You’ve got to hand it to Garrison Keillor, he just calls it like he sees it: “So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, “Throw the bums out!” They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.
They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn’t just fall off the coal truck.
It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part — forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be — and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. ….”
Govenor Palin = George Bush with big hair
The hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder could be our first woman president.
Rest at the link
Red Vixen:
Remind me: who has been in control of Congress the last two years?
Which Democratic old bull has been fighting Fannie and Freddie reforms tooth and nail?
Thanks, though, Garrison. Hopefully you can squeeze a few more years out of that PBS/Lake Woebegone gig.
Matt –
‘Remind me: who has been in control of Congress the last two years?‘
… and who’s filibustered everything for the past two years? It’s called gridlock. Your party messed everything up and lost their integrity in regards to their own conservative principals. Maybe it’s time to let the Dems have a real shot at making change, and when they inevitably blow it anyway, then you can complain. Until then, let someone else have a chance at getting things done and you may be surprised.
I’m sure you’d agree that politics is cyclic in nature.
SMS
Jubal:
How many bills did the President veto previous to two years ago?
Zero.
How many did he veto since the Dems got in?
Lots.
Jam up the pipeline, then jump on the brakes when the other side takes over, then scream the other guys are being ineffective, while the Lemmings we refer to as Voters lick it up. Doublespeak at its finest, raised to a higher level of an already fine art.
Bravo.
Here are four items for your perusal. Let’s all get educated on some of the economic happenings right now:
1. In 30 seconds Govenor Palin explains Economic Fundamentals. http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/09/video-fundamentals-of-palin-unfair.html
Please, someone tell me if she grasps the situation. I just don’t see it.
*************************
2. What China is saying:
This is what came out from China today:
“BEIJING, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Threatened by a “financial tsunami,” the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.
“The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States’ financial oversight and supervision,” writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun.
“The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States.”
“Infinite Balance Sheet” eh? See what foreign governments think of that sort of garbage?
********************************
3. Obama’s statement on the economy: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGgmDT
********************************
4. MCCAINS ECONOMIC ADVISOR, PHIL GRAMM WAS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IMPLOSION YOU ARE NOW SEEING – HE HEADED UP THE DEREGULATION AND HE MADE UP NEW EXCUSES TO LET IT ALL HAPPEN. ————->
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, November 12, 1999
GRAMM’S STATEMENT AT SIGNING CEREMONY
FOR GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT
http://banking.senate.gov/prel99/1112gbl.htm
“The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it.
“Abraham Lincoln used to like to use the analogy that old and outmoded laws need to be changed because it made about as much sense to continue to impose them on people as it did to ask a man to wear the same clothes he did when he was a child.
“In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.
“We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.
“I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality.”
[if this were a political board, I’d point out that this is one of the top economic advisers of one of our presidential hopefuls, but since it’s not, I won’t……]
====================================================
[……..]
Two separate United States laws are known as the Glass-Steagall Act. The Acts (Glass & Steagall) were both reactions of the U.S. government to cope with the collapse of a large portion of the American commercial banking system in early 1933. While many economic histories attribute the collapse to the economic problems which followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929 it is clear that the U.S. banking collapse of 1933, which came three and a half years later, could only have been partially the result of the stock market collapse in October 1929.
The Republican Hoover administration had lost the November 1932 election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but his administration did not take office until March 1933. The lame duck Hoover Administration and the incoming Roosevelt Administration could not, or would not, coordinate actions to stop the run on banks affiliated with the Henry Ford family that began in Detroit Michigan in January 1933. The Federal Reserve under its chairman Eugene Meyer, who would buy the Washington Post out of bankruptcy in May 1933 as he left his post as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was equally ineffectual.
Both bills were sponsored by Democratic Senator Carter Glass of Lynchburg, Virginia, a former Secretary of the Treasury, and Democratic Congressman Henry B. Steagall of Alabama, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency.
Congressional Research Service Summary:
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the “commercial” and “investment” banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions’ securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act.[4]……..
[……]
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act