[DianaraVP]

Dear Mr. Bush, < Kinda necessary in an open letter, right?

When you became our President after losing the popular vote, we said "it's ok, you are our President now." The majority of us didn't vote for you because we thought you were going to end up being a shit head, but we sucked it up and held hope that you would take us down the road of prosperity. We trusted you, like we trusted the Presidents before, even though it went against our better instincts.

Not long into your administration, something awful happened. 9/11 was a tragedy that no one expected. After it happened we threw our support behind you and hoped that you would show grace and leadership during this difficult time in American history. The entire world had shown their support and pledged to do whatever it took to make this situation better. The American people gave you the support you needed to take action and bring the conspirators of the worst attack on US soil to justice. You took our trust, you took the world's trust... and you used to take upon a personal vendetta against someone who "tried to kill your dad."

Two terms and over seven years later, the evidence is overwhelming; you didn't restore justice in the world as we commissioned you to do. You didn't make sure that another attack wouldn't happen. You pushed our allies away and you laid the soil for the seed of Islamic radicalism to sprout and blossom into a movement that will ensure that we will have generations of Muslim men who want to bring down our great country.

You didn't have the foresight to see the trap was laid out for you - for us - to bring down our country from within. The attacks on 9/11 were designed to bring us into financial distress. They were designed to pull us into a "war" that we would not win, but commit billions of dollars, resources and lives. One can't help but draw parallels to the results of Cold War efforts to bring down the Soviet Union - make your enemies go bankrupt and the nation will collapse upon itself. In retrospect, it might have been useful to elect someone who has read a history book, rather than snorted blow off one.

Today, 2008 October 6, the United states dropped below 10 000 on the DOW. Oil hovers around $90 a barrel. The economy is in a state of peril. Now of course, not all of this can be blamed on you. Many of these problems ran much deeper than the hole you dug for us. However, as people lose their retirements and more and more of our tax dollars go toward fixing our broken economy and supporting a war that we will never win, it kind of makes you wonder what could we have done with the money that we used to support your vendetta? Giving health care to the American people? Pay for college educations? Take care of our veterans? Save families from being evicted from their homes? Rebuild our energy infrastructure? Bailout Wall Street?

One thing that all these ideas have in common is that they would have made us better. They would have created jobs. They would have provided resources that could have lessened the damage to our financial system.

While you do not shoulder the sole blame for this crisis, who's roots will continue to drive deeper into the ground, you do shoulder the responsibility of having poor judgment. You are at fault for being unwaveringly decisive. Confidence is oft an appreciated quality in a leader, but so is prudence. In your case, had you exercised the slightest bit of reconsideration in your line of thinking, had you listened to the evidence that was laid out for you by military commanders and economic experts, had you not assumed that your judgment was always better for the American people than what people smarter and more knowledgeable than yourself advised we might not be in the mess we are in right now.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm not looking for blame here. I am looking for accountability. While you didn't make this mess yourself, you were the straw that broke the camel's back (a fitting metaphor for being trapped in a quagmire in the middle east). I'm not looking back to the past, as Governor Palin suggested about Biden, rather I am treating our nation as a diagnostician would treat his patient; I am trying to understand the cause so I can find a cure.

Now that your administration is coming to a close, and you are more and more appearing to be a lame duck, we expect you to continue to show your stalwart and stubborn sense of self-assurance in times of crisis. We expect that you will not use your eleventh hour as a time to help fix the nation that you helped break. We expect that you will continue to support your decision-making process and believe that you will be vetted by history. What we don't expect is that you admit that you were wrong about every single major decision that we faced as a nation during your 8 years in office. And now that the financial crisis that you helped caused has bloomed into a beautiful "turd blossom," we don't expect that you will do the right thing to point us to the end of the long dark cave of recession. Instead, we expect you to make the same poor choices and take the same poor advice from those individuals who's judgment shouldn't have been trusted in the first place. We know that you will leave this mess to the next Joe Six-pack who precedes you in office.

I'm going to end this letter on a high note: You did leave us one gift. If you are lucky, maybe this will be the legacy that you leave behind. You managed to unite the large majority of people against you and your party. You managed to single-handedly shift public opinion away from Republicans. More importantly, you managed to inspire people to vote for the person who is best for the job, and not who we want to "share a beer with." We became complacent in our democracy. We forgot that we had a job to do, and you made us remember. For that, we thank you.

