Red State Renegade

Bush Last week:
“Our capital markets are flexible and resilient and can deal with these adjustments”

Bush Today:
“Our entire economy is in danger…Without immediate action by Congress, America can slip into a major panic”

McCain Last week:
“I believe, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong”

McCain today:
“The whole future of the American economy is in danger…If we do not act, credit will dry up with grave consequences for workers and businesses across the American economy”

Need I say more?

John McCain, in a magazine article called “Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American” explains that we should deregulate the health care industry, as him and his boys deregulated the banking industry a few years back…Because it has worked so well!:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation

…and proves once again that Republicans are ‘Fraidy Cats‘

University of Nebraska researchers have demonstrated a correlation between higher general fear levels and the likelihood of someone being a ‘conservative:

Compared to staunch liberals, people with strongly conservative views were three times more fearful after factoring out the effects of gender, age, income and education, all of which can affect political attitudes.

This speaks for itself…but the contrast between the last two administrations is amazing:

Elizabeth Drew, ex McCain admirer and author of a positive biography, “Citizen McCain” (Simon & Schuster, 2002, paperback 2008.) has now given up on him, and written an editorial questioning his integrity. Excerpts:

…Other once-hailed McCain efforts – his cultivation of the press (“my base”) and even his fight for campaign finance reform (launched in the wake of his embarrassment over the Keating Five scandal) now seem to have been simply maneuvers. The “Straight Talk Express” – a brilliant p.r. stroke in 2000 – has now been shut down.

…Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose. He gave the Iraq war unflagging support no matter the facts. He still talks about “winning” the war, though George W. Bush gave that up some time ago. As the war became increasingly unpopular, he employed the useful technique of blaming its execution rather than recognizing the misconceptions that had led him to be one of the most enthusiastic champions of the war in the first place.

Similarly, in making a big issue of having backed the surge (and simplifying the reasons for its apparent success), he preempts debate on the very idea of the war. He has talked (and sung) loosely about attacking Iran. More recently, he oversimplified this summer’s events in Georgia and made intemperate remarks about Russia, about which he’s been more belligerent than the administration for some time. (He has his own set of neocons.)

…By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

…Now he’s back to declaring himself a maverick, but it’s not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he’s now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is.

“We deserve reimbursement”

The above are actual quotes from Gabriel Nathan Shwartz, a 29 year old Republican delegate from their convention in Minneapolis last month. “Less taxes and more war” he said to the news cameras. He said the U.S. should “bomb the hell” out of Iran because the country threatens Israel.

Poor Gabriel tasted his own medicine at the convention when an innocent one-night-stand went sour. After meeting a woman in his hotel bar, the two went upstairs to his room, where she told him to get undressed and she made drinks. That was his last recollection.

When he awoke, she was gone, along with over $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.

I hope she donates some of that to Obama!

Ashcroft’s deputy Attorney General:

“I have encountered just such an apocalyptic situation, where I and the Department of Justice have been asked to be part of something that is fundamentally wrong”

In May of last year, Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified to the U.S. Senate that three years earlier, on the eve of the 2004 election, ALL of the top Department of Justice officials (including Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller) told G.W. Bush they would resign immediately because George Bush was continuing the NSA wiretapping/surveillance program (which had been in place for at least three years) after his own Department of Justice had told him it was illegal.

The politically awkward resignation (imagine all these leaders telling the press that they needed more time with their families suddenly, all at once) was avoided because Bush agreed to change certain aspects of the program (to this day, unrevealed) in order for these officials to stay on and endorse it’s legality.

This all came about well before the N.Y. Times broke the politically charged story of the wiretapping program in 2005, which all of the above officials endorsed. So the program unveiled by the Times, as controversial as it was, was actually a compromise acceptable to the right wing nut-job ‘bushies’ working in these positions! And of course, the story was published only after the Times sat on it for a year and had been actively lobbied by the administration to keep it quiet (Such traitors, these elitist journalists!).

Here is a portion of the amazing resignation letter written by Deputy Attorney General James Comey:

We have had 11 regular (small banks) collapse, and more recently the Bear Stearns bailout, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and some minor entity called “Lehman Bros.” But:

In an exclusive interview with CNBC.com, Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co., says he sees possibly as many as a thousand bank closures in the coming months. And this will create opportunities for investors.