BuzzFlash Mailbag for September 23, 2008

BUZZFLASH MAILBAG

Want to join the conversation? Share your thoughts with other Mailbag readers by clicking here. You also may comment below; post articles yourself at BuzzFlash.net; or send urls for BuzzFlash to post to: www.buzzflash.com/contact/newstip.html.

Subject: The new Nigerian money-raising scam letter (Hint: it's from Washington DC)

(A friend just sent this to me, and boy is it a pisser:)

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,

Minister of Treasury Paulson

Joe Strike
New York NY

Subject: The Meltdown That Begot An Uprising

What happened was that, unexpectedly, the Bush administration's attempted bailout of banking and financial institutions was taken to be a personal threat to the well-being of almost every American. Why unexpectedly? Because who would have thought that the public would see through all the unintelligible Wall Street jargon ("beat the buck", "credit swaps", "selling short", among others) with which the proposed bailout cum giveaway was being camouflaged. What woke up the public? Common sense, that's what. As always the powers that be had underestimated the public's intelligence.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Palin

I am really getting tired of everyone, including Democrats, walking on egg shells when it comes to Sarah Palin.

It might seem irrelevant when Karl Rove suggests that Obama shouldn't criticize Palin as it could cost him the election - after all, that could just be another Rovian trick - but when Bill Clinton admits he won't criticize her, that's another matter.

Can't anyone separate honest criticism from ridicule? What is so wrong with going after Palin's lack of experience and credentials, and criticizing her inexplicable evasive double talk when she is asked a question that "stumps the candidate"? We are not criticizing her for being a woman or criticizing her looks.

Having lived through Hillary's campaign, we can see Bill Clinton's "hidden" agenda -- trying to avoid angering the women who want to vote for Palin so as to garner them for Hillary in 2012. That may also be the rationale for Hillary's apparent lack of "loyal Democratic" fortitude to go after Palin herself.

It is sickening to have Democrats and Republicans alike lecturing us on our criticism of Sarah Palin. It only enables the media to avoid properly vetting her -- as they were able to do with Senator Obama over the last two years.

If we can't criticize her now, when can we? When she becomes a heartbeat away from the presidency? Or, God forbid, when she needs to step up to the highest office in the country?

There is only about 40 days left, and Sarah Palin is still being treated like a vestal virgin, still being kept from the media for the most part, and still avoiding the tough questions. It's time to raise a ruckus about that, and if we can't get heard, then we certainly should NOT reward McCain and Palin with the election. We shouldn't even allow it to be close.

Patricia A. Weller
Emmitsburg, Maryland

Subject: Congress Wants Oversight Board for Historic Wall Street Bailout 9/23

BS! Fox minding the hen house! Any "bail out" should go to an "as needed" basis TO THE VICTIMS OF WALL STREET, i.e., MAIN STREET, so they can afford their mortgage, avoid foreclosure, pay their property taxes, and maintain and upgrade their neighborhoods!

Will Wyche
Palm Springs, CA

Subject: Our hair is on fire!! An epic moment in American history

Yes, Sec Treas Henry Paulson and Sec Treas-to-be (if McCain wins the election) Phil Gramm have to be the two people most responsible for the financial crisis.

Yes, if his plan goes through unchecked, Paulson would be in effect the richest man in the world, at least the financially most influential. We talk about billionaires with some awe. He would have authority, unaccountable, to disburse and give away a trillion dollars!

Given the hysteria it appears that some sort of bailout plan will go through and that, instead of accountability

(prosecution) it will put the foxes in the hen house, totally empowered.

'What Paulson, et al. have tried (are trying) to do is reassert authority ' the sort that used to be wielded by the Mellons and Rockefellers and other rich men in private clubs.'

'If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public ' all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.'

'The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist love fest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks.'

The Establishment Lives! (David Brooks/NY Times)

Once, there was a financial elite in this country. During the first two-thirds of the 20th century, middle-aged men with names like Mellon and McCloy led Wall Street firms, corporate boards and white-shoe law firms and occasionally emerged to serve in government.

Starting in the 1960s, that cohesive elite began to fall apart. Liberal interest groups took control of Democratic economic policy. Supply-side think tankers and Southern conservatives dominated the GOP.

In the 1980s, the old power structures frayed, even on Wall Street. Corporate raiders took on the old business elite. Math geeks created complicated financial instruments that the top executives couldn't control or understand. (The market for credit-default swaps alone has exploded to $45.5 trillion, up from $900 billion in 2001.)

Year followed year, and the idea of a cohesive financial establishment seemed increasingly like a thing of the past.

