Gramm, was one of the principal conspirators in pushing through legislation de-regulating the banking industry.

Meanwhile, on the Hill, Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson feels that American taxpayers who are caught in the credit squeeze created by the mis-management of investment bankers are not entitled to bail-outs or assistance.

Henry Paulson: “The ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this troubled asset relief program provides to our financial system, even as it will involve a significant investment of taxpayer dollars. I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative—a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion.”

How Mr Paulson has been able to foretell the future with sufficient accuracy to determine ‘the alternative’ to the American people shelling out an estimated $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) to rescue failed businesses when he presumably could not foresee the current financial debacle remains unanswered. Mr Paulson did not elaborate upon whether or not other less extreme, less ‘bold approach(es)’ had been considered.

It is evident that President Bush and his administration are confident of the largesse of the American taxpayer to rescue even foreign banks from the financial calamity brought on by deregulation and the ‘Free Market’. Over the weekend, the size of the proposed bailout grew as the Bush administration said foreign banks, including Barclays and UBS, should be eligible for the bailout. The Financial Times reports some industry groups are lobbying for the fund to grow even larger by including a clause that would allow banks to account for any losses realized over a number of years.

Secretary Paulson is convinced that the American people will be less burdened by this $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bail-out than by any attempt by the Fed or the Treasury to assist those millions of home-owners facing fore-closure, homelessness and destitution. Mr Paulson did not expound upon this irrationality.

His worry is ‘economic expansion’, and those folks in foreclosure as a result of predatory sub-prime loan programs simply cannot be expected to be a viable part of the anticipated ‘economic expansion’. Now, that’s what some wags might call ‘compassionate conservatism’.

900,000,000,000

Nine hundred billion

Nine-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero.

No, that number's not from the odometer on the Starship Enterprise nor the distance from here to the center of the galaxy.

That’s $900,000,000,000!

US dollars, that is.

First Bear-Sterns, then Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, now AIG; all are being bail-out by the US government!

That means the US taxpayers (not those who top the 5% stratum and have been getting all the breaks from Reagan-omics Mark II but all the rest of us) are now being forced by the administration to borrow more money to bail-out companies mismanaged by greedy, unscrupulous gamblers.

Meanwhile, some 4,000,000 home-owners who were at the mercy of predatory loan-sharking are forced from their homes for lack of government support. Not to mention our deteriorating infrastructure, under-financed education system, nearly-non-existent health care system, etc which could be - should be – at the front of the line for disbursements rather than these vipers in pin-stripe.

Add that astronomic number to the billions spent (and borrowed) every week to pay for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and anyone with more numeric savvy than a third-grade can see that the US economy is in deep doo-doo.

To hear Bush and McCain talk, you’d think otherwise.

“Sound Fundamentals”? Fundamentally F***ed, you mean, don’t you?

Lingering Ruminations on the RNC (ugh)

You know what really amazed me about the RNC?

The fact that each of the speakers at the RNC, Thompson, Leiberman, McCain and Palin (et al.) went on and on about the problems of America but never, ever mentioned the Bush administration or any of the principals who have master-minded the mess we’re in. Of course, they want to distance themselves from Bush/Cheney and company – Bush delivered his speech from the White House; Cheney was in the Caucasus shilling for Big Oil – that’s easy to figure.

The amazing thing is the deceitful, callous panache, if you will, that was displayed by those hard-working spin-meisters who crafted the speeches at the RNC. Any writer will tell you that would be incredibly difficult to be able to bring up the Iraq debacle, the faltering economy, record home foreclosures, rising unemployment, the power of lobbyists, and so on, pushing all of the right ‘hot buttons’ for voters without ever mentioning or alluding to the fact that all of these problems lay directly at the door of the Bush administrations and the GOP.

Granted that the Dems – inept, complacent bunch of craven goldbricks that they are, with few exceptions – have done next to nothing since gaining control of Congress but rubber stamp the decrees from the Imperial Palace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the big problems were well out of the gate by then.

And then to top it all off with calling McCain/Palin a pair of Mavericks and a ticket for Change! Wow! Mavericks that run with the herd and change that won’t actually change anything. Amazing chutzpa!

Of course, it could be called worse things.

They're At It Again!

Like murderous 2-year olds, you can't take your eyes off of them for a moment. They're making war with an ally, now!

The Bush and Cheney Gang - who else!? While the ridiculous spectacle of personality politics in the US distracts us, Bush/Cheney are attacking Pakistan.

Again and again!

Killing hundreds of men, women, children and - oh, by the way, the occasional member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

My, my. Do tell! There are Taliban and Al-Qaeda member in Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan? In the Tora Bora Mountains! There!?

This is not news. This is the same old info we’ve had since before the Russians bailed on their Afghani adventure. The CIA and the ISI recruited and hired those thugs to harass the Ruskies. The thugs did a pretty good job and they continue to do a pretty good job at harassing occupying forces. And they’re still in the same area of the world where the USA armed them.

