"The capital almost had the feel of wartime."
I'm drinking my coffee and reading the NY Times and reading that sentence. We invaded Iraq in May 2003. More than 4,000 Americans are dead, more than 30,000 wounded. We don't know how many innocent Iraqis have been killed or wounded.
And now this: "The capital almost had the feel of wartime."
It doesn't quite feel like wartime in the capital. But almost. It's starting to remind some reporters of what a government at war looks like.
What does a government at wartime look like? Oh, yeah. It acts interested. Even concerned. It actually pays attention and sometimes even thoughtfully responds to events.
The government didn't act like it was at war this year when 600,000 jobs disappeared and the unemployment rate climbed to its highest level in 5 years. It remained calm when wages continued to be flat. As homeowners lost their homes in greater numbers than any times since the Great Depression, Washington, D.C. remained remarkably cool.
For 8 years, the Bush Administration and its cronies (including McCain) remained impressively calm as millions lived with no healthcare and more were losing their healthcare daily as rates increased.
True, they did have a position on these issues: "let the market work." McCain and Bush wanted to let the economy work itself out; and anyway, their rich friends on Wall Street were doing very nicely, thank you.
This week, all that changed. Bush's friends from Wall Street who now held "very important positions" in government, having moved from Wall Street to managing economic policy for the administration, got down to work. They now have furrowed brows. They are serious. And they are doing important things.
This is an emergency. We must rescue Wall Street!
Now, we're seeing the Bush administration pay attention! No, this isn't some insignificant event that can be shucked off on some incompetent underling. This is no mere Katrina.
This is about WALL STREET! Quick! Let's print more money, stick the working class with the bill and save our economy.
By "our" I mean McCain's middle class — people earning (sic, actually "collecting") $5 million per year or more.
Strangely, I feel no sympathy for those whiners. I don't care if they lose every dollar they ever stole. I think the rescue should be a direct rescue of struggling homeowners, a rescue of the unemployed, and a rescue of the uninsured. I don't see any firm as "too big to fail". Actually, the troubled companies have revealed themselves to be "too incompetent, greedy and short-sighted to succeed".
But, the money is going to those who caused this problem, and we are supposed to hope and believe that this will somehow trickle down to us. We are supposed to be amazingly stupid. Almost as stupid as people who extend bad loans in huge numbers for years and actually believe they are creating wealth. I personally don't know anybody as stupid as a Wall Street executive.
Anyway, Wall Street is just having a mental recession.
So, if these people continue to get their way, here's what will happen. Many of us will be living in McHoovervilles on the White House lawn. That is, until President McCain gets angry and sends out the troops (that he so loves) to gun us down.