Frank Rich, former "lifestyle" columnist and now editor of the New York Times, lays out an editorial MASTERPIECE: a swift review of the past decade, how government and business 'leaders', both Democrat and Republican, paved the way for America's current TRILLIONS-of-dollars economic meltdown, with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTING, vastly overstated assets, suppression of open reporting and transparency - with DOZENS of banks, business executives, and government officials ECHOING and REPEATING the basic template of ENRON massive ACCOUNTING FRAUD, and Bush-Cheney co's. LIES-to-WAR.
IN particular, Rich details FORMER CLINTON/Democrat TREASURY SECRETARY ROBERT RUBIN as being in on the Wall Street con game:
==================================
Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich
[i.e. a small-time, comparatively honest hoodlum compared to the predatory sharks, parasitic bankers, and massive fraudsters of Wall St., Washington, and corporate America.]
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14rich.html
<< Regulators had failed to see the iceberg in Enron’s path and so had Enron’s own accountants at Arthur Andersen, a corporate giant whose parallel implosion had its own casualty list of some 80,000 jobs. Despite Bush’s post-Enron call for “a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community,” the exact opposite has happened in the six years since. Warren Buffett’s warning in 2003 that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction” was politely ignored. Much larger companies than Enron figured out how to place even bigger and more impenetrable gambles on derivatives, all the while piling up unseen debt. They built castles of air on a far grander scale than Kenny Boy could have imagined, doing so with sheer stupidity and cavalier, greed-fueled carelessness rather than fraud. >>
<< The most stupendous example as measured in dollars is Citigroup, now the recipient of potentially the biggest taxpayer bailout to date. The price tag could be some $300 billion — 20 times the proposed first installment of the scuttled Detroit bailout. Citigroup’s toxic derivatives, often tied to subprime mortgages, metastasized without appearing on the balance sheet. Both the company’s former chief executive, Charles O. Prince III, and his senior adviser, Robert Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary, have said they didn’t know the size of the worthless holdings until they’d spiraled into the tens of billions of dollars. >>
<< It’s a sad snapshot of our century’s establishment that Rubin has been an economic adviser to Barack Obama and [Phil] Gramm to John McCain. And that both captains of finance remain unapologetic, unaccountable and still at their banks, which have each lost more than 70 percent of their shareholders’ value this year and have collectively announced more than 90,000 layoffs so far. >>
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THE STUPID, media-sedated American public TOLERATES MASSIVE THEFT of both the US taxpayer Treasury AND THEIR OWN SAVINGS, INVESTMENTS, (home-values, etc.) and PENSION funds!!
(note: ONe thing that Frank Rich doesn't quite get to in this information packed commentary, is the role his own employer, the SULZBERGER OWNED New York Times, played in all this massive, gigantic, titanic accounting fraud and economic meltdown.
That is, in the early-mid 1990s the new Clinton administration was only just starting to drag America out of the BUSH-1 RECESSION, brought about by the Phil Gramm led DEREGULATION of the entire US Savings & Loan financial industry, when the New York Times started perpetrating journalistic fraud with their shoddy, misleading, and often times outright LYING reporting about the hapless Jim McDougal's role in "WHITEWATER", i.e. the routine real-estate flops of McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan in Little Rock, Arksansas. The Times' RELENTLESSLY BAD reporting on "WHITEWATER" led millions of American "news" consumers to believe that McDougal's rural Arkansas "Whitewater" real-estate flop was THE CENTER of the nation's entire $500 billion (in 1980s money) S&L debacle; when, even by the Times' most hysterical accounts, McDougal's Madison Guarantee was bailed out by government/taxpayers for no more than $22 million. By comparison, Neil Bush's Colorado-based SILVERADO S&L cost taxpayers $1 BILLION in losses; and President Bush Sr., in FIRING the fed criminal banking auditor fo CHARLES KEATING's "LINCOLN Savings & Loan", allowed Keating to dodge a criminal audit, and continue Lincoln's operations for another year.... Costing taxpayers ANOTHER BILLION DOLLARS in losses, for TWO BILLION DOLLARS in losses for Keating's Lincoln S&L, ALONE!
In relentlessly putting McDougal's hapless "WHITEWATER!" flop on the front pages of the NY Times for five or more years in a row, the TIMES publisher and editors HELPED AMERICANS FORGET about the far larger, far more systematic S&L debacle - thereby paving the way for good ol' PHIL GRAMM and his Democrat/Republican financial fraud enablers to REPEAT the ECONOMIC "DEREGULATION" tsunami all over again in the late 1990s!
(Authors Lyons & Conasons document the Times' relentlessly atrocious "Whitewater" reporting in their encylcopedic accounting of "THE HUNTING of the PRESIDENT"
http://www.amazon.com/Hunting-President-Ten-Year-Campaign-Destroy/dp/0312273193
(The contents, index, and several hundred of the authors' _25 pages_ of citations are included in the free GoogleBooks preview of the book.)
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Christ Mathews TALKS OVER HIS GUESTS - what constitutes "journalism" in America's whorrific media...
Fortunately MSNBC now has both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to provide a SANE discussion of the issues, but this comedic clip by "236.com" video (a play on "news 24/7") captures what Mathews critics have known ever since he came to America's attention (along with Tim Russert) - spouting off "MONICA!" "MONICA!" MONICA!" 24/7 during the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton for __"lying"__ about his affair with Monica: THAT CHRIS MATHEWS TALKS OVER ALL Of his guests, usually so much that there is nothing intelligible on his show!"
Monday, December 08, 2008
New York (whore) Times follows Tribune co. in CASH CRISIS....
NY Times Co. follows Tribune co. in cash crisis: forced to borrow $225-million against its New York office building to stave off an immediate "cash flow squeeze."
We must note here teh delicious irony of the New York Times ATROCIOUS "reporting" standards (not to say "journalistic" standards) coming home to roost; for NO ONE in America is MORE RESPONSIBLE for the NIGHTMARE of this nation's current economic crisis than the LYING New York Whore Times, and the Cowardly, lying Washington Post.
AS an example, this NY Times own report, where the Times' editors, writers, and publisher (Mr. Arthur Sulzberger and family) practically JOINED Wall Street bank executives at GOLDMAN SACHS co., in PRACTICALLY GLOATING about the G-S __BILLION DOLLAR CHRISTMAS BONUS__...... in December of ___2006____, EVEN AS THOUSANDS of American families were BEING FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES, by the building FORECLOSURE CRISIS, the EXACT SAME CRISIS that would send FORMER GOLDAMN-SACHS _CHAIRMAN & CEO._ HANK PAULSON - currently President Bush's SECRETARY OF TREASURY - litterally BEGGING to Congress for $700 billion (ONE TRILLION DOLLARS+ in real costs!) in SOCIALIZED TAXPAYER BAILOUTS of the very banks and brokerage houses that less than two-dozen months previously had been GLOATING about their ill-gotten BONUSES, even as families were being EVICTED from their homes due to PREDATORY loans, credit cards, and health-care tragedy bankruptcies!
AND AT NO TIME did the god-damned NEW YORK TIMES or WASHINGTON POST _EVER_ try to make a CONNECTION between those Wall Street billion-dollar gloating "BONUSES", and the THOUSANDS of Americans VICTIMIZED by credit extortion, bullying, fraud, and greed.
Nor did the Post and Times speak our for MILLIONS of voters (_NOT!_ Mr. Gore) ROBBED of their votes by the Republican VOTE-STEALING EFFORTS of Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and Supreme Court Inquisitor Antonin Scalia in the Florida NON-RECOUNT of December 2000.
NOR did the Lying Times and Cowardly Post STAND UP FOR US Army FEMALE VOLUNTEER PRIVATES accused ONLY of "ABUSE" at Abu Ghraib prison and put on trial in the Cheney-Rumsfeld military's KANGAROO TRIALS, WHILE the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration DEMANDED THE 'right' to TORTURE PRISONERS TO DEATH, at THEIR SOLE DISCRETION, with NO OVERSIGHT or accountability TO ANYONE, EVER!
These are THREE MASSIVE, GLARING BETRAYALS that will show up 100 years later in American history, just like the dismal DRED SCOTT decision, and for these treacherous betrayals, ALONE (not to mention being party to and/or complicity with lies-to-war leading up to the Iraq war), BOTH the New York Times and Washington Post deserve to face bankruptcy and failure.
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NY TIMES Co. to BORROW AGAINST its NY BUILDING
by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, New York Times
Published: December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/media/08times.html
The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.
We must note here teh delicious irony of the New York Times ATROCIOUS "reporting" standards (not to say "journalistic" standards) coming home to roost; for NO ONE in America is MORE RESPONSIBLE for the NIGHTMARE of this nation's current economic crisis than the LYING New York Whore Times, and the Cowardly, lying Washington Post.
AS an example, this NY Times own report, where the Times' editors, writers, and publisher (Mr. Arthur Sulzberger and family) practically JOINED Wall Street bank executives at GOLDMAN SACHS co., in PRACTICALLY GLOATING about the G-S __BILLION DOLLAR CHRISTMAS BONUS__...... in December of ___2006____, EVEN AS THOUSANDS of American families were BEING FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES, by the building FORECLOSURE CRISIS, the EXACT SAME CRISIS that would send FORMER GOLDAMN-SACHS _CHAIRMAN & CEO._ HANK PAULSON - currently President Bush's SECRETARY OF TREASURY - litterally BEGGING to Congress for $700 billion (ONE TRILLION DOLLARS+ in real costs!) in SOCIALIZED TAXPAYER BAILOUTS of the very banks and brokerage houses that less than two-dozen months previously had been GLOATING about their ill-gotten BONUSES, even as families were being EVICTED from their homes due to PREDATORY loans, credit cards, and health-care tragedy bankruptcies!
AND AT NO TIME did the god-damned NEW YORK TIMES or WASHINGTON POST _EVER_ try to make a CONNECTION between those Wall Street billion-dollar gloating "BONUSES", and the THOUSANDS of Americans VICTIMIZED by credit extortion, bullying, fraud, and greed.
Nor did the Post and Times speak our for MILLIONS of voters (_NOT!_ Mr. Gore) ROBBED of their votes by the Republican VOTE-STEALING EFFORTS of Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and Supreme Court Inquisitor Antonin Scalia in the Florida NON-RECOUNT of December 2000.
NOR did the Lying Times and Cowardly Post STAND UP FOR US Army FEMALE VOLUNTEER PRIVATES accused ONLY of "ABUSE" at Abu Ghraib prison and put on trial in the Cheney-Rumsfeld military's KANGAROO TRIALS, WHILE the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration DEMANDED THE 'right' to TORTURE PRISONERS TO DEATH, at THEIR SOLE DISCRETION, with NO OVERSIGHT or accountability TO ANYONE, EVER!
These are THREE MASSIVE, GLARING BETRAYALS that will show up 100 years later in American history, just like the dismal DRED SCOTT decision, and for these treacherous betrayals, ALONE (not to mention being party to and/or complicity with lies-to-war leading up to the Iraq war), BOTH the New York Times and Washington Post deserve to face bankruptcy and failure.