[Siyual]

Because we all know W trolls around KI, and has a 75DRG

[Seigrith]

It's not that I disagree with you, Dianara, but you're really just wallpapering fog here.

[DianaraVP]

I don't mind. I'm angry. As of 1:30pm CT the market is down 720 points. Someone needs to be held responsible. This man fucked us. I don't care if you do or don't agree. I'm just pissed off.

[Dr. Ifto]

nvm

was going to call you an idiot, but you just arent worth the time or effort

[DianaraVP]

I'm the idiot because I realize the President's role in this mess we are in...

I promised I wouldn't get sucked into a flame war, but at the same time I knew what I was getting into posting this here. The fact is that everything I said was right, and you would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise. And to those of you who want to try to come at me for posting this on KI, you do realize the heading of this thread, right?

[Dr. Ifto]

A lot of the problems with the financial situation is not W's fault. Its all the accumilation from the past 4 presidents. Clinton deregulated a lot in his tenure.

[AndreosofOdin]

Word Dianara. A well thought out letter expressing your understandable frustration.

[Dr. Ifto]

You register an alias just to praise yourself?

[Cruzandercerberus]

I don't mind. I'm angry. As of 1:30pm CT the market is down 720 points. Someone needs to be held responsible. This man fucked us. I don't care if you do or don't agree. I'm just pissed off.

[DianaraVP]

I understand that better than most, Ifto. However, you missed the overarching point of the post. The fact is had Bush not sunk us into a war, and made numerous other financial errors (including, but not limited to his tax cuts) we might have been able to handle this financial crisis better. Period. The point of the war was to eliminate terrorism, but the terrorists' purpose was to hurt us economically. Bush walked us right into that trap.

I said very bluntly that Bush does not shoulder the responsibility on his own. But it was his irresponsibility that made an already potentially bad situation much much worse. Everything that Bush did during his administration set us up to fall hard. And that is exactly what we are doing. His approach to every situation that we faced was one of over-confidence and decisiveness, a bad combination of character traits with someone who has poor judgment.

Update: Dow down 300. Closing around 10000. Much better than the -800 that we hit, but a loss is a loss. And to lose 300 points and be happy about it shows how fucked up this situation is.

Edit: Cruz oh don't even get me started on Congress. Those assholes are equally as responsible for this mess. All of them. Not just the Republicans or Democrats, but all of them. If those pricks did their job instead of always backing their party line, we probably would have gotten into this mess either. Instead of being the people's balance to the power of the Executive branch, they have become the third arm of the President - backing every decision their party's President, be it Dem or Rep.

I'm not irrational. The fact is we had the money. We could have fixed this. We spent it somewhere that we shouldn't have gone. I blame us too. We let this shit happen under our noses. We should have been angrier and tried harder to prevent this shit from happening. We stopped paying attention. JS Mill actually talked about how the people become complacent with democracy when things are going well. We lived beyond our means and forgot that there are real issues that we need to deal with outside our day-to-day lives. We just didn't pay attention.

[pathwriter]

I keep asking myself why people think the President has real influence over domestic policy. And, hell, even if taxes had been kept high, even if we'd stayed out of Iraq, even if Clinton and Bush, Sr., hadn't relaxed regulations, I thoroughly anticipate that something like this would have happened. The government certainly has a culpable role in the whole affair, but it has been our "financial institutions" (pronounced to rhyme with "mental institutions") that have caused these ongoing problems. This isn't even new. We were all being born around the time that the S&Ls crashed in the 80s, and there have been a string of similar failures for the past century. Why? Because bankers and stock traders and other people whose singular skill lies in embezzlement are completely untrustworthy. They're not interested in the day after tomorrow, they're barely capable of thinking more than an hour ahead.

Don't buy it? Look at how credit cards work. They're handed out like candy to anyone passing by on the street, even if they're in debt up to their eyeballs. Why? Because the banks that back those cards intend to make a serious profit off the interest rates on those cards (there's a reason why the Bible forbade usury and it's one of those things in which it was absolutely correct, but even moreso when you consider that the "money" a credit card user is theoretically paying out does not and never will exist, it's a number in a computer on which banks get to charge 20% interest) and, of course, any and all fees they can squeeze in. It's not that they're extending credit based on the capital they have at hand and in the sure knowledge that their debtor will repay in a timely manner with a nominal fee attached, it's that they're pretending the money exists and collecting pure profit, right up until the nation is bankrupt.

