ppatt

It was no secret that this was coming. 4-5 years ago during the so-called lending-industry-induced housing boom it was written in major new publications that any one of several economic shocks could send the US economy reeling.

They were right. We forgot. We also should not forget that it was Americans who duped America, not some external threat. With patriots like this who needs terrorists?

In a larger sense, it was a guilty and conspiring elite with complicit politicos distracting the witless and stoking all sorts of fears and anxieties while they stole America right out from under our noses. Don't expect even a glimmer of recognition from them, they will never be wrong (in their own minds). I'd been hoping to elect someone who would fight this slime, not unite with it. The mood is about to turn very ugly...maybe ugly enough that if we could have a do-over (they are becoming the fashion, aren't they?) maybe we'd have different ideas regarding the ideal candidate.

I didn't intend to make this post about Edwards but it does seem kind of funny that we'd pass over someone who would fight for the poor by letting corporations and politicians roll the dice with the financial solvency of our nation. As he faded from the scene I'd concluded that we might need something rivaling the Great Depression before we'd lose our cynicism over someone claiming they would fight for the little guy. Maybe the little guy has just become used to getting stomped on.

Well, get ready...quite a few more of us are going to fall into the category that we never thought we'd be in to benefit from a candidate like Edwards. We all thought ourselves more affluent than that, eh? Besides it wasn't like only the lower class would have benefitted from Edwards.

It will get very ugly but we really did earn what is coming by complciity or neglect, take your pick.

I eagerly await the first hair-brained bit of wisdom from Fox or the usual suspects who blame this mess on the liberals. It is time for them to consider entering the adult world of solid, manly, laudable conservative accountability.

Wow, I found my first...I predict a newfound intolerance of the type of glib doubletalk that got us into the situation we're in and possibly even worse. Here's just one example, and I'll bet nobody's buying crap like that which is examined in that blog anymore. I can't say that there will be lynch mobs but I seriously doubt that the coming anger is something that Fox can coopt and turn back on those who had little to do with it. I just hope that we'll remember who fanned the flames of the last 7 years. We probably won't but we can hope, can't we?

My only hope is that there might be a silver lining. Sometimes getting the ever-livin' crap knocked out of oneself has a curious way of instilling the kind of humility needed for the duller among us to stop forsaking their own self interest and to start supporting candidates for office who can be depended upon to favor Main Street over Wall Street. We've had that in the past, we've just forgotten why it had made sense at one time in the past. We are about to relearn and this learning experience will be painful.

Maybe some are aware of the history and economic situation that prevailed in post WWI Germany. That is my worst fear and I will take no joy in winning a debate a year or so back with Heretic and a couple of others regarding the same unprecendented confluence of circumstance that led to comparisons between USA and Nazi Germany.

Oh...and can we please get out of Iraq now? Maybe we can waterboard the CEO of Bear Stearns doesn't he deserve less than a bailout. Jeez, I deserve a bailout more than him and I ain't gettin' one.

anhailla

Besides some good people on these boards...in general, Americans are stupid.

I just was in an argument where 3 women said the issue that was most important is that a President didn't cheat on his wife.
"it shows character"...uh huh


what can you say to the ignorant elite?
nothing, they don't care and they don't care to. "I have been cheated on" one lady said.

uh huh...


so to answer your question ppat...being "bitched slapped" doesn't effect the ignorant.

__________________
...either I go, or that wallpaper does.

Oscar Wilde

cheapseats

Ignorance is ignorance. A beating doesn't make a person less ignorant any more than a beating makes a person less ugly or less brunette or less tall. An overhaul of public education is required.

Take heed, Cheapskates, of the multiplicity of dangers and woes inherent in an ignorant electorate.

But I say Infidelity IS an issue in THIS country...I am not talking about cultures where sexual mores are relaxed and lovers-on-the-side are acceptable. That isn't the American story.

The American story with Infidelity is that it runs rampant in a society that simultaneously legislates morality for the masses while excusing the Elite. The American story with Infidelity is that a woman's security is inexorably tied to the favor of "her" man. If the man stays with his wife, she's gold. If he chooses the Other Woman, the Other Woman is gold and the first wife is invisible. We're gonna be taking a closer look at that...including at Big Money that gets in bed, literally, with foreign nationals. Beginning with Rupert Murdoch and Paul Wolfowitz.

Latest statistics reveal that we have FIFTY THREE MILLION SINGLE WOMEN in America...while prostitution is illegal but fucking around is acceptable.

Pie-in-the-sky Democrats got sucked into making this election about a First Woman or a First Black Man. That would be because Democrats are dopes. One thing that WILL come out of this election, courtesy Eliot Spitzer AND JOHN McCAIN and a number of other fuckers, is some goddamned parity for the people they fuck.