Of course, with the Bush/Cheney eyes on a different prize, they were not so interested in finding some Arab with bad kidneys in a cave and bringing him to trial. (What would you imagine we could all learn from several days of Bin Laden’s testimony in a witness box?)

A third of world oil reserves! Makes your head spin! Bush could revive Arbusco Oil (and probably run it into the ground)and Cheney would probably get free virgins and a gazillion bucks a month in retainers from Halliburton just for his rolodex.

But I digress…

US forces are attacking our ‘key partner in the War on Terror’! What the f… is with that? I suppose Bush/Cheney and their round-table of socio-paths figured the Pakistanis wouldn’t mind if the US killed a few dozen people in the Tribal Areas for a ‘good cause’. Of course, they were advised against such an insane, immoral action by the Intelligence Community, but did they listen? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

You’ve got to give credit where it is due, though. This is a tried and true tactic for winning the war on terror; it’s proven successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a nutshell, here’s the plan: make every person in the region hate the US for brutally murdering a family member or loved one. Then everybody in the region, man, woman and child, will share a culturally rooted vow to affect terrible, bloody vengeance on the USA.

That will take care of ‘collateral damage’ for good; whoever’s on photo-op detail at the White House will simply read the teleprompter and sign the executive order making ‘them’ all terrorists.

Ipso facto…

Presto change-o! Nobody’s an innocent because they’ve all been defined as ‘evil terr’rists’ by Imperial decree.

Then we just nuke ‘em all and take the oil.

Cheney's Clear Priorities

However much commentators like Jon Stewart – primary jester to the court of George the Deuce – might deride Richard Cheney for his secrecy, his man-sized safe, his cool arrogance, or his flippant disregard for the Constitution, let it never be said that our current co-president is inconsistent when prioritizing his tasks.

While a substantial number of high-ranking Republicans juggled their time between wringing their hands in trembling hope that Mother Nature would spare them a repeat of the excoriation of the Bush administration’s lack of concern (empathy, being the current talking-point), the rank incompetence of FEMA and the resultant PR debacle associated with the Hurricane Katrina calamity three years ago, and staging the over-blown, over-funded pep rally in the Twin Cities, VP Cheney was buttering some bread in the former Soviet states in the Caspian Sea area.

"President Bush has sent me here with a clear and simple message to the people of Azerbaijan and the entire region: The United States has deep and abiding interests in your well-being and security.", Mr Cheney stated, as if anyone at this point actually believes that he serves at the behest of Mr Bush.

Azerbaijan, which borders Georgia and Iran and sits along the Caspian Sea, is an oil- and gas-rich nation and a key U.S. ally in the region. Why this tiny nation should be considered a ‘key U.S. ally in the region’ might be a question worth a journalist’s time to ask but no explanation beyond ‘oil and gas-rich nation’ seems to be required or expected from Mr Cheney.

To double-under-score the true meaning of America’s ‘deep and abiding interest’ in ‘Azerbaijan and the entire region’ of the Caspian, Cheney held meetings with Azerbaijan representatives of oil giants, British Petroleum and Chevron. Perhaps this was a modest effort by the VP to earn the reported one million dollars paid him annually by Halliburton as their beloved former CEO. Only after getting the more important business of oil and gas production out of the way did ‘Our Man Dick’ squeeze in a meeting with Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev.

Apparently thinking no one would notice with the stories of the nonsensical spectacle of the RNC and a hurricane threatening the Big Easy dominating the ‘news’, Cheney took this occasion to pontificate, "One of the basic foundations of security and peace is respect for national borders, a principle that is endangered today.” That the Co-president managed to utter this without emitting an ironic chortle or displaying a facial twitch or eye-wink that might indicate he was pulling our collective leg was not reported by those journalists in attendance.

That non sequitur aside, Cheney went on to proclaim “The United States strongly believes that together with the nations of Europe, including Turkey, we must work with Azerbaijan and other countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia on the additional routes for energy exports that ensure the free flow of resources.”

Without follow-up queries from competent journalists, one cannot be certain what Mr Cheney is implying but one can reasonably assume that he envisions an imperial, NATO-like organization, dominated by the USA, which spans from the Atlantic to the Caspian and beyond. One might also be lead to assume that the people living in the region are of less concern to him than ensuring ‘the free flow of resources’, presumably to western corporations with which Mr Cheney might have association.

Cheney's trip began as U.S. government sources confirmed the Bush administration plans for a $1 billion aid package for Georgia. An observer might wonder how the American taxpayers, suffering growing unemployment, a stagnating economy, record home foreclosures, a devalued dollar, rising inflation and a continually deteriorating infrastructure feel about tossing another billion US into the rat-hole of ‘foreign aid’ to an enfeebled nation of less than five million people.