No more. Over the past week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner of the New York Fed have nearly revived it. At its base, the turmoil wracking the world financial markets is a crisis of confidence. What Paulson, et al. have tried to do is reassert authority ' the sort that used to be wielded by the Mellons and Rockefellers and other rich men in private clubs. ...

If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We're not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We're not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We're entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable ' and often oligarchic ' framework for capitalist endeavor.

TWIGA

Subject: Your site loads too slow now!

Hi!

I live in America, and we have one of the most antiquated phone systems in the world. We just don't have broadband available, and even our dial up is half speed. Since you added pictures and videos to the BuzzFlash page, it takes too long to load! I used to visit the site several times a day. Now, I don't bother, because I just sit and wait and get annoyed while video I can't watch hogs up the bandwidth. The nice plain RSS feed format was one of the most appealing things about BuzzFlash, and now that is gone. Can you have a plain text option for those of us in places like America who don't have cushy jobs where we can use the high speed computers at work?

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Poll questions!?

Hi, Buzz!!

I can't believe the questions pollsters ask: Who would I like to have a beer with (2004)? Who would I rather watch a football game with (2008)?

I neither drink beer nor watch football, so I guess I can't answer those polls. What I would like to know is WHO THE HELL CAME UP WITH THOSE STOOOOOPID QUESTIONS?

I don't want to elect a beer buddy. I don't want to elect a football fan. I want to elect a PRESIDENT. I want him (I'm not being sexist; our choices are both male) to be smarter than I am. I want him to know more than I do about things like economics and foreign policy and the Constitution.

John McCain doesn't qualify. I ranked higher in my college graduating class than he did (I have a Phi Beta Kappa key, and you have to be in the top 10% of your class to get one of those. John McCain wasn't even close). I know that Czechoslovakia no longer exists. I know how many houses I own. I know how to send an email.

Barack Obama has a J.D. from Harvard; in my mind, that stacks up pretty well against my Phi Beta Kappa key. Barack Obama is a Constitutional scholar. Barack Obama has seen more of the world than most Americans; he has a perspective on other countries that McCain can't match - and neither can I, since I spent my entire childhood in the same house in the same small town in Oklahoma.

I suspect that Barack Obama is smarter than I am; I'm certain that he knows more than I do about the things a President needs to know.

The choice is clear: PRESIDENT OBAMA!

If that makes me an elitist, so be it.

Jane Hawes
Edmond, OK (still a red-state Democrat)

[BuzzFlash Note: No, that makes you a Democrat -- the Republican strategy being to ignore issues and cultivate emotional responses rather than rational ones.]

Subject: Hitler would be proud of Bush

As I recall, when Hitler was in his bunker during the closing of WWII, wasn't his policy to ruin Germany since it had failed him?

Isn't this Wall Street bailout the same as "Scorched earth?"

Mike Curtis
Greenbrier Ark

Subject: rolled up sleeves

Can I just say this about both Obama and McCain? Spare me the rolled up sleeves! Neither one of you is impressing anyone. It is a huge insult to see the two of you trying to ply voters with that stupid stunt.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: "Governor Pit Bull"

To me, the most shamelessly dishonest part of Sarah Palin's convention speech was what she didn't say. It's true that Barack Obama once worked as a "community organizer", but Palin at the same age was a beauty pageant contestant! Long before she even considered a political career, Obama had already graduated from Columbia University, completed law school, passed the bar exam, become president of Harvard Law Review (an honor that recognizes exceptional academic performance and leadership skills) taught Constitutional law classes for more than a decade and had nearly finished his eight-year term in the Illinois State Legislature.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: We're being ripped off

Hi Buzz and Friends,

I can't believe how so many people (at least in the government) are buying into this ultimate leverage of money and power - as a dire emergency requiring the expenditure of over a trillion taxpayer dollars - just months before Bush leaves office. Bush, of course, says we have to have it right now. Rather than being a dire emergency isn't it much more likely that this is just one last service that Bush is doing for his wealthy cronies?

At the very least the cart is way out in front of the horse in this whole thing. Nothing about new regulations or dealing with the golden parachutes that are being deployed all over Wall Street and Washington. They need to have at least a scary moment when they pull the cord and nothing happens. If these companies are too big to fail then they're too big and need to be broken up. The urgency, they say, stems from instability in the market, citing the rapid fall of Lehman Bothers. The short-sellers causing the instability however are described as an "important balance in the market." So nobody has to repudiate anything and can go back to preaching free market and going into government to make as much money and do as much damage as they can possibly do. The Bush crowd, including Palin and McCain, would have us believe that greed is cyclical and that we just have to get through this and make sure "it doesn't happen in the first place".