==========================================
NY TIMES Co. to BORROW AGAINST its NY BUILDING
by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, New York Times
Published: December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/media/08times.html
The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Chicago Tribune "News" Co. FACING BANKRUPTCY !
ALL OVER AMERICA, America's "news" companies ARE FACING MASSIVE financial losses... WHICH OF COURSE SERVES THEM RIGHT, as they have been COMPLICIT in the ECONOMIC LOOTING of America, at the very least since Antonin Scalia and the US Supreme Court STOLE the 2000 presidential election away (NOT from the hapless, pathetic Al Gore, but) from tens of millions of Democratic-candidate voting voters.
As JUST ONE EXAMPLE of how America's "major media" "news" companies HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT in the FINANCIAL LOOTING of America, is the fact that NONE OF THEM have EVER SOUGHT TO _LINK_ President Bush and his corrupt White House with.... THE MASSIVE FINANCIAL FRAUD of ENRON corporation, Enron Chairman and CEO _only_ being BUSH's #1 CAREER CAMPAIGN DONOR through his entire political career!"
(Enron, for example, providing the Bush campaign FREE corporate air travel during the Florida (non-) Recount battle.)
As a SECOND example of how COMPLICITLY CORRUPT the US corporate "media" has been is that NONE OF THEM, have EVER _DEMANDED_ answers for the the NINE BILLION DOLLARS CASH that "went MISSING" in Iraq, within 2-3 weeks of that cash being handed to Bush's "VICEROY" in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
(Nor have the stupid American media whores pointed out that "VICEROY" was the designation of the Spanish crown's demigod authorities DURING THE GENOCIDAL Spanish conquistador CONQUESTS of the New World - which DEPOPULATED and ENSLAVED ENTIRE REGIONS of Central- and South America, duh. GREAT, REVEALING job title for a Bush admin. flunky allegedly trying to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq... NOT!)
So now, the US corporate media, 8 year partners-in-crime to the Bush-GOP administration's desire to TURN AMERICA BACK into an IGNORANT, ENSLAVED plantation wage-slave population, finds readership down so severely, that those businesses are facing drastic financial losses.
SERVES THEM RIGHT.
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Tribune Hires Advisers to Help Stave Off Bankruptcy
December 7, 2008
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/tribune-hires-bankruptcy-advisers/
Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.
The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.
It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year.
As JUST ONE EXAMPLE of how America's "major media" "news" companies HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT in the FINANCIAL LOOTING of America, is the fact that NONE OF THEM have EVER SOUGHT TO _LINK_ President Bush and his corrupt White House with.... THE MASSIVE FINANCIAL FRAUD of ENRON corporation, Enron Chairman and CEO _only_ being BUSH's #1 CAREER CAMPAIGN DONOR through his entire political career!"
(Enron, for example, providing the Bush campaign FREE corporate air travel during the Florida (non-) Recount battle.)
As a SECOND example of how COMPLICITLY CORRUPT the US corporate "media" has been is that NONE OF THEM, have EVER _DEMANDED_ answers for the the NINE BILLION DOLLARS CASH that "went MISSING" in Iraq, within 2-3 weeks of that cash being handed to Bush's "VICEROY" in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
(Nor have the stupid American media whores pointed out that "VICEROY" was the designation of the Spanish crown's demigod authorities DURING THE GENOCIDAL Spanish conquistador CONQUESTS of the New World - which DEPOPULATED and ENSLAVED ENTIRE REGIONS of Central- and South America, duh. GREAT, REVEALING job title for a Bush admin. flunky allegedly trying to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq... NOT!)
So now, the US corporate media, 8 year partners-in-crime to the Bush-GOP administration's desire to TURN AMERICA BACK into an IGNORANT, ENSLAVED plantation wage-slave population, finds readership down so severely, that those businesses are facing drastic financial losses.
SERVES THEM RIGHT.
=====================================================
Tribune Hires Advisers to Help Stave Off Bankruptcy
December 7, 2008
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/tribune-hires-bankruptcy-advisers/
Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.
The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.
It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
PM Carpenter Dissects the WASHINGTON WHORE POST's fawning, slavish treatment of Bush-Paulson WASTING BILLIONS of taxpayer "BAILOUT" dollars...
Just how sad, sordid, and vile the WASHINGTON COWARDLY POST has become as an institution is illustrated in today's editorial by PM Carpenter.
PM explaining that when Washington Post writers and editors write _any_ article on a Bush administration agenda or policy execution, you can just PARACHUTE IN THE WORDS "FAILURE," "INADEQUACY," "LACK OF OVERSIGHT" - and the god-damned Washington Post will PRETEND that there IS NOTHING seriously wrong about such a story reporting that the Bush administration is MISHANDLING YET ANOTHER trillion dollars (sigh) of taxpayer money!
- EVEN AS EIGHT YEARS of the Bush administrations relentless, continual support for _ENRON ACCOUNTING_ financial and corporate standards, making American DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL _and_ FOREIGN CREDIT, & DEFICIT ECONOMICS, are THE ROOT of this current FAMILY CRUSHING, JOB KILLING, ECONOMY GUTTING America- and world economic crisis!
(ONE MILLION LAYOFFS in America this year, alone!)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/BUDA14GTA9.DTL
Washington Post, THY NAME is VILE, nation-killing COMPLICITY in KLEPTOCRACY (what Paul Craig Roberts calls "ECONOMIC TREASON") - SERVILE COURTIERS to POWER, & SYCHOPHANTS to RAW GREED & ABJECT LIES.
PM explaining that when Washington Post writers and editors write _any_ article on a Bush administration agenda or policy execution, you can just PARACHUTE IN THE WORDS "FAILURE," "INADEQUACY," "LACK OF OVERSIGHT" - and the god-damned Washington Post will PRETEND that there IS NOTHING seriously wrong about such a story reporting that the Bush administration is MISHANDLING YET ANOTHER trillion dollars (sigh) of taxpayer money!
- EVEN AS EIGHT YEARS of the Bush administrations relentless, continual support for _ENRON ACCOUNTING_ financial and corporate standards, making American DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL _and_ FOREIGN CREDIT, & DEFICIT ECONOMICS, are THE ROOT of this current FAMILY CRUSHING, JOB KILLING, ECONOMY GUTTING America- and world economic crisis!
(ONE MILLION LAYOFFS in America this year, alone!)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/BUDA14GTA9.DTL
"As the Washington Post reports, WHILE REVEALING _NO_ SHOCK OR even DISMAY: 'The Bush administration has failed to adequately oversee its $700 billion bailout program'....
...Failure, inadequacy, lack of oversight -- three commonly referenced subjects in any story on the Bush regime, which parachute into the same inclusive sentence with almost perfunctory regularity and, after eight years, have devolved to the reportorial level of a yawning S.N.A.F.U."
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/252
Washington Post, THY NAME is VILE, nation-killing COMPLICITY in KLEPTOCRACY (what Paul Craig Roberts calls "ECONOMIC TREASON") - SERVILE COURTIERS to POWER, & SYCHOPHANTS to RAW GREED & ABJECT LIES.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
PAUL KRUGMAN takes uber-Righty GEORGE WILL to woodshed, delivers THRASHING over Will LYING about causes of the GREAT DEPRESSION...
Poor Paul Krugman! The "Failed Currencies" expert hired by Arthur ("punk") Sulzberger to be the New York Times' in-house "Economic Hit Man" proved not only to be an expert on failed economies (failed currencies of course = failed economies), but turned out to be that rare bird, an ECONOMIST with a CONSCIENCE.
Over coming years Krugman would prove to be "right", as in "correct", far more often than his more well-known NYT columnist stablemates - dreadfully wrong men like WILLIAM "GIVE FALLUJAH a taste of (Hitler's) LIDICE Treatment!" SAFIRE, or THOMAS "The world is FLAT - "AMERICAN WORKERS should settle for THE SAME WAGES as HITLER's CONCENTRATION CAMP LABORERS", er, "CHINESE convict/slave-labor factories" FRIDMAN, or David "I LOVE REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS" BROOKS (just don't try to nail him on exactly why) - and no matter how prescient Krugman's predictions were, they were always buried deep in the editorial section of the Times once or twice a week and IGNORED by the editors and their hack writers who populated the far more influential FRONT PAGES of the Whore Times.
Krugman had to suffer the "dissing" of having his own paper, the NEW YORK SLIMES, IGNORE his own rock-solid recommendations in the way the Times covered the war costs and economic stories of the past 8 years of the Bush-Cheney dreadful administration, every month providing new confirmation that Krugman was correct, and the Times' Neo-Con "TAX-CUTS FOR the WEALTHY in TIME OF WAR" war-pigs were dreadfully wrong.
Well, we have now reached "DOW 8,000 and falling like a rock," these final weeks of 2008, and ALL of Krugman's PREDICTIONS have been BORN OUT to be true.
Sometimes satisfaction is such a fleeting creature - in the above video, Krugman DEMOLISHES liar GEORGE WILL's right-wing Talking Points that somehow "LIBERAL" economics CAUSED THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
Krugman takes George Will TO THE WOODSHED, explaining - "ECONOMIC POLICY has NOTHING to do with investment - IF you ALREADY HAVE 20 factories that are empty, laid off, and unproductive, BECAUSE THERE IS NO CONSUMER BUYING to stimilate new investment or production for those existing factories." DUH!
But George Will's above TEXT BOOK EXAMPLE of Right-Wing "EXPERTS" PULLING "FACTS" OUT OF THEIR ASS, is EXACTLY how the WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES, and other "major media" LYING WHORES have been RUINING the American news industry over the past 20 years, substituting their OWN DERANGED TALKING POINTS for genuine economic & social facts.
REAL "facts" such as GEORGE W. BUSH _WRECKED_ the TEXAS STATE BUDGET SURPLUS left to him by previous (Democratic) Governor ANN RICHARDS. Not only did Bush WRECK Texas' DEMOCRATIC BUDGET SURPLUS left to him by the previous gubernatorial administration back in the late 1990s, but he DID IT WHILE _SLASHING_ SOCIAL PROGRAMS _PROVEN_ to save state taxpayers in the long run!
THIS was THE SIGNATURE AGENDA of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000... THE SIGNATURE AGENDA that ARTHUR SULZBERGER and his LYING WHORES at the NEW YORK SLIMES pretended not to notice, as they acted like 9th grade locker-room bullies sneering at Vice President Al Gore's campaign.
Programs like pre-school, after-school, and health-care programs for Texas' poor and minority schoolchildren that kept those children IN SCHOOL, performing at a higher level, with higher GRADUATION RATES, OUT OF the Juvenile CRIMINAL System, and OUT of EMERGENCY ROOMS - THOSE are the programs the ENTITLED SON of a former president SLASHED for Texas citizens in need, ON BEHALF OF THE INSANELY GREEDY Texas upper-crust right-wing millionaires!
