From
AP, via Yahoo:
"A lot of people in America think there is a trust -- that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you," Bush said in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg.
"But that's not the way it works," Bush said. "There is no trust 'fund' -- just IOUs that I saw firsthand," Bush said.
...
"Imagine," Bush said in his speech. "The retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet. It's time to strengthen and modernize Social Security for future generations with growing assets that you can control that you call your own -- assets that the government can't take away."
More below the fold ...
So Mr. Bush has decided that he's going to risk causing a global financial panic in an effort to scare the living shit out of those who don't know any better, by alleging that there's at least a good possibility the United States government may default on its Treasury obligations.
I sit here stunned, really just speechless, that a sitting President would, for any reason whatsoever, even begin to hint in the most oblique and tangential manner possible that my Uncle Sam might default on any of his financial obligations.
It's one of the President's jobs to use his bully pulpit, if and when necessary, to do just the opposite, to talk up the financial health of the country, to calm troubled markets, to reassure the international financial community ... and this guy's out on the stump, doing his damndest to cheat the poor and middle class out of the one thing that will keep them, in their retirement, from having to push their shopping carts under overpasses in order to stay out of the rain while they eat their Alpo, and doing so by deliberately impugning the financial integrity of the United States government.
I mean, I really don't have the words to express my shock upon reading this.
Of course, a default on the Treasury notes held by the Social Security system would be, I suspect, the largest theft in the history of mankind, a theft of $1.7 trillion (and counting) from those who, by and large, can afford it the least ... the poor and middle class.
But let's forget about that, at least for the moment. I lack also the words to express the depths of my utter contempt for this sorry excuse for a man, who, for any reason, would risk triggering a global financial panic by ... forget about hinting in the most oblique and tangential manner possible ... by outright stating there's a serious risk that the United States government will default on its financial obligations to the tune of almost $2 trillion, by outright stating the the "full faith and credit of the United States government" is so poor that our government cannot be trusted to honor its past and future financial obligations.
Hello, George, didn't anybody tell you that the Chinese, the Japanese, the Germans, the South Koreans, and a host of other nations ... all of whom have been funding the egregious fiscal irresponsibilities of the Republican Party for the last quarter of a century by buying those same Treasury securities, and any or all of whom might, given sufficient reason ... like the President of the United States stating publicly that there's a good chance those notes might not be redeemed when they're due, that the United States Treasury might actually freaking default, for chrissakes, for the first time in its over two hundred year history ... all of whom might decide to dump those securities now while they're still worth something ... bringing on a collapse of the dollar and a depression of the same magnitude as that of the Great Depression of the 1930s?
Shit, if anybody did bother to clue the dumb bastard in, he probably forgot ...
This is irresponsibility on a scale so vast, and so unspeakably venal, that it's simply not possible for me to convey its true import.
Help, the President of the United States has gone mad, and is out of control. There's no telling what he'll do next ... In fact, I'll go so far as to say that there's a fucking madman at the helm.
Remember Nixon, in the final days of his Presidency ... and at the height of the Cold War ... wandering the corridors of the White House late at night, drunk and talking with ... and arguing with ... the portraits and ghosts of his illustrious predecessors? Remember the spectre of a President gone mad, while in the wings there waited an implacable adversary, armed with nuclear weapons, an adversary that had been waiting decades for the opputune time to pounce in Europe?
This is much more frightening, because this time around, we don't have an Al Haig there to see to it that the President's lunatic behavior is kept shielded from the public's ... and the world's ... eyes, and to see to it that, should our adversaires try to take advantage of the President's having taken leave of his senses, sanity would at least hopefully prevail ...
No, this is far worse, for the President's lunacies are a matter of determined policy; his advisors are actually egging him on, vetting his insane utterances and passing on them, sending him out among us to try to swindle us all ... yet again ... this time by swinging with a meat axe at our national economy ...
"Party of Fiscal Responsibility," my freaking ass ... If no one else dare call it treason, I do.
Be afraid, be very afraid ...