These are the people running our government, folks.

From the infamous, America-hating commie rag Forbes.com —

"In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

‘It’s not based on any particular data point,’ a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. ‘We just wanted to choose a really large number.’"

Mission accomplished!  That, keep in mind, is a Treasury spokeswoman.  That’s not a leak, that’s not someone talking out of school, that’s an actual message to the press from a Treasury spokeswoman, speaking in full knowledge that she was talking to a national publication.  If that’s their actual message they want people to know, then who knows what’s really going on with these people?

So forgive me if I don’t buy the administration’s line on the necessity of this bailout.

Glad to see I’m not alone.

I’m not going to pretend to be an economic wizard, I have a hard time adding up change from my pocket, but, like the majority of Americans, I’m not sure we need any kind of bailout at all. In fact, the mere fact that this bailout is being rammed down our throats with record speed, making the Iraq war debate seem like a good-natured exchange of ideas in comparison, with an emphasis on FEAR FEAR FEAR TERROR TERROR TERROR and YOU CANNOT QUESTION US, THE COUNTRY IS AT STAKE!!!! and THE WORLD WILL END IF WE DON’T DO THIS GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!1! makes me assume that the opposite is the case, that this is purely Bush’s corporate overlords demanding he turn over the Treasury to them before he leaves office.

And it looks like they’re getting their way.  We’re not talking about whether we need this or not, we’re now haggling over the details.  Even though an overwhelming majority of citizens don’t want this in any form.  Hmm, using fear and aggression to countermand democracy and the will of the people, where have I seen that before?

PS. Guess how many people, apart from John McCain I suppose, think the fundamentals of the American economy are strong? Go ahead, guess.

More like this, please.

There you go.  I’ve never heard of this lady before, but I like her.

And, this.

Contact your representatives today!

I’m not really the most political of guys, I’m much happier talking about box-office reports than public-opinion polls, but I’ve been angered by George W. Bush from the moment he stole the election in 2000. Something about the way he subverted democratic principles and the will of the people in order to grab power kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Funny how he’s proceeded to subvert democratic principles and the will of the people a thousand different ways since then. Started an illegal war, illegally detained and tortured prisoners, didn’t bother pursuing the people responsible for the events of 9/11, looked the other way while an American city was destroyed, illegally wiretapped American’s phones, those kind of things, I’ve got to say, they just don’t sit right with me.

And yet, I’ve kind of let all those things go by without really getting involved. But this Wall Street bailout thing has sent me right over the edge. No pretext, no explanation, no excuse, just a loaded revolver aimed at the temple of the American middle-class, "hand over all your money so that my wealthy friends can stay wealthy or else." Did someone say $700 billion dollars? Try $1.8 trillion dollars. And keep in mind, the language of the bill only limits taxpayer involvement at $700 billion at any given time — that is, we’re talking about a slush fund of $700 billion, to be replenished and handed out however our financial overlords see fit, with no oversight, no checks or balances, on Bush’s say so. Everyone is talking about it as a bailout, but I have a hard time seeing it as anything besides just handing over the keys to the Treasury to Wall Street. And you can tell from the markets that Wall Street sees it for what it is — a blank check, a carte blanche to keep going full-steam ahead, no correction, no regulation, no punishment required. Yahoo! We finally failed so big that we now get to raid the Treasury!  It’s grand theft in broad daylight on an unimaginable scale.

So, I don’t generally do this, but please, Write your Congressperson, write your senator. It’s fun and easy and, believe it or not, it makes a difference. If enough people show that they are royally pissed off about this, maybe the spineless Democrats won’t cave on this one — after all, congressmen don’t make so much money that they won’t be affected by this. (Speaking of which, I simply cannot believe that this, this, has become a partisan issue — why are all the headlines today about the "Democratic Response" to this obscene, dripping phallus of a bill? For Christ’s sake, fucking NEWT GINGRICH is against it! UPDATE: Christ on a pogo stick, even rabid conservative hate-hound Michelle Malkin is against it — and she’s dumb as a post and evil as creosote!)

UPDATE: If you’d like to know what all this has to do with the election, you will not get a finer, more readable, more comprehensive overview than this right here.