I seriously never thought I'd find myself defending this idiot, but stop trying to place the blame for the current situation on Bush. He and his Republican overlords (the man is not in charge of his own destiny and you're a fool if you think otherwise) have certainly permitted these vultures to feast openly and without reprisal, but they didn't spawn the carrion-eaters.

[Cruzandercerberus]

Since we're on a rant. I think I'll do one too.

3 trillion dollars is not the inevitable price of a 5 year war. In fact it's a greatly exagerated cost. My problem is not with the justification for the Iraq war which was more than adequate, it is rather the wasteful method in which it was conducted, which is purely congress' fault. I am on Eisenhower's side when he said " we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." That is precisely the reason that the Democrats have been gaining ground in the congress and precisely what they have utterly failed to do. Of course we live in a political atmosphere in which even the fundamentally tiny loss of life on our side from the GWOT is concidered unacceptable by the public at large. And so it would be political suicide for them to take any action that could possibly be construed as not wrapping every desk jockey with an impenitrable bomb proof bubble. As a result of this It is obviously no longer possible in a timely manner for the United States to project power into areas in which it is needed, As it will remain to be so in the future.

I am quite satisfied with the assertion of William Tecumseh Sherman that " War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.". People detest war, and that is fine. Most people are like sheep, they can only harm one another by accident and couldn't fathom using violence as a method to enforce anything. I've learned to live with the impotent hostility of the pink crowd, I can take it. But sometimes war is a nessisary evil. As even Barack Obama will attest to when he supports going after the islamists in Pakistan. Which by the way Dianara I think you could use a refresher in the doctrines of Islamic Supremecy that are advocated by the sorts of people we are going after. We are not in Iraq because of "Bush's dad". that is, coming from you intentionally dishonest. And even if we were, we're talking about a foreign leader attempting to assassinate a former president of the United States. It would be a horrible travesty if it was Bill Clinton that he went after. But republicans' lives don't seem to matter. Which leads me to wonder what kind of party you would throw had Saddam Hussein's assassins succeeded in assassinating former president Bush.

We can really look at the alternative to mulitilateral military action as was used against Iraq, as it relates to Darfur, Sudan. We sat back and we let Kofi Annan and his toothless U.N. security council try and go into darfur while the islamic janjaweed and militias were on their campaign of ethnic cleansing. And the positive development that he has managed to create from the situation is that we no longer need worry about genocide in the Sudan since they've all already been killed. Thank god the evil neocons didn't get to start another illegal war.

Make no mistake, the left will gut our military, just as they point the blame for their own financial failures at them as we speak, while laughably claiming through their teeth that they "Support the troops". What a joke. I'd like to ask those type of anti-military people If Saddam Hussein had of continued on in 1991 and conquered all the Gulf States and then sold oil only to China, India and Japan and embargoed the West you'd have been okay with that? The world is not America where everyone gets a fair shake. If you are not the biggest, baddest dog on the porch then you are the beta and eat scraps and don't get to fuck even the ugly dogs. No thanks. We need to be big and powerful enough to not only project power but to occupy countries and kick in their doors to find and kill all of our enemies. You're not going to do that with the only the U.S. Coast Guard and the California National Guard Civil Affairs, Forestry and Agrarian Reform Service stationed out of Malibu. the anti-war crowd's idea is to project isolationism and weakness, which the thugs in power around this planet will use as a cue to attack us. Remember what Bin Laden said about 9-11. He found willingness to attack us because of our response to Mogadishu. We were "weak and had no stomach for war". His own words.

I have over time become less tolerant of the idea that the United States is still one nation. We're not. We're severely divided ideologically and most young people can't even describe what exactly it means to be an American. In our own nation American values are no longer widely held. unlike other nations American identity is not based on race, ethnicity, or descent. Being American is based around a set of values. If Americans no longer hold American cultural values then America is no longer America. And the charade that we all live in that it is beginning to wear thin. Like a greasy fake coin with the lead center beginning to show through. And the next presidency will strain it to it's limits should we enact the monroe doctrine on Hugo Chavez and his hardcore socialist ilk as they become increasingly totalitarian to cement their hold on power in the face of failing economic policies. Or in the border areas of Pakistan, trying to clean up the historical failures of the British Raj and Muhatma Ghandi to absorb Muslims, Sikh, and Hindu into one nation. Or action against Iran for it's march toward nuclear weapons.