Justice IS an issue.

But I'll tell you who IS getting beaten into a state of reasonableness, and them's the Big Boys on Wall Street. They're all ears, now, baby.

Too bad the Democrats have nothing to say, outside the gripping fight-to-the-death between one-name-like-a-star Hillary and one-name-like-a-star Obama.

Never in my lifetime has a third-party candidacy been so viable, and I am NOT talking about confirmed Loser Ralph Nader.

__________________

cheapseats

like we should re-consider him as the Compromise Candidate. Biden, as well.

Compromise as in, Democrats abandon their respective Darlings in order to unite behind a winning ticket.

I feel certain that neither Clinton nor Obama will defeat McCain.

__________________

anhailla

you know..after seeing the lastest polls, I am starting to agree with you.

If a democrat can't win this Election..I am dropping out of the party.
these two candidates slugging out has given John Mccain a near lead and he isn't even campaigning.

Fuck them...I am mad and sick of the democratic party.
We are just about ready to blow the most important election, maybe..in the history of the country.

the american dream, while not quite dead...will be buried forever with one more corporate whoring, war mongering..fuck health insurance and the middle class...president

so congratulatios to all of you fighting over hiliary and Obama
it just bought you fucking Mccain.

yes I am crabby...near economic collapse will do that to a person

__________________
...either I go, or that wallpaper does.

Oscar Wilde

ppatt

You may be right, however good and stupid aren't mutually exclusive. We're all just good simple people looking for safe harbor in a storm. How on earth did we know the hotel we pulled up at was run by Norman Bates? Nevertheless we pay the price of our stupidity as do the not-so-stupid right along with us.

We are fated to benefit from only the most recent history and now, with Fox, we will listen to others twisting that to their advantage even before the history books hit the press.

It's the human condition to cast our lot on a person or ideology rather than to analyze or learn anything outside of what puts food on the table, buy a better car, or take a buttery vacation. Inevitably this comes back to haunt us. We won't hold those at the helm accountable day to day but we'll join the lynch mob after the shit hits the fan.

The lessons of the Great Depression? "Bah, those rules don't apply anymore" they said...and we listened. But there were warning signs that we should have been responsible for heeding just as much as the one that says "Freeway ends ahead".

We should have known way back when we caught glimpses of the eery, unreal mind-set at play inside the Bush adminstration, best identified and held up to the light years ago by Ron Suskind:

Our demise tracked proportionally with the price of oil. Just consider the price now vs. the price when Bush took office. I'm no ardent fan but Bill Clinton in his autobiography claimed that he was preparing the US for the time in which we were not the worlds only superpower. Then along comes somone who claims "we" are an empire after which every twit among us took great pride in that identification.

So we listen to whoever will make us feel good in the moment and as we climb out of this hole we'll listen to whoever offers hope. Hopefully, this time the vehicles of our demise will loom so large that we will actually address them, until we forget again.

My biggest concern is that when there is economic and social despair this does not always make us smarter...at least it hasn't in history. It has often led to fascism...that "wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross thing".

So who will we listen to next now that we will likely stop listening to a few who've had our ears? Who will fill this void. I vote for intelligence over charisma which got us here in the first place.

That's really the problem isn't it? How do we get lucky enough to elect someone more intelligent than ourselves? How would we even recognize such a person?

ppatt

We may need to suffer a while longer...stew in the juices of the mess that was made before we'd feel right having someone fight on our behalf. It is like a 12-step program -- first we must admit that we had a problem and accept responsibility for having supported what caused it.

Even then, there will be snake oil salesmen to beware of. That was what they said about Edwards, dismissing out of hand his life experience as a clever ploy. He either did not seem real of was not offering anything people thought they needed.

I'm concerned that the snake oil salesmen will be a little more fascist than before. Having fulfilled most of the similarities between now and nazi Germany we lack only one which all studies indicate is the final requirement that must be fulfilled, a crisis. Bush has worked hard for 7 years to serve one up and his timing is impeccable.

Sorry for my tangents but I'm in the middle of Chris Hedges American Fascists which has led me to the works of Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper. All of this has happened before and there is a lot to be learned from it. They have thoroughly convinced me of how fragile open societies are. The enemies almost always come from within while pointing to enemies inside and outside our borders.

We're in bad need of deciding just who the bad guys are and of what the real facts of how we have come to this point are rather than the ones we hear from this accident of a president we now have.