THE RIGHT-WING press/media ARE CHRONIC LAIRS with an ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA: an agenda that favors ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION and OUTSOURCING of US JOBS, to create a virtual WAGE-SLAVE servile UNDERCLASS here in America, so the Right-Wing Crime-lords like GEORGE WILL and DAVID BRODER and WILLIAM SAFIRE can "HARRUMPH!" as THEIR ECONOMIC and tax POLICIES TURN AMERICA into a THIRD-WORLD, GREAT DEPRESSION, poverty-wages nation.
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(Did we mention that as a wealthy sports franchise co-owner, LYIN' PIG George Will FAVORS TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES for major sports stadiums...???)
Saturday, November 01, 2008
How (w)Horrific is the US Media? NO ONE, ANYWHERE, ask McCain "IF you are an 'agent of change' WHERE do your policies DIFFER from President Bush's?"
How (w)Horrific is the US Media?
NO ONE, ANYWHERE, ask McCain "IF you are an 'agent of change,' WHERE do YOUR policies DIFFER from President Bush's?"
EIGHT, TEN, FIFTEEN WEEKS of John McCain's candidacy as the Repblican presidential nominee, the (w)horrific American press-media has NEVER asked of John McCain,
NO ONE, ANYWHERE, ask McCain "IF you are an 'agent of change,' WHERE do YOUR policies DIFFER from President Bush's?"
EIGHT, TEN, FIFTEEN WEEKS of John McCain's candidacy as the Repblican presidential nominee, the (w)horrific American press-media has NEVER asked of John McCain,
"WHERE, SPECIFICALLY, DO YOU DISAGREE WITH PRESIDENT BUSH's POLICIES?"
"IF you don't DISAGREE, PUBLICLY and vocally, with President Bush's policies, HOW THEN CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF AN AGENT OF CHANGE?"
(and VAGUE assertions that McCain will "end corruption" don't count - SPECIFIC EXAMPLES of CORRUPTION that Mr. Bush has NOT ended, that McCain would stop, would be the JOURNALISTIC MINIMUM of competence - a MINIMUM that the pathetic, corporate-whore US media REFUSES to live up to!)
Monday, October 20, 2008
Minnesota's WHORE Corporate Media CENSORS Michele Bachman's McCarthyesque comments from public 'news' consumption...
Minnesota's WHORE Corporate Media - the MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE and the St. PAUL PIONEER PRESS - have taken it upon themselves to CENSOR Minnesota Congresswoman MICHELE BACHMAN's McCARTHYESQUE DEMANDS for "investigations" into the "American" qualifications - of her fellow members of Congress! - the WHORE publishers of the Pioneer Press and Star-Tribune KEEPING THEIR READERS IN THE DARK about a leading political figure in the state, so as to give Bachman tHE APPEARANCE of of "mainstream respectability."
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/20/0337/9913/689/635947
The Pioneer Press and Star-Tribune - TWO MORE EXAMPLES of America's entitled WHORE corporate media, taking it as their right to LIE to American citizens (in this case, LIES of OMMISSION), om pursuit of the RADICAL RIGHT-WING AGENDA that has LOOTED THE US TREASURY, EXPORTED US JOBS, DISENFRANCHSED AMERICAN VOTERS, STOLEN US election, and made America DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL and FOREIGN CREDIT.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/20/0337/9913/689/635947
The Pioneer Press and Star-Tribune - TWO MORE EXAMPLES of America's entitled WHORE corporate media, taking it as their right to LIE to American citizens (in this case, LIES of OMMISSION), om pursuit of the RADICAL RIGHT-WING AGENDA that has LOOTED THE US TREASURY, EXPORTED US JOBS, DISENFRANCHSED AMERICAN VOTERS, STOLEN US election, and made America DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL and FOREIGN CREDIT.
HOW DISGUSTING & CRAVEN are the Media Whores? TWO WEEKS after Bush's $700 BILLION _SOCIALIZED_ BAILOUT of Wall St, Sarah Palin BASHES "socialism"!
HOW DISGUSTING, CRAVEN, LYING, STUPID, VENAL, and PROPAGANDISED are America's "Major Media" 'news' WHORES?
THEY FAIL to point out, even as SARAH PALIN is BASHING "socialism", that ALASKA is a NET TAX DOLLAR RECIPIENT, as are almost all rural "conservative" Republican-leaning "Red states."
Even more importantly, "the Media" FAILS to point out that Sarah Palin's running mate JOHN McCAIN JUST recently APPROVED OF President Bush's $700 BILLION _SOCIALIZED_ welfare BAILOUT of Wall Street bankers, brokerage houses, and insurers.... at workin' stiff American taxpayer expense!
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Sarah Palin's Alaska, receiving $1.87 in federal tax dollars for every dollar it sends in taxes to the US treasury, follows ONLY New Mexico for the highest ratio of SOCIALIZED NET TAX DOLLAR RECIPIENTS in America. uber "Blue State" New Jersey, by comparison, receives only 55-cents back for every tax dollar it sends to the US Treasury... America's tax structure MAKES SOCIALIZED WELFARE QUEENS of SARAH PALIN's OWN STATE, and the stupid, craven media does NOT even call the Alaska governor on her GROSS HYPOCRISY, IGNORANCE, and reactionary hate-baiting!
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MONTHS before the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke SOCIALIZED US Taxpayer BAILOUTS of WALL St. BIG, billionaire BANKS and brokerage houses, Elena Steier penned this scathing cartoon of AMERICA's ENTIRE FINANCIAL SYSTEM as SOCIALISM for big, insider, Republican administration connected millionaires and billion-dollar banks.
Well... TWO SHORT WEEKS after President Bush, his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and the entire "Big Business" wing of the Republican Party BEGGED, DEMANDED, FOUGHT FOR, and implemented a $700 billion SEVEN_HUNDRED_BILLION dollar SOCIALIZED BAILOUT of the nation's large banks and insurance companies...
...SARAH PALIN, Republican candidate for Vice President, is out on the campaign trail, TRYING TO DRUM UP SCORN and DERISION for "Socialized" redistribution of taxes, as part of Senator Obama's economic tax package for 2009-2010!
OF COURSE the MEDIA WHORES are ENTIRELY TOO CORRUPTED, IGNORANT, VENAL, and DISGUSTING to point out to Ms. Palin, that WE ALREADY HAVE A _SOCIALIZED_ _REDISTRIBUTION_ of taxes tax system: It is called "SOCIALIZING America's taxes FROM URBAN, "blue" cities and states, TO RURAL, RED STATES !!
AS IS NOW USUAL, what lying, Republican pigs ACCUSE Democrats of doing or intending to do, IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY, Republican HYPOCRITES, ARE DOING and intend to do more of!
The ENTIRE Bush-Cheney economic agenda has been one of REDISTRIBUTING America's wealth FROM THE WORKING CLASS taxpayers, TO THE venal, selfish, traitorous Rich who DEMAND TAX CUTS in TIME OF WAR while SHIFTING that ADDITIONAL TAX BURDEN of INTEREST ON THE BUSH DEFICITS to those very workin' stiff, OVERTAXED Americans!
VILE HYPOCRISY, thy name is "RIGHT-WING REPUBLICAN", and your treacherous, slavish, venal, captive lying whore media.
THEY FAIL to point out, even as SARAH PALIN is BASHING "socialism", that ALASKA is a NET TAX DOLLAR RECIPIENT, as are almost all rural "conservative" Republican-leaning "Red states."
Even more importantly, "the Media" FAILS to point out that Sarah Palin's running mate JOHN McCAIN JUST recently APPROVED OF President Bush's $700 BILLION _SOCIALIZED_ welfare BAILOUT of Wall Street bankers, brokerage houses, and insurers.... at workin' stiff American taxpayer expense!
----------------------------------------------------
Sarah Palin's Alaska, receiving $1.87 in federal tax dollars for every dollar it sends in taxes to the US treasury, follows ONLY New Mexico for the highest ratio of SOCIALIZED NET TAX DOLLAR RECIPIENTS in America. uber "Blue State" New Jersey, by comparison, receives only 55-cents back for every tax dollar it sends to the US Treasury... America's tax structure MAKES SOCIALIZED WELFARE QUEENS of SARAH PALIN's OWN STATE, and the stupid, craven media does NOT even call the Alaska governor on her GROSS HYPOCRISY, IGNORANCE, and reactionary hate-baiting!
-----------------------------------------------------------
MONTHS before the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke SOCIALIZED US Taxpayer BAILOUTS of WALL St. BIG, billionaire BANKS and brokerage houses, Elena Steier penned this scathing cartoon of AMERICA's ENTIRE FINANCIAL SYSTEM as SOCIALISM for big, insider, Republican administration connected millionaires and billion-dollar banks.
Well... TWO SHORT WEEKS after President Bush, his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and the entire "Big Business" wing of the Republican Party BEGGED, DEMANDED, FOUGHT FOR, and implemented a $700 billion SEVEN_HUNDRED_BILLION dollar SOCIALIZED BAILOUT of the nation's large banks and insurance companies...
...SARAH PALIN, Republican candidate for Vice President, is out on the campaign trail, TRYING TO DRUM UP SCORN and DERISION for "Socialized" redistribution of taxes, as part of Senator Obama's economic tax package for 2009-2010!
OF COURSE the MEDIA WHORES are ENTIRELY TOO CORRUPTED, IGNORANT, VENAL, and DISGUSTING to point out to Ms. Palin, that WE ALREADY HAVE A _SOCIALIZED_ _REDISTRIBUTION_ of taxes tax system: It is called "SOCIALIZING America's taxes FROM URBAN, "blue" cities and states, TO RURAL, RED STATES !!
AS IS NOW USUAL, what lying, Republican pigs ACCUSE Democrats of doing or intending to do, IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY, Republican HYPOCRITES, ARE DOING and intend to do more of!
The ENTIRE Bush-Cheney economic agenda has been one of REDISTRIBUTING America's wealth FROM THE WORKING CLASS taxpayers, TO THE venal, selfish, traitorous Rich who DEMAND TAX CUTS in TIME OF WAR while SHIFTING that ADDITIONAL TAX BURDEN of INTEREST ON THE BUSH DEFICITS to those very workin' stiff, OVERTAXED Americans!
VILE HYPOCRISY, thy name is "RIGHT-WING REPUBLICAN", and your treacherous, slavish, venal, captive lying whore media.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Rush Limbaugh - CAUGHT IN ACT of SQUEALING like the DRUG-ADDICT, HYPOCRITE, ENTITLED, lying, squealing PIG that he is...
We haven't posted many, if any, post on the UBER-LYING HYPOCRITE BIGGEST PIG of the ENTIRE "major media", but it would be RUSH LIMBAUGH - and we are DELIGHTED to see Chicago Sun-Times Columnist MARY MITCHELL slice-and-dice the lying, sleaze-ball, smear-mongering, hypocrite - did we mention LYING - Limbaugh right back into his SLEAZY little slime-pit at CLEAR-CHANNEL radio - the radio network that has ENABLED LIMBAUGH for a DECADE by CENSORING those who can contest that DISGUSTING LYING PIG with actual facts, data, and research....
http://eurweb.com/story/eur47744.cfm
http://eurweb.com/story/eur47744.cfm
Chicago sun Times columnist Mary Mitchell has struck a serious nerve with conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Actually, she phrases his actions as squealing like a pig after its tail had been stepped on...