Hell maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the whole divisionl thing go away once we have democrats in office. Maybe that's my failure in thinking that the whole anti-war thing is about anything but who is in power. I desperately hope that I am right. I don't think I want to live in a nation in which the fruit of the willingly sacrificed lives of our soldiers are just another bargaining chip to gain votes. either way the implications are horrifying.

[DianaraVP]

I was at the White Sox Division Championship, and they kept running that rally cry "dun dun dun dun dun dun CHARGE!!!" The funny thing was everytime they would do it, they would run an ad on the Jumbo Tron for Master Card. It was like a metaphor for the Credit Crunch - everyone screaming to charge their 9 dollar hot dogs on their credit cards.

Look Path, when it comes to economics there are so many factors that take place over the course of long periods of time that it becomes hard to pin blame for financial situations on any one group or person. We all had a hand in this, hell I am in debt up to my eyeballs, and my family has money. The fact is that the money that was used to fund the war could have gone toward more productive uses. As a consequence of Bush's actions, the terrorists really are winning.

You have to understand, while we would have eventually had this happen if we continued down the same path without Bush, we would have the resources to deal with the problem more effectively and expediently. I mean tell me, please tell me, what could we have done if we had the money from the war at our disposal? In fact, I recently read a report about the crisis we are in and the links and implications that the deficit we are running will have on our economy in the near future. If we don't pay this shit down (and yes, that means raising taxes) the financial situation we will find ourselves in will be much worse.

Your puppetmaster comments aside, Bush is responsible just like the CEOs of the companies who raped Wall Street. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States, and he was responsible for maintaining our economic well-being. Considering the man ran on a platform of being better for the economy than "the liberals," he should be held accountable for his part in this mess.

Understand that I'm not giving everyone else a pass here. I don't think we should give him a pass either. And as the CEO of the United States, he is the one who has to go down with the ship.

Since we're on a rant. I think I'll do one too.

/shrug What else better do we have to do at the moment? =/

Cruz, I have to respectfully disagree with you. I'll respond to your comments after Terminator goes off... lol.

[Vigilous]

So what everyone is trying to say is.... I should dust off my Y2K emergency kit and start keeping my money in the mattress? Done.

[DianaraVP]

As I stated in my previous post, I respectfully do not agree with the points made in your post. There are a few points that I want to cover specifically, starting with the premise you laid out about Bin Laden's cause.

The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group's goal is to force America into bankruptcy.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/

As much as it sickens me to say this, Bin Laden was right. The article points to the comments made by Bin Laden in a 2004 video, where he states "[it was] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration." This is chess, not checkers. This was about strategy. He suckered us all into buying into going to war; ironically it wasn't where he thought it would be. I do not believe that Bin Laden expected us to go into Iraq, but when we did his dick got hard. We walked right into a snare trap, and we were led there by the Bush Administration's farce.

I don't think that our opponent is an idiot. I don't think he is a madman. It is foolish for us to pigeonhole him in such a manner. Bin Laden didn't attack us because of our response to Mogadishu, he's not that petty. While that may have been one of the many things that pissed him off, it definitely wasn't the purpose of his mission.

Your misunderstanding of said point brings me to my next one; you seem to think that prudence is a sign weakness. The fact is I care about the troops. I care what happens to them. I hope that when we use them, that it is in the most necessary of situations and we have exhausted every possible economic and diplomatic avenue. Knowing when and why to use your troops is just as important as knowing how. We failed our troops by letting them get sucked into a war that cannot be won by military means.

You see, the difference is not our level of care for the troops, or what party is in office, the difference is a fundamental understanding of how to project power effectively. And I’m sorry to tell you, your understanding is far beyond flawed. The fact that you bought into that “support the troops” tagline pisses me off, not because you say it, but because the people who came up with that bullshit manipulated you. This isn’t about supporting the troops, it’s about war.

What, do you think that I believe the world is meant to be perfect and that our enemies will shit gumdrops and fart rainbows? This shit is real to me. I want to break off a foot in Bin Laden’s ass just as much as you do. I just don’t think that foot always has to be attached to the leg of the military.

Do you think Darfur doesn’t piss me off? Rwanda? We have a moral and legal obligation to help those people and we couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. This shit eats me up inside.

I’m not weak. I want our enemies to fall at our feet, just like you. But you will not be able to accomplish that feat with the military alone, or even using them the majority of the time. We needed a scalpel here, not a broadsword.

