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CREDIT BRAVE NEW FILMS FOR BRINGING TO ATTENTION THE FOLLOWING COMMERCIAL AGAINST McCAIN/PALIN, AS PRODUCED BY "A CONCERNED PRIVATE CITIZEN" who would like you to spread the word:

For those among you who insist upon substantiation of the claims made in the ur-ad, see for yourself here, here und here, as you prefer. And be sure to pass it along--but do so responsibly.

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IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD, POLICE RAIDED THE TONY ALAMO MINISTRIES COMPOUND NEAR TEXARKANA @ THE WEEKEND as part of enquiries into suspicions of child sexual abuse and child pornography being carried on therefrom.

Which could be considered byproducts of what the Southern Poverty Law Centre's Intelligence Report broke just last fall--and which they reminded everyone of thusly in the Hatewatch blog when the story first broke Saturday evening:

As detailed in the Fall 2007 issue of the Report, Alamo in recent years has argued that girls should marry once they start menstruating, even if they are as young as 10. In a 2006 radio broadcast, he said: “God impregnated Mary when she was about 11 years old. So the government idiots, the people that don’t know the Bible, what you’re going to have to do is get a hold of God now, you’re going to have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prison for statutory rape.”

In early 2007, Alamo cited the alleged promiscuity of 1st-graders as grounds for marrying them before the age of legal consent. “I’ve found out from people’s parents that their daughter started having sex when she was 6 years old and had sex every day of her life,” he said in another broadcast. “So right there, by the time she’s 15 years old, she’s had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality.”

The Report’s story also explores the Alamo cult’s strange background and its leader’s raging hatred for Catholics and homosexuals. Alamo has blamed Catholics for “every filthy thing,” including communism, Nazism, the two world wars, the Jonestown massacre, drugs, prostitution and pornography. He has also attacked his many detractors in Fouke, saying that God would “destroy” what he characterized as his “Vaticanite” critics.

Which raises the question, readers, of where Rev. Alamo gets such a notion that first-graders' showing signs of "sexual promiscuity" was grounds enough for urging their being Married Too Young--as in @ the onset of the menarche.

How do we know it isn't Al Cohol as is providing the inspiration?

WITHOUT DOUBT, THE BIG DEBATE ABROAD THIS DAY IS OVER HOW BEST TO APPROACH (AND TWEAK UPON) TREASURY SECRETARY PAULSON'S GRAND DESIGN of what he (aided and abetted by His Fraudulency) sees as a "necessary" restructuring of the banking, financial and mortgage-lending industries in the United States made all the more so by--wait for it--the Great Within's delusory beliefs that regulatory relief will actually "empower" in particular the Lower Classes--especially such deemed "chronic and habitual welfare cases***unwittingly conditioned into embracing Socialistic, Communistic or otherwise un-American beliefs and value-systems" because of State welfare.

That it would open the doors to greater selection of new and innovative banking and mortgage products, @ lower prices than before.

And that it would empower investors into maximising their returns through new and innovative investment vehicles previously available only to bankers and the super-wealthy.

All of which, it turns out, can be traced back, in one way or another, to none other than the self-proclaimed "maverick" of Indecision 2008, by name of John McCain. (See for yourself what The Nation has to say in this respect. Not to mention some revealing new information the MSM is afraid to disclose, For Reasons You Need to Understand, that the same AIG insurance group whose Govermnent bailout The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang is criticising actually gave money to his so-called "Reform Institute;" talk about your hypocrisy there!)

Not to mention wondering how such can be financed without recourse to higher taxes, to be excused as being "in the national interest" (as in the belief that low taxes=jobs=social stability), as well as having to maintain an extremely costly ur-RAHOWA in Iraq and Afghanistan Against International Terrorism while expecting the public to maintain their daily routines as a "preemptive" measure against further infamous attacks.

In short, a $700 billion misunderstanding, and then some.

One suggestion I have: This holiday season, consider giving Savings Bonds instead of wasteful and frivolous consumption goods as gifts to your friends as one way to show how such a Noble Delusion can be financed. Said bonds can be purchased in Series EE (paying market-linked rates) or Series I (paying an inflation-linked rate adjusted regularly), and are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.

(If you still have old Series E or Series EE bonds in the attic or safe, consider trading those in on Series HH bonds; those are the only way Series HH bonds can be acquired.)

Or, for that matter, United States Treasury securities through the Treasury Direct scheme; they can also serve as worthwhile holiday-season gift options to the wasteful, the frivolous and the otherwise impractical of consumption goods.

(Unless, of course, you can show cause why we need to purchase wasteful and unnecessary consumption goods @, say, Wally World rather than invest for the good of the Nation.)

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IN ANY EVENT, THINK TWICE ABOUT WHETHER BUYING WASTEFUL AND UNNECESSARY APPLIANCES OR TOYS FOR THE HOLIDAYS IS REALLY NECESSARY in the face of what could be a serious and volatile socioeconomic situation ... and put those monies, instead, into Savings Bonds or other Treasury securities, where such will actually serve useful purposes for the Nation--and, over time, will translate into a generous return.

They can be purchased, for the most part, through your local bankers, or you can open a Treasury Direct account online. Also ask your employer if they offer the Payroll Savings Plan, as allows you to put aside part of your pay for Savings Bond purchases.

Employers who may be looking for worthwhile holiday gift ideas for their employees or loyal customers may want to consider giving Savings Bonds or other Treasury Securities this time around; such could help make a difference for once, and could be much better than frivolous or unnecessary consumption goods.

Otherwise ... what stands in the way?

And pray, whence the idea that constant and unnecessary purchases of consumption goods is necessary to the defence of Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations?

YOUR CORRESPONDENT, HIMSELF MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY DISABLED TO A POINT WHERE NORMAL EMPLOYMENT IS DEEMED NOT VIABLE, has himself been subjected to what amounts to psychoemotional abuse under the guise of "therapy" by the likes of psychiatrists with Community Mental Health Centres, sheltered workshop counsellors and Vocational Guidance Counsellors with Vocational Rehabilitation.

In particular the likes of fearmongering statements such as these:

• "The only way many employers would be willing to hire disabled people is if, and only if, they were given greater flexibility to use Independent Contractors, using them only as needed, and paying them less than mininum wage."
• "Employers in the community would like to hire disabled people, but as things stand now, they are prevented by assorted legal restrictions from doing so."
• "Holding outspoken beliefs, or showing outspoken tendencies, can be sufficent grounds for your welfare and Social Security benefits being cancelled or revoked. Hence, keep your mouth shut and your nose clean."
• "Being outspoken will only sap your strength."
• "The law requires disability recertification through a Trial Work Period being completed every seven years."
• "Being outspoken is a clear sign of mental illness."
• "Those of your kind who speak out are all the more likely to undermine public confidence and trust in certain agencies, institutions and schemes of the State deemed Essential or otherwise Strategic."
• "Outspoken people are all the more likely to spread Schizophrenic Germs, infecting whole communities to the point of an epidemic of insanity ensuing."
• "Companies prefer locating in communities with a high level of Mental Purity." (Alternately, "Companies would rather not locate in areas with high populations of troublemakers and mental cases.")
• "If companies were allowed to freely hire disabled people, employers could risk legal action charging Unfair Labour Practice, Reverse Bias and/or Union-Busting from those who were let go just to hire your kind."
• "You would be better off taking night-shift work so you can not only get a better chance of being hired, but also free up your days for needed therapy."
• "In some cases of serious mental disorders, medication can help."

And perhaps one of the weirdest of lies I can recall being subjected against me was in the fall of 1981, shortly after my return from a misguided referral interstate to Eau Claire, Wisconsin by Minnesota Vocational Rehabilitation for jobs training and evaluation as eventually resulted in referral to a Day Treatment programme which was nothing short of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four on earth, with abuse packaged as "therapy" which was so awful, I have since been considered unsuitable for traditional employment in the community: In the interest of expediency, Vocational Rehabilitation placed me in a board-and-care home (since closed) which was nothing short of Bedlam from time to time, reinforced by an insistence on utmost cooperation if we were expected to be in the good graces of management.

That lie was suggesting that I was directly responsible for such acts, deeds and exploits as led to the closing of a local children's home in 1976, as if suggesting where said children's home was something of an Essential or Strategic Institution in the Public Interest--all the while lacking credible evidence as would substantiate the connexion. Not to mention suggesting that I lie down on the nearby railroad tracks and let the next train pass over and kill me "to spare the community further embarrassment."

(If truth be known, the reason said children's home closed was not because of "troublemaking" on my part, but because of the structural condition thereof precluding cost-efficent remodelling to bring the same up to prevailing fire codes--in fact, such was in a historically-significant structure here in Winona--and a general paradigm shift away from the institutional model and more towards foster care vis-a-vis those with emotional and developmental disorders motivated largely by cost and changing social attitudes.)

*************

NOW THAT HIS FRAUDULENCY IS CALLING ON CONGRESS TO PASS AN $800 BILLION PACKAGE TO BUY DOWN BAD MORTGAGES and otherwise save face for the Great Within's Grand Delusions of regulatory relief towards a Classless Ownership Society being one with empowering the Lower Classes especially, there could be serious questions already emerging.

Which prompts Credo Mobile to come out with the following letter to share with your Right-Thinking Droogs (and responsibly, know):

Subject: No blank check for Wall Street.

Dear Friend,

Congress is on the brink of making a one-sided deal to give George W. Bush a blank check to bail out his droogs--offering nearly (or perhaps more than) a trillion taxpayer dollars to Wall Street to cover its bad debts. That works out to somewhere between $2000 and $5000 from every American family. So what do the taxpayers get in return?

Nothing. No new regulation or oversight to help avoid this kind of crisis in the future. No public interest givebacks to help people whose homes are in the hands of the banks. Perhaps most shockingly of all, the taxpayers get absolutely no share in the profits if and when these finance giants bounce back, even though we are now assuming a great deal of the risk.

This is worse than a bad deal - this isn't a deal at all. This is a blank check to some of the richest companies in the world.

I just signed a petition calling on key members of Congress to impose a few sensible conditions to this bailout in order to protect the American people--I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/no_blank_check/?r_by=912-1603185-2vR2O8x&rc=paste

Thanks!

So what stands in the way?

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LASTLY, A FURTHER APPY POLLY LOGGY IS DICTATED IN LIGHT OF CONTINUED PROBLEMS TODAY ON BLOGDRIVE'S PART as prevented this blog from displaying for much of yesterday--essentially continuing on what happened Saturday after some hardware on their end failed.

These were outside my direct control, know, and I apologise for any inconvenience you may have suffered.

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FIRST OFF, AN EXPLANATION IS IN ORDER FOR WHY IT WAS THAT I WAS UNABLE TO POST MATERIAL YESTERDAY UNTIL LATER IN THE DAY: Some hardware on Blogdrive's end failed, forcing them offline for some while.

(Which, however, did not affect member blogs like this one, which were still up and running.)

Please understand that the problem is being rectified @ this time, so expect some delays in seeing these items posted in real time.

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HARD TO SAY IF THIS COULD BE THE END OF THE NOTORIOUS TONY ALAMO MINISTRIES, but their compound in Fouke, AR was raided last evening by Federal and State authorities in response to rumours that Tony Alamo Ministries was dabbling in the old kinderporn.

Charges which Rev. Alamo denies, claiming his "deeply-held beliefs" are "under attack" by what he called "the Anti-Christ Government," never mind where Alamo's pseudoministry has been described as an Evil Cult preying upon children and Other Vulnerable Elements of Society.

(Some further interesting insight into Tony Alamo Ministries was had last fall by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in their Intelligence Report; the article itself is worth reading in the wake of these new developments.)

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AND SPEAKING OF SO-CALLED "DEEPLY-HELD BELIEFS" AS A PATSY OF THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT WHICH CAN SERVE AS A LEGAL DEFENCE if and when required--Right Wing Watch takes note on how same is being deployed in their propaganda for Indecision 2008:

The Religious Right has spent the last several months savaging Barack Obama and his Christian faith, calling it everything from “deceitful,” to “woefully deficient,” to outright "phony." They have gone over the tenets of his faith with a fine-toothed comb and demanded that he sit down with them and explain, in depth, his Christian beliefs and how they influence his political positions. 

But now that Sarah Palin has emerged on the scene, they have suddenly dusted off their age-old complaint that questions about a candidate's faith and "deeply held beliefs" are off-limits and that any such inquiry is a sign of anti-Christian bigotry: 

Governor Sarah Palin is undergoing increasing scrutiny by those aiming to use her church and religious beliefs as a weapon against her. Over the weekend, a biased Associated Press article attacked her church for promoting Focus on the Family's "Love Won Out" conference which will be held this Saturday in Anchorage. The conference will teach a biblical message on sexuality and assist those seeking to overcome same-sex attractions. We can probably expect more attacks of this nature. How the McCain campaign responds is critical in maintaining the intensity and enthusiasm that swept through social conservatives after Gov. Palin's selection as the VP nominee. In the past, there has been an overwhelming public backlash against those seeking to impose a religious litmus test on candidates and judicial nominees. Several years ago, Senator Schumer (D-NY) experienced this backlash when he attacked judicial nominees for holding "deeply held personal beliefs." The McCain campaign must stand firmly against efforts to make Gov. Palin's faith a disqualifier. There should be no reluctance in any party to be identified as someone who holds "deeply held personal beliefs."

If FRC really is so upset about people trying to use a candidate's "church and religious beliefs as a weapon" against them, maybe they should take it up with James Dobson and Focus on the Family.

Next thing you know, expect the Religiopolitical Right to start using "dearly-held beliefs"--or, even better yet, "deeply- and dearly-held beliefs"--as a patsy crossing on canard to suggest that the defence of a mythological White Male Christian Power Structure is one with the defence of Our Traditional Christian Heritage and Identity. Especially when delivered in a condescendingly-sarcastic tone and nuance which may conceal psychopathic intentions.

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WITH BANKERS AND LENDERS ALL THE MORE LIKELY TO START TIGHTENING LOAN AND CREDIT STANDARDS IN THE FACE OF A SERIOUS SOCIOFINANCIAL MELTDOWN caused, no doubt, by the Grand Delusions of His Fraudulency's Great Within suggesting that a combination of "stay-the-course" socioeconomic policies, low taxes and regulatory relief will help ensure Complete and Final Victory in the ur-RAHOWA Agains Terrorism, it was only a matter of time before "spam" e-mails began surfacing from what can best be regarded as disreputable channels claiming to offer "cheap loans" @ low rates of usury without regards to credit history.

Typical of which was the following, as received by Your Correspondent (with necessary redactions):

FRED FINANCIAL HOME is the leading provider of Loans any where any time
.
Get a loan for bills, car repairs, travel or vacation, credit repair, PCS
expenses, furniture, home repair, and all your other needs Loans are available from $2,000 USD to $5,000,000 USD,Personalize your loan with Flexible terms at competitive rates.

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied, return your loan
within 15 days at no cost to you.
Contact us today on our email [redacted] with the following
details:

Names:
Monthly Income:
Home Address:
Phone No:
Fax No:
Country:
Loan Amount ($):
Loan Period:

Regards,
Mr Fred Duke
Chairman / F.F.H.

N.B
All Interested Applicant are to Contact the Company Email below
[redacted]

And it makes you wonder just how these "loans" (if @ all extant) are financed; methinks one likely possibility is that such "lenders" are really using such as a front for Laundering the Proceeds of Crime or Terrorism @ the expense of vulnerable persons needing consumer finance, but unlikely to know where to turn for fear of "not meeting current lending standards."

In turn bringing up the following item per Media Matters for America offered in the interest of insight:

Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News' Your World, conflated giving home mortgages to minorities with risky lending practices, suggesting that efforts to increase homeownership among minority borrowers contributed to financial problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Discussing the decision by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, Cavuto asked Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) on September 18, "[W]hen you and many of your colleagues were pushing for more minority lending and more expanded lending to folks who heretofore couldn't get mortgages, when you were pushing homeownership ... Are you totally without culpability here? Are you totally blameless? Are you totally irresponsible of anything that happened?" Cavuto later said, "I'm just saying, I don't remember a clarion call that said, 'Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.'"