US press/media IS IN THE PAID PROFESSIONAL LIARS business.....
Robert Parry - the great investigative reporter who became CENSORED from the American corporate media before his "IRAN-CONTRA" reports were VINDICATED despite an OFFICIAL, authoritarian, power-hungry WASHINGTON that PRETENDED that the United States under President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush WAS NOT running a secret and illegal series of small wars and genocidal "ethnic cleansing" campaigns in Central- and South America during the 1980s...
Robert Parry hits the head of the nail about the DC/New York/Chicago/LA corporate media - the press/media THAT IS CONSTANTLY and CONTINUALLY trying to sell the American public A BILL OF GOODS, to BLACK IN TO WHITE, to turn night in to day and day in to night; to make Up seem "down" and Down seem up.... almost across the board, on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE OF IMPORTANCE TO THE AMERICA PEOPLE, the CORPORATE WHORE MASTERS of the US Media - in the office suites of the WASHINGTON COWARDLY POST and the NEW YORK LYING TIMES, and almost every "major" media outlet downstream of those two quasi-governmental titans, are CHRONICALLY and CONTINUALLY LYING to the American people.
(Today's example: THOM HARTMANN points out that, even thought today's 'news' headlines read "SOCIALIZATION OF US BANKS", all that Bush, Paulson, and Bernake are doing is PILING MORE _TAXPAYER DEBT_ on the very bankers who LED AMERICA INTO THIS CREDIT EXPANSION/CONTRACTION NIGHTMARE...
Paul Waldman: AMERICA's MEDIA WHORES _ENABLE_ Right-Wing vast destruction of popular programs, and Treasury looting corruption, by propagating the Republican Party's PERMANENT SMEAR CAMPAIGN....
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_permanent_smear_campaign
Robert Parry: Media WHORES COMPLICITY in Right-Wing ATTACK campaigns and SMEAR-MONGERING have CONTRIBUTED TO THE DECLINE of the American economy....
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/101308.html
Robert Parry hits the head of the nail about the DC/New York/Chicago/LA corporate media - the press/media THAT IS CONSTANTLY and CONTINUALLY trying to sell the American public A BILL OF GOODS, to BLACK IN TO WHITE, to turn night in to day and day in to night; to make Up seem "down" and Down seem up.... almost across the board, on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE OF IMPORTANCE TO THE AMERICA PEOPLE, the CORPORATE WHORE MASTERS of the US Media - in the office suites of the WASHINGTON COWARDLY POST and the NEW YORK LYING TIMES, and almost every "major" media outlet downstream of those two quasi-governmental titans, are CHRONICALLY and CONTINUALLY LYING to the American people.
(Today's example: THOM HARTMANN points out that, even thought today's 'news' headlines read "SOCIALIZATION OF US BANKS", all that Bush, Paulson, and Bernake are doing is PILING MORE _TAXPAYER DEBT_ on the very bankers who LED AMERICA INTO THIS CREDIT EXPANSION/CONTRACTION NIGHTMARE...
Paul Waldman: AMERICA's MEDIA WHORES _ENABLE_ Right-Wing vast destruction of popular programs, and Treasury looting corruption, by propagating the Republican Party's PERMANENT SMEAR CAMPAIGN....
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_permanent_smear_campaign
Robert Parry: Media WHORES COMPLICITY in Right-Wing ATTACK campaigns and SMEAR-MONGERING have CONTRIBUTED TO THE DECLINE of the American economy....
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/101308.html
<< The story doesn’t explain all that’s gone wrong in the past eight years, but it reveals how aggressive right-wing operatives, aided and abetted by a lazy or complicit news media, can create an impression for millions of voters that is nearly the opposite of the truth. >>
HOW STUPID, VENAL, CORRUPT, LYING, and DELUDED is America's press-Media? JOE SCARBOROUGH BELIEVES the GARBAGE attack ads about "William Ayers" !!
HOW STUPID, VENAL, LYING, CORRUPT, DELUDED and PROPAGANDISTIC is the American press-Media?
Well, for example today, REPUBLICAN former Congressman JOE SCARBOROUGH, on his morning 'news' talk show, Mr. Scarborough IS ACTUALLY STUPID ENOUGH to BELIEVE the GARBAGE McCain campaign attack ads about "William Ayers" !!
Mr. Scarborough said this morning, "IF ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE in the primary had ANY RELATIONSHIP with William Ayers, HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS WOULD ATTACK HIM FOR IT."
HELLO JOE? YOU IGNORAMUS!
WILLIAM AYERS was PUT ON THE CHICAGO "Annenberg Challenge" CHARITY FOUNDATION BOARD by.... _REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE_ WALTER ANNENBERG!
WALTER ANNEBERG, Joe, you stupid, Lying, Deluded IGNORAMUS... THE Walter Annenber WHO WAS RICHARD NIXON's AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND! THE Walter Annenberg who was a CLOSE FRIEND to RON and NANCY REAGAN. THE Walter Annenberg who was an associate and donor to George H.W. Bush (Sr.) THE Mrs. Walter Annenberg who, according to one source, is THE #2 DONOR to the current McCAIN - PALIN CAMPAIGN!
The Current REPUBLICAN DOMINATED US MEDIA TALKING POINTS that "BARACK OBAMA PALS AROUND WITH TERRORIST William Ayers!" for SITTING ON THE ANNENBERG CHALLENGE CHARITY FOUNDATION BOARD - set up and run by REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE WALTER ANNENBERG - is as IGNORANT and MURDEROUSLY CRUEL as THE NAZI PARTY in 1930s German BLAMING ALL OF GERMANY's post-WWI economic problems on "the Jews'!
And USING "MURDER" in this context _IS NOT HYPERBOLE_! -
ALREADY _THIS YEAR_, we have seen TWO MURDEROUS ATTACKS by DELUDED Right-Wing Gunman, DRIVEN TO MURDEROUS HATE BY THE murderously ghoulish, lying, RIGHT-WING ATTACK MEDIA.
IN BOTH the TENNESSE CHURCH SHOOTING that killed two and wounded others, AND the murder by shooting of the ARKANSAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY Chairman, the GUNMEN WERE KNOWN to have listened to RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO, and both actually had purchased (and presumably read) SEAN HANNITY, BILL O'REILLY, and/or MICHAEL SAVAGE's HATE SCREEDS.
Well, for example today, REPUBLICAN former Congressman JOE SCARBOROUGH, on his morning 'news' talk show, Mr. Scarborough IS ACTUALLY STUPID ENOUGH to BELIEVE the GARBAGE McCain campaign attack ads about "William Ayers" !!
Mr. Scarborough said this morning, "IF ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE in the primary had ANY RELATIONSHIP with William Ayers, HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS WOULD ATTACK HIM FOR IT."
HELLO JOE? YOU IGNORAMUS!
WILLIAM AYERS was PUT ON THE CHICAGO "Annenberg Challenge" CHARITY FOUNDATION BOARD by.... _REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE_ WALTER ANNENBERG!
WALTER ANNEBERG, Joe, you stupid, Lying, Deluded IGNORAMUS... THE Walter Annenber WHO WAS RICHARD NIXON's AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND! THE Walter Annenberg who was a CLOSE FRIEND to RON and NANCY REAGAN. THE Walter Annenberg who was an associate and donor to George H.W. Bush (Sr.) THE Mrs. Walter Annenberg who, according to one source, is THE #2 DONOR to the current McCAIN - PALIN CAMPAIGN!
The Current REPUBLICAN DOMINATED US MEDIA TALKING POINTS that "BARACK OBAMA PALS AROUND WITH TERRORIST William Ayers!" for SITTING ON THE ANNENBERG CHALLENGE CHARITY FOUNDATION BOARD - set up and run by REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE WALTER ANNENBERG - is as IGNORANT and MURDEROUSLY CRUEL as THE NAZI PARTY in 1930s German BLAMING ALL OF GERMANY's post-WWI economic problems on "the Jews'!
And USING "MURDER" in this context _IS NOT HYPERBOLE_! -
ALREADY _THIS YEAR_, we have seen TWO MURDEROUS ATTACKS by DELUDED Right-Wing Gunman, DRIVEN TO MURDEROUS HATE BY THE murderously ghoulish, lying, RIGHT-WING ATTACK MEDIA.
IN BOTH the TENNESSE CHURCH SHOOTING that killed two and wounded others, AND the murder by shooting of the ARKANSAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY Chairman, the GUNMEN WERE KNOWN to have listened to RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO, and both actually had purchased (and presumably read) SEAN HANNITY, BILL O'REILLY, and/or MICHAEL SAVAGE's HATE SCREEDS.
Friday, October 10, 2008
George Will, John McCain, Sarah Palin, corporate media TRY TO BLAME ENTIRE Economic Crisis on... MINORITY (Black) Americans & Fannie Mae!!
BRAVO! For David Fiderer - he is DECONSTRUCTING the attempts by George Will and the Right-Wing Media - at the urging of John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party - TO BLAME THE _ENTIRE_ US and world financial economic crisis on MINORITIES (BLACK AMERICANS) in general, and FANNIE MAE in particular.
We here at MediaWhoresUSA have _NO_ doubt that 'Democratic' Party leaders have been in the middle of the DEREGULATION agenda, and have not stood up forcefully enough to the climate of greed and lack of oversight on Wall St. and in the financial markets.
BUT TO BLAME THIS _ENTIRE_ ECONOMIC CRISIS on Fannie Mae is patently absurd - especially since THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS IN CONTROL of BOTH the White House AND CONGRESS from 2002 to 2006. As recently as JULY 2006, PRESIDENT Bush's OWN Secretary of Treasury QUASHED RUMORS that Fannie Mae needed a bailout, Treasury Secretary Paulson flatly asserting that there would be no bailout for Fannie Mae.
BUT - IF Sec. Paulson had to ACKNOWLEDGE the POTENTIAL need for a bailout at Fannie Mae, SHOULD HE NOT HAVE ADDRESSED a BUDDING CRISIS THERE long before September and October 2008?????
===================================
Wagging the Dog With Fannie Mae: Republicans Explain the Financial Crisis With Racist Mythology
David Fiderer
Posted October 9, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/wagging-the-dog-with-fann_b_133388.html
"Is this video a lie?" wrote someone in response to my last piece on HuffPost.
No, "lie" is an inadequate description. I uploaded the video link, seen by two million people before me, and gasped at the artful perversion of history. It was like a post-millennium version of The Birth of a Nation. In that silent film classic, a pivotal scene is prefaced by the title card:
"AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the State House of Representatives of South Carolina as it was in 1870."
