Taibbi on the tea-parties, being sloppy with his facts again, all in the name of rhetoric:
“It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.”
My Comment:
Er, Matt. It was the Dems who rolled over for the bail-outs. It was the Republicans, the Southern Republicans, who stymied it first time round…until they had their arms twisted.
Before you got your consciousness raised on the subject several years late, it was right libertarians who were objecting most strongly to the financializing of the economy…..
The Penson video post wasn’t as big a deal as it was made out to be, to my mind. But this post and his debate on 9-11 with David Griffin (at Alternet) do betray some ignorance…
Update:
Louis Proyect has a review of “Dime’s Worth of Difference” (Cockburn and St. Clair) that has a precis that will