You have to read Bob Herbert's "When madmen reign" in today's New York Times :
 more this way»

Glenn Greenwald lays out the manufacturing of the crisis in plain English :

(1) Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency [...]

(2) Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process [...]

(3) Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions [...]

(4) The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable [...]

(5) Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and (therefore) they always win [...]

(6) The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest [...]

(7) For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government -- as it bails them out -- isn't doing anything to rein in their practices [...]
 more this way»

My (imaginary) boyfriend has a few things to say about the craziness on Wall Street :

Steal from the poor and give to the rich: this is the policy that we have in recent days seen the U.S. Government unhesitatingly and irresponsibly sanction by bailing out the big gamblers and law-breakers with tax-payer money. At least now this short-sighted and destructive approach to governance is undeniably out in the open.

We saw this happen in the 1980s with the savings and loan scandal and bail-outs, and we are seeing now, as we saw then, people like John McCain, Phil Gramm and the usual assortment of corporate pirates get off scot-free and continue on their paths of self-advancement and cronyism. The mismanagement and plundering of our nation's wealth and the cavalier drive to burden future generations of its citizens with crushing debt have been hallmarks of U.S. government practice for quite some time, but never to the unprecedented degree that we have experienced during the eight years that the Bush Administration has plundered the treasury for the benefit of a tiny, very wealthy minority.

Hopefully voters will keep this in mind when deciding whether they wish to continue in the same vein with McCain, or give change a chance to happen with an Obama administration.

Perhaps, too, the mainstream media outlets, in response to the now undeniable financial and moral crises we face, will get back to allowing issues more pressing and significant than the personal and ethical foibles of Ms Palin to take precedence in their daily election "coverage".

I have my doubts about their willingness to do so, but there is always hope.

It's so HAWT when he pokes his nose in my b'ness and does that weird pseudo-blogging thing he does at this publishing company's site.

Le sigh.

He's given me the perfect reason to post about McCain's involvement in the Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980s. I give you John McCain's Keating Five Problem In 97 Seconds :
 more this way»