Then we see black legislators in session, drinking whiskey, eating chicken, resting bare feet on their desks, and leering after white women. As J. Lapper wrote:
"This is also the first instance of "bait and switch" in the film. Prior to this, as noted above, [Director D.W.] Griffith used 'historical facsimiles' to give the film an air of historical accuracy...The subversive logic being, 'Earlier we saw facsimiles of Sherman's March, Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination. We know those are true. This must be too.'"
The updated "historical facsimile" from NakedEmperorNews.com, is just as dishonest and just as racially incendiary, since it has the semblance of reasonableness and reality. The hero at the Congressional hearings is the courtly southern gentleman, Republican Richard Baker, whose calls for regulatory oversight are drowned out by the shiftless uncouth blacks: Maxine Waters, Gregory Meeks, Lacy Clay, Artur Davis and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, aided by one white guy, Barney Frank.
[Update at 9:00 am October 10, 2008: Yesterday John McCain echoed this video by saying, "Democrat members of Congress fought against reform and it is a matter of record and hearings that they said everything was fine." Barney Frank was one of the "willing co-conspirators."]
To appreciate the mendacity of the video, you need to understand the history of what happened at Fannie Mae, and the causes of the current financial crisis. You'd be hard pressed to get that knowledge from mainstream media, whose piecemeal reporting comes across like blind men describing an elephant.
Into this void of understanding, Republicans have sought to absolve themselves of blame with a racist mythology that has gone viral. George Will, a chief proponent, neatly summarized the narrative on This Week last Sunday:
"In fact, much of the crisis we're in today is because the government set out to fiddle the market. That is, we had regulation in effect with legislation that would criminalize as racism and discrimination if you didn't lend to nonproductive borrowers. We had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac existed to rig the housing market because the market would not have put people in homes they could not have afforded."
Will's narrative is about as accurate as D.W. Griffith's portrayal of Reconstruction. Fox News invokes it constantly. The ABC commentator invokes four different phenomena, none of which he understands:
1. The financial problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
2. The mission of Fannie and Freddie,
3. The Community Reinvestment Act,
4. The greater mortgage crisis.
To refute the lie, we need to address these issues one at a time.
What does the video have to do with Fannie Mae's collapse? Nothing.
The best way to understand what happened is to start off with an understanding of when things happened. Therein lies the bait-and-switch. The financial problems at Fannie Mae began after these Congressional hearings, which were conducted a few weeks before the November 2004 elections. Fannie Mae's troubles were caused by Daniel Mudd, who reversed the policies of his predecessor, Franklin Raines, when he became CEO in December 2004. The New York Times laid it out very clearly:
"[B]y the time Mr. Mudd became Fannie's chief executive in 2004, his company was under siege. Competitors were snatching lucrative parts of its business. Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income borrowers. Lenders were threatening to sell directly to Wall Street unless Fannie bought a bigger chunk of their riskiest loans.
"So Mr. Mudd made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to executives.
[...]
"Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in loans to risky borrowers -- more than three times as much as in all its earlier years combined, according to company filings and industry data."
Democrats Supported Regulatory Oversight But Objected to a White House Power Grab
So if the October 2004 hearings did not address concerns associated with Fannie's risky mortgages, what was everyone talking about? Something quite different, though an ignoramus like George Will could easily conflate the two concepts. An Administration report had skewered Fannie for engaging in some dodgy accounting practices - relating to timing differences over the recognition of income - which had a slight impact on its overall financial metrics. Fannie and its management deserved to be criticized and increased regulatory oversight was absolutely appropriate. But what the House Democrats in the video were objecting to was the Administration's level of overkill. From how they saw things, the Bush Administration was using the pretext of regulatory oversight to accomplish a power grab that would compromise the mission of Fannie Mae. Here's what Barney Frank said at the time:
"I believe we were well on the way, the chairman and I and the staffs, to putting together a bill that would have enhanced the regulator and could have passed. What stopped progress on a new bill was the Bush administration's determination to go beyond safety and soundness and into provisions that would have restricted the housing function.
"To the extent that people played games [with accounting rules] to get bonuses, I'm outraged. People making that much money, let me put it this way, at the level of compensation of the top officers of Fannie Mae, they should get bonuses if they rush into a burning building a rescue a kid, maybe a cat, but not for doing their job. I think it is unseemly of them to be getting bonuses in the first place for doing what they're getting paid very well to do.
[...]
"To the extent that there was manipulation, that is very wrong and should be penalized. But I've seen nothing in here that suggests that the safety and soundness are at issue, and I think it serves us badly to raise safety and soundness as a kind of a general shibboleth, when it does not seem to be the issue."
Banks Governed by The Community Reinvestment Act Were Not The Ones Who Caused the Subprime Market to Expand
Daniel Gross in Slate attacks a lot of the same mythology discussed herein, focusing specifically on phony claims pertaining to the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been around for 30 years and never affected the soundness of the mortgage markets. The CRA never suggested that anyone compromise credit standards and it didn't apply to the mortgage lenders or investment banks who were pumping up subprime mortgages.
Hank Paulson: The mortgage crisis was caused by events that began during the run up to the 2004 election and ended soon after the Democrats took Congress in early 2007.
Again, to understand what happened, begin with understanding when things happened. In this regard, there's no secret. Everyone in financial services knows when and how things happened. Hank Paulson's report to the President reflected the common knowledge expressed by Treasury, the Fed, the SEC and the CFTC:
"The turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for US. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into early 2007. "[Italics in original text.]
We see this in all the numbers. According to a survey by the New York Fed, about 77% of subprime mortgages and 85% of Alt-A mortgages were issued after 2004. What happened in 2004? Subprime mortgage securitizations were able to take off because, as Bloomberg reported, in August 2004 Moody's and Standard and Poor's loosened their standards for rating mortgage backed securities, which had traded in a highly liquid market for almost 20 years. The impact of the rating agencies' practices cannot be overstated. To date, banks have recognized about $500 billion in losses on subprime mortgages, the lion's share of which were packaged in securities originally rated AAA, i.e. presumed to always be salable at close to par.
In 2004 short term interest rates, reduced by Alan Greenspan to stimulate the economy going in to the election cycle, reached their lowest point, enabling certain buyers to get variable rate mortgages at teaser rates of 3% for the first two years.
Nowhere in Paulson's report will you find anything that suggests that the financial crisis was triggered by, as George Will put it, regulation that compelling lending to "non-productive borrowers" or by Fannie or Freddie, which had been around for decades, "rigging the housing market."
As a final aside, you may remember this little gem from the McCain campaign. It's an ad that claims Obama relied on economic advice from Franklin Raines, which wasn't actually true. What do you think McCain was getting at?
We here at MediaWhoresUSA have _NO_ doubt that 'Democratic' Party leaders have been in the middle of the DEREGULATION agenda, and have not stood up forcefully enough to the climate of greed and lack of oversight on Wall St. and in the financial markets.
BUT TO BLAME THIS _ENTIRE_ ECONOMIC CRISIS on Fannie Mae is patently absurd - especially since THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS IN CONTROL of BOTH the White House AND CONGRESS from 2002 to 2006. As recently as JULY 2006, PRESIDENT Bush's OWN Secretary of Treasury QUASHED RUMORS that Fannie Mae needed a bailout, Treasury Secretary Paulson flatly asserting that there would be no bailout for Fannie Mae.
BUT - IF Sec. Paulson had to ACKNOWLEDGE the POTENTIAL need for a bailout at Fannie Mae, SHOULD HE NOT HAVE ADDRESSED a BUDDING CRISIS THERE long before September and October 2008?????
===================================
Wagging the Dog With Fannie Mae: Republicans Explain the Financial Crisis With Racist Mythology
David Fiderer
Posted October 9, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/wagging-the-dog-with-fann_b_133388.html
"Is this video a lie?" wrote someone in response to my last piece on HuffPost.
No, "lie" is an inadequate description. I uploaded the video link, seen by two million people before me, and gasped at the artful perversion of history. It was like a post-millennium version of The Birth of a Nation. In that silent film classic, a pivotal scene is prefaced by the title card:
"AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the State House of Representatives of South Carolina as it was in 1870."
Then we see black legislators in session, drinking whiskey, eating chicken, resting bare feet on their desks, and leering after white women. As J. Lapper wrote:
"This is also the first instance of "bait and switch" in the film. Prior to this, as noted above, [Director D.W.] Griffith used 'historical facsimiles' to give the film an air of historical accuracy...The subversive logic being, 'Earlier we saw facsimiles of Sherman's March, Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination. We know those are true. This must be too.'"
The updated "historical facsimile" from NakedEmperorNews.com, is just as dishonest and just as racially incendiary, since it has the semblance of reasonableness and reality. The hero at the Congressional hearings is the courtly southern gentleman, Republican Richard Baker, whose calls for regulatory oversight are drowned out by the shiftless uncouth blacks: Maxine Waters, Gregory Meeks, Lacy Clay, Artur Davis and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, aided by one white guy, Barney Frank.
[Update at 9:00 am October 10, 2008: Yesterday John McCain echoed this video by saying, "Democrat members of Congress fought against reform and it is a matter of record and hearings that they said everything was fine." Barney Frank was one of the "willing co-conspirators."]
To appreciate the mendacity of the video, you need to understand the history of what happened at Fannie Mae, and the causes of the current financial crisis. You'd be hard pressed to get that knowledge from mainstream media, whose piecemeal reporting comes across like blind men describing an elephant.
Into this void of understanding, Republicans have sought to absolve themselves of blame with a racist mythology that has gone viral. George Will, a chief proponent, neatly summarized the narrative on This Week last Sunday:
"In fact, much of the crisis we're in today is because the government set out to fiddle the market. That is, we had regulation in effect with legislation that would criminalize as racism and discrimination if you didn't lend to nonproductive borrowers. We had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac existed to rig the housing market because the market would not have put people in homes they could not have afforded."
Will's narrative is about as accurate as D.W. Griffith's portrayal of Reconstruction. Fox News invokes it constantly. The ABC commentator invokes four different phenomena, none of which he understands:
1. The financial problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
2. The mission of Fannie and Freddie,
3. The Community Reinvestment Act,
4. The greater mortgage crisis.
To refute the lie, we need to address these issues one at a time.
What does the video have to do with Fannie Mae's collapse? Nothing.
The best way to understand what happened is to start off with an understanding of when things happened. Therein lies the bait-and-switch. The financial problems at Fannie Mae began after these Congressional hearings, which were conducted a few weeks before the November 2004 elections. Fannie Mae's troubles were caused by Daniel Mudd, who reversed the policies of his predecessor, Franklin Raines, when he became CEO in December 2004. The New York Times laid it out very clearly:
"[B]y the time Mr. Mudd became Fannie's chief executive in 2004, his company was under siege. Competitors were snatching lucrative parts of its business. Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income borrowers. Lenders were threatening to sell directly to Wall Street unless Fannie bought a bigger chunk of their riskiest loans.
"So Mr. Mudd made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to executives.
[...]
"Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in loans to risky borrowers -- more than three times as much as in all its earlier years combined, according to company filings and industry data."
