Why am I not surprised that the $700 billion .... No, the $850 billion .... No, try again ... the $1.8 trillion bailout giveaway passed through Congress? It was so easy. The lemmings were lead to the edge of the abyss, shown oblivion, and terrified into giving away their fortune, their children's future, and their freedom for as far into the future as anyone can care to see.
To tell what happened, all you have to do is follow the money. Who won? That's easy to see. The oil companies and speculators won "big time," to use a phrase fancied by one famous administration official early on. The banks won "big time." Wall Street won "big time." Is there anyone we know who has a stake in all of these ventures who stood to profit "big time" along with all of his good buddies?
The secret was to watch for those who were flailing their arms, jumping up and down, and making the most noise and then to watch those who were being quiet. The clue came from whoever made the biggest blather because they were not a suspect in this caper. Instead, they were the ones being used, the ones who were being frightened. But, those who were silent in the face of impending disaster, they were the ones who were spinning their little webs and doing all the manipulations.
Let's see, there was Nancy Pelosi. Unbelievable! Before the first House vote on September 29, 2008, she said, "$700 billion. A staggering number. But only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness."
Reckless! Are you kidding? Reckless? Watch out young lady, just who are you calling reckless? Did you ever think for one minute that you were one of the barnyard animals who Chicken Little had stampeded? Could it possibly be that you are the unwitting pawn in the dirty work of the master manipulator?
Then there was Henry Paulson. What a nice man. He seemed so upset. He actually believed the sky was falling. After all, he had seen the facts, the numbers, and the statistics, and they all showed the sky was falling. He even got down on his hands and knees to beg the Speaker of the House of Representatives to believe he meant every word of it. And in fact he did mean it, only he hadn't learned from Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Ben Bernanke ... naw, he was just a vassal, a messenger, the guy who ran 26 miles to bring the dooms-day news. He couldn't remember the lessons of Weapons of Mass Destruction either.
Then there was the emperor himself, George Bush, or at least the soon to be ex-emperor. Weren't his beautiful new clothes something to behold? Everyone could see we were in trouble. After all, he had paid the finest tailor in the world to bring him all the evidence. The royal tailor had done a wonderful job. We had all the facts. I mean, Wa Mu had failed, Lehman Brothers had gone under, Wachovia was teetering, and there were 117 banks on the endangered species list. What we needed was environmental protection legislation to save the banks from extinction, didn't we? But just who was the royal tailor anyway?
Of all the bureaucrats and pols who were carrying on, crying, and spewing dire predictions of the end of the world, there was one man who was silent. One man kept his head. One man didn't babel on and was unbelievably cool, calm, and collected. He was invisible.
Who was that masked man?
Why, it was Richard Bruce Chaney, that mild mannered Congressional intern from Lincoln, Nebraska. Yes, it was "Dick." Always in the background, always behind the scenes making phone calls, being the master manipulator par-excellence. You never see the Vice-President do his work, but he's there. You can feel him, taste him, because he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake.
But this time he really pulled off the big one.
Bigger than the Great Brinks Robbery of 1950. Bigger than Saddam Hussein who took $1 billion the day before the Iraq War. Bigger than the $300 million St. Patrick's Day robbery from the Boston Museum.
He made Goldfinger look like an amateur.
Goldfinger wanted to rob Fort Knox, but James Bond was there to stop him. Except, there was no James Bond this time, and we took it right on the chin.
You see, Goldfinger's problem was that he was neither 007's boss nor did he have any influence over "M," the head of British Secret Service. If Goldfinger had the moxie, the moves, the grove of Dick Cheney, he would have given the order to let Nancy Pelosi be the frontman aka woman for him, tell all the secret service and treasury agents to stand down, and just let the bad guys loot the treasury. James, where were you when we needed you?
This was an inside job. It was the work of the greatest master of all time. Give the man credit, he pulled it off. $700 billion! $850 billion? $1.8 trillion *&^%$#@! Who can count that high? He was able to fool all the people all of the time.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. You have never seen better work than that which comes form Dick Chaney.
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