It should also be noted that the ‘Straight-talking Maverick’, multi-millionaire John McCain has, as his presidential campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, lobbyist Randy Scheunemann. Mr Scheunemann is working on the McCain campaign while on hiatus from his DC-based lobbying firm, Orion Strategies. Insofar as McCain has a whole raft of lobbyists working on his campaign, Mr Scheunemann’s involvement isn’t note-worthy in and of itself. What is notable, however, is that one of the most prominent clients of Orion Strategies is the nation of Georgia. (Yes, that one.) It must be considered less than a coincidence that Mr Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies was hired to ‘grease the wheels’ for the admission of Georgia to NATO, another one of the Bush/Cheney pet projects.

So, let the Republican hoity-toity attend to extravagantly mundane party business and feign empty displays of concern for an impending reprise of a natural calamity, all Americans and, indeed, the citizens of the world can rest assured that Richard Cheney has his priorities in order; perverted as that order may appear to those with a sense of justice or decency.

ADDENDUM:

After writing and posting this article - which was based on a CNN on-line article - I read at Kommersant.com, a Russian site that Cheney's meeting with the presidents of Azerbaijan and Georgia did not go smoothly - meaning that Cheney did not get his way. He wanted both countries to cut Russia out of the supply line for gas and oil.

President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan had Cheney cool his heels before meeting with him. Their meeting did not go as Cheney intended despite (or due to) the fact that he and Aliyev have known each other since Cheney was at Halliburton and Aliyev was VP of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company. Cheney was so miffed at being told 'No!'by Aliyev (and by being met at the airport by personages of lesser rank than the VP himself) that he even refused to attend a banquet in his honor.

Looks like the bloom is off the rose, Dick, old boy.

Also! This just in from Democracy Now!

US Provided Combat Training to Georgian Commandos Prior to Assault

The Financial Times reports the US military provided combat training to eighty Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in August. The training was provided by senior US soldiers and two private military contractors—MPRI and American Systems, both based in Virginia.The revelation could add fuel to accusations by Russia that the US had orchestrated the war in the Georgian enclave.

So. maybe that Putin fellow is not exactly blowing smoke about the US playing high-stakes chess in the Caspian.

http://www.kommersant.com/p1020720/Ilham_Aliyev_reluctant_to_fully_support_America/

A Respectful Admonition of Senator McCain

My father was a war hero. He served in the US Navy as a radar man aboard an LCT in the North Atlantic and in the Mediterranean; most notably, at Anzio. He nearly lost his life on several occasions and, as one of the younger, unmarried members of the crew, was often asked to perform dangerous duty in service to the nation.

My grandfather was a war hero, too. He served as an infantryman on the killing fields of Europe during the First World War, what was then called ‘The Great War’.

They have been many heroes who put their lives on the line for the people who served with them. It can easily be asserted that each and every member of the armed services who has seen action, whether or not they were wounded, be-medaled, captured or killed, are heroes worthy of our admiration and gratitude.

As my father and my grandfather expressed it when pressed to tell their stories, they did not consider themselves heroes but simple ordinary men who managed to stay alive because of the heroic actions of their buddies. This is a most common comment made by those we consider war-time heroes.

In interviews with the surviving members of Company E, 2^nd Battalion, 506^th Parachute Regiment, 101^st Airborne Division, ‘The Screaming Eagles’, whose story was recounted in the best-selling book, ‘Band of Brothers’ by military historian, Stephen Ambrose, each and every man down-played their own part and honored those they served with. Their commanding officer, Richard D. ‘Dick’ Winters expressed this attitude of noble humility best in an interview for the HBO series. When asked if he considered himself a hero, he responded with tearful eyes, that he wasn’t a hero, but he had served in the company of heroes.

My father, like Dick Winters and many thousands of other veterans, did not crow and puff themselves up by harping about their heroics during armed conflict. They were modest men who saw themselves as unextraordinary despite the extraordinary conditions under which they served. This attitude of gracious humility is not exclusive to any specific generation; it is an unspoken code that is followed by all of the combat veterans known personally to this writer.

Meaning no disrespect to Senator McCain, for he must be counted in the company of heroes, he does not share the noble humility of Dick Winters or my father or my grandfather. Senator McCain’s unceasing, self-serving reiteration of his experiences as a POW in order to brazenly advance his political career and this presidential campaign is most distasteful.

His service should be honored as should all be honored who have laid their lives on the line for the nation and their buddies. What is objectionable is Mr McCain’s vulgar, overweening use of his experiences in Vietnam to blatantly promote himself and the agenda of the Republican Party by playing off the sympathies and pity of the public.

Former senator and presidential hopeful, George McGovern, was once asked why he hadn’t trumpeted his war-time military career during the 1968 election campaign against Richard Nixon. After all, McGovern had served during World War II as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot in the Fifteenth Air Force, had flown 35 missions over enemy territory and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving his crew. Surely, his campaign as an anti-war candidate would have been strengthened if he had simply made the American electorate aware that he was an honest-to-god, decorated war hero. McGovern shook his head dismissively and replied, “That would have been unseemly.”

Senator McCain, end the incessant rehashing of your war stories. It’s unseemly in a hero.