Well, that doesn't seem very likely. If the recent past is any indicator things will just get much worse. Greed never sleeps and it's wide awake right now. The people that brought us the crisis are scheming right now planning to just take the trillion, give absolutely nothing in return and then certainly everything will crash around us - except that they'll be very rich and able to raise large armies and we'll be trickle-down peons. Why not extend the ban on short-selling first and see if that will buy enough time to do the basic accounting required as this is nothing more than a book-entry trick. There is no emergency except that they want the money very much. They wanted the SS funds - but this will do nicely thank you very much.

Again, no one is punished. taxpayers get bad loans at inflated prices and CEO's get a soft landing in their penthouses. Senators Dodd and Boehner looked like a couple of realtors trying to talk Americans into taking a risky second on their homes. They didn't convince me of anything except that they wouldn't be good at vaudeville. They propped each other up at awkward moments like when they were asked "What did the Fed chairman say to you that scared you so badly?" It was apparently too scary to describe and anyway not suitable for Sunday television. Neither is their bad acting.

Democrats are like cows that will follow any steer that gets out in front of them. They're disgusting in their timidity. They likely all have the same model Blackberry and text each other while they should be paying attention to what's happening around them. This is certainly no time to abandon partisanship - just before the election. This whole thing has a thieves forming a posse outside the bank they just robbed quality to it that is just infuriating. But like the Iraq war there appears to be nothing that can be done.

Far from being patriotic supporting this plan is a betrayal of the people. The MSM media will not ask people like Boehner to account for the apparent contradiction between their philosophy and the action they're recommending. Like spoiled children they made the mess and want us to clean it up so that they can carry on making a mess. This trillion dollars is supposed to be forgotten in a couple of weeks in favor of even "bolder" action involving sucking all the money out of the national treasury. McCain just wants to play "Commander-in-Chief" and doesn't know anything about economic policy except what Phil Gramm has told him.

Americans are supposed to be a free people - we have a president not a CiC. According to the Constitution the president is CiC of the military and president of the people. Anyway I'm sick of hearing the term - it's stupid like so much about this country today. Call me bitter.

Tim Mooring

San Francisco, CA

Subject: McCain

Let's stop being nice to John McCain. Tell the real truth the man is senile and unfit to be President

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Incompetent lawmakers

I'd like to add something to your recent article describing the leadership of this once great nation. But after reading it, I cannot think of anything you haven't said that I would, or could. I do however have a question. When corporate America actually determines who will be president and U.S policy, how can we straighten it out???

david a robinson
brooksville, fl.

Subject: Is John McCain's Age More Of An Issue Than Barack Obama's Race?

From http://vexedinthecity.wordpress.com/

Let me start this off by saying that I don't like to bash old people. Really I don't. My grandparents were old people. I don't disregard or diminish the contributions of old people to society nor do I feel that it's cool to make old people the punchlines or the butt of any joke. In fact, I hope to one day be an old person, so they get two thumbs up from me. They do-- please keep that in mind as you read the rest of my thoughts here.

I'm concerned about John McCain's age. Not just as a practical matter of his physical health and well being, but more so as a matter of national security and, as witnessed over the past few weeks, how this relates to the potential health and well being of the nation. You see, as the gaffe train keeps rolling and each day brings us news of another poorly worded or semi-confused statement coming from the candidate's mouth, I start to wonder if he's up for the rigors that come with the 24/7/365 grind that is being the leader of the free world.

While most of his contemporaries are well into their retirement and some are dying, John McCain is asking us to give him one of the most mentally and physically rigorous jobs on the planet, and if he can't remember the SEC vs. the FEC, the prime minister of Spain, or how many homes he has, I don't know if it's fair to saddle him with the presidency.

To be fair, I'm not attacking John McCain here. I'm genuinely concerned about his health and wish someone would actually speak to this subject in the proper context. What does this mean to the rest of the nation if he is elected?

If it's fair to make insinuations and launch attacks of subtlety based on Barack Obama's race, is it equally as appropriate to examine John McCain's age? The average Caucasian male in America lives 75.15 years, and as a four-time cancer survivor, this number drops a bit more; that said, we're not talking about a man in tip top physical shape nor are we talking about someone who is abnormally spry for his age as exampled by his inability to hide his confusion in his bluster. This could be not only unfortunate for him as our potential leader, but also dangerous.

Are we to believe that it's okay that the man we would elect as the 'decider' would be forced, by his own diminishing wits, to make decisions by committee or cede vital functions of his executive capacity to proxies so as to allow him time to focus on the issues he's proficient on, or even still, those he can remember? These gaffes matter. Not just because they show a lack of elocution and articulation of policy, but more so because they are telling in his inability to stick to his script and his driftng away from the facts as they are.