Democrats Supported Regulatory Oversight But Objected to a White House Power Grab
So if the October 2004 hearings did not address concerns associated with Fannie's risky mortgages, what was everyone talking about? Something quite different, though an ignoramus like George Will could easily conflate the two concepts. An Administration report had skewered Fannie for engaging in some dodgy accounting practices - relating to timing differences over the recognition of income - which had a slight impact on its overall financial metrics. Fannie and its management deserved to be criticized and increased regulatory oversight was absolutely appropriate. But what the House Democrats in the video were objecting to was the Administration's level of overkill. From how they saw things, the Bush Administration was using the pretext of regulatory oversight to accomplish a power grab that would compromise the mission of Fannie Mae. Here's what Barney Frank said at the time:
"I believe we were well on the way, the chairman and I and the staffs, to putting together a bill that would have enhanced the regulator and could have passed. What stopped progress on a new bill was the Bush administration's determination to go beyond safety and soundness and into provisions that would have restricted the housing function.
"To the extent that people played games [with accounting rules] to get bonuses, I'm outraged. People making that much money, let me put it this way, at the level of compensation of the top officers of Fannie Mae, they should get bonuses if they rush into a burning building a rescue a kid, maybe a cat, but not for doing their job. I think it is unseemly of them to be getting bonuses in the first place for doing what they're getting paid very well to do.
[...]
"To the extent that there was manipulation, that is very wrong and should be penalized. But I've seen nothing in here that suggests that the safety and soundness are at issue, and I think it serves us badly to raise safety and soundness as a kind of a general shibboleth, when it does not seem to be the issue."
Banks Governed by The Community Reinvestment Act Were Not The Ones Who Caused the Subprime Market to Expand
Daniel Gross in Slate attacks a lot of the same mythology discussed herein, focusing specifically on phony claims pertaining to the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been around for 30 years and never affected the soundness of the mortgage markets. The CRA never suggested that anyone compromise credit standards and it didn't apply to the mortgage lenders or investment banks who were pumping up subprime mortgages.
Hank Paulson: The mortgage crisis was caused by events that began during the run up to the 2004 election and ended soon after the Democrats took Congress in early 2007.
Again, to understand what happened, begin with understanding when things happened. In this regard, there's no secret. Everyone in financial services knows when and how things happened. Hank Paulson's report to the President reflected the common knowledge expressed by Treasury, the Fed, the SEC and the CFTC:
"The turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for US. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into early 2007. "[Italics in original text.]
We see this in all the numbers. According to a survey by the New York Fed, about 77% of subprime mortgages and 85% of Alt-A mortgages were issued after 2004. What happened in 2004? Subprime mortgage securitizations were able to take off because, as Bloomberg reported, in August 2004 Moody's and Standard and Poor's loosened their standards for rating mortgage backed securities, which had traded in a highly liquid market for almost 20 years. The impact of the rating agencies' practices cannot be overstated. To date, banks have recognized about $500 billion in losses on subprime mortgages, the lion's share of which were packaged in securities originally rated AAA, i.e. presumed to always be salable at close to par.
In 2004 short term interest rates, reduced by Alan Greenspan to stimulate the economy going in to the election cycle, reached their lowest point, enabling certain buyers to get variable rate mortgages at teaser rates of 3% for the first two years.
Nowhere in Paulson's report will you find anything that suggests that the financial crisis was triggered by, as George Will put it, regulation that compelling lending to "non-productive borrowers" or by Fannie or Freddie, which had been around for decades, "rigging the housing market."
As a final aside, you may remember this little gem from the McCain campaign. It's an ad that claims Obama relied on economic advice from Franklin Raines, which wasn't actually true. What do you think McCain was getting at?
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Tom Freidman.... DITCHES the NEO-CON INSANITY held by his NY Times stablemates... and joins the "Sanity in American Media" crowd again?
WOW - THE Bush-Cheney ECONOMY IS CRASHING SO QUICKLY, that EVEN UBER- Neo-CON _whore_ THOMAS FRIEDMAN - privileged neo-con Times' hawker of Neo-Con FANTASY ("EXPORT AMERICAN JOBS!" "IMPORT MORE OIL!" "THE WEALTHY DESERVE EVERY DIME OF PROFITS THEY GET!" "TAX CUTS FOR RICH IN TIME OF WAR!" "LET the WAGE-SLAVE PEONS PAY FOR THE WAR, the DEFICITS, AND INTEREST ON those Bush Deficits!"; "American Taxpayers SHOULD BE FORCED TO BAIL OUT Corporate ROBBER BARONS!" "THE WAR IN IRAQ is a JUST, justifiable, AND HOLY!") -
- well, neo-con Tom FINALLY returns to his roots - as a PRAGMATIC LIBERAL. We have saved a photo-copy of a similar Friedman column - written in the early 1990s at the peak of the BUSH-1 RECESSION - comparing Conservative's calls then for "LESS TAXES!" and "LESS GOVERNMENT!", during the Bush-1 Recession, with LIBERIA, then ruled by MASS-MURDEROUS WAR-LORDS RUN AMOK.
The Ft.Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel published Friedman's syndicated column common-sense appeal to America's common-sense that day, printed Friedman's column under a picture of.... a Liberian warlord's foot-soldier walking down a burned out, desolate dirt street, carrying two decapitated heads by their hair or a string.
Well, it has only taken just under 20 years, and just over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS of American INVESTOR MONEY VANISHED INTO THIN AIR this past week, alone, for overpaid Times-boy Friedman to REGAIN HIS SENSES - but in this case better late than never....
=========================================
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
by Thomas L. Friedman
Published: October 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.....
continued at -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html
- well, neo-con Tom FINALLY returns to his roots - as a PRAGMATIC LIBERAL. We have saved a photo-copy of a similar Friedman column - written in the early 1990s at the peak of the BUSH-1 RECESSION - comparing Conservative's calls then for "LESS TAXES!" and "LESS GOVERNMENT!", during the Bush-1 Recession, with LIBERIA, then ruled by MASS-MURDEROUS WAR-LORDS RUN AMOK.
The Ft.Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel published Friedman's syndicated column common-sense appeal to America's common-sense that day, printed Friedman's column under a picture of.... a Liberian warlord's foot-soldier walking down a burned out, desolate dirt street, carrying two decapitated heads by their hair or a string.
Well, it has only taken just under 20 years, and just over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS of American INVESTOR MONEY VANISHED INTO THIN AIR this past week, alone, for overpaid Times-boy Friedman to REGAIN HIS SENSES - but in this case better late than never....
=========================================
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
by Thomas L. Friedman
Published: October 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.....
continued at -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Media Whores may not be in Bed with McCain.. but they love the FREE BOOZE!
<< To a greater degree than any candidate in thirty years, McCain offered reporters the three things they want most: total access all the time, an endless stream of amusing quotes, and vast quantities of free booze." >>
As quoted by Eric Alterman and George Zornik in their article in The Nation magazine, quoting an excerpt from _REPUBLICAN_ media personality Tucker Carlson's book, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
Tucker's quote is just one of several dozen examples of how reporters put playing courtiers to McCain's campaign court as a far greater priority than analyzing how the senators policies, votes, and positions would impact the American economy and foreign policy... or even how McCain's positions have impacted America in the past. (For example, McCain's role as a KEATING FIVE Senator, running a WASHINGTON PROTECTION RACKET for Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan before it went belly-up during the S&L Crisis - a debacle that cost American taxpayers an estimated TWO BILLION DOLLARS for Keating's Lincoln S&L losses, alone.)
IN McCain's defense, THE OTHER FOUR of the "Keating Five" Senators.... WERE DEMOCRATS!
Nominal Democrat "leaders" NANCY PELOSI and HARRY REID this week REPRISE the role of the KEATING FOUR Democrats RUNNING A PROTECTION RACKET for Keating's S&L... Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (et al) all but bowing down and Kissing King Henry Paulson's feet, in order to shower Paulson with, not one billion, not two billion, but SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION taxpayer DOLLARS in the Paulson-Pelosi-Bush "CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY for Wall St. in 2008" WALL Street millionaires BAILOUT BILL!
============================================
Loving John McCain
By Eric Alterman & George Zornick
June 19, 2008 (the July 7, 2008 edition of The Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
<< But even though we might be taken with McCain personally, we would like to think that we would resist the urge to offer the sort of spontaneous testimonials to his character that have gushed from the pens of so many MSM journalists. These would include calling McCain "a cool dude" (Jake Tapper, Salon); "an original, imaginative, and at times inspiring candidate" (Jacob Weisberg, Slate); "a man of unshakable character, willing to stand up for his convictions" (the late R.W. Apple Jr., New York Times); "a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek); "blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles.... What he does do is what he's always done, play it as straight as possible.... The maverick candidate still" (Terry Moran, ABC News's Nightline); "worldly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology...willing to defy his own party and forge compromise...pragmatic in the service of the national interest...rises to passion when he believes that America's best values are at stake" (Michael Hirsch, Newsweek); "kind of like a Martin Luther" (Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball); "the perfect candidate to deal with what challenges we face as a country" (Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Morning Joe); "rises above the pack...eloquent, as only a prisoner of war can be" (David Nyhan, Boston Globe); "the bravest candidate in the presidential race" (Dana Milbank, Washington Post); "an affable man of zealous, unbending beliefs" and "the hero [who] still does things his own way" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post); and who, in "an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties...is the rare exception who is not assumed to be willing to sacrifice personal credibility to prevail in any contest" (David Broder, Washington Post).
Believe us, we could go on (and on and on...). Suffice it to say that no candidate since John F. Kennedy, and perhaps none since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has enjoyed such cozy relations with the press. >>
As quoted by Eric Alterman and George Zornik in their article in The Nation magazine, quoting an excerpt from _REPUBLICAN_ media personality Tucker Carlson's book, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
Tucker's quote is just one of several dozen examples of how reporters put playing courtiers to McCain's campaign court as a far greater priority than analyzing how the senators policies, votes, and positions would impact the American economy and foreign policy... or even how McCain's positions have impacted America in the past. (For example, McCain's role as a KEATING FIVE Senator, running a WASHINGTON PROTECTION RACKET for Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan before it went belly-up during the S&L Crisis - a debacle that cost American taxpayers an estimated TWO BILLION DOLLARS for Keating's Lincoln S&L losses, alone.)
IN McCain's defense, THE OTHER FOUR of the "Keating Five" Senators.... WERE DEMOCRATS!
Nominal Democrat "leaders" NANCY PELOSI and HARRY REID this week REPRISE the role of the KEATING FOUR Democrats RUNNING A PROTECTION RACKET for Keating's S&L... Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (et al) all but bowing down and Kissing King Henry Paulson's feet, in order to shower Paulson with, not one billion, not two billion, but SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION taxpayer DOLLARS in the Paulson-Pelosi-Bush "CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY for Wall St. in 2008" WALL Street millionaires BAILOUT BILL!
