bloviators.net BloviBlog

So much has happened again this week, so much that it’s been hard for The Bloviator to keep up with things.  Obama’s ads popped up in XBox games, we had the third and final Presidential debate – starring Joe the Plumber, the New York Times trashed Cindy McCain, the Supreme Court upheld a decision making it easier for voter fraud to occur in Ohio, and Sarah Palin makes an, albeit short, appearance on SNL.  Topping all of that, The Bloviator has been busy in his real life too (you know – the Clark Kent stuff), so there have not been that many posts this past week.  So, let’s get to the Wrap-Up…

Presidential Debate #3 and ‘Joe the Plumber’

First things first, The Bloviator wants to know where the John McCain we saw on Wednesday night has been for the last few months.  Senator McCain was fired up and, while he could have hit Obama harder on topics like his tax-cut that isn’t really a tax-cut, McCain did a pretty good job of hitting Obama where it counted.  For the first 45 minutes of the debate it looked as if McCain had Obama on the defensive, hitting him over and over again on taxes and even scoring a great hit when he told Senator Obama that if he “wanted to run against President Bush” he “should have run 4 years ago.”  That was a good line, but it may be coming at a point too late in the race to matter.  With under 20 days until election now most voters have already made up their minds…and those who were still undecided will likely pull that lever for Obama out of nothing more than pure hatred for President Bush.

Senator McCain pushed Senator Obama on his response to ‘Joe the Plumber’ earlier in the week where Obama said, among other things, that he wanted to “spread the wealth around” in his administration.  That sounds a lot like socialism to The Bloviator, and McCain attacked that as nothing more than a welfare program.  McCain brought up Joe more than 20 times through the course of the debate, and at this late point in the game, if anything is going to resurrect McCain’s campaign it is Joe the Plumber – or more appropriately Obama’s response to his question.

Aside from from pointed questions and responses about the negativity in both campaigns, and McCain’s constant attacks using Joe the Plumber as a “Joe six-pack” metaphor, the rest of the debate was pretty much just the same old talking points we’ve heard from the candidates for the past many months now.  While McCain came out strong and kept on hitting, Senator Obama more or less kept his cool and just let McCain punch himself out.  By the end of the debate Obama was back on his game and just spouting the same old lines we’ve heard from him for over a year now.

Can we no longer ask candidates tough questions?

If you’ve heard any newscast since Senator Obama dropped the “spread the wealth around” response on Joe Wurzelbacher, you’ve likely been subjected to the smears of this ordinary America.  Joe, whose real name is Samual Joseph Wurzelbacher, did not go out of his way to see Senator Obama.  He did not seek to crash a campaign rally or anything of the sort.  Senator Obama was in Joe’s neighborhood so he decided to ask him a question…and it was a good question.  In fact, as Senator McCain said recently, Joe managed to get more honesty out of Senator Obama than all the mainstream media and press have been able to for the last 20 months.

It is because of this honest question, and the honest answer Obama gave him, that the media have systematically scoured through Joe’s personal life.  They have uncovered that Joe is really named Samuel (Joe is his middle name…big deal), that he is not actually licensed as a plumber (he currently works under someone else’s license…call the FBI), he owes around $1,200 in back taxes, the list just goes on.  In 48 hours the liberal media managed to uncover more about Joe the Plumber than they have found about Barack Obama in 20 months.  This is a scary thing to The Bloviator.  All Joe did was ask a simple question, and he got a simple answer.

Senator Obama’s answer reeks of socialism, and for that the media attacks and attempts to discredit Joe rather than asking Obama about his position.  The moral of this story seems to be that if you intend to ask Obama a question that makes him look bad you’d better make sure there is nothing in your past that can be used against you, because Obama’s Gestapo will be coming for you in the night.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

In a move that is no big surprise for anyone in politics, former Bush Secretary of State and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell announced on Sunday morning that he is endorsing Senator Obama for President.

The Bloviator really could care less who endorses who for what, as I do not think endorsements mean anything and policies and track records mean everything, however I feel I must ask a simple question.  Powell was for the Iraq war in a way that almost no one else was back in 2003.  It can be argued that without his testimony in front of the UN holding that vial he claimed was filled with WMD agents from Iraq, the US would have never gone into that war.  On the contrary, Senator Obama claims to have opposed the war from the start.  Do you think you’re going to hear Obama come out and denounce Colin Powell for his role in bringing the US into this war?  The Bloviator isn’t holding his breath.

