Bad American

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. You’ve got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I’ve still got a lot to teach you. “  – Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street

Pain Dealer

It’s refreshing for a change, to see the Pain Dealer focusing a front page story on real people with real problems. Hell they even found a black person amidst the sea of white people to interview. Good job PD! I’m so proud of you!

Well, OK, technically it wasn’t the actual front page. That was devoted to a man who plays a little boys game for money. But gotta sell newspapers to the bread and circuses crowd.

I do have a problem with this couple in the article:

Preschool teacher Amber Theodore is a pro at slashing the household budget. That’s a necessary skill in a two-person household where the yearly take-home pay hits just $19,000.

But Theodore and her husband, Paul, a full-time student, refused to part with their gym memberships. Instead, they asked for help from their YMCA in Westlake, which dropped the couple’s monthly payment from $60 to $23.

You know you could jog around the block and get just as good a workout at home. I don’t understand vanity spending. I’d LOVE to belong to a gym but my little bookstore right now is also a casualty of the Bush economic meltdown so I can’t afford the luxury. The other thing is one could spend their workout time at another job. Right now, I’m starting to contemplate flipping burgers in the evening or perhaps a night shift at Wal-Mart to make ends meet. You do what you have to do. I may be a liberal, but I believe in working for a living when one is able.

Of course in the PD comments section there are still deluded souls who defend Bush from any criticism. But the facts are that he had been POTUS for the last 7+ years and in those years we went from a budget surplus to record deficits, started an illegal and immoral war that is bankrupting the country while making Bush’s friends wealthy beyond measure, and which saw the triumph of the ‘Shock Doctrine’ of elite capitalists applied, finally, to the USA.

It was Bush’s friends both in the Fed, in Congress and in big business and their think tanks that gave us the Wall Street ethos that has put our economy in a grave and now, at least, we can see in our daily newspaper the real damage. I’m sure the executive who left Bear Stearns a few weeks ago and paid cash for a $28 million Manhattan condo is cackling all the way to the bank. As Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street: “It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses.”

And yet the delusional out there continue to support this President, this economic system, this war and this way of doing business. As far as I’m concerned, these people are amoral and evil.

Not that I’m letting the elite Democrats off the hook. I blame a lot of this on that bastard Bill Clinton who, every time I see him on TV lately, I wish could hit him square in the face with a pie or something perhaps a little more painful. Clinton opened the cage and Bush let the big dogs run - all over us.

Remember that when you vote for Czarina Hillary. Economically, you’ll get no better than Bush. And the war will go on.

But in 7+ years of Bush it’s clear that war expenditures coupled with the deregulation of much of the mortgage industry coupled to destroy this economy. And Bush, of course, did nothing but cheer. Now he looks in the camera, smirks and lies when he tells us about what we know to be a lie: it’s not just a recession but quickly threatening to become something far worse.

Just ask the shareholders and customers of our own National City Bank. Too late for tears now, the crooks who ran the bank into the ground are already safely out on the country club course comparing their latest drivers. Sic transit gloria capitalism! All hail.

And remember this: the meltdown has just started.