John McCain: Economic Disaster

JOHN McCAIN is the CANDIDATE of CHANGE!

After all, he changes his mind, positions and beliefs several times a day.

Or, is change for him just another way of saying “severe mood swings?”

Weird Wally Wants to know...
Do you?

Now this is What Weird Wally is Talking About...

Weird Wally lifted this post from Randi Rhode’s (the Goddess of Talk Radio) site and he hopes she doesn’t mind. But her site today is too good not to share.

TRILLION

It wasn't that long ago that using the number 'one trillion' truly was like saying 'a gagillion bazillion'. Well it’s time we learn how many zeroes are involved in that number. It's 12. We have a Trillion Dollars to offer and The Bankers want it. Who knew?

Do NOT make that deal. NO NO NO NO NO.

The unchecked right wing Free Market, No Regulations, No Oversight, No Adult Supervision ORGY of spending and lending over the past 8 years is OVER. Of course it failed because it had to. You can’t take money out of people’s pockets and steal their assets. We are the Economy. Doh.

But the pain of ignoring or worse, agreeing with the solution cooked up by the people who robbed us is ridiculous.

We have a “money shortage”. The only question is how do we put money back INTO the credit market. We get people paying for their homes again and give them a little extra cash to spend. That’s how.

What to do now? THIS IS A FORECLOSURE CRISIS. Deal with FORECLOSURES. Or put another way, IT’S THE FORECLOSURES STUPID.

Anything that is presented to you that doesn’t include at its core, foreclosure relief should be ignored. Any piece of legislation that does not include an immediate Foreclosure Freeze should not be taken seriously. Any piece of legislation that does not give people in foreclosure, or who have missed 3 payments in one year the ability to renegotiate their home loans should be dismissed instantly. Any piece of legislation that doesn’t include oversight by the GAO should not be taken seriously. Any piece of legislation that doesn’t force this down the throats of the giant Banks and Investment Banks who played with your loan going in and coming out is the wrong solution. Any legislation that hands over all the money to one guy at once is a HEIST.

We do have to put money back into the credit market. Allowing people to pay SOMETHING on their homes NOW puts money IN. Add a little stimulus check for us to spend and we’re BACK from the abyss. PERIOD.

Their solution is to put money in the hands of one guy who knows exactly where to put it. That’s WRONG and SILLY on it’s face.

Yesterday you think you saw 1.2 Tillion lost. It wasn’t lost! It was a negotiation. What happened in the Stock Market yesterday was a “dead cat bounce”. People were selling but no one was buying so prices went down. This wasn’t a sell off. It was the exact opposite. NO selling. I predict today there will be lots of buying at new lower prices.

John McCain gave us nearly a week of slapstick, melodrama and photo-ops....and ended up as useless as his theater was. First he said The Fundamentals of the Economy are strong. Then he said the workers are the Fundamentals, Then he declared a Depression-like crisis. Then he said he was suspending his campaign to forge a deal, and then he announced he saved the day by forging a deal. Then when the deal failed? He blamed Obama for all of it??? What?

This is a serious problem and we need serious people to solve it. Anyone who takes John McCain seriously should not be taken seriously. Seriously!

Meanwhile Obama understands it’s a Foreclosure Crisis not an opportunity to leave a Trillion Dollar tip on the table for the gruel we’ve been served for 8 years. He also knows not to panic!

And Congress? Oh Dear God. Literally minutes after 'The Rescue' failed and the Big Board numbers were heading south in double digits every time they refreshed, we got John Boehner, Roy Blunt and a collection of Right Wing Enablers who blame the whole thing on a Floor Speech that hurt their feelings? So let me understand this. You would allow a Great Depression to take root in this country because you had problems with a speech? That is LOW. Even for Republicans.

Let's be clear. We saw a lot of dramatics on Monday from The Republican “Leadership” None of it helpful. The economy took a massive hit yesterday and that is not in dispute. But the Democrats didn’t do much better. Their plan is a non starter and they know it so they went looking for cover. Republican cover. When they didn’t get it, they went home. UNBELIEVABLE.

What should we be doing now? Screaming for a Foreclosure Freeze and legislating so that people can renegotiate their home loans and get a stimulus check sooner rather than later.

