Re: I Have Seen The Light.... I Am Now A Republican

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:00:09 -0700, walkinay@xxxxxx (hank alrich)
wrote:


You are a socialist when it comes to Wallstreet Welfare, whether or not
you choose to be. The amount of money gurgitated there now amounts to a
significant fraction of a trillion dollars.

I think the current Wall Street situation is a bit like Iraq.

In Iraq, we did one thing after another wrong, starting with GWH
Bush's tacit approval of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, and then the
1991 Gulf War, and the continuing harrassment of the "no-fly zones"
and sanctions during the Clinton administration and then we drove
right off the Bridge to Stupidity when the current Bush administration
invaded. In fact, our mistakes in the MidEast in general go back much
further than that. But now the argument is that, whatever the
stupididty of the past, we simply can't just get out, because all
sorts of terrible things would happen. I don't know that I agree with
that argument, and I don't know that continuing to act in the same
stupid manner that got us into this *** makes any sense - but I
understand the argument that "we fucked up so bad that now we HAVE to
do these painful things that we would otherwise not want to do."

Same with th Wall Street crap. We have done all this de-regulation
and laissez-faire capitalist stuff that has resulted in this
situation. And so now, the argument goes, we HAVE to bail out AIG and
banks and so forth, because if we don't, even MORE painful things will
result.

Well, maybe. I don't know. And maybe it's the avoidance of the pain
that should result from bad decisions that screws stuff up even more.
But here we are - doing things that we would normally not do (bailouts
- government owning 80% of AIG) because of the stupid things we did
before.

The question is: will we continue to behave in the stupid ways that
got us into these messes? Or will we throw the bums out and get some
real CHANGE?


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