============================================
Loving John McCain
By Eric Alterman & George Zornick
June 19, 2008 (the July 7, 2008 edition of The Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
<< But even though we might be taken with McCain personally, we would like to think that we would resist the urge to offer the sort of spontaneous testimonials to his character that have gushed from the pens of so many MSM journalists. These would include calling McCain "a cool dude" (Jake Tapper, Salon); "an original, imaginative, and at times inspiring candidate" (Jacob Weisberg, Slate); "a man of unshakable character, willing to stand up for his convictions" (the late R.W. Apple Jr., New York Times); "a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek); "blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles.... What he does do is what he's always done, play it as straight as possible.... The maverick candidate still" (Terry Moran, ABC News's Nightline); "worldly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology...willing to defy his own party and forge compromise...pragmatic in the service of the national interest...rises to passion when he believes that America's best values are at stake" (Michael Hirsch, Newsweek); "kind of like a Martin Luther" (Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball); "the perfect candidate to deal with what challenges we face as a country" (Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Morning Joe); "rises above the pack...eloquent, as only a prisoner of war can be" (David Nyhan, Boston Globe); "the bravest candidate in the presidential race" (Dana Milbank, Washington Post); "an affable man of zealous, unbending beliefs" and "the hero [who] still does things his own way" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post); and who, in "an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties...is the rare exception who is not assumed to be willing to sacrifice personal credibility to prevail in any contest" (David Broder, Washington Post).
Believe us, we could go on (and on and on...). Suffice it to say that no candidate since John F. Kennedy, and perhaps none since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has enjoyed such cozy relations with the press. >>
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
NY TIMES WHORES David Brooks, Bob Herbert pour SCORN on taxpayers for WALL STREET's FAILURES...
NY TIMES WHORES David Brooks, Bob Herbert pour SCORN on taxpayers and voters for WALL STREET's FAILURES...
#1. "Revolt of the Nihilists" - NY Times' David Brooks whines "GIVE US New York Wall St. con-men MORE OF YOUR consumer/taxpayer money - or else!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30brooks.html
#2. Bob Herbert echoes his nyt op-ed stablemate Brook's scorn and derision for American taxpayers, homeowners, and consumers (the "little people") and their congressmen - they are all -
"MADMEN!" shouts Herbert, IF THEY DON'T HAND OVER ONE TRILLION taxoayer DOLLARS (put on our national credit card, at daily compounding interest at that) to our Wall St. banker friends!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30herbert.html
Mr. Herbert and Mr. Brooks - just two more of the UNPRINCIPLED LYING HACKS at Arthur Sulzberger's NY LYIN' TIMES, the organization that PRETENDS it is looking out for American consumers, taxpayers, and citizens, but is really in bed with the kleptocratic oligarchs of Diebold, Wall St. the murderous War Industry, and the Bush administration shell-game, FLIM-FLAM, ENRON ACCOUNTING, TRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICITS, WARS, LIES, & frauds con men.
#1. "Revolt of the Nihilists" - NY Times' David Brooks whines "GIVE US New York Wall St. con-men MORE OF YOUR consumer/taxpayer money - or else!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30brooks.html
#2. Bob Herbert echoes his nyt op-ed stablemate Brook's scorn and derision for American taxpayers, homeowners, and consumers (the "little people") and their congressmen - they are all -
"MADMEN!" shouts Herbert, IF THEY DON'T HAND OVER ONE TRILLION taxoayer DOLLARS (put on our national credit card, at daily compounding interest at that) to our Wall St. banker friends!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30herbert.html
Mr. Herbert and Mr. Brooks - just two more of the UNPRINCIPLED LYING HACKS at Arthur Sulzberger's NY LYIN' TIMES, the organization that PRETENDS it is looking out for American consumers, taxpayers, and citizens, but is really in bed with the kleptocratic oligarchs of Diebold, Wall St. the murderous War Industry, and the Bush administration shell-game, FLIM-FLAM, ENRON ACCOUNTING, TRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICITS, WARS, LIES, & frauds con men.
Monday, September 29, 2008
New York Lyin' Times Distillation of Corporate Media talking-points re Bush's Catastrohpic Wall St. Failures Bailout -
QUOTES: "I didn't know you were Catholic."
Speaker of the Houe NANCY PELOSI, as quoted by TIME magazine this weekend, which gave us this solid gold nugget of attribution about Pelosi's above quote:
<< Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, referring to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, WHO REPORTEDLY GOT DOWN ON HIS KNEES to BEG Pelosi to help speed along the government bailout package. >>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Today's New York whore Times gets their 3rd sentence in this morning's article on the "miracle cure" Wall St. bailout bill correct:
<< The measure still faced stiff resistance from Republican and Democratic lawmakers who portrayed it as a rush to economic judgment and an undeserved aid package for high-flying financiers who chased big profits through reckless investments. >>
And the 1st, 2nd, and 4th sentences are not too terrible, either.
BUT the 5th, 6th, and 7th sentences in Carl Hulse and David Herszenhorn's report are real stinkers:
<< ALL SIDES HAD TO SURRENDER SOMETHING. The administration had to accept limits on executive pay and tougher oversight; Democrats had to sacrifice a push to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages; and Republicans fell short in their effort to require that the federal government insure, rather than buy, the bad debt.
Even so, lawmakers on all sides said the bill had been significantly improved from the Bush administration’s original proposal. >>
WHY, EXACTLY, did the 'Democrat' "Leadership" HAVE TO SURRENDER SOMETHING"??
According to TIME magazine, there are reports that Bush's Treasury Secretary, Mr. Henry Paulson, literally got on his knees beseeching Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi approve the $700 billion Wall St. BAILOUT bill - AT TAXPAYER expense.
Let's pretend for a moment that a kiss was also involved, it would be the most expensive kiss in all of human history!
THE MECHANICS of the Bush-Paulson-Pelosi WALL Street BAILOUT BILL are SIMPLY GROTESQUE: $700-billion dollars; SEVEN-HUNDRED-BILLION-DOLLARS;
$700,000,000,000.
Divide $700,000,000,000 by 3-hundred-million Americans, THAT WORKS OUT TO over $2,000 PER AMERICAN man, woman, and child.
Consider that with children, retirees, and people with disabilitees, only one in three Americans are working taxpayers, and the price of the PELOSI-PAULSON BAILOUT now zooms to over $6,000 per American worker.
WITH THAT KIND OF MONEY INVOLVED, why could not the US government have simply LET WALL STREET FAIL, and then stepped in as a lender on behalf of consumers and producers itself providing those loans guarantees of amounts up to several billions of dollars, to new lenders or loan consortiums?
THE NOTION that the Bush administration "HAD TO GIVE SOMETHING UP" by giving up INSANE amounts of EXECUTIVE PAY and compensaion is... well, simply INSANE.
This is the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall St. Journal's, and other corporate media favorite media meme: THAT NO MATTER HOW ABSURD or APPALLING the Bush administration (or big business) request, policy, legislation, bill, or agenda is, it has a miraculous "EQUIVALENCE" with Democratic policy requests, priorities, and bills, SIMPLY BECAUSE there must be "AN EQUIVALENCE" between the two political parties!
HOW would Mr. Hulse and Mr. Herszenhorn feel if a robber put a gun to their heads, and said "HAND OVER $6,000, or I'll ruin your ability to raise credit financing"?
THAT is the underlying theme of Major Media reporting on the Bush-Cheney-Paulson TAXPAYER BAILOUT of Wall St. - "IF you don't GIVE US MONEY, you will not be able to RAISE MONEY in the future"!
Well, for one trillion dollars (what it will cost us American taxpayers before this particular Bush-Rove-Cheney nightmare is over) we did BUY ONE GLORIOUS GIFT: the NOTION of GEORGE W. BUSH as a "TAX CUTTER" is OVER for ALL ETERNITY;
George W. Bush as TAX CUTTER is DEAD AND BURIED, because in fact Mr. Bush wants American TAXPAYERS to FORK OVER a MINIMUM of ONE-TRILLION-DOLLARS to save his crony Wall Street Robber Barons & Credit EXTORTIONISTS, and the REAL cost of this $.7-trillion bailout, on top of the EXISTING $11 TRILLION of pre-existing BUSH DEFICITS, will likely be two or three times the stated amount - just as, if you make purchases on your over-loaded credit card and only pay the minimum monthly payment, your REAL PRICE is THREE TIMES what you paid to purchase an item with that credit card..
THE REAL price of the Bush-Pelosi-Paulson BAILOUT, will cost American taxpayers somewhere between ONE TRILLION and TWO TRILLION+ DOLLARS - TAXPAYER dollars, i.e. TWO TRILLION DOLLARS in NEW TAXES by George Bush and Nancy Pelosi to BAIL OUT Wall St. fat-cats.
BUSH BESEECHES BILLIONS in NEW TAXES from Congress to BAIL OUT his WALL Street Credit Extortion Cronies & Robber Barons:
The AMERICAN WHORE MEDIA - SLAVES to their corporate bosses and owners - is INCAPABLE of saying what a Bailout Protester on Wall Street said in a ten word protest sign: That President Bush, his Republican Party, and the complicit Democrats (who wouldn't know how to use a FILIBUSTER it their lives depended on it) HAVE RUN UP ELEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS - $11,000,000,000,000 - of DEBT that American taxpayers will have to pay, the complete, diametrical OPPOSITE of the "TAX CUTS" Mr. Bush has been BRAGGING ABOUT for the last decade, a MASSIVE GOVERNMENT DEBT that INCREASES by almost TWO BILLION DOLLAR PER DAY, from the interest alone - and that was BEFORE Mr. Bush's NEWEST round of TAXES FOR BAILOUTS for BILLIONAIRE wannabees!
Friday, September 19, 2008
ONE Simple Question for America's Sychophant Media Whores: IF John McCain WOULD CHANGE policies in future, WHICH policies SHOULD Bush have Changed??
ONE simple question illustrates America's MEDIA morons:
IF John McCain WOULD CHANGE policies in a future McCain administration; then
#1. WHICH CURRENT Bush-Cheney administration policies SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHANGED, or never brought to pass; and,
B. WHY didn't 26-year Republican SENATOR JOHN McCAIN OPPOSE THOSE bad, wrong, or ill-informed POLICIES MORE ACTIVELY in the past 8 years?
.....ESPECIALLY given McCain's role as one of the Keating-5 senators in the KEATING-FIVE SCANDAL, which access scandal was at the CORE of the US-economy GUTTING SAVINGS & LOAN scandal, the financial scandal that led DIRECTLY to the BUSH-1 DEFICITS, which in turn led to the BUSH-1 RECESSION???
Note: The BUSH-2 DEFICITS, and Bush-Cheney RECESSION, is a CARBON COPY, EXACT REPEAT, of the Bush-1 Deficits and Bush-1 Recession, brought about by PHIL GRAMM"s SAVINGS & LOAN DEREGULATION and INSIDER LOOTING of MILLIONS out of the nation's Savings & Loan and bank vaults, with INFLATED APPRAISALS, INSIDER LOANS, OVERSTATED ASSETS; and KEATING-FIVE PROTECTION from agressive state and federal audits!
SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, THANK YOU for illustrating how SUPERFICIAL, cowering, and PATHETIC the American DO NOTHING BUT LIE "major Media" has been, that they can NOT even ask a question YOU WOULD EXPECT of a 9'th Grade "COMPARE & CONTRAST" social studies class!
(Note: there are 1,000 ONE-THOUSAND Right-Wing radio outlets in America; and far less than 10%, LESS-THAN-TEN-PERCENT "liberal" talk outlets to compete.
Note #2: THE BOOK that PREDICTED the Bush-2 RECESSION, and current financial institutions COLLAPSE:
INSIDE JOB: The LOOTING of AMERICA's SAVINGS & LOANS,
by Moulo, Fricker, and Pizzo, 1989.
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Job-Looting-Americas-Savings/dp/0070502307
As the title implies, the S&L debacle of the 1980s was not an "accident" of home buyers making mistakes purchasing their homes; it was a PREMEDITATED effort, on the part of INSIDER BUSINESSMEN and bank executives, CONNECTED with the top tiers of both the Republican AND Democratic Party, who set out to make millions of dollars from GOVERNMENT GUARANTEED LOANS, writing themselves and their friends loans that WOULD FAIL, knowing the government would insure the losses.
Hence the $500 BILLION, in 1980s money, S&L Bailout debacle and subsequent Bush-1 DEFICITS, the DEFICITS that Ross Perot spent $12 MILLION of his own money (worth well over $25 million in today's dollars) EDUCATING AMERICANS about with his charts and twangy Texas drawl.
ALL THROUGH the 1990s, Republicans, big-business, and their media allies PUSHED the S&L debacle OUT of the news & financial coverage, substituting instead the soap-opera drama of hapless JIM McDOUGALs' Madison Guarantee S&L, which losses federal prosecutors, Ken Starr, and the New York Times and Washington Post were never able to state as costing more than $22 million. By comparison, Keating's LINCOLN SAVINGS & Loan lost TWO BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer guaranteed funds; and President Bush's son Neil Bush's SILVERADO Savings & Loan based in Colorado COST TAXPAYERS ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
for more on the INSIDER nature of the S&L financial crash, and how "insiders" included both Democrats and Republicans, see "The CIA, the Mafia, and George Bush" (Sr.), which builds on the foundation of "INSIDE JOB", and in the introduction spells out that had the Democratic Dukakis-Bentson campaign won election 1988, the title of the book would have been "The CIA, the Mafia, and Lloyd Benston"
IF John McCain WOULD CHANGE policies in a future McCain administration; then
#1. WHICH CURRENT Bush-Cheney administration policies SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHANGED, or never brought to pass; and,
B. WHY didn't 26-year Republican SENATOR JOHN McCAIN OPPOSE THOSE bad, wrong, or ill-informed POLICIES MORE ACTIVELY in the past 8 years?
.....ESPECIALLY given McCain's role as one of the Keating-5 senators in the KEATING-FIVE SCANDAL, which access scandal was at the CORE of the US-economy GUTTING SAVINGS & LOAN scandal, the financial scandal that led DIRECTLY to the BUSH-1 DEFICITS, which in turn led to the BUSH-1 RECESSION???
Note: The BUSH-2 DEFICITS, and Bush-Cheney RECESSION, is a CARBON COPY, EXACT REPEAT, of the Bush-1 Deficits and Bush-1 Recession, brought about by PHIL GRAMM"s SAVINGS & LOAN DEREGULATION and INSIDER LOOTING of MILLIONS out of the nation's Savings & Loan and bank vaults, with INFLATED APPRAISALS, INSIDER LOANS, OVERSTATED ASSETS; and KEATING-FIVE PROTECTION from agressive state and federal audits!
SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, THANK YOU for illustrating how SUPERFICIAL, cowering, and PATHETIC the American DO NOTHING BUT LIE "major Media" has been, that they can NOT even ask a question YOU WOULD EXPECT of a 9'th Grade "COMPARE & CONTRAST" social studies class!
(Note: there are 1,000 ONE-THOUSAND Right-Wing radio outlets in America; and far less than 10%, LESS-THAN-TEN-PERCENT "liberal" talk outlets to compete.
Note #2: THE BOOK that PREDICTED the Bush-2 RECESSION, and current financial institutions COLLAPSE:
INSIDE JOB: The LOOTING of AMERICA's SAVINGS & LOANS,
by Moulo, Fricker, and Pizzo, 1989.
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Job-Looting-Americas-Savings/dp/0070502307
As the title implies, the S&L debacle of the 1980s was not an "accident" of home buyers making mistakes purchasing their homes; it was a PREMEDITATED effort, on the part of INSIDER BUSINESSMEN and bank executives, CONNECTED with the top tiers of both the Republican AND Democratic Party, who set out to make millions of dollars from GOVERNMENT GUARANTEED LOANS, writing themselves and their friends loans that WOULD FAIL, knowing the government would insure the losses.
Hence the $500 BILLION, in 1980s money, S&L Bailout debacle and subsequent Bush-1 DEFICITS, the DEFICITS that Ross Perot spent $12 MILLION of his own money (worth well over $25 million in today's dollars) EDUCATING AMERICANS about with his charts and twangy Texas drawl.
ALL THROUGH the 1990s, Republicans, big-business, and their media allies PUSHED the S&L debacle OUT of the news & financial coverage, substituting instead the soap-opera drama of hapless JIM McDOUGALs' Madison Guarantee S&L, which losses federal prosecutors, Ken Starr, and the New York Times and Washington Post were never able to state as costing more than $22 million. By comparison, Keating's LINCOLN SAVINGS & Loan lost TWO BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer guaranteed funds; and President Bush's son Neil Bush's SILVERADO Savings & Loan based in Colorado COST TAXPAYERS ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
for more on the INSIDER nature of the S&L financial crash, and how "insiders" included both Democrats and Republicans, see "The CIA, the Mafia, and George Bush" (Sr.), which builds on the foundation of "INSIDE JOB", and in the introduction spells out that had the Democratic Dukakis-Bentson campaign won election 1988, the title of the book would have been "The CIA, the Mafia, and Lloyd Benston"
So Much for "FREEDOM" of press: Texas Gov. Perry CENSORS media overflights of Hurricane Ike devastated beach areas...
Media Obstruction in Galveston
Press denied access in the wake of Hurricane Ike
By Curtis Brainard
Thu 18 Sep 2008
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/media_obstruction_in_galveston.php?page=2
ABC News affiliate in Houston carried a video of investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino confronting Texas [REPUGLICAN] governor Rick Perry about temporary “no-fly” zones for TV helicopters over parts of the Bolivar peninsula and west Galveston, the hardest hit areas. Later in the video, Dolcefino tells the ABC anchors:
After Katrina, we were able to go to Waveland, Mississippi, and Gulfport, and Biloxi, and places that were devastated, where there were, sadly, bodies on the road. Now that’s a horrible thing to see and a horrible thing to show, but people who live there, who have friends there, who have relatives there, have a fundamental right to know that stuff. They have a fundamental right to know, not just from the words of a politician or public official, but from the news media, which are independent of government and have also the responsibility of trying to help the public evaluate response…
We couldn’t get crews back on Galveston last night and this morning until we complained on the air for about twenty hours. And it’s not because we want to sightsee, guys, it’s because we have the responsibility of telling people… I made it as clear to [Gov. Perry] off camera as I did on camera that this is not going to be tolerated. You know, we hear about disasters in other countries—what was it, Burma, Myanmar—where they won’t let people in to see and you know, this is the state of Texas; this America. And we’re not trying to interfere with rescue and search operations, nor did anyone suggest we would be."
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/media_obstruction_in_galveston.php?page=2
Friday, August 29, 2008
AP _DROPPED_ by more US papers! Keith Olbermann DEMOLISHES _LYING_ report by AP "reporter" Charles Babbington that sneered at Obama speech
A duo of fantastic news:
#1. US papers, seeing profits fall like a stone in the Bush-2 Recession, are DROPPING the right-wing propaganda 'news' wire feed from AP 'News'!
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003840644
#2. Within a day or two of the story that more US papers are dropping AP, we see a textbook example of why: "Countdown" news show anchor Keith Olbermann, hosting much of MSNBC's coverage at the Democratic Primary Convention in Denver this past week, bashed AP 'news' 'reporter' CHARLES BABBINGTON's article on Senator Obama's acceptance speech as bearing no resemblence to the speech that fully FORTY MILLION AMERICANS tuned in to watch, to see IF American has a hope of digging itself out from the Bush-2 Recession and national security morass Bush, Cheney, Kark Rove, and the incompetent PNAC "WAR FIRST!" crew have gotten us in to over the past decade.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844063
click here for E&P's original report on Keith Olbermann DEMOLISHING KNOCKING-OUT of Charles Babbington's misleading, outright LYING spin on the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech last night, including Babbington's misleading article in full - http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844063
#1. US papers, seeing profits fall like a stone in the Bush-2 Recession, are DROPPING the right-wing propaganda 'news' wire feed from AP 'News'!
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003840644
#2. Within a day or two of the story that more US papers are dropping AP, we see a textbook example of why: "Countdown" news show anchor Keith Olbermann, hosting much of MSNBC's coverage at the Democratic Primary Convention in Denver this past week, bashed AP 'news' 'reporter' CHARLES BABBINGTON's article on Senator Obama's acceptance speech as bearing no resemblence to the speech that fully FORTY MILLION AMERICANS tuned in to watch, to see IF American has a hope of digging itself out from the Bush-2 Recession and national security morass Bush, Cheney, Kark Rove, and the incompetent PNAC "WAR FIRST!" crew have gotten us in to over the past decade.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844063
August 29, 2008 12:20 AM ET, NEW YORK - In an unusually heated attack on a veteran political reporter by a cable news host, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann laced into the Associated Press's Charles Babington an hour after Barack Obama had concluded his speech in Denver on Thursday night.
Olbermann was outraged that the AP's Babington had written, in his analysis of the speech, just off the wire, that Obama had tried nothing new and that his speech was lacking in specifics. He read the first few paragraphs on the air, lamented that it would be printed in hundred of newspapers on Friday, and concluded, "It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watched. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and web sites is a remarkable failure of that news organization.
"Charles Babington, find a new line of work."
Olberman even criticized the reporter on his time-keeping, noting that the article said the speech was 35 minutes long when it was, he said, actually 44 minutes long. A few minutes later, the AP copy showing up at news sites had been corrected to "44 minutes."
Even as Babington was hitting Obama for a lack of specifics, AP was transmitting a second piece by another reporter, Jim Drinkard, that offered a detailed look at seven specific policy proposals in the speech (and expressed doubts about all of them)
click here for E&P's original report on Keith Olbermann DEMOLISHING KNOCKING-OUT of Charles Babbington's misleading, outright LYING spin on the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech last night, including Babbington's misleading article in full - http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844063
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