When we do not call out this issue, we sugarcoat what could be the most prescient and imperative facts of this campaign.

Yes, Barack Obama is black.

Yes, Sarah Palin is a woman.

We know what that means. We know the historic ramifications of both of their candidacies, but race and gender are not deciding factors in one's ability to think clearly. Age is.

John McCain is old. This is a fact, and yet no one has asked what that really means beyond a whisper here or conjecture there. No one has has gone hard to the pain with this issue as they have with Obama's membership in a church that espouses black liberation theology and what that means to race relations. or Sarah Palin's motherhood and what that means to working moms and feminism. We've talked about issues as to who the candidates are genetically, but no one's talking about what the candidates are chronologically.

The question of McCain's age is not allayed nor is it relieved when his campaign is not waged on the merits of his ideas and is constantly devolving into a cipher of deception and aggression punctuated by an inability to articulate a message for the future that is coherent and coupled with a plan. The fact is, unlike Reagan who was able to be magnanimous and forward looking, appearing as the wise sage calling for morning in America, McCain comes across as callous and curmudgeonly. ...

Again, unlike race or gender, in this election age matters. If John McCain can't convince us that he's not just in touch with the common man, but in touch with reality, then how can we entrust our country to him?

Corey Richardson
Austin, TX

Subject: The Significance Of This Trillion Dollar Bailout?

"They've taken charge of the piggy-bank, and that's it for the rest of us."

"Security?"

"Gone."

"The safety net?"

"Shriveled up."

"Happiness?"

"What's that?"

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Prevent another stolen election

1. Before you go to vote print off or go and get a copy of the voting laws of your state so you have ammunition in case someone tries to prevent you from voting.

2. In Oklahoma if you are in line at the time the polls are supposed to close you still get to vote. Do not under any circumstance leave.

3. If something is wrong with the machines ask for a paper ballot if they are allowed in your state.

4. Vote early or absentee.

5. Have observers at your precinct.

6. If anyone tells you that you are not on the list, ask for a paper ballot.

7. Take a cell phone and report any kind of irregularity.

Karen Webb
Moore, Ok

Subject: Re: Free Speech - campaign signs

Re: Free Speech -  Campaign Signs

He needs to take a look at his lease. If it is in the lease that he can't, and he signed the lease, then he can't. If it isn't in the lease he should be able to put anything he chooses in the window. Does it say any sign or just political signs? Is there a definition of political sign? Is a "pro-life" sign considered political?

My sister who is very active politically lives in an addition in Houston where any kind of sign is forbidden.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/mailbag/693

Karen Webb
Moore, Ok

Subject: Mortgage Musical Chairs

Today, we are witnessing what is really the result of what I call mortgage musical chairs! I work in the industry and provide mortgage origination and risk products to lenders. I tell you without hesitation that by as late as 2006, EVERYONE in the mortgage business knew the bubble was bursting and that high debt ratios and sub-prime practices would have devastating results. Everyone was gambling they were smarter and they could bundle, package, and hide the worst of the worst so when the music stopped someone else would be caught holding the loan.

Well, it appears that they were right! This reactionary bailout leaves them all still squatting at the trough while the taxpayers are once again left holding the bag.

This is another example of the miserable failure of leadership that is this administration. Incompetence, cronyism and greed are the rule of the day, and you should ask your favorite media channel and demand of yor members of congress which side of history they want to be on when the story of the sub-prime lending crisis is told. For well over 2 years many warned the Bush administration of the devastating effects this would have on the economy and on the lives of innocent homeowners. Not only were these warnings summarily dismissed, but it now appears that they were an all too eager accomplice to the unscrupulous lenders who went to great lengths to keep their pipelines open and their profits pouring in.

Once again, this administration has abused the power of the federal government by deciding to be a groupie to big business and by assailing anyone who stood on the side of consumers by asking Washington to change the tune or even to add a few more chairs.

Barry Baker
Albany, NY

Subject: Mortgage Crisis

Instead of giving the $700 billion directly to the financial organizations, I recommend paying off the mortgages that are in jeopardy to these financial organization, rewriting a sensible and affordable loan to the home owners with them paying back into the US Treasury their monthly payments. This way, the financial institutes have money to work with, the home owner keeps their homes, with payments going back to Uncle Sam. Along with this, regulations for these institutes to follow in making new loans.

Colonel Colin J. N. Chauret, USAF Retired

BUZZFLASH MAILBAG