Now, I should also say that I admire and respect Gen. Powell a great deal, but in his press conference this morning he claimed that the recent negativity from the McCain campaign was part of his reason for deciding to support Obama.  Powell went so far as to say that McCain had called Obama a muslim.  I feel I must point out this could not be further from the truth, and in fact Senator McCain stopped to chastise someone at a recent rally for suggesting that fact.  One would think that Gen. Powell could have at least had his facts straight.

Sarah Palin Appears on SNL

This Saturday evening there were two Sarah Palins on Saturday Night Live, the character played by Tina Fey and the real deal, Governor Palin herself.  I should preface that I have not paid one bit of attention to SNL for many years now as it has been many moons since that show was anything close to funny.  However, it still gets Tivo’d in my house, so I happened to see the two short skits the Governor was in this week.

I have only one comment about the appearance.  What was the point again?  Governor Palin did herself no service by appearing on the show, except perhaps to look Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels in the face behind the scenes.  Her skits were not funny, and she had about 60 seconds of total speaking time.  The only thing of note Palin managed to accomplish was to deliver the “live from New York, it’s Saturday night” line.  Perhaps I’m just biased against SNL as I truly hate that show now, but I just do not see what Governor Palin gets out of a deal where she in turn validates the jack-asses on SNL by proxy of her presence.

Security Clearance Shopping Season Starts Earlier and Earlier

It was announced on Sunday morning the the government has approached both Senators McCain and Obama to determine who will have potential seats in their respective cabinets so they can begin the initial research portion of the security clearance process.  This is reported as a needed step due to potential terrorist activity immediately following the election, however The Bloviator wonders if this is actually a move to vette some of Senator Obama’s potential cabinet members before he has a chance to take office as President (as it does look more and more like Obama is going to the White House).  No, I am not a subscriber to the “right-wing conspiracy” mentality, but seeing as how Obama would not even qualify for security clearance in his own administration this may be a prudent step to take while the government still has the power to do so.  More on this story as it develops over the coming days…

In the interest of time…

Other events of note this week included the fundraising Al Smith dinner at which the candidates both appeared and gave very funny speeches, the roller-coaster that is the Dow, and the horrible article in the New York Times attacking Cindy McCain, however The Bloviator is out of time in this week’s Wrap-Up, so analysis of those items will be forthcoming in the next few days.

 
This will be the first of what will become a weekly series where I summarize the notable events that occurred over the past week.  Today’s series, not surprisingly, will largely focus on the presidential campaigns and some of the newsworthy (and some not so worthy) bumps along the road.  So, in no particular order, let’s get to it.

 Ohio’s “non-partisan” bussing project:

It is not easy to get as many people registered and to the polls as possible in the swing states, so stepping in to fill the void are several non-partisan organizations with bussing projects.  Sounds innocent enough, right?  Well – just a few problems.  Ohio has no rule against registering and voting at the same place and time, which is different than most other states in the country.  This was instituted to help with the turnouts, as it is common (in all states, just no in Ohio) for people to register and then never show up on election day.  None of this really seems like a problem yet.  

However, there have been increasing numbers of reports that these busses are picking up what tend to be mostly homeless people and are bussing them to registration centers.  They register and then fill out an absentee ballot at the same time, which is all legal.  They then board the busses again and, according to reports, are being bussed to another registration center where they repeat the process all over again.  So, if we are to believe the reports we now have voter fraud on our hands.  

To add another layer into the mix, the supposedly non-partisan organizations who are handling these programs are – in at least one confirmed case – encouraging those who they transport to vote for Barack Obama.  I saw a great interview with one of these bus drivers on cable news earlier this week where the driver openly admitted that she was encouraging her busloads of people to vote Obama.  It was only when the TV interviewer asked “but aren’t you supposed to be a non-partisan organization?” that the driver seemed to realize her mistake and quickly ended the interview.

Practices such as this, from either or neither party, are completely unacceptable.  We all know the states are technologically ignorant and do not even have the most simple safeguards in place to flag and prevent individuals from voting multiple times, so for now this is a problem we seem to be stuck with.  This may just be a situation where the campaign that is willing to break the rules the most will walk away the winner.