There are forces at play inside our borders and we still have not arrived at any clear understanding of the need to elect someone who will stand up to them. As we start to pay for not heeding the warning signs we should realize that there are more we haven't yet noticed. We need to find someone really smart this time. I'd suggest doing it during the period at which those who led us this far are still clining to false and disproven myths. Soon enough they will change their tunes, displace all blame and start talking about how hard it is going to be. By then we will have forgotten who was who in the catastrophe.

ocealdia

Very good post and I agree with it completely. Even though you may not have intended this thread to be about Edwards, I never understood either why Edwards would not pick up steam. He was always for the little guy - always fighting for his cause. He was my favorite from the beginning. I never wanted him to give up.

As I've said before, the corporate media ignored Edwards. He just wasn't their baby.

kblair7

Maybe I just don't know what you're getting at here. This is the same old garbage I hear all the time, "it was the evil corporations." No one is blaming "liberals," whatever that means. If you feel that blaming someone will make you feel better, blame Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernake, all the monterists. Edwards? Don't tell me you buy that populist tripe?

As an illustration of my point, this is a excellent discussion I suggest you listen to it: WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio - The Diane Rehm Show

10:00U.S. Credit Crisis

The Federal Reserve will likely to cut the federal funds rate again today - a move on top of unprecedented steps taken over the weekend to address the deepening financial woes in the U.S. A look at the ongoing credit crisis and its implications for the U.S and global economy
Guests

Desmond Lachman, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Michael Englund, Principal Director and Chief Economist for Action Economics, LLC.

Greg Ip, reporter for the Wall Street Journal

John Taylor, President and CEO, National Community Reinvestment Coalition

ppatt

Hi,

I think you are spot on here.

The sooner we realize that this is not a relativistic matter of competing ideas (a notion that benefits those highly vested in a particular set of ideas) but rather one of patriotic Infidelity. It goes even beyond sex. Legislating a host of moral issues while going against the grain of the spirit of that legislation seems to fool us each and every time.

There is economic Infidelity, diplomatic Infidelity etc. etc. Are we really to believe that economic messes are not the sum of their parts? That they just sort of drop from the sky? Only by escaping the initial confusion over this point can we begin to assess whether misplaced loyalties might be at the root of our problems. It is no small wonder when unifying symbols like "flag" and "America" distract us from the fact that there are many Americas -- the America of my making money (possibly at the expense of others) or the America of ensuring fair vehicles for the education of the people. There are too many to mention yet "America" has become a distorted codeword.

Another distraction and it's unfortunate how this stands in place of substance in the media. But it titallates and it's all about US (my personal feelings about races and my own sexuality) and has nothing to do with our real problems.

Yup. We won't have any if we don't uphold this as a value, first and foremost. It is a much deeper concept than anything in the news that is about me and how I feel about it. It is profoundly and exclusively about US. It begs the question of whether we will all be safe and subject to the same set of rules. It is trampled on each and every time we think of it exclusively in terms of how it affects just us and it is hard not to fall prey to that sort of thinking if we listen to any major media.

But isn't this ingrained mode of thinking the order of the day? We care not a whit about community and dirtying ourselves with others unlike us. As a nation we've developed some wierd auto-immune response as we turn on one another. We think we are supposed to legislate our every personalized whim and benefit only to the deserving. The problem is that everyone decides who is deserving just a little differently. We've lost touch with that wonderful document, the constitution. We'll never sort it out without some clarity on the concept of justice as something beyond oursleves.

Today, at a fundamental level, corporations have their cake and eat it too. Conservatives (even their judges) claim unprecedented status to corporations as individuals yet there are no analogous punishments as with individuals. If we proceed with the same core fundamental concepts (which I submit are historical aberrations) without going back to some of the basic tenets in our Constitution that have been systematically distorted and nearly eradicated from rational discourse, we'll remain mired in the mess that we're in.

Face it, we've grown accustomed to two sets of rules -- an imperial one for corporations and another for individuals. We lack principles and have internalize such a wide array of hypocrisies that we no longer attempt to justify one course of action or another. In our mistier moments we wax profoundly and righteously about human rights yet in a patently American contradictory style we've become inured to a tiered system of humanity, with immigrants being banished to the lower rungs.

Believe me, there are certain people out there doing an accounting of how many contradictions they can get us to internalize because once we do that we become more docile, complacent and easy to manage. We reach a state of moral and ethical gridlock.

They will be back to their old tricks as soon as they think they no longer need protection from the BIG GOVERNMENT ushered in by conservatives and complicit others in the opposition party who did not do their jobs. Mother America hardly has enough teats for them all to get their share of sustaining milk from BIG GOVERNMENT.

Everyone should take note that in the heat of the moment there is little talk about going back and fixing problems at the source. The absence of that is terrifying.