I’m sorry, I’m rambling. What you said pissed me off to no end Cruz. I can’t even begin to type all of the things I can say to make my point here. It’s just one of those things that I would need to tell you in person, because no matter how many words I type it will seem hollow compared to the words that come out of my mouth.

Just one last thing here, we are one nation. You want to know what it means to be American: diversity. Everything that we have, we took from someone else. We looked to Europe for inspiration on our society; we looked to ancient Rome and Greece for our philosophies. Somewhere along the line, our “message” of tolerance and understanding got lost. We became a nation divided by party, race, and economics. The one thing that remained was the one thing that has been consistent throughout our history is our diversity. Our ability to have different beliefs and opinions and nationalities and still be united under our right to be free is what makes us American. It is what makes us unique. It is our diversity that makes us strong - the ability to choose the best from all walks of life. That is the message that we pass down through our educational institutions and we encourage immigrants to accept when we assimilate them to our culture.

So, when you insinuate that anti-war people don’t support the troops, or want to see this country be prosperous, it makes me realize that you are the one that doesn’t truly understand what it is to be American. Remember what I said about coming to see Chicago. I wish you could come live here for awhile, and then you would understand. This is America.

[Cruzandercerberus]

As I stated in my previous post, I respectfully do not agree with the points made in your post. There are a few points that I want to cover specifically, starting with the premise you laid out about Bin Laden's cause.

As much as it sickens me to say this, Bin Laden was right. The article points to the comments made by Bin Laden in a 2004 video, where he states "[it was] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration." This is chess, not checkers. This was about strategy. He suckered us all into buying into going to war; ironically it wasn't where he thought it would be. I do not believe that Bin Laden expected us to go into Iraq, but when we did his dick got hard. We walked right into a snare trap, and we were led there by the Bush Administration's farce.

I don't think that our opponent is an idiot. I don't think he is a madman. It is foolish for us to pigeonhole him in such a manner. Bin Laden didn't attack us because of our response to Mogadishu, he's not that petty. While that may have been one of the many things that pissed him off, it definitely wasn't the purpose of his mission.

he didn't attack us specifically because of that act. But it was one of the reasons he decided that provoking open war would be a good idea. He thought that you and your ilk would do nothing effectual , which you can always be counted upon to do. And if we did, he could maintain a long term low intensity fight as long as he had a safe sanctuary (See: Mao's rules for revolution). It is one of the only things I agree with the Obama admnistration on that we need to take the fight into Pakistan. This is one of the reasons why embedded militias are difficult to defeat. But it can be done. We have done it in Iraq. We can do it in Afghanistan and anywhere else it needs to be done.

Your misunderstanding of said point brings me to my next one; you seem to think that prudence is a sign weakness. The fact is I care about the troops. I care what happens to them. I hope that when we use them, that it is in the most necessary of situations and we have exhausted every possible economic and diplomatic avenue. Knowing when and why to use your troops is just as important as knowing how. We failed our troops by letting them get sucked into a war that cannot be won by military means.

Prudence is a sign of virtue, Virtue is from the latin meaning valor, manliniess and courage. there is no virtue in allowing other men to be ground under the boots of tyrants and barbarians, It was a sign of weakness when George Bush the elder chose to leave Saddam Hussein in power and it was Over the term of William Jefferson Clinton we bombed iraq innumerable times, employed every device of our diplomatic corps, the United Nations, etc, etc. Ultimate result. Zero, sip, zilch, nada, nothing. Iraq continued to violate each and every circumstance under which a nation's soverignty is surrendered according the the United Nations. I find it difficult to believe that you think that these nations which have no infrastructure to speak of and are more or less completely totalitarian can be influenced by soft power. It has been tried. It has failed. The only way we're going to fix their fucked up backward "honor culture" is to cram civilization down their throats until they start to like it. Anything less is not prudence, it is folly. The arabs were worthless fucks in the time of Xenophon, and they're worthless fucks now. You cannot use the sort of methods that work with civilized men, these are not civilized men.

You see, the difference is not our level of care for the troops, or what party is in office, the difference is a fundamental understanding of how to project power effectively. And I’m sorry to tell you, your understanding is far beyond flawed. The fact that you bought into that “support the troops” tagline pisses me off, not because you say it, but because the people who came up with that bullshit manipulated you. This isn’t about supporting the troops, it’s about war.