We finally get to have that conversation that has been put off for way too long. What about the Middle Class??? We keep saving the day every day we go to work, and buy lunch, and put gas in our cars and pay our bills. We deserve to be at the table here. If we get our money we will put it into the Economy and save the day once again. We will pay our mortgages, and buy cars, and make payrolls. FDR knew that, and you know it whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. The Middle Class is the backbone of this country. The only way to fix this mess is to get the money in the hands of those who built this country. Money in anyone else’s hands is just stupid and more greed run amok.

Jerry McGuire was correct! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

White Privilege in America

Since Weird Wally cannot even imagine what it must be like to be borne white in America, he never thought much about it. “When you’re black stand back, because, when you’re white you’re right!”

So, why did it take a white dude like Tim Wise to tell WW about “white privilege?”

Silly folks; WW isn’t white, so how could he have known?

September 13, 2008, 2:01 pm

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you're a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36-minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an "average guy," while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you "uppity" and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that's OK, and you're still cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you dangerously naive and immature.

White privilege is being able to say that you hate "gooks" and "will always hate them," and yet, you aren't a racist because, ya know, you were a POW, so you're entitled to your hatred, while being black and noting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.



(Red Room Editor's Note: This online community of writers welcomes all the new members who have found us by way of Tim Wise's thought-provoking entries and who have taken the time to comment. We encourage you to read Tim's follow-up here, and to discover all the other great writing on other Red Room blogs and original articles.)

John McCain is the Candidate of Change...

After all, he changes his mind and beliefs several times a day.

Or is change for him just another way of saying “severe mood swings?”

Weird Wally Wants to know

Weird Wally’s Problem With Michael Moore...

Let’s face it, Michael Moore looks like he just stumbled out of his trailer park and into a KKK meeting. So, when Mr. Moore first stumbled upon Weird Wally’s (WW’s) radar screen, WW ignored him.

In other words, WW fucked up because he didn’t recognize a kindred spirit and all WW can do now is to give Mr. Moore a “High-Five” and, advise him to keep on fucking with people’s sterotypes.

After all, sterotypes are what we are all about and, with major sterotypes we will reach niether bliss nor, even understanding.

So, what is Mr. Moore up to now?

-30-

Who Are the Money Changers in the “Temple of Right Now”, and Where Are they Hiding?

Look, Touch, Feel, Smell the shit and follow the money.

They are a tricky bunch.

And will try and convince you that white is black and black is white...

And all the while, denying that a different shade of gray is as real as anything they say that the colors are!

-30-

Google Phil Graham...

John McCaine is a maverick for new times and is talking the talk about throwing money changers out of the Temple.


But who does McCaine listen to when it comes to throwing them out?



And how will John McCaine and Phil Graham clean the Temple together?

-30-

Remember the Keating Five

For all of John McCain’s rants against Wall Street and corruption, his role in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scheme never came clear.


Was he a crook, or just plain stupid?


Weird Wally wants to know...


***

Slate Magazine
explainer
Is John McCain a Crook?
Chris Suellentrop
Posted Friday, Feb. 18, 2000, at 2:35 PM ET

The controversial George W. Bush-sponsored poll in South Carolina mentioned John McCain's role in the so-called Keating Five scandal, and McCain says his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." What exactly did McCain do?

In early 1987, at the beginning of his first Senate term, McCain attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from a number of U.S. senators.

At Keating's behest, four senators--McCain and Democrats Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, and John Glenn of Ohio--met with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on April 2. Those four senators and Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., attended a second meeting at Keating's behest on April 9 with bank regulators in San Francisco.

Regulators did not seize Lincoln Savings and Loan until two years later. The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million.

In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the meetings between the senators and the regulators. McCain, Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, and Riegle became known as the Keating Five.

(Keating himself was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Last year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.)

McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."

But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)

After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.

And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.

The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990, and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.

In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain and Glenn to be the least blameworthy of the five senators. (McCain and Glenn attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators.) McCain was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment," the committee said, and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." McCain considered the committee's judgment to be "full exoneration," and he contributed $112,000 (the amount raised for him by Keating) to the U.S. Treasury.

Next question?
Chris Suellentrop, a former Slate staffer, writes "The Opinionator" for the New York Times.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/1004633/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

How Wall Street Ripped off Your Street

This link is said to have been sent to Weird Wally (WW) by one of his best friends from high school. And although one might have to stretch one’s imagination and assume that WW actually got as far as high school, according to the McCain/Palin Campaign and FOX News, WW wants to thank EB for sending this insightful link.

The how and why of it all.


