Web Letters | The Nation

Web Letter

What rock has Naomi Klein been hiding under? Everybody could see Fannie Mae would eventually go bust the past ten years--and just how many of The Nation's supposedly "liberal" readership made a bit a cash on the side flipping houses, all thanks to the scam Klein defines as "looting of public assets"?

I'm sorry, but the corruption was widespread, and the money has already been lost--if the Treasury didn't step in to buy up all those toxic assets, market confidence would have been that much worse off, and collectively we'd have been even worse off.

I blame Klein and The Nation's readership just as much the Bush "gang" or "cabal" or whatever other derogatory term you wish to define them by. Liberals should have removed their heads out of their behinds years ago and stopped worrying about human rights in Africa or saving the whales down near Antarctica. They should have focused their concerns closer to home and more realistically so that now the Bush Cabal wouldn't be running away with all the trophies and all the loot.

I say good on Bush for sticking it to the soft-headed liberals. They thought they were so intelligent and "empowered," they could change the world--they would have been better ensuring their own house was in order, because in the end, they've lost everything by trying to do too much.

Web Letter

I have some questions that should be discussed.

1. Impeach them (Bush-Cheney) now or arrest them later?

2. Do You think another Bush should be allowed to serve in the White House?

3. Should the United States allow an aristocracy to develop in the Presidency? Example: George H. Bush has served as president, so George W Bush should not have been allowed to run, let alone serve. That means that Jeb Bush should be denied the presidency as well. (You know he will try in 2012.)

The USA is not an aristocracy, nor is it a family business.

Protect yourselves now by pushing this issue. No more Bushes in the White House!

We need legislation (an amendment) to keep immediate family members of any president from attempting to gain the presidency for (say) twenty-four years from the last date of his or her parent's or brother's or sister's last day in office.

Web Letter

Thanks to Naomi Klein for pointing out that the bailout is neither a case of egregious necessity nor of atrocious mismanagement, as the mainstream media have presented it, but "Bush's final pillage." In earlier issues, William Greider has helpfully referred to it as a "historic swindle," and Howard Zinn has reminded us of the long and sordid history of a supine government servicing corporations and banks while admonishing the poor to practice proper Puritan virtue. Nothing so clearly resembles the "bailout" as exiled Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier's last action, plundering the national treasury for his own retirement plans, which consisted, according to the New York Times, of a vast amount of champagne and cocaine in the south of France. And nothing so resembles the disgraceful Alan Greenspan's expressions of being shocked, shocked, as the scene in Casablanca when Captain Renault closes down a gambling operation even as he is handed his winnings.

The bailout has other more strategic purposes, of course--not just to guarantee the financial industry a cozy retirement package at the public expense. It guts the national budget that the wrong president might use to advance actual progressive policies: surely the clearest signal that Wall Street and the current administration expect an Obama electoral win, and are moving quickly to render such an outcome merely symbolic.

Web Letter

It is not too late to impeach Bush. Drag his sorry butt in front of Congress and make him try to justify his actions.

Web Letter

The current crop of conservative Republicans are traitors. Bush, Cheney and their entire staff should be prosecuted for high crimes and misdemeanors, plus treason.

I wake up every day in despair. Why? Because the great country I grew up in, which was founded on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, no longer exists. We are so close to fascism--if not already there!

This terrifies me. What terrifies me even more is that I may never again see this country restored to its position of greatness, and fairness for all citizens.

The conservative Republicans are selfish, greedy pigs who should pay for their crimes against the United States of America!

Web Letter

Thanks to Naomi Klein for this excellent & quick breakdown of the bailout plan and its increasingly costly failures. Most Americans were iffy about the bailout in the first place, but we couldn't put our fingers on the "why." Some people pointed to the almost absolutist power that Paulson would wield under its original text. Others questioned whether a group of crooks should benefit from government help.

But mostly, we just wondered why, why these same crooks should get any assistance in a so-called "free market" economy (I won't get into that now), when millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement packages. To me, it seemed like the administration's final way to say that they not only don't care about "ordinary" Americans, but they don't understand what it's like to be one, either. If Obama wins, I don't envy his job...