What, do you think that I believe the world is meant to be perfect and that our enemies will shit gumdrops and fart rainbows? This shit is real to me. I want to break off a foot in Bin Laden’s ass just as much as you do. I just don’t think that foot always has to be attached to the leg of the military.

A strongly worded letter? Sanctions on a nation that has no industry or infrastructure? A U.S. naval vessel off the coast armed and ready to air-drop food once the situation has become truly dire? I'd like to hear it. The only thing that is going to cause a discernable effect in places like Afghanistan, and Sudan is force of arms. These are not as I have to repeatedly remind you, Civilized men.

Do you think Darfur doesn’t piss me off? Rwanda? We have a moral and legal obligation to help those people and we couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. This shit eats me up inside.

I’m not weak. I want our enemies to fall at our feet, just like you. But you will not be able to accomplish that feat with the military alone, or even using them the majority of the time. We needed a scalpel here, not a broadsword.

And after we deliver a killing stroke or frontal lobotomy to said nation or as is the style this century group of stateless shitbags with a JDAMS shaped scalpel, what then? We used a scalpel with Russia when they were in Afghanistan. What a wonderful result came out of that.

Somewhere along the line, our “message” of tolerance and understanding got lost. We became a nation divided by party, race, and economics. The one thing that remained was the one thing that has been consistent throughout our history, which is diversity. Our ability to have different beliefs and opinions and nationalities and still be united under our right to be free is what makes us American. It is what makes us unique. That is the message that we pass down through our educational institutions and we encourage immigrants to accept when we assimilate them to our culture.

Chicago is your america, what about the heartland? the coastal reigons? the Deep South? Are they any less "America"? My very point is that we are devided by ideology. Without the right to self-determination under a federalist system with heavy checks on the federal establishment there is no freedom. We are only united under our "Right" to be free as long as we are able to assimilate into one culture. There are increasing numbers of people in America that have no want to assimilate with one another. Not only immigrants who won't assimilate and the reactionaries that demand that they do but people who are hostile to governance under one party or the other. This is either a recipe for civil war, or the outright fracture of the nation. I'm not terribly happy about it but it's the way the wind is blowing.

[draugo]

LOL












































I am not laughing with you Diarana, I am laughing at you. Funny you should bring up Chi town as the ideal you would hold for this nation when it has the most corrupt and devious bunch of crooks running it in the nation.

Your inability to understand everything Cruz wrote in his first post, and your failure to understand that it was your Democratic leadership who continued to be bribed to prevent effective oversight over Fannie and Freddie really goes to show how idiotic you really are.

By the way do you know who took the most money from Fannie and Freddie? Thats right your Messiah Mr. Obama. How about Dodd receiving sweetheart home finance deals from those assholes? Or the absolute shit ton of pork your people threw into the bailout before they would lift a finger to help this country. I will tell you what would have happened to the money we spent on the war had we not spent it on the war, it would have gone to Sausage Museums, and bike paths for no goddamn reason to nowhere. Do you know who cooked the books for those people? Bama's financial adviser. You are fucked if he gets in office. End of story.

And a last thing. You need to learn to quit talking with your "factual" authority when you have no god damned clue what the fuck you are talking about.

Good video Cruz.

[pathwriter]

Um... correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it something like 2/3s of House Republicans voted against the original bailout? As much as I think that Obama deserves every bit of criticism that can be leveled against him, it wasn't the Democrats who needed a padded bill to choke it down. You might want to work on your consistency there, Draugo.

Fuck, I've managed to defend George Bush AND Dianara in this thread. I should go drown myself.

[Mack]

@OP: The economic peril can only help us at this point... Be smart about it, invest in the stock market and that declining oil price... well not right away at least. Wait til it bottoms out and then buy up cheep... The price with jump back $20-$30 and you can profit on bloating stocks. Invest in precious metals like SILVER and COPPER, they're used in electronics and many other areas of the economy. Be smart about it. Oh and one more thing... This was not Bush's fault idiot, read your history books and about past bills signed by other presidents. EXAMPLE: Carter signed a bill allowing people with shitty credit to get loans... banks were required to give them or suffer bad ratings marks or some such bullshit. CLINTON passed a similar bill expanding on those same principles, the combination of them have driven our economy into the dirt by allowing people to take out loans without consequence. Defaulting left and right.

Now on the the real reason for my post...
@OP: CRY MOAR NAO!!!!! WIPE THE SAND OUTTA YOUR VAG AND GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE.