Bailout Sounding More and More Like Iraq War:

Sec. Paulson's bailout proposal of Wall Street has one big troubling factor: no one seems to know what he wants the taxpayers to buy. Or how much any of the stuff that's being sold is actually worth. (See The New York Times' Vikas Bajaj's story.)

The first word was that everything was going at bargain basement prices. This was the deal of a lifetime. The taxpayers, we were told, would end up owning a bunch of stuff that we could turn around and sell at a yard sale or put on eBay and make a killing from, creating instant solvency for a bankrupt nation.

Ooopsie! It could very well be that Paulson is simply pushing the administration's plan to further bankrupt the nation, a process that has been going on for seven and a half years at this point.

The Bush administration is the most corrupt and incompetent administration in U. S. history; can taxpayers believe anything it says? Even former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (a firmly established free marketeer) is screaming "Wait just a minute" on this one.

Remember the run up to the Iraq war, when the administration told us the sky was falling and manufactured lies about yellow cake and al Qaeda. Their real purpose was good old fashioned war profiteering.

The Dude went on TV last night to urge the nation to back Paulson's bailout plan. Watching him deliver the speech, it wasn't clear whether he'd had a chance to read it prior to going on the air. Obviously, he didn't write it himself, and considering the way he read it, it certainly wasn't clear he understood it. (See The Washington Post story.)

The Dude on Iraq: "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is—my point is, threre's a strong will for democracy." — George W. Bush to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Sept. 24, 2006. (Note: Immediately following the fall of Bagdad, the Iraqi people began setting up there own democratic organizations and holding elections. The Americans moved quickly to cancel these elections and to hand pick the people they wanted in charge in Iraq. The Bush administration was in fact terrified of democracy emerging in Iraq and moved at every step to undermine it.)

Senior White House Officials Involved in Approving Torture:

While the news is dominated by the current economic crisis, information indicating that Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, and Don Rumsfield were all envolved in meetings where approval of "harsh interrogation techniques," better known as torture, by the C.I.A. were approved. (See The New York Times story.) The administration has consistantly denied the use of torture, based solely on renaming the activity. (I wonder if this defense would have worked at Nuremberg. "It's not 'torture' 'cause we don't call it that.")

Another Part of the Plot To Steal the Next Election:

Here's a twist: millions of people have lost their homes this year, but they are registered to vote at the addresses of the homes they've been kicked out of. That means their votes can be tossed out unless they re-register. No one can know how each of these voters might vote in advance, but it's a safe bet that many, perhaps most, would vote for a change of party in the White House, considering how angry they must feel. (See The New York Times story.)