Quotes of the day

The tea party I’m familiar with was concerned more about the collusion of big business and big government than the War in Iraq. The tea party I’m familiar with was more concerned about rejecting the bailout of Wall Street while looking for ways reinvigorate the economy of Main Street than looking for Al-Qaeda. The tea party I’m familiar with seemed more concerned about restoring the Republic at home than Democracy abroad.

It’s true. With one convention, the Tea Party movement morphed into the GOP beltway hack War Party movement. Alas, usurped again.

As usual, the neoconservatives ruin everything good.

And will someone please explain to me how Obama is “weak on national security” after he’s delivered the largest defense spending in our history, created a permanent standing nation-building office, left the Orwellian Patriot Act in place, and expanded Bush’s stupid, ubercostly, perpetual nation-building wars? (Even Richard Perle sees no difference but in tone.)

Is it because he hasn’t declared war on Iran (yet), as warmongers Palin and Pipes (among others) are chomping at the bit to do?

Rae on February 8, 2010 at 10:02 AM

This guy gets it. This is what the tea parties are supposed to be all about. This is the type of keynote speech that should have been given at the Tea Party convention:

[...]

Americans are angry about executive compensation.

Rightfully so.

The executives at General Motors and Chrysler don’t deserve to make a lot of money. They made bad products that people didn’t want to buy.

The executives on Wall Street don’t deserve to make a lot of money. They were reckless. They borrowed huge sums to make bets that didn’t pay off. And they wasted trillions of dollars of precious capital, funneling it into housing instead of health innovation or high mileage cars or a thousand investments more productive than more and bigger houses.

Everyday folks who are out of work through no fault of their own want to know why people who made bad decisions not only have a job but a big salary to go with it.

No wonder they’re angry at Wall Street,

But if we keep getting angry at Wall Street, we’ll miss the real source of the problem. It’s right here. In Washington.

We are what we do. Not what we wish to be. Not what we say we are. But what we do. And what we do here in Washington is rescue big companies and rich people from the consequences of their mistakes. When mistakes don’t cost you anything, you do more of them.

[...]

Capitalism is a profit and loss system. The profits encourage risk-taking. The losses encourage prudence. Is it a surprise that when the government takes the losses, instead of the investors, that investing gets less prudent? If you always bail out lenders, is it surprising that firms can borrow enormous amounts of money living on the edge of insolvency?

I’m mad at Wall Street. But I’m a lot madder at the people who gave them the keys to drive our economy off a cliff. I’m mad at the people who have taken hundreds of billions of taxpayer money and given it to some of the richest people in human history.

I’m mad at President Bush and President Obama and Secretary Paulson and Secretary Geithner and Chairman Bernanake. And I’m mad at Congress. You helped risk-takers continue to expect that the rules that apply to the rest of us don’t apply to people with the right connections.

You have saved the system, but it’s not a system worth saving. It’s not capitalism but crony capitalism.
[continues]

Alas…

Rae on February 8, 2010 at 11:27 AM

Sonosam on February 8, 2010 at 12:46 PM

Bush was a disaster, for conservativism and for the republic. That is not to say that Obama isn’t a catastrophe of the highest order, because he is.

By the by, it’s not only Richard Perle who sees no difference in Bushbama’s foreign policy:

Obama’s Latest Defense: I’m No Different From Bush

Steroids is the difference. Change® = Lots More of the Same spending, borrowing and printing, big government, corporatism, Banksta Bailouts, never-ending economic “stimuli,” assaults on our Constitutional rights, and perpetual war.

Rae on February 8, 2010 at 2:32 PM