Who Let the Dawgs Out?

TMiss wants to know how come the Big Shots let the economy go to hell before McCain was elected.

Could the Republicans be working any harder at gaming the economy in the hopes of pulling this one out? I’m just waiting to learn why the market crashed ahead of schedule. I suspect the global economy is so rotten, the big money pukes couldn’t wait until after November 5 to crash the market as scheduled.

Rotten people everywhere, and being rid of Bush won’t get rid of most of them.

That last bit is true but gratuitous liberal wingnut-baiting and we don't want to encourage that kind of thing. Much. The central point is, however, well taken. How did the timing get so screwed up? Obviously this paper-clip-and-rubber-banded economy was intended to be held together until the GOP could steal another 4 years.

Or was it?

Maybe they were overconfident about being able to handle the timing of the damage they inflicted. They might have thought that a few well-chosen and time-honored tactics - the Fed lowering interest rates, the bailing-out of one or two massive failures, and the cold appraisal that everything was hunky-dory by Alan "Fish Face" Greenspan and Ben "The Beard" Bernanke - would settle everything down nicely for the few months it would take to anoint St John elect McCain.

Or maybe this is what was intended to happen all along.

Consider: if the economy had held together and McC had run a real campaign instead of a self-destructive parody, there is every chance this election might have been close, with the racism the GOP always incites being the deciding factor.

But he didn't. If there was a mistake out there lying in wait Johnny grabbed it, from the mishigas of centering your election on calling a guy an insane terrorist when you look nuttier - by far - than he does to the appalling choice of a beauty queen with the IQ of a garden hose as your Veep, a dingbat who has apparently already abandoned the campaign in order to run for president of Chevron. Think about the string of bloopers so far out in left field a first-time candidate for elementary school hall monitor wouldn't have made them and a plate of slimy dirty tricks that even Tracy Flick wouldn't have stooped to them and you have a picture-perfect illustration in living color and complete with sound track of the World's Worst Possible Campaign. Steve Schmidt makes Susan Estrich look competent by comparison.

Now ask yourself: could such a Perfect Storm of stupidity, cupidity run amok, incompetence so total that not one thing got done right be accidental?

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe they wanted the Democrat elected because he's the one who's going to have to take the blame for not being able to fix it - and they'll make double-damn sure he can't.

I mean, have you checked the stock market lately? It's as nervous as a jumping spider, hopping back and forth from despair to euphoria and back to despair again as a passel of financial Nervous Nellies vacillate from panicky selling at the bottom of the loop-de-loop to greedy buying at the top. It looks chaotic but - and here's the point - it isn't actually chaos.

It's just bad enough that the GOP will lose but it hasn't fallen totally apart yet, meaning the Democrats will get the blame when it does.

I don't think Wall Street ever intended for McC to win. A McCain presidency would inevitably be the death knell, the last nail in the last coffin, the last slug of dirt dumped on the lid of corporate/Republican control of the govt for the next 16 generations. Like bad poker players, they want another chance to win back the money they lost (they think they lost, remember - they haven't got everything yet, and to them that's the same as losing) and the only chance they've got is to find a scapegoat.

It's either that or Corporate America fires the GOP and hires the Dems as their new Face.

Which they might already have done, come to think of it. There was that secret meeting of Obama's with Wall Street a few months ago....

Comments

[vwclown]

Just as I suspected....

[eRobin]

I get all tangled up when I go down roads like this but who am I to say this isn't the way it is. I still can't believe that we're supposed to believe that Greenspan didn't see all this coming when he lowered interest rates to 1% in 2002 and started pushing ARMs shortly after that.

[eRobin]

I get all tangled up when I go down roads like this but who am I to say this isn't the way it is. I still can't believe that we're supposed to believe that Greenspan didn't see all this coming when he lowered interest rates to 1% in 2002 and started pushing ARMs shortly after that.

[eRobin]

I get all tangled up when I go down roads like this but who am I to say this isn't the way it is. I still can't believe that we're supposed to believe that Greenspan didn't see all this coming when he lowered interest rates to 1% in 2002 and started pushing ARMs shortly after that.

[eRobin]

It's either that or Corporate America fires the GOP and hires the Dems as their new Face.

I don't think they need a new face. The system they have in place now, with the parties claiming to be different enough to matter on that score, suits everyone fine.

I agree that this is the time for the masses to replenish the coffers so they can be looted again when ripe. Even pirates have to let the ships go back to port to reload or there would be nothing to steal.

[mick arran]

Even pirates have to let the ships go back to port to reload or there would be nothing to steal.

Good point.