More McCarthyism

“You keep on using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-b7RmmMJeo

Inconceivable!

Okay, now that my hard work is done, I can get serious.I don’t care who calls whom (whom calls who?…someone help me!) McCarthyistic. It’s obvious that Red hunters are McCarthyites, so end of question. This is how we know that partisan politicians (currently Republicans) have no regard for truth or history, and are pretty much ALL about controlling the masses with their drivel, made up as it is.But for further examples of politicians having no regard for truth or history, please research current House and Senate members standing up and taking responsibility for allowing AIG to pay out bonuses.Ooops, wait. Disregard that last. There’s no such thing.My mom used to be great at finding out “who done it”. She’d put us in a room, stand in the doorway, and say, “No one leaves this room until I find out who did it.”I try that with my daughter from time to time, and it doesn’t take long, mainly because she’s an only child, but the principle is the same. We should hold a joint session, and post guards in the doorways, telling our wonderful elected officials, “Okay, no one leaves until we find out who did it, or until everyone is dead.”I’m betting it takes DAYS for all of them to die, because you KNOW none of them will admit they did it.;>)

this AIG bonus shing has the potential to become a real shitstorm for dems in general and for the white house in particular.as far as i can tell,theres only two ways the language about restricting bonuses could have been removed from the stimulus.either someone in congress rewrote it,or someone from the whitehouse/treasury told them to rewrite it.eventually ,someone is going to find out exactly how it went down and i cant see how it wont end up looking like dems being sympathetic to wealthy,greedy executives who are responsible for the bullshit we’re dealing with now.and especially if it turns out that it came from the whitehouse.chris dodd said yesterday that “staffers” from treasury told them to change it.i have a hard time believing that some random staffer just showed up and gave the order to rewrite legislation.it had to have come from either geithner or the whitehouse,right?am i wrong?seriously,someone please give me an explanation to make me feel better.

Yes, both parties, democrats and republicans are tools of greedy, billionaires who will sell us all out for crumbs from their corporate masters table. The difference between them, is that while republicans are unashamed whores, democrats have guilt pangs about it.

“eventually ,someone is going to find out exactly how it went down and i cant see how it wont end up looking like dems being sympathetic to wealthy,greedy executives who are responsible for the bullshit we’re dealing with now.and especially if it turns out that it came from the whitehouse.”And please tell me this will not come as a surprise to you?

24hourjack,The man you are looking for is Senator Christopher Dodd, who is very busy, at the moment, throwing the Obama Administration under the bus.

Here’s what I found yesterday:

Sen. Chris Dodd, facing the lowest approval ratings of any Senate Democratic incumbent, is in political purgatory. But on the subject of AIG’s bonuses, he doesn’t deserve the bad rap. Dodd is being blamed for OKing a proviso in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act guaranteeing previously sanctioned employment contracts. He faces intense political pressure because of his long-standing friendship with bankers and lenders, which has made him a key player in the negotiations between financial institutions and the government. In a statement yesterday, Dodd called on AIG executives to voluntarily refuse their bonuses. The truth is that the codicil was added in conference by mutual agreement of House and Senate Democrats and the White House. At the time, the administration worried about both the perception and the reality of government’s interfering in the decisions and internal operations of the banks. Backstopping employment contracts was controversial to critics, but to an administration that was trying to work with the banks, it was an easy call. The worry was that the banks would suffer immediate and disasterous brain drain if the govenment could abrogate (the world of the week!) employment contracts willy-nilly. Apparently, no one at the Treasury Department or the New York Federal Reserve Board bothered to check on what those contracts actually contained – therein was the sin of omission, if you can call it that. How many tens of thousands of employees does AIG have? And didn’t Geithner recuse himself from dealing with AIG?

…In conference — Dodd was not a conferee – the following clause was added to reconcile differences between the Senate and House bills:

iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.

Dodd, the chair of the banking committee, agreed to this language because most all of the stakeholders – including the administration – wanted it. But the original bill passed by the Senate contains Dodd’s compensation limits without the carve out the exemption for bonuses. So there is no evidence that Dodd bowed to pressure from his contributors or that he was the author, the force of nature, behind it.

- Marc Ambinder

Ambinder is weak. So we have everyone going into “who me?” mode now, is that right? No one authored this and no one caved into pressure, hell, there may not have been any pressure. This is flat out hilarious!

One more thing: why was this item buried inside a gargantuan fucking stimulus bill? Hilarious!

The fucking Dems wrote the god damn bill, and there they were yesterday, before the whole damn country, with their outrage and lecturing. Not only is this hilarious, it’s hugely fucking pathetic. Both parties deserve to hang.

hey jim…why dont you give it a rest with the whole moral equivalency bullshit.all that nonsense about how both parties are equally as bad and horrible and ALL politicians are bad etc…the ideology of the republican party prevailed over the past eight years and because of it,our economy is fucked,4,000+ soldiers are dead(not to mention 100,000+ iraqis),new orleans lay underwater for days with zero help from the federal gov…do i really need to go on about whats wrong with the republican party?theyre the people who take seriously people like glenn beck and joe the plumber.this doesnt mean that dems are completely blameless,it just means that there is a clear difference between the ideology and the results of the two parties,so to suggest that “everyones bad and we oughtta just hang em’ all” or whatever,that sounds pretty fucking dopey,irresponsible and way out of touch.

Nicely said, Jack.Jim, you call Ambinder’s argument weak and yet don’t refute any of the statements. He was specifically speaking about throwing Dodd under the bus. Any comments?

Moral equivalency? Not I. There is enough of that in some of the statements above, e.g., bringing up the incompetency of the way Katrina was managed, when I dare to criticize certain Democrats. That is moral equivalency. You can play circle the wagons if you want but I don’t consider that to be productive. I’ll echo something someone dropped in another thread here: “This is the problem with both Democrats and Republicans. Both sides are never to blame, and their opponents are guilty of everything.”

I turned on Morning Joe today and when they were showing screen shots of DC/NYC, Joe went into a “Mika hates Americam, she wants a screen shot of the red square!” Hardy fucking har, Joe.