Wednesday, March 18, 2009

TODAY'S QUOTE

"The president needs to brush back the arrogant, greedy creeps who kneecapped capitalism, rather than cosseting Wall Street for fear of looking like an avatar of socialism." —Maureen Dowd in The New York Times today (3/18/09)

5 comments:

JIm said...

Here are quotes that are potentially great for America and probably good for the long term prospects for Democrats. Evan Bayh's announcement trump anything Maureen Dowd has to offer.

He announced on "Morning Joe" the formation of a group of 15 moderate to conservative Democratic Senators. For want of a better term these are the Blue Dog Democrats of 2009, and will be a counter balance to the loony left of Pelosi, Reid and Obama. This group can rule Washington even if the commedian from Minnesota gets seated. It should be bye, bye Card Check, Carbon Cap and Trade etc.

If the Republicans had had a fiscally conservative group of Senators who had applied pressure on George W and Tom Delay, maybe they would still be in power. The Abram's scandals and overspending and abusive earmarks might not have happened.

Isn't American Democracy Grand!!!!
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“Everybody has to bring something to the table,” said Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a leader of a 15-member caucus of conservative and centrist Democrats. “That doesn’t mean that you have to postpone your aspirations forever. But until we’re through this crisis and growth has resumed, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s necessary.”

Anonymous said...

On what we’ve seen and what we can expect from Obama.

Obama is Far From a Radical Reformer
By John R. MacArthur

Even so, left and right persist in the fantasy that the president is a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington character prepared to “take on” the powers that be. It’s one thing to rationalize the vast sums that Obama raised for his campaign from commercial and investment banks (“Well, you have to get elected,” etc.). But rationalizing the laissez-faire beliefs of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner—exhibited most notably in their scandalous opposition to derivatives regulation in the Clinton administration—borders on the idiotic. The left pretends that Summers isn’t really Obama’s chief economic adviser, while the right pretends the former Treasury secretary has converted to left-wing Gaullism. In reality, Summers and Geithner are in place precisely to prevent real reform of a banking system that helped put Obama in the White House.

On budget matters, so far, Obama’s economic “brain trust” is brain-dead. Comparisons with FDR are spurious, given that the administration so far won’t even discuss restoring some form of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal law that separated investment banks and commercial banks.


from Harper’s
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004581

Curtis Faville said...

If I were running the Justice Department, I'd have half my staff go right after Wall Street. Put the dogs on them. Executives who clearly knew that they had created mountains of unrated debt were jeopardizing all their clients as well as their whole companies. Certainly no less egregious than Enron. It's just another form of embezzlement.

White collar crime should be prosecuted in the same way as other crimes. If thousands of people are hurt, irrevocably, the punishment should fit the damage done. Bonuses, my ass! The CEO of AIG should get 20 years, no question.

JIm said...

Curtis,
Fair is fair. If the former CEO of AIG were to get 20 years, Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd should get adjoining cells for malfeasence and stupidity.

JIm said...

Real Creeps and Nathan Bedford Forrest (KKK founder).

My wife and I were in a Starbucks between my daughter Shannon's softball games Saturday. In walked a large well muscled man, approximately 6'6" ,in his 40's. He wore a t-shirt with crossed confederate flags and Nathan Bedford Forrest's picture. We noticed a tattoo that was only partially visible on his upper arm. It said "I only salute this". We could not see the object that was being saluted. I refrained from asking him if he had voted for Obama, since I am fond of life. It is amazing the capacity for creeps that a free society has. It is also heartening in the midst of vestiges of hate that a man of color can be elected. I just hope if a man of color is elected in 2012, that it is Bobby Jindal and not the Socialist that currently lives there.

PS As he drove away in his truck, we were heartened that he had South Dakota plates and not Colorado.