Children of the Corn Obama:

Earlier this week an internet video, which has apparently been around for a while now, found it’s way into the mainstream.  It featured a group of young schoolchildren singing the praises of Obama and how he was going to lead us and solve all our problems.  The video claims to be a spontaneous thing, just thrown together, however it was produced, scripted, rehearsed, filmed and edited over many days.  That sounds more like a plan than something spontaneous to The Bloviator, but that’s not the point here.  Having been young at one time myself, I understand how impressionable children can be at those ages (most of these kids appeared to be between 7-9 years old).  Whoever their parents are should be ashamed of themselves for using their children to promote their political agendas.  There is no way children that young could have any idea what the differences between the candidates are, or for that matter even understand the basics of the election process.

This seems to be the brainchild of a west-coast music teacher, no surprises there.  What is surprising is that the Obama campaign’s official website apparently linked to this video.  Well…more accurately, they linked to this video until the story broke in the mainstream media, at which time the link and any mention of the project mysteriously vanished from the campaign’s website.

A pundit I saw on television earlier this morning made some light of the issue – he hopes that those children all grow up to be Republicans and card carrying members of the NRA just to spite their parents to using them in such a shameless (and downright creepy) election ploy.

New York Times finally catches up to the William Ayres Story (sort-of):

It’s like with the mail, better late than never, right?  The New York Times ran a cover story on Saturday that finally addressed the links and associations between Barack Obama and the admitted terrorist and founder of The Weather Underground.  If you’ve been living on Mars the last 19 months, the Weather Underground was the organization responsible for American on American terrorism in the late 1960’s.  Their founder, and participant in bombings which included the Pentagon, was William Ayres.  The same William Ayres that helped introduce Barack Obama into Illinois politics and who sat on a board of directors of the Woods Fund in Chicago with Obama.  The campaign has tried to distance themselves from the domestic terrorist (something that is hard to do when you live in the same neighborhood…literally), however the links are undeniable.  

The New York Times appears to have taken their talking points straight from the Obama campaign, however, glossing over and in some cases ignoring the persistent and major links between the presidential candidate and the unrepentant domestic terrorist.  The Obama campaign’s main point of defense and deflection?  That Obama was just 8 years old when Ayres was an active terrorist.  Think about that for a second – it is likely you were not born with Hitler was exterminating the Jewish people in the Holocaust – but that does not make it any less wrong.

This story has been out there for over a year now and has not gained any significant traction.  This is not because the story does not deserve attention, as it most certainly does, but is instead an indicator of how far into the tank for Obama the mainstream media actually is.  If you or I had associations like those Obama does we would never be able to get any governmental security clearance, but we’re going to elect him into the most powerful position in the country.  Shame on we Americans on this one for letting the media get away with burying the facts that do not suit them or their cause.

Bush…Bush…Bush:

This week brought more of the same old Bush bashing from the left.  If only President Bush was running for office again this year these constant attacks might actually have a point.  The Bloviator is disappointed yet not surprised by the left’s almost constant attempts to tie Senator McCain’s policies and ideas to those of the unpopular President.  

Unnecessary, and needless, injection of race into the campaign:

A few days ago a Florida schoolteacher was suspended and reprimanded for writing an acronym, C.H.A.N.G.E. – come help a (n-word) get elected – on his classroom’s whiteboard.  This statement was unnecessarily hateful and has no place in this or any campaign, from either party.  Remember Obama’s comments a few months ago in which he said “you know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills” and “did I mention he’s black?”

The Bloviator hopes that everyone, including Obama himself, will refrain from further injecting race into politics.  This helps no one and only serves to feed the needless hate and tensions that we’ve been working so hard to erase from our society.

McCain announces Michigan pull-out:

Late this week Senator McCain announced that his campaign was going to pull out of Michigan, conceding the race there to Obama.  Governor Palin, however, does not seem ready to concede defeat there and is heading back in with her husband Todd in an effort to turn things around for their campaign.  Judging by the recent polling in just about every swing state, however, their campaign is going to need some new energy just about across the board.  This may just be another sign that this race is no longer McCain’s to win, but Obama’s to lose.

Bail-Out Rescue Package Passes House & Senate:

The bail-out package began over a week ago as a two and a half page proposal from Treasury Secretary Paulson.  This was then “politicked” over by the Senate and House leadership for about a week, and a modified…and now more than one hundred page…proposal went to the House floor for a vote last Monday.  The only problem was that the leadership did not have the votes to pass the measure, and it failed by a 228-205 margin.  The markets reacted to this, the Dow plunging 777 points before Monday’s close.  So, what does the House do?  They go on vacation for two days.

