Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 23, 2008 4:54:18 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The $1 Trillion Bankers' Bailout is CHENEY's Idea and It Was
Planned MONTHS Ago
Bush Mouthpiece Admits: They’ve Been Sitting on this Plan
By: emptywheel Tuesday September 23, 2008 8:57 am
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/09/23/bush-mouthpiece-admits-theyve-been-sitting-on-this-plan/
Hidden in an article reporting that Cheney's going to go hunt up some
support for the $700,000,000,000 bailout < http://www.rollcall.com/news/28599-1.html?type=printer_friendly
>
is this admission that the Bush Administration has been sitting on it
for some time:
The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on
Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout
fund, dispatching Vice President Cheney ....
Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, and presidential
adviser Ed Gillespie are meeting this morning with House Republican
conservatives, where a rebellion is brewing against the size and
questionable free market credentials of the administration proposal.
Cheney will later gather with GOP Senators at the regular Tuesday
lunch. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal, are
testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their
handiwork.
But Bush himself continues to do little to explain ["]his["] plan, and
he has refused to be questioned about it.
...
Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been
drawn up as a contingency over previous months by administration
officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse
it, but he said that should be enough.
Which raises three questions for me:
A) First, as we'll discuss today in the book salon on Woodward's War
Within, the Bush Administration refused to admit Iraq was FUBAR even
while, for seven months, they were drumming up a new strategy because
it was FUBAR. They did so because they didn't want to affect the mid-
term elections. So has the Bush Administration been formulating a
plan to bail out their buddies, in secret, because they didn't want to
let the voters know how badly they had fucked up the American economy
before November?
B) And if that is true, how much worse has the economy gotten--and how
much more expensive will the bailout be--because the Bushies were
trying to hide yet another colossal Republican failure?
C) Or, did they simply not tell us about their fuck-up so they could
spring the $700,000,000,000 surprise on us on a Friday and demand
results by Monday? The Shock Doctrine at work!
Though, I guess "A" and "C" are not necessarily either/or propositions.
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