TTYL,
WW

If You’re retired and depending on Social Security, Why Would You Vote for McCain?

Why do so many of us seniors think McCain is so cool that we would vote for him and cut off our noses to spite our faces.

Well, it’s probably because McCain hasn’t told us about his plans to “rescue Social Security.”

In short, McCain believes that if we give our money to an unregulated Wall Street, the money changers now currently occupying the Temple (Washington and Wall Street), will honestly look out for the rest of us.

Now that is the dumbest shit Weird Wally (WW) says he has ever heard.

See for yourself...


Published on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
McCain Would Privatize Social Security

by Dean Baker

The Republicans have already turned to sick sexual innuendo and nonsense about their vice-presidential candidate, pigs and lipstick in order to distract the public from the real issues in this campaign. One of the items that should be on top of the list of real issues is Senator McCain's plans to privatize and cut Social Security.

McCain has repeatedly expressed interest in privatizing Social Security along the lines proposed by President Bush. For those who have forgotten that nightmare, Bush's plan would have reduced benefits by approximately one percent a year for many workers.

Workers who retired 10 years after the plan was put in place would see a 10 percent reduction in benefits compared with the currently projected levels. Workers who retired 20 years after the plan was implemented would see approximately a 20 percent cut in benefits and workers who retired 40 years after the plan started would see their benefits cut by close to 40 percent.

This schedule of cuts would apply to workers who earn $100,000 a year. Workers who earn $60,000 a year would see cuts of about half this size.

The losses to retired workers could mean big benefits for the financial industry. Under some versions of the plan, the financial industry would rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in fees and commissions over the next 40 years.

According to a recent World Bank analysis, the financial industry pocketed 15-20 percent of the money paid into the privatized Social Security system in Chile, which has often been held up as a model by privatizers in the United States. Given the losses that the millionaire Wall Street bozos have incurred with the housing crash, it is understandable that Senator McCain would want to help the very rich needy.

Privatization would be especially painful coming now, in the wake of the collapse of the housing bubble. The huge baby boom cohort that is just now reaching retirement age has seen most of their wealth wiped out by the housing crash.

A recent analysis that I did with David Rosnick, my colleague at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, showed that a typical late-baby-boomer household (between the ages of 45 and 54) will have less than $100,000 in wealth in 2009 [1]. This figure includes 401(k)s, IRAs and other retirement accounts, personal savings and home equity.

A relatively small share of these late baby boomers has traditional defined-benefit pensions. In other words, these families are going to have very little to support themselves in retirement other than the Social Security that Senator McCain is so anxious to cut.

While the Bush-McCain crew has long been trying to whip up fears about Social Security's finances, the reality is that the program is financially solid. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently updated its analysis of the program's finances [2].

The analysis projects that Social Security will be able to pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2049 with no changes whatsoever. Even after 2049, when the program is first projected to face a shortfall, the payable benefit is projected to be more than 30 percent higher than what the average retiree gets today, and the payable amount would continue to rise from that level every year.

The privatizers have worked hard to convince the public that Social Security is on its last legs, but this is simply a lie. We are going to face many problems that dwarf the dimensions of the projected Social Security shortfall. For example, the annual costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are approximately three times as large as the annual revenue that would be needed to eliminate the projected Social Security shortfall.

The 2049 date when Social Security is first projected to face a shortfall is more than three decades after the latest date when the next president can leave office. John McCain will be 113 when Social Security is first projected to be unable to pay full benefits. In a country where millions of families are struggling to hang onto their homes, and tens of millions are struggling to pay for health care and child care, a distant and relatively minor problem like the projected Social Security shortfall hardly warrants center stage.

The public should know that Social Security is fundamentally sound today and is projected to be sound far into the future. The line about Social Security going bankrupt is just a scare tactic pushed by the privatizers.

The presidential debate must return to Social Security and other issues that affect people's lives. The sleaze that Senator McCain and his vice-presidential candidate throw out as a distraction should be left to the pigs.

Dean Baker [3] is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research [4] (CEPR). He is the author of "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer [5]." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press [6]," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/16

Nothing Else Need be Said

After assessing the two mentioned articles below, all Weird Wally can say is, “vote for McCain/Palin at your own Peril!” And although Palin doesn’t have a clue, McCain did a lot to help make this happen.

Bush flees questions and the press

A very long weekend for the rich and powerful


Trust me on this...

better yet, trust yourself.

Weird Wally

09-16-2008