Stay of Bailout

Looks as if we're safe for a couple of days, as the criminal community has failed to reach a division-of-spoils agreement. And now, as befits deeply observant Jewish people, they're taking a couple of days to contemplate repentance on the occasion of the Feast of Trumpets.

The news accounts have suggested that opposition to the robbery came from the supposedly opposed ends of the celebrated "political spectrum" -- conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. To the unknown extent to which this is true, it paints at least a slightly cheerful picture: people with principles of one kind or another rejecting the business-as-usual synthesis of crap being shoveled by the functionaries of the Mushy Middle.

Meanwhile, I was going to wax sarcastic about the idea of the hell-minions of DC feeling the need to knock off for a couple of days' worth of religious holiday. But, on second thought, what a good thing! Just because the supply of religious Jews in the Congress is undoubtedly very thin -- that's no reason for all our Congresscritters, Jew and Gentile alike, not to observe Rosh Hashanah. Let them all take some time off ... a couple of weeks, even! And even though they're 95% Satan-spawn, by all means, let every one of our rulers observe not only Holy Week, come Eastertime, but maybe an entire Holy Month! If anyone knows some good Buddhist or Hindu or Shinto holidays that could be the cause of some lengthy legislative absences, by all means, let's hear them. And why shouldn't the Congress knock off for Ramadan -- that's pretty much a whole month, isn't it? You see where I'm going with this. Let safety spread across the whole of the calendar!

Duh-mockracy on Stage

So, I'm sitting here typing the previous post and listening to Grampaw Angry-Pants and Sen. Yes-We-Can having a little one-up contest to see who is the more obsequious servant to Twelve Tribes™, Inc., and who hates Iran more. We have a murderous cokehead in the Oval Office now, and we will soon have either a murderous Alzheimer's patient or a murderous confidence man taking his spot. (Do you sense a theme here? What do these men have in common?) At times like these, a great big Imperial money meltdown sounds like not only a great idea, but a downright necessity if a whole 'nother raft-o-people are to escape slaughter.

Last second update: Grampaw has counted the number of letters in "KGB" correctly! Out-freakin'-standing.

Be sure to vote, now. Voting changes things. My high-school "government" teacher told me so. On the other hand, he was a football-coaching moron, too, wasn't he?

Me: Wrong Again

Yesterday (and below), I claimed that the skids were greased and the deal was done. The money boys who own our supervisors already had their 5-feet-in-diameter supply hose inserted into the treasury, and El Presidente was about to close the switch to start the 50,000-horsepower pumps. Then, suddenly, the deal wasn't done, and everybody was mad; and today, there seems to be uncertainty:

Central banks step in as bail-out fears mount

By Norma Cohen, Economics Correspondent

The Bank of England moved on Friday to inject longer term cash into money markets as part of a co-ordinated effort with the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank.

The intervention came after White House talks over a $700bn bailout for the US financial system broke up late on Thursday without agreement.

Now, the Big D.C. Bustup may be nothing more than puppet theater for the edification of the rubes (us). It may be that the idea is to ratchet up the fear; the WaMu failure/seizure would serve admirably as one part of the set dressing in the Theater of Money Terror. That proves nothing, of course; with our supervisors being complete strangers to truth, and the corporate, complicit, etiolated remnants of the press being little more than our supervisors' publicists, we're reduced to guessing. It may be that the Great Financiers will be somewhat delayed in starting the pumps; it's even (faintly) possible that they won't get it done at all. I still think they will. If I'm wrong, I'll be glad -- oh, very glad! -- to say so.

We shall see.

Done Deal

How many parties rule us? We have a how-many-party system, you keep telling me? Now I have to decide whether to believe you, or my lying eyes:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Warned of a possible financial panic, key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement in principle Thursday on a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and said they would present it to the Bush administration in hopes of a vote within days. Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman said, "We are very confident that we can act expeditiously."

Now, there's something about which I can agree with Sen. Dodd. I, too, am very confident that they can -- and will -- act expeditiously.

Folks, we have "government" by the ruling class, for the ruling class, and they aren't going to get themselves off our necks. If we don't do it, who's gonna? And no, I'm not talking about voting Obama, either.

We Do Love Our Wars

I saw something today that was excerpted from Kurt Vonnegut's unpublished papers. And, although we are of course completely preoccupied with how confidence in the markets can be restored, it's worth a few minutes to read. Here's a small taste:

It was a routine speech we got during our first day of basic training, delivered by a wiry little lieutenant: “Men, up to now you’ve been good, clean, American boys with an American’s love for sportsmanship and fair play. We’re here to change that.

“Our job is to make you the meanest, dirtiest bunch of scrappers in the history of the world. From now on, you can forget the Marquess of Queensberry rules and every other set of rules. Anything and everything goes.

“Never hit a man above the belt when you can kick him below it. Make the bastard scream. Kill him any way you can. Kill, kill, kill – do you understand?”

His talk was greeted with nervous laughter and general agreement that he was right. “Didn’t Hitler and Tojo say the Americans were a bunch of softies? Ha! They’ll find out.”

And of course, Germany and Japan did find out: a toughened-up democracy poured forth a scalding fury that could not be stopped. It was a war of reason against barbarism, supposedly, with the issues at stake on such a high plane that most of our feverish fighters had no idea why they were fighting – other than that the enemy was a bunch of bastards. A new kind of war, with all destruction, all killing approved.

A lot of people relished the idea of total war: it had a modern ring to it, in keeping with our spectacular technology. To them it was like a football game.

[Back home in America], three small-town merchants’ wives, middle-aged and plump, gave me a ride when I was hitchhiking home from Camp Atterbury. “Did you kill a lot of them Germans?” asked the driver, making cheerful small-talk. I told her I didn’t know.

This was taken for modesty. As I was getting out of the car, one of the ladies patted me on the shoulder in motherly fashion: “I’ll bet you’d like to get over and kill some of them dirty Japs now, wouldn’t you?”

We exchanged knowing winks. I didn’t tell those simple souls that I had been captured after a week at the front; and more to the point, what I knew and thought about killing dirty Germans, about total war. The reason for my being sick at heart then and now has to do with an incident that received cursory treatment in the American newspapers. In February 1945, Dresden, Germany, was destroyed, and with it over 100,000 human beings. I was there. Not many know how tough America got.

(Via.)

And seriously, folks: if we didn't love war so much, we wouldn't be contemplating this "economic meltdown" either. War, after all, is the polluted spring from which flows both material debt and ruinous destruction -- physical, mental, and spiritual.

Just Say NO -- Or Maybe Something a Little Stronger

After listening to NPR during my morning travels, I was going to write yet another lunchtime post about this. But I see where Slacktivist has said it much better than I would have:

When in the course of human events a purportedly democratic official demands that the people give him $700,000,000,000 -- no strings attached, by week's end, or else -- then the duly elected representatives of the people have one and only one responsible response: Say "No."

Better yet, say "Hell no."

There's more; go read it.