Enter the Senate, who again modifies the package, and after floor debates the measure…now over four hundred pages thick…passes the Senate by a vote of 74-25.  Once the House got back from their days off, the measure, which started as a bail-out but is now creatively coined a “rescue” pacakge, passed and was quickly signed by the President.

Need additional details?  Just read some of the prior posts on the subject – I haven’t the will to recap it all again.  The only questions now – will it work, and was it a good idea?  The Bloviator hopes all this was worth it, especially since it’s going to cost us so much.

 
It has now been a week since Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke came forward with the White House’s $700 billion Wall Street bail-out plan.  They told us we had to pass this package as soon as possible or the markets were going to crash, the world was going to end, and the sky was going to fall.  Paulson went on record stating only a “bazooka” was going to solve the problem.

A week has gone by now and the sun still rises every morning.  Nothing has been accomplished except the left accusing the right of derailing the process, and the right accusing the left of leaving them out of the process.

So what is really going on here?

In a “Twilight Zone” like scenario, we have a Republican president and administration proposing one of the largest single spending packages in the history of the country – whose only support at the moment is from House and Senate Democrats.  More specifically, the package is supported by the very same congressmen that helped cause the problem in the first place:  Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, and Congressman Barney Frank, who chairs the same committee in the House.  Incidentally, both of them voted against reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2006 – a bill supported by John McCain.  That is a topic for a different post, however.

After a week we still have the President calling for the bill to be passed quickly.  We have the intense negotiations between both parties from the House and Senate trying to work out some sort of deal.  John McCain flew into DC to jump into the process, and Barack Obama is “phoning it in” by speaking “every day” to Paulson, Bernanke, and democratic leadership.  All of this in support of a bill that will essentially reward the excessive risks and unsound business practices of many financial institutions…all on the taxpayer’s dime.  In some cases it seems that these banks were lending out $30 for every $1 they actually held in capital.  If you play poker, you have about a 30-1 chance to be dealt three of a kind in any given hand.  Would you bet your company’s future, along with the financial well-being of your stock & stake-holders, on being dealt three of a kind on every hand?  If that were possible The Bloviator would be in Vegas right now.

Are Americans Revolting Against Wall Street?

It seems that, at this point, our only hope as American taxpayers lies with the House Republicans.  The Democrats have control of both houses of congress, so they could go ahead and pass any version of the bill they want.  The President is unlikely to veto the bill, seeing as it came from his office to begin with.  The Democrats are deathly afraid of moving ahead without bipartisan support – they need the Republican support as an insurance policy in case this bail-out does not work so the blame could be spread around.

Everyone in Washington seems to agree on the basic principle that something needs to be done about the crisis, the disagreements begin to come out around the details of how to do whatever the something is.  We go back to a blog post from a few days ago where I drew the comparison between this crisis and a burning house, however now instead of arguing over how to build a more fire-proof house we’re bickering ove where we should get the water from.  Should it come from a public fire hydrant, a private lake, or should we just wait and hope for rain?

It now seems like the only remaining opposition to passing some version of a bail-out bill is the American people.  Recent polling shows just 25% of Americans actually support a bail-out, with between 37% – 45% of Americans opposed to the idea.  The same polls show about a 30% to 30% split on Americans who think the bail-out will help the economy versus those who think it will do economic harm.

That is nearly half of the American people who would rather see these companies and banks pay the price for their own actions rather than have to foot the bill with tax dollars.  

The Bloviator thinks that is a pretty big problem.  While I went on record a few days ago reluctantly supporting the bill I find myself having second thoughts tonight, and thus I now fall somewhere in the middle.  On the one hand I feel I have to trust the chairman of the Fed and the secretary of the Treasury, but on the other I still have real concerns that we could proceed with this process a) not fix a thing, b) not change a thing, or c) make things worse.

With such staunch opposition at this late stage of the process The Bloviator would like to see his government “leaders” explain more of the details of this plan before we spend enough money to fill every gas tank and pay every heating bill for America for the next year.

Wednesday afternoon Senator John McCain announced that he intended to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to do his part in assisting the $700 billion bail-out package to pass.  Specifically, McCain knows that he is crucial in delivering the the House republicans’ votes.

So – do we need McCain’s help or not?

If all you listen to is NPR, CNN, and MSNBC/NBC News, you might think we were close to a deal yesterday afternoon before McCain arrived for the meeting with the President and house & senate leaders.  Majority leader Harry Reid came out and made a statement that Senator McCain’s assistance was not needed and that he would only hurt the process.

However, less than 24 hours before Senator Reid made that comment he had personally called Senator McCain and explained to him how important it was going to be to have his support on the legislation.  So – which is it?  This perplexes The Bloviator, and it usually takes a lot for my eyes to cross.

McCain’s annoncement to suspend his campaign to, well…to do his job as a United States Senator, was brilliant.  Whether you believe it was a political move or not is beside the point.  He is the leader of the Republican party and is doing his job as a US Senator by returning to Washington to help work on this package.

That announcement came around 2:30pm ET on Wednesday and from that point until the Gallup daily tracking poll came out the next morning McCain had not only closed the gap in the polling, but had tied Obama at 46% each.  It would appear that many undecided voters did not think this was a political move.  In fact, the only playing of politics The Bloviator has seen was when Harry Reid announced that a deal was imminent on Thursday around noontime and McCain was not needed.  That, combined with the majority leader’s comments today speaking about a ‘nameless senator who flew in to town’ that caused the deal to fall apart, are clearly partisan moves trying to discount the role McCain is clearly playing in this process.  Senator Reid’s statement that we were anywhere close to a deal was inaccurate at best, and at worst a lie designed with the sole intent of attacking McCain.  There has been nothing constructive in anything Senator Reid has said this week, on any topic.

Senator Obama phones it in…

Senator Reid had to say something negative to try and derail McCain, especially since Senator Obama’s only plan (until the President called him to come to DC) was to be “on call.”

The Bloviator isn’t allowed to “work from home” so why should we pay our Senators more than $160,000 per year to not even go to the office?  Senator Obama basically told the country “Hey…I’ve got a campaign to run, so call me if you need me,” whereas Senator McCain said “Hey…this crisis is much too important for me to be focusing on my campaign, so I’m going to do my job.”

Were it not for President Bush calling on Obama to join the meetings on Thursday he would have remained in Clearwater, FL preparing for Friday’s debate.  Wait…didn’t Obama tell us a president was supposed to be able to multi-task?

With the reports of the deal falling through last night Senator Obama took the opportunity to make an “I told you statement” when he said that was what he hoped to avoid by not bringing presidential politics into the argument.  That is a silly argument in and of itself as either McCain or Obama is going to have to deal with the fall-out from this mess as president.  Any rational American would assume the next potential presidents would want input into the policies they are going to have to manage in just a few short months.

To Debate, or Not To Debate…that is the debate.

As part of Senator McCain’s plan to suspend his campaign he called for a delay in tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi, citing concerns over the rocky debate of bail-out package.  Senator Obama immediately stated that he thought the debate should continue, and The Bloviator actually found himself agreeing with Obama on something.  The debate tonight is crucial, and based on past track records, will likely help McCain anyway as Senator Obama has not traditionally performed well in situations without a teleprompter to tell him what he thinks about something.  Do you remember the abortion question at the Saddleback Church forum?  I wonder what questions tonight might be ‘above Obama’s pay-grade.’

As of a little after noon Eastern time it appears the debate over the debate is over as McCain’s campaign announces they are resuming all activities and that McCain will attend the forum this evening.  The senator does intend to return to DC following the debate to review the final versions of any agreement that is reached.  It is widely perceived that any bill will not pass without the support of the House Republicans, whom which McCain can deliver.  While the democrats have the votes to pass the measure they do not dare do so without a wide base of republican support for fear of being held responsible if the package fails to fix the problem…or worse yet if the crisis intensifies as a result.

The Bloviator is sure he will not be able to contain himself during this evening’s debate, so look for posts hitting the blog in near real-time as the canidates meet for their first showdown.

 
If you were paying attention to the coverage of the mortgage crisis and the White House’s plan for a $700 billion bail-out plan, you must have heard all of the calls for urgency.  President Bush called for the congress to review and adopt the measure before the trading markets opened this morning, however that did not happen.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Sunday, Senator Charles Schumer spoke about the White House’s plan, noting that “we need accountability, transparency” and stating that the plan “needs changes,” including the addition of some sort of economic stimulus package.  In contrast, Senator Jon Kyl opposed adding some sort of stimulus, commenting that we “need to leave agendas for another time.”  Senator Kyl went on to say that we must first “put the fire out.”

Are we fighting the fire?

Senator Kyl makes a good point – the current situation affecting the financial markets – and by proxy our other trading markets – can be likened to a burning house fire.  For the sake of argument let us assume that it is your house that is ablaze.  The fire department arrives on the scene quickly with their bright red fire engines, long hoses and axes.  

Just as the firemen are about the begin spraying your burning house with water your homeowners association shows up and stops them.  ”Wait!” they say, “You cannot put this fire out until we decide how to build a more fire-proof house to replace this one.”

While your home, belongings, and all your baby photos are going up in smoke they stand in your driveway arguing about how better to rebuild the house the next time.  Now do not misunderstand, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a more fire-proof house, just like there is nothing wrong with creating new regulation and oversight over the financial sectors (assuming it is responsibly done, of course).

Now is not the time.

Today, as the Democratic congress begins their campaign to add as much pork to the mortgage rescue package as they can the financial house burns hotter than ever.  While they argue, we, the taxpayers and the citizens of this country, continue to be hammered financially as a result of this indecision and political posturing.  Think you aren’t being affected?  Take a look at gas prices, being driven by the weakening dollar in the world market, or look at your latest 401k statement and tell me you are not taking a hit.

Today oil prices jumped more than $20 per barrel and the Dow dropped over 340 points as a result of congressional inaction.

Now is not the time to argue about what should have been done differently, or what we should do in the future to prevent another crisis such as this.  Now is not the time to delay.  Now is the time to put water on the fire.  We will have plenty of  time to fix the underlying problems once we get the flames under control.

The Bloviator will always be the first to champion smaller government and limited intervention in the private sector, but if we linger and get bogged down in the details of who should oversee what or how many “poor homeowners” who cannot pay their bills we should support we are going to find our house burned to the ground – and then there will be nothing left to argue about.

The Bloviator calls for action now!

  
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace this morning, and was asked some hard questions about the White House’s plan to bail-out the financial sector.  Believe it or not, some of those questions directly addressed some of the ideas put forth in yesterday’s blog entry posted right here in the BloviBlog.  The Bloviator took copious notes during the interview, and here are some of the more important points:

Will we, the taxpayers, get a piece of the action?

In what we consider the be the most important question of all, whether or not the taxpayers will be rewarded in any way for assuming the risk of what could be a $700 billion “blank check,” Secretary Paulson’s political skill showed through as he tactically evaded the question.  His silence on this point speaks louder than words could, offering a resounding no on the question…especially as he indicated that when those loans we are buying are sold off later the funds would be returned to the federal treasury.  Sounds like you and I are going to be left holding the bag on this one – but did you really expect different from our government?

Will there be any sort of mortgage relief included in the package?

Secretary Paulson was also vague on any details pertaining to potential mortgage relief to those who are struggling to make their payments, but seeing as how the entire White House proposal is only three pages long I think it is safe to assume it may be vague on more details than that.  $700 billion bucks in just three pages, that might be a new record!  Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that a three page proposal is the best we have come up with to address a problem as complex as the financial melt-down we are facing?  It gives The Bloviator a warm-fuzzy feeling inside.

What effects will the package have on the US economy, the debt, and the strength of the dollar?

When questioned by Chris Wallace about the potential negative side-effects of the bail-out legislation he stated that “this is the least costly way, to the economy, to the American people” to attempt to correct the crisis we are facing, adding that “this is a humbling time for the United States.”

However, on March 18th of this year, Secretary Paulson went on record, stating “I have great confidence in our markets and in our financial institutions,” begging the question of whether or not we should have acted sooner.  Secretary Paulson stated that there was “no way we could have gone to congress” to inject capital unless there was already an urgent crisis such as the one we are now in.

The Bloviator disagrees with this analysis, however, believing that the solution to the core problem is not to offer a bail-out in the first place, but instead to allow those organizations and institutions who made poor and overly risky decisions to fend for themselves.  This is a classic “you made your bed, now sleep in it” scenario.

What guarantee do we have that our investments are safe?

Secretary Paulson used the opportunity posed by this question to state the obvious, mentioning things like FDIC insured accounts are 100% safe (up to $100k, of course).  He, however, stopped well short of offering any assurances at all as it relates to the bail-out, instead stating there are “no guarantees” that this is even going to work, only that “we’re going to work through this problem.”  Another warm-fuzzy feeling for The Bloviator.