BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'

Subject: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:20 PM

Can you believe it? Just as in 9/11, the Bush administration was warned that this financial meltdown would happen.


Damn. Damn. Damn


I just hope I live long enough that I hear the danged Bushites wail. Right now I could spit nails.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:25 PM

Wow, speaking of cross posting, Eb?!?!...

I just posted on the Palin thread that it is my opinion that it will be along time before voters will gain vote for the guy with whom they would most like to share a beer... Stupidity has run it's course in this country and the lessons of the last 8 years will be with US a long, long time...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Bert
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:39 PM

Have you noticed that this year we are not hearing the term 'Lame duck presidency'.

I suspect that it is because the last eight years have been a 'Lame duck presidency'.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:45 PM

Acually, where I got the 'stupefying' phrase was from a Joe Klein column, where he says: At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks.

The Lamest Duck

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 07:46 PM

Two years ago, my neighbor sold his house. When I heard what he got for it, I was 'stupefied', and read up on what mine (significantly larger) might be worth. I was startled....I could not believe that my relatively modest house was approaching $400,000 or maybe a bit more.. I said at the time... "this is insane, and it can't last."

3 months after that, prices started dropping, and my neighbor across the street just barely got a decent price for HER place. Now, the 'for sale' signs in the area are looking worn and faded.

My neighbor made out like a bandit....and I didn't even like him.

Maybe *I* should apply as a financial consultant? Nawwww.. you gotta have credentials to figure out these important issues!.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:22 PM

If Bush had the intellect of Einstein and the dictatorial powers of a banana republic tin pot tyrant, he couldn't have stopped this Greed Train.

Tens of thousands of financial wizards lost trillions of dollars in this game.

From the article:

>>Marc Savitt, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, said regulators were afraid of stopping a good thing.

"If it seems to be working, if it's not broken don't fix it, if everybody's making money, then the good times are rolling and nobody wants to be the one guy to put the brakes on," he said.<<

We sowed this. George is responsible for Iraq.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:45 PM

And a LOT more besides Iraq too.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:50 PM

In this, as in so much, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:18 PM

Stupidity has run it's course in this country...

Not even close.

and the lessons of the last 8 years will be with US a long, long time...

The boobocracy will remember those lessons for maybe six months, tops.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Barry Finn
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:32 PM

Ebbie, I hope those nails that you're spitting are pinning the bastard hands & feet to a cross, I'd tell you to aim for the heart but you'd miss, it's not there.
After he leaves, hopefully he will never be heard from again except during sentencing at his trial.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:33 PM

You really should find a way of changing your leaders more quickly, I think. In Canada it happens the very next day after the election...as I believe is normal in most parliamentary systems.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 05:53 PM

Many of us here forwarned nearly all of the consequences we are now "enjoying" today.

Enjoy the enlightenment.

Best early than late.
Better late than never.
Never is never ever best.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: heric
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 06:39 PM

I'll be a witness for Donuel, who was way ahead of the curve. I remember him saying about two years ago that "rich people would be taking normal people's homes soon," or words to that effect.

A dude named John Paulson of Paulson & Co. hedge funds "generated profits of more than $3 billion for the firm in 2007, mostly by betting the housing bubble, swollen with subprime mortgages, would burst."

Those people are pretty hard to find, though.

Yes, it was a failure of government, but it was a failure of a government of the people to stand up against the desires of the people. (I'm also unclear how much relative blame goes to regulators in the executive branch versus the Congress. There are lots of reports of the adminstration warning Congress repeatedly of Fannie/Freddie danger signs, long before the meltdown.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 06:56 PM

I think there is enough blame to go around and plenty of time to fix it AFTER we get out of this mess. Let's stop pointing fingers and start filling in the hole we've dug ourselves into.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: heric
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:11 PM

Yes, but, assigning blame is part of the process of identifying the problems, and hence the proper solutions, which have evaded our appointed Mr. Fix-It guys to date. Further, track records help to show who may have the right ideas and approaches. As it stands, we are digging the hole deeper and deeper on a wish and a prayer.

We, the normal folk, can maybe work on getting calloused hands as about all we can do. Still, it's hard not to look up from the trench at the Keystone Cops as they scurry about. It's like watching them put up sandbags all around us, while groundwater is flooding the trench.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: akenaton
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:39 PM

well said Mr heric

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 09:07 PM

An appearance of'Stupefying Ineptitude' is often a great smokescreen for cui bono?

And while we Catters argue ad nauseum, another old bamboozle goes unspotted. Soylent Green? It's closer than you think.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 04:39 AM

Auditors: Not enough oversight for bailout

Treasury Department has no mechanism track taxpayer money, report says

The Associated Press
updated 6:19 p.m. CT, Tues., Dec. 2, 2008

WASHINGTON - The government must toughen its monitoring of the $700 billion financial bailout to ensure that banking institutions limit their top executives' pay and comply with other restrictions, federal auditors said Tuesday in the first comprehensive review of the rescue package.

The Treasury Department has no mechanism in place to track how institutions are using $150 billion in taxpayer money that the government injected into the banking system as of last month, the Government Accountability Office concluded in its report to Congress. (italics added)

[end quote]

Some additional fallout from the report at the link; but I'll leave it to those interested to pull it up.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:25 AM

Marc Savitt, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, said regulators were afraid of stopping a good thing.

Nonsense. This was not a "failure of government" but the government implementing over a period of years Reagan's "voodoo economics".

The "regulators" were nonexistant or emasculated ON PURPOSE.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:38 AM

Maybe so, but we all loved the orgy.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: GUEST,Jack The Sailor
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 11:16 AM

>>Maybe so, but we all loved the orgy.

In California, Nevada and South Florida maybe.

Carol and I bought at the top of the Bubble and our house and land didn't cost as much as it would to build a new house of similar size with the same features on much cheaper land.

In two thousand and two we stayed with the friend of a friend in central Florida. He had recently sold a modest ranch home in San Diego and bought a much nicer home in Florida for half the money. He told me about the interest only mortgages and multi-million dollar 2000 square foot homes then. He said "Mark my words. Its going to crash and crash hard!".

The thing is the Government did encourage it. They used it as the economic engine to balance the tax cuts to the wealthy. They used it the same way Reagan used military spending. Trickle Down Economics is nothing more than wishful thinking. It is a fairy tail for "faith based" voters. The market is not worthy of faith. Nothing is automatic. Governing and regulation is hard, difficult work. We need to have our best people at the top. Not cheerleaders, B grade actors or beauty queen runner ups.

The reason that the banking crisis came about was twofold, yeah the backs skirted regulations and took a lot of unnecessary risks, but the real crisis was one of confidence. Paulson, Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush didn't have a plan for the eventual crash. They left it to the market, and though every financial bubble in the history of the world had eventually popped, they acted as if this one would not.

Faith based governance. I hope we have seen the last of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: heric
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 05:11 PM

This should be us: video

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: pdq
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:19 PM

"...In California, Nevada and South Florida maybe..."

Well, let's leave Nevada out of that group.

We did not have a huge house price escalation until 2003-5 and that put us at 1/3 or maybe 1/2 of the California price for an equivalent house. Even that increase was fueled, almost completely, by California refugees who sold their overpriced LA and Bay Area property and were able to by two or three houses in Nevada. Others got huge, epensive houses here (there are some such things) and had enough left to coast into retirement.

The housing bubble in California started forming in 1977, just months after Jimmy Carter took the oath. By the end of 1977, the $20K "cheapest possible" entry level home in a slum area had become $70K, and places normal people wanted to live were not to be had for less the $100K. Said bubble went from unreasonable to absurd, then burst a few months ago. {Sierra foothills and rural property not included, just urban and suburban, where the jobs are}

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:27 PM

Yeah, that's what's been happening in Idaho too. Californios moving to avoid high prices and then complaining that "things were BETTER in ___________" and/or buying houses on spec and now finding themselves in foreclosure.

"Don't californicate Idaho" say the signs....

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: pdq
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:18 PM

There is a local gent with a bumper sticker on his Cummins diesel Dodge pickup which reads:

          I DON'T FUCKING CARE HOW THEY DID IT IN CALIFORNIA!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Bobert
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:28 PM

Mr Cummings Diesel needs anger management, pdq...

But there are Md Cummings Diesels everywhere... We got 'um right here in Page County, Virgina... There's obe who has more than 10,000 bumpwer stickers on his Plymouth Aries.., Okay, it's more like 60 ot 70 but it looks like 10,000... But he is 100% sure that his guy, John McCain, has all the answers... I mean, 100% of thre answers... Why else would he need at least 30 McCain stickers to keep the rest of his pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-Democrat, pro-war bumper stickers company???

There is something about "true believers" that I find both disturbing and interesting...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:56 PM

You guys needn't worry. There's noo way they are going to transplant the Blue Pacific, the Sierra Nevada, The Golden Gate, Redwoods coastal or giganteum, Mendocino County or palm trees to Idaho. Nevada can look at Lake Tahoe, I guess.

What you don't realize, either, is that California has always welcomed with open arms and a smile far more Northwesternians, in good times and bad - than occurs in the reverse direction. This I know.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: Bobert
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:00 PM

Not only that, heric, but California has always been on the leading edge of enviromental issues... The 1st state to require that the crap comin' outta yer tailpipe wasn't as crappy as in other states...

Of course, the folks there are certifiably nuts but, hey, nobody is perfect...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Admin: 'Stupefying Ineptitude'
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:15 PM

"Completely nuts -- not that there's anything wrong with that!"