Previously, on the September 16 edition of Your World, Cavuto said to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD): "[Y]ou wanted to encourage minority lending -- obviously, a lot of Republicans did as well. There was a lot of -- expand lending to those to get a home," Cavuto went on to ask, "Do you think, intrinsically, it was a mistake, on both parties' part, to push -- to push for homeownership for everybody?"

Besides, it's my understanding that Fox Prolefeed has this nasty repute for being a paid shill for the articles of faith of His Fraudulency's Great Within, in particular the empowerment of the Lower Classes out of "chronic and habitual" dependency on renting in "the projects" and into a "healthy and nutritious" respect for owner-occupancy housing as one with True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command.

Enough to make you wonder if what Fox Prolefeed wants out of "the projects" is essentially conversion, Singapore-stylee, of rental units therein into owner-occupied housing, provided the tenants were of Good Moral Character--in other words, unwed mothers, those with past-due traffic tickets or other criminal fines, tax evaders and others deemed "parasites of the state" need not apply.

more the engrish!

THIS PARTICULAR SPECIMEN OF ENGRISH PROMPTS ME TO ASK WHAT YOU VISITORS THINK OF THE EXAGGERATOR almost nine months on in its existance.

Comments graciously welcomed, so long as they refrain from obscenity, indecency or profanity (especially so the "Seven Dirty Words" and their variants); avoid ethno-racial and ethno-religious slurs and epithets; avoid appeals to latent bigotry and hate--in short, keep it clean and all will be right with the world.

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FIRST OFF, READERS, AN APPY POLLY OGGY IS IN ORDER FOR THE DELAY IN POSTING THIS ITEM: Blogdrive.com, as hosts The Exaggerator, was offline for much of today without prior timely advice issued to members explaining what was going on all the while. (As seems the case with them, unfortunately.)

Not to mention my attendance @ Winona State University's Homecoming parade this morning and some time crushing down aluminum cans for recycling @ the motel that I do for in Winona after lunch. The former does tend to get rather excitable, what with students having a drink or two while enjoying the same.

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SO MUCH FOR THE GOP BEING THE PARTY OF SELF-RELIANCE, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND A CLASSLESS OWNERSHIP SOCIETY: Melissa McEwan, who writes for the British gazetta The Guardian, observes thus on the GOP's failing to see the errors of their own ways all along in pushing the argument that "complete, final and binding" regulatory relief, as well as a "healthy and nutritious respect" for free-market capitalism, would be the keys to a new Classless Ownership Society as would, for one, "empower" the Lower Classes after years of "chronic and habitual welfare dependency:"

What a difference four years makes. In August of 2004, when he was running for re-election, George Bush turned what had been a nebulous idea encompassing various privatisation and investment ideas into a formal objective, releasing a "fact sheet" detailing his policies that would promote this capitalist utopia known as the "ownership society".

More access and choices in healthcare! More home ownership! More tax relief! It was all about getting the American taxpayers' tax dollars back into their pockets where they belonged so they could buy stuff - because, as Bush explained: "If you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of our country. The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country."

Four years later, millions of Americans are now without healthcare, home foreclosures are skyrocketing, bankruptcy is epidemic and the headlines blare "Nightmare on Wall Street" as the country faces the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The people who were supposed to own a vital stake in America's future by now are lucky if they still own the shirts on their backs.

The ownership society – built on the shoddy foundation of corporate deregulation, unchecked lending, massive deficits and tax cuts during a time of war – has failed.

And its failure is owned by precisely no one.

Bush, once the golden boy of modern conservatism, has now been disowned by the entire Republican party, who are seemingly just as eager to disown the name of the party itself: The words "Bush" and "Republican" were hardly spoken at the Republican National Convention earlier this month. And the bloody scene on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday – in which host Chris Matthews went after Republican congressman Eric Cantor like a starving dog on a steak, tenaciously exhorting him to take political responsibility for his party's economic policies – was a slaughter, with Matthews declaring at one point: "I have never in my life seen a party run from its own record like the Republicans have."

Matthews: The problem you have is that your colleague from Virginia, Tom Davis, who once ran your campaign committee, said that if the Republican party was dog food, they'd take it off the shelves. And you haven't used the word "Republican" tonight; your party didn't use it in the acceptance speech; John McCain never said the word "Republican"; he never said the word "Bush"; you're trying to take off your uniforms and run from the field of political battle and claim you're not Republicans. You're claiming - you're running against this administration! And I'm not going to let anybody get away with that kind of foolery! You have to take responsibility, sir. The policies of this administration that has gotten us into this mess - you can't walk away and say, "Oh, we had nothing to do with this".

But that is, of course, exactly what the Republicans are now trying to do. Bush is persona non grata. The ownership society? Never heard of it! Gee, it's a terrible situation we're in – how'd that happen? Well, never mind. Now is not the time to point fingers and lay blame! Let us tell you about a hot little commodity named John McCain.

What is, perhaps, most unrelentingly galling about their affected posture is that, even as they disown, disclaim and distance themselves from Bush's economic policies and promote McCain as some sort of saviour, they refuse to acknowledge that his proposals are just more of the same conservative überfail that got us into this morass in the first place.

Had he brilliant economic proposals, or even different ones, it might legitimately warrant their abandonment of Bush and his antiquated fiscal sensibilities. But McCain is merely a new face on the same old swill. They won't own it with Bush's name stamped on it, but they'll line up behind near-identical policies in droves, hoping no one will notice – hoping to help sell those policies again to the American people.

It's stunning, really.

The hypocrisy of the personal responsibility brigade brazenly, utterly refusing to take responsibility for this mess, and the irony of these great champions of the ownership society flatly refusing to own the economic policies which have resulted in massive losses among American families, would be positively hilarious if it all weren't so goddamned tragic.

And what of McCain in all this? Once upon a time, he was an honourable man – and, while it's debatable how kinda sorta mavericky he ever really was during the first part of his career in the Senate, it seems fair to suggest there was probably a time when he would have refused to play the role of new-and-improved packaging on economic policies that had been comprehensively disastrous for America.

But the 2000 election left the taste of presidency in his mouth and Karl Rove's bootprint on his back. Whatever decency and integrity there had ever been in the man disappeared in a moment, as he infused with new meaning that dear old chestnut: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. He once said he wouldn't want to lose a war to win an election. His position on losing his soul seems more flexible.

He now stands at the front of the Republican party, poised to lead them back into the White House, given the right number of electoral votes, and he refuses, like all the rest, to accept any responsibility for the current economic crisis, or to own up to the reality that he's got nothing new up his sleeve, nothing that will effectively and significantly alter the course we are already on – a dearth of ideas that, comically, is owed to the unwavering fealty to partisan doctrine he had to affect in order to become his party's nominee, genuflecting to the precious tax cuts that no one wants to own. Not anymore.

So much for the ownership society.

Which, essentially, is conditioned on an idealised "pure" form of free-market capitalism being the Great White Father. "Pure," as in based solely on Self-Regulatory Codes of Good Practice as contain subtle "outs" which can excuse cartel behaviour and its excesses, with major detrius to both consumers and businesses in equal measure.

In effect, handing over The United States of America to RAMJAC, who would reorganise same as a Limited Liability Corporation (The United States of America, LLC, as it were) based on the belief that taxes were one with "share capital."

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AS IF THE NOTION OF A "CLASSLESS OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" IN DISINTEGRATION WASN'T AWFUL ENOUGH FOR THE GOP TO RELISH, think of what Amy Goodman has to say from the new, virtual version of The Capital Times (Madison, WI) about, as it were, taxpayers bailing out tax foes:

The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver's seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.

Tuesday, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, the insurance giant. This follows the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank; the distressed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; the bailout of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the collapse of retail bank IndyMac; and the federally guaranteed buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase.

AIG was deemed "too big to fail," with 103,000 employees and more than $1 trillion in assets. According to regulators, an unruly collapse could cause global financial turmoil. U.S. taxpayers now own close to 80 percent of AIG, so the orderly sale of AIG will allow the taxpayers to recoup their money, the theory goes.

It's not so easy.

The financial crisis will most likely deepen. More banks and giant financial institutions could collapse. Millions of people bought houses with shady subprime mortgages and have already lost or will soon lose their homes. The financiers packaged these mortgages into complex "mortgage-backed securities" and other derivative investment schemes. Investors went hog-wild, buying these derivatives with more and more borrowed money.

Nomi Prins used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns and also worked at Lehman Brothers. "AIG was acting not simply as an insurance company," she told me. "It was acting as a speculative investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you have a situation where it's (the U.S. government) ... taking on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand."

She went on: "It's about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, 25 to 30 times the amount of capital. ... They had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. ... There was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that's what is bringing down the entire banking system."

As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks' money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to "save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they're going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to (lose) property taxes, they're going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers."

Prins elaborated: "You're nationalizing the worst portion of the banking system. ... You're taking on risk you won't be able to understand. So it's even more dangerous." I asked Prins, in light of all this nationalization, to comment on the prospect of nationalizing health care into a single-payer system. She responded, "You could actually put some money into something that pre-empts a problem happening and helps people get health care."

The meltdown is a bipartisan affair. Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama each have received millions of dollars from these very companies that are collapsing and are receiving the corporate welfare. President Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (now an Obama economic adviser) presided over the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed after the Great Depression of 1929 to curb speculation that caused that calamity. The repeal was pushed through by former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, one of McCain's former top advisers.

Politicians are too dependent on Wall Street to do anything. The people who vote for them, and whose taxes are being handed over to these failed financiers, are the ones who need to show their outrage and demand their leaders truly put "country first" and bring about "change."

Spread the word.

Your Pirate Name Is...

Black Sheik of Rumps

Government health insurance, like large employer health insurance, is based on a simple concept: Risk pooling. The more of us in this together, the more our health risks will average out among the population. When I'm sick, many more will be well, and so the group will be able to bear the costs of my illness. Moreover, the greater the size of the pool, the greater our ability to negotiate better deals, demand fairer treatment, and generally find market strength in numbers. This is true, in a maximal sense, for Medicare, with its tens of millions of members and ability to set doctor-payment rates. And it's relatively true for large employers. Democrats, in general, want to expand this model, bringing more people into government and employer options, and ensuring that ever fewer individuals are forced to face the health system on their lonesome.

In contrast, McCain would like to take the health-care system in the opposite direction, toward an individual market where individuals seek coverage without the protection of large insurers or the government. Thus, the core of McCain's health-care proposal is a tax credit designed to ease people out of employer insurance and help employers pull away from offering coverage. McCain would give individuals a $2,500 tax credit and families a $5,000 tax credit meant to help them seek cheaper coverage options, such as health savings accounts, in the private market. And it is this cheaper coverage that is truly the point of McCain's health plan. "I would seek to encourage and expand the benefits of [health savings] accounts to more American families."

The benefits of those accounts are simple: low monthly premiums. The drawbacks are similarly clear: very high deductibles, lots of personal financial risk, and relatively sparse coverage. "These accounts put the family in charge of what they pay for," enthuses McCain. But that's not quite accurate. Individuals have no more autonomy under these accounts than in a traditional sense. They are just more acutely sensitive to the price of their care, which means they'll purchase less of it, and overall health spending will fall.

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Give McCain this: His philosophy is clear. McCain believes that Americans use too much health care, and he has created a plan that will make care less affordable so millions of Americans will use less. He even has a euphemistic description for this approach: "The key to real reform," he says, "is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves … These accounts put the family in charge of what they pay for."

That's undoubtedly true. Parents weighing an emergency room visit they can't afford no doubt realize that they are in charge of what they are paying for. They are certainly more "price sensitive." They are certainly not acting with the wanton disregard of an insured family who seeks care for their feverish child without a second thought. The question, of course, is whether this sort of cost sensitivity is desirable.

So ask yourself this question: It's 3 a.m. one December night in 2010 -- one year after health reform was passed. Whose signature do you wish were on that bill? The president who believed you needed health insurance, and the peace of mind to seek medical care? Or the president who believed you needed more "price sensitivity," and left you to the tender mercy of the insurers? Are we in this together, or are we better off alone?

But where would this leave the Lower Classes traditionally reliant on Medicaid or state-equivalent programmes--subjected to high-pressure sales campaigns from private-sector health plans to the point of causing deliberate bedlam and confusion?