The only thing that’s surprising about the government’s bailout of the financial industry is the American taxpayers surprise that over, depending on who’s adding, $7.36 trillion to $6.6 trillion of their dollars have gone up in smoke without any of the benefits the gargantuan handout was supposed to have brought. Many millions of those dollars were earmarked for executive bonuses. The bulk of the billions the busted banks and investment houses were so generously awarded were stuffed into their pockets and used in merger ventures. The agreement with the Bush Boys was the banks would lend the money to kickstart the economy. Goldman Sachs was given $12.5 billion and executive bonuses ate up $12.4 billion. It’s the same story throughout the private sector. Those vaunted wizards of high finance who could do no wrong have been exposed for what they’ve always been. Ordinary thieves, turned traitorous, who maneuvered for position through their campaign donations, then acted to steal every dime they could make off with.
After working Americans anteed up a few hundred billion, 1.6 billion was given to executives to buy Country Club Memberships, book travel aboard corporate jets, and most importantly, award themselves, on average, $2.6 million in bonuses. The public’s trust in the Holy Free Market went the way of those Supreme Court partisan hacks that decided to get into the business of presidential appointments, and foisted off on Americans the worst president Americans could have ever imagined in their worst nightmares. And who can ever forget the Bush whopper about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? The government, at the mercy of a wholly owned corporate subsidiary of various broadcasting networks, says the tax payers have been good sports about bailing out the banks and investment houses. The irony rests in the unfortunate truth that republican conservatives have been richly rewarded by the government they profess to despise. Rewarded, according to an NBC News Poll, by $7.36 trillion.
After the first huge cash infusion to the financial industry, the Big Three Automobile makers got their turn at the public trough. They only asked for enough to keep their corporate jets aloft while they tried to determine the best way forward. We can do better, they chorused, as foreign markets passed them by as if they were standing still. They kept turning out dinosaurs and Americans kept buying them, even as the rest of the world’s automobile manufacturers were leaving them in the dust. Slow to catch on, the CEO’s of Ford, GM and Chrysler cried piteously and Congress gave them billions. In return, they were supposed to grow brains.
Obama finds himself in the unenviable position of the American electorate’s short attention span. He can hear George Bush laughing as he realizes the extent of the fuckup Dubya left behind. Blah, blah, blah the corporate CEO’s replied before they announced the first of their factories closures beginning in January, 2009. Goldman Sachs raked in $12.5 billion in TARP money, and paid $12.4 billion in executive bonuses. The poor sods who comprise middle America, and do all the meaningful work, watch impotently as Obama gives away another trillion to save the same people who built the house of cards economy, then watched as it collapsed. They were helpless, but had like babies, enough lungpower to cry out and demand attention. Send cash they screeched. Just don’t attach any of those damn rules and regulations that once kept us honest.
It may be that Americans need to experience the results of their actions. Excusing the millions who didn’t vote for Bush or McCain, there are still roughly half of the nation’s electorate suffering from a kind of stupidity there is no answer or cure for. These are the people who think creationism is science. These are the people who subscribe to the right’s poisoness tirades - Limbaugh’s “Ditto Heads” who are quiet proud of their imbecilic beliefs, such at they are.
Rush : The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.
Rush : They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).
Rush: You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed."
Limbaugh is the voice of conservatism. For that, Americans should be grateful. The fat tub of guts reveals his racism, for all to see. Limbaugh’s drooling hatred appeals to very stupid Americans. These Americans are found in places like Louisiana. The white voters there tried to install David Duke in a Senate seat. Duke, a Grand Dragon of the KKK, was defeated, but ran again for governor. The Dragon lost again. He just couldn’t muster enough black votes to put him into the winners column. Go, figure. Louisianan’s are still scratching their heads. They can’t quite put a finger on what went wrong. Major morons. Dumber than turkeys. Combine their imaginative self importance with their mistaken arrogance and the end product is stupidity tempered with arrogance. A sure formula for disaster. Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1799
Limbaugh’s abuse of his fellow countrymen should not be tolerated in a society of decent, caring people. Not to mention the fact that a black president has won the White House. That said, Limbaugh and his ilk are not only tolerated, but recognized by millions as authorities on American politics. It is for that reason that it’s perhaps best that the nation sink into depression. The morons who subscribe to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Show should suffer the most if there were justice in the world, but of course there isn’t. It is far more likely that those millions of halfwits who don’t care enough about their republic to know the most essential truths regarding the freedoms they’re guaranteed will go about their lives reveling in their gross ignorance. Just as they always have. A free republic can’t survive with almost half of its citizenry mired in stupidity and ignorance. The U.S. has gone as far as it’s ever going to go as a free republic. As the republicans themselves like to say, “never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.”