Longtime reader The Editor tells me that a snail-mail letter to your representatives carries more weight than a phone call or email, but due to the emergency nature of this atrocity that’s being rammed down America’s throat in record time, I urge readers to do both. Write the email, copy the text, paste it into your word processing program, print it up and send it.

Thanks! Analysis of Jeepers Creepers, Pumpkinhead, The Wizard of Oz, and A.I. are on their way. To my readers who suggested I watch Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Ginger Snaps — well, I tried. I really did. Sorry.

The Hen-House Crisis

My fellow Americans, today I would like to address the problem we face with America’s hen-house.

Due to circumstances no one really understands, foxes have been put in charge of operating our hen-house. There will be plenty of time in the future to debate about whose decision it was to put foxes in charge of the hen-house, but the fact remains that the foxes have eaten all the hens and now we are out of hens. This is a crisis of far-reaching import — American hens are the envy of the world and we cannot afford to be without them. I shall call this the Hen-House Crisis.

I have spoken with the foxes who run our hen-house and they have assured me that this is a crisis. Our hen-house must be filled with hens immediately or it will lead to a world-wide shortage of hens. That means no chicken dinners, no scrambled eggs, no Denver omelets, no feathered pillows. And that cannot be allowed to happen.  The world turns to us for hens and hen-related policy.

And so it is up to each and every American to supply our foxes with more hens, to dig deep and sacrifice their hard-earned hens so that the foxes will have more hens to mind. This is the only way out of this crisis — the foxes must be given more hens.  It is the only solution to our problem, and anyone who suggests otherwise, well I have to question their belief in hens.  

If the foxes are not given more hens, they will go hungry, and we cannot afford a nation with hungry foxes. Foxes are the backbone of our hen-fox structure — foxes provide America with whatever hens they don’t devour, and if we don’t supply our foxes with an unending stream of hens we will have no hens at all.

My plan calls for Americans to supply our foxes with seven hundred billion hens — give or take, on an ongoing basis, whenever the foxes ask for them, for whatever purposes the foxes see fit.  This deal is non-negotiable and permanent, and our foxes will be under no obligation to tell us how they are tending our hens or when, if ever, we will ever see any hens again.  Because we need so many hens immediately, this means that a lot of Americans who have never raised hens will need to learn to do so, otherwise our foxes will have no hens to tend. Some Americans may need to work an extra job in order to buy the materials they will need to raise hens to give to our foxes, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to demand.

I have been assured by America’s foxes that they will be very wise and cautious in the stewardship of these billions upon billions of hens, that the hens we provide the foxes will be bred into even more hens, which will then, the foxes assure me, returned to the Americans who provided them.  We will then be, I am told, swimming in hens, thanks to the very wise foxes of the American hen-house industry.

"This is an emergency, there is a clear and present threat to our nation, everything could blow apart into a million pieces tomorrow, we must act now now now or there will be hell to pay, there is no time to bicker and argue about details like ‘who’s responsible for this’ or ‘how are we going to pay for this,’ the federal government must be immediately granted sweeping new supreme powers without oversight, and anyone who disagrees with me or questions me or seeks to modify my decisions is a traitor, and I know best because I am the president."

Hmmmm…where have I heard this before?

Oh yeah, now I remember. Yeah, it’s all coming back to me now.

Amazingly — amazingly — Bush seems to be doing it again. A president with less credibility than a turnip, the man responsible (along with anti-regulator John McCain, of course) for this entire mess, is now telling us that we’re in the midst of a crisis and only he knows how to solve it and we have no option but to agree with him or else we’re destroying the country. The amazing part is that Washington isn’t just laughing in his face and looking for someone actually qualified to handle the situation, they’re actually taking his proposal seriously and worried about their political future if they don’t unquestioningly obey our Dear Leader.

As Atrios puts it, "Any member of Congress who looks at the plan to give Hank unchecked power to transfer $700 billion from the Treasury to his friends’ companies and has any reaction other than ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me’ does not deserve to hold office."

His proposal, as far I can tell, is: it is not enough that the middle class pay for the highest deficit in our history and a three-trillion dollar war nobody wanted, it must now also help keep the ultra-wealthy Wall Street crowd from losing its yachts. This is, I hope (but can by no means be sure) the final insult to the American people by not just the worst president in history, but one of the worst Americans (which, as The Stranger in The Big Lebowski would put it, "which would put him high in the runnin’ for worst world-wide") in history.