Tonight, I put my on Republican thinking cap and a tried to think like a corporate fascist puppet. Here is what I came up with. It isn’t pretty. I suggest lots of tequila or beer to take the sting away.We have already had three selected-not-elected Republican presidencies in the last fifty years. Each has broken the law, committed war crimes, used the Article II defense to justify his lawless ways, increased poverty, left us with a recession that his Democratic successor had to clean up----you know,
two selected-not-elected Republicans with the same pattern of governing could be an accident. Three? That’s deliberate. We need to be ready for number four. To do that, we need to study numbers one, two and three.
In 1968
Nixon and Humphrey were neck and neck. LBJ had decided not to seek re-election so that he could devote himself to the task of ending the war in Vietnam, right wing anti-communists and Big Business, especially oil and MIC like Brown & Root, preferred to see the conflict continue indefinitely. So, Henry Kissinger, who was supposed to be negotiating for Johnson, cut a secret deal with South Vietnam. He promised that if that country backed out of the peace treaty and helped get Nixon elected, the Republican president would get them a better deal. Instead, Nixon gave them four more years of war followed by defeat and he gave the world the conflicts in Laos, Cambodia (along with the Killing Fields), he gave the U.S. Watergate, the Plumbers, enough Constitutional violations that he was kicked out on his ass and half his associates were tried and jailed. He commonly solicited bribes in exchange for official favors, and he received huge contributions from people like Howard Hughes. His policies lead to a recession which hampered the efforts of the Democrat elected in 1976 on a platform of
A Leader for a Change Jimmy Carter.
While Carter succeeded in turning the economy around, the right wing was able to pin the Nixon-Ford recession on him. They also employed a trick not unlike the one that Kissinger used in 1968---
except that this time they negotiated with the enemy, an act of treason . Representatives of the
Reagan-Bush campaign made a deal with the government of Iran to hold the U.S. embassy hostages until after the election in order to win more votes for the ex-actor turned politician. The details of this arrangement were revealed a few years later when the Iranian president, Abol-hassan Banisadr had to flee Iran for his life after the Ayatollah ordered him secretly executed. From his place of exile in France, he disclosed the secrets of the hostages for votes deal to the world. The U.S. Congress and the American people issued a collective yawn. This may explain why President Bill Clinton did not act on information provided by the Iranians years later. If no one in the U.S. cared that Reagan stole the presidency in 1982, who was going to care in 1992? Note that David Rockefeller, who supported Carter in 1976 against Ford, was reportedly the bag man in the hostages for votes deal in 1980.
The twelve years of the Reagan-Bush presidency were a bonanza for big business. Using the
Reagan is a nice guy, but no one is in charge excuse, the federal government was able to turn federal tax coffers and federal assets into one big feeding trough where corporate pigs could gorge. U.S. citizens at home were divided against each other along racial lines with the bogus War on Drugs. Poverty, which had been in the decline since LBJ’s War on Poverty, began to surge again thanks to deliberate federal policies meant to increase wealth disparity, which began to rise for the first time since the Second World War. Federal regulators looked the other way as Savings& Loans began to practice risky policies. Never mind that high levels of wealth disparity and unsound investment strategies by lenders were the two hallmarks of the Great Depression. It appeared that no one was in charge---
However, appearances were deceiving. During the Reagan era, the Federalists began to populate the federal courts. This group had one goal---to roll the clocks back to before FDR. That meant to before the days of SEC regulation and Social Security and everything else that had brought the American middle class into being. In order to do that, they needed another Great Depression. For that, they needed extreme wealth disparity combined with another market crash and an America public out of work and with no savings to fall back upon----that meant no houses and nothing in their retirement fund or stock market. They came close during the Reagan administration. However, George HW Bush did not have Reagan’s ability to make the people love him even as they hated their misery. That was why the GOP had to call time out and let the Democrats take the field.
The Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton was supposed to be a one term president like the Georgia governor turned president, Carter. However, history did not repeat itself. Somalia, which Bush Sr. set up on his way out, barely caused a ripple in the Clinton administration. Big Dog could handle anything. In his second term, desperate to keep him from undoing all the progress they had made in widening the gap between rich and poor and creating a gulf between white and Black, members of the right like Melon-Scaiffe and Ken Lay tried to set up a perjury trap involving consensual extramarital oral sex (which a majority of college students surveyed declared was
not sexual relations in a report in the
Journal of the American Medical Association ). The Republicans made themselves look foolish, and Clinton’s popularity rose. Worse for them, Hillary Clinton became an American folk hero because she stood by her man.
With almost the entire press corp (including many who style themselves as moderates and liberals) attacking the president and first lady over their private lives, the majority of the American people continued to pay attention only to the way that the first couple handled their official duties. The press was irate. The right wing was irate. The divide between America and those who thought they controlled her---the wealthy and their puppies in the press---had never been more obvious. It was clear that desperate measures were required if the right wing was to pull off another coup in the face of this newly emboldened American working class. They were going to have to steal an election and rub the American voters’ faces in it.
So, we got
Bush v. Gore. And then we got 9/11. And we were told that if we dared to question Bush-Cheney, we were probably terrorists. If we were Muslim or if we looked brown, we were definitely terrorists, and Bush had the power to haul us off to a secret prison and torture us, even if we were U.S. citizens. Cheney could talk to anyone he wanted about anything and ignore any law he wanted. Enron could price gouge California just as long as they were solvent (it was a different story when they went bankrupt). Our phones had to be wiretapped for our own good. Our money had to be given to Halliburton for our own good. Our troops had to languish away in Iraq for Iraq’s own good, even though Iraq did not want us there. All corporate CEOs were innocent. Every man whose skin was darker than a pecan was guilty. The rich should pay less taxes. The poor should pay more (because government does more for them). Everything in American belonged to rich folks, and at any moment the government could come in and destroy your life so you better keep your lip buttoned and just hope that no one noticed you. And pray that no hurricanes came, either, because if they did and you didn’t vote Republican in the last election, Karl Rove would personally order that you be left to die like a dog on national TV as a warning for everyone else to see…
Did I mention that wealth disparity went up again, and this time the selected not elected (third Republican selected president in a row!) made it a crime for any state or local official to try to stop a lender from engaging in fraudulent practices? That’s right! Fraudulent lending became the law of the land under Bush-Cheney! Eliot Spitzer tried to warn us. That is why the FBI and DOJ lied that the son of a billionaire had to use official funds to pay a hooker, but did not tell us that the bank execs were the ones using company funds to buy call girls.
Speaking of bank executives, you have to admit that these guys are the best of the best when it comes to the big con. Who else could bring America to the verge of financial ruin through their incompetent (perhaps even criminal ) actions and
walk away with a $1.2 trillion slush fund courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer?
http://www.wikio.com/video/765665That is $4,000 for every U.S man, woman and child. What have we gotten for our money? Nada. The money supply did not get loosened up one bit. All the banks did was pay their execs a lot of bonuses. I guess the GOP can expect to get a lot of financial contributions from bank executives---and bank executive’s wives and maids and infant nephews and neighbors---in the months to come. That is what a $1.2 trillion slush fund is for.
The bailout, which W. begged for on national television with his
the sky is falling and only you can prop it up by giving all your tax dollars to the banks speech, will be useful in funding the
Fourth Right Wing Coup, because the Coup will not be popular with the public. Not in its early days. Right now, it is making use of its two main political assets, 1) Rush Limbaugh and 2) its minority membership in the U.S. Senate. Since the GOP does not actually have to vote to filibuster anything, they simply say
We don’t like it to jobs bills, health care reform, food for starving infants. The bailout slush fund provides a financial incentive to Republicans to ignore the will of the public. Money will buy a lot of TV time as the 2010 elections near.
Once its gets over its honeymoon (a period that typically lasts 90 days) with President Obama the corporate press can be counted upon to blame the worsening recession/depression on Obama and the Congressional Democrats and even on Bill Clinton. Individual reporters can receive much more than the maximum $2000 allowed per candidate per person from the bailout slush fund. They can get a book deal, a TV show, super-stardom if they play their cards right. Just look at Santelli who stood in the Stock exchange and got investors to paint kick me signs on themselves by delivering a scripted rant in which he declared that investors do not want to see American taxpayers spend their tax dollars bailing out other Americans who are about to lose their homes. This after America just bailed out Wall Street. You just know
that guy is getting his palm greased. Especially when he had a big rant about how speculation was not driving up the price of oil not so very long ago, funded no doubt by oil speculators.
Santelli looks like a hypocritical heartless bastard discussing mortgages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XkjyKfLZTISantelli looks like an idiot claiming oil prices are not related to oil speculation:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eeLZA71EM&feature=relatedNow, who benefits when home owners do not get help in staying in their homes after predatory lenders have written illegal mortgages—ones with rising rates even though the client qualified for a fixed rate mortgage? Answer: the folks with lots of cash who will be there to buy up the property and hold onto it until real estate prices rise. There is a name for them.
Vulture Funds http://www.sdbj.com/industry_article.asp?aID=25915833.2706415.1629082.994392.7278646.250&aID2=125305 As more homes fall into foreclosure, banks are packaging pools of foreclosed homes and wholesaling them to private equity “vulture funds” for pennies on the dollar.
While the phrase vulture fund conjures up cold-blooded opportunists, the funds are buying assets that banks are desperately trying to move off their books to free up capital.
Basically, anyone in the market with $3 million to $100 million or more to buy a block of REO, or real estate owned, properties could be called a vulture fund.
National investors such as The Blackstone Group and Lehman Bros. Inc. have reportedly purchased billions of dollars of foreclosed properties through private equity funds.
Often, the buyers are from other countries. For instance, if you are from an oil producing Middle Eastern country and you have amassed vast amounts of cash from the inflated price of oil these last eight years but you know that the supply of crude beneath your countries sand will run out soon, now probably seems like a good time to become a landlord in the United States.
http://www.therealestatebloggers.com/2008/10/29/international-vultures-flock-to-florida-real-estate/ But after a market carnage, this is what the market needs. Someone to start buying up all the inventory to allow the market to start functioning again. So while we never want a vulture in our backyard, they do provide a very useful service.
Florida far outpaced all other states in attracting foreign investment, with roughly 25 percent of all purchases made by international buyers done in the Sunshine State, according to a recent National Association of Realtors study.
I wonder how many people that used to work for mortgage companies have moved straight into the business of buying up houses which are about to be foreclosed? You know, the ones that they sold to the buyers using deceptive practices that the Bush administration made it a crime for state and local officials to prosecute. (Here is Spitzer’s 2008 Valentine to the American people that cost him his governorship)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.htmlYou though the nightmare of the Bush administration was over? Hell no. The federal regulatory part may be through, but the business community still has a role to play if they are going to bring about the Fourth Right Wing Coup. The folks with the money intend to deprive the workers of their jobs by sending the work off shore and then offer us the same work at lower wages with a different title and no benefits. They will take our houses and then let us rent them. They have already stolen our retirement savings and our 401Ks—and they conned us into rewarding them with a big fat check for $4,000 from each American citizen. They have ruined our health with plastic adulterated milk and mercury contaminated fish and genetically altered seed crops and raised the prices for these foods so high that we almost can not afford to eat them. When we got sick, they offered us pills that cost $15 a piece that did not cure the problem but made us even sicker because the FDA was bribed not to ask for proper testing. And now they pay shills to get on television to tell us that it is our neighbor who is responsible for our misfortune, not the greedy CEO of the Fortune 500 Company who thinks that he has a god given right to steal the crusts of bread from a poor widow’s lips before he kicks her out into the snow and drags her to debtor’s prison because she can not pay her medical bills.
And that is just domestic policy.
The Right Wing Coup will attempt to direct our nation’s course through its foreign policy, too. The recent election and coalition far right wing government in Israel will be crucial for their plans. Despite Richard Perle’s insistence that there is no such thing as a NeoCon, there is most definitely a NeoCon agenda, and it uses Israel and the handful of rich families which control that country through fear. George Mitchell and Hillary Clinton may have been able to bring peace to Northern Ireland, but they did not have the GOP and the Fourth Right Wing Coup which is plotting the overthrow of Democracy in America conspiring against them. Arms will continue to be smuggled into Palestine while food, medicine and any other useful aid will be denied to the people. The combination of hopelessness and anger will lead to violence, which will lead to more fighting, which will make Israel more isolated---and more belligerent. Eventually, they will attack Syria or Iran and dare the Obama administration not to back them---that will play havoc with Obama’s plan to reduce the deficit by bringing troops home from Iraq.
The Saudis, allies of the forces plotting the Fourth Right Wing Coup, can be counted upon to provide fighters from their own ranks of disaffected young people, aka Al Qaeda, to keep things stirred up. One possible scenario: an Iranian hostage type situation will be timed for shortly before the 2012 elections, this time in Taliban controlled regions of Pakistan, a sovereign country with nuclear capability which Obama will be unable to invade. The Pakistani government will make a secret deal with Henry Kissinger, the man who first helped them acquire nuclear weapons, in exchange for delaying the release of the hostages to help the Republican candidate.
The vote will also be unexpectedly close, because states will have balked at instituting election reform measures, citing the recession. The Republicans will have filibustered any attempts to pass laws requiring paper trails on the grounds that the country just can not afford it during a time of economic crisis.
Patrick Fitzgerald has been installed (for the duration of the Obama administration, he hopes) to be this century’s Ken Starr. Since the right wing dare not assassinate a Democratic president, for fear that his successor would do with his memory what LBJ did with JKF’s memory—pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare—they have to character assassinate him instead. He will wait until the Obama press honeymoon is over before issuing any more
worst political crime in America’s history pronouncements. I hope Fitz recalls that Ken Starr did not get his promised judicial appointment and that he is dean at a law school that specializes in entertainment law. That is what you get when you become the nation’s most famous federally funded pornographer.
All the blackmail information that Dick Cheney acquired through eight years of warrantless spying on every American citizen has probably been transferred to the corporate offices of Halliburton in Dubai Ports by now---with choice bits forwarded to the headquarters of the RNC. Maybe you were wondering why KBR got another contract from the military right after they were accused of murdering soldiers in their electric death showers? Do not be surprised at anything Cheney is able to do. He knows everything about everyone. Congressional Dems did not keep authorizing domestic spying because they
like it. They caved because they knew that they were among the first targets. From now on, the information revealed from those wiretaps will become front page news rather than the subject of DOJ indictments, so do not be surprised if you start hearing a lot of dirt about the siblings, spouses and children of elected Democrats and critics of the right wing.
Obama wants to be FDR.
The Right Wing Coup wants Obama to be another Jimmy Carter, a brief pause while they regroup around another puppet president, who will be selected by David Rockefeller and the usual Very Important People, someone chosen for his hair and his ability to lie convincingly and his likable, affable
I may not be too smart, but I am honest attitude.
Someone like
Written while sober. I promise. But I may go get a beer now. Or maybe a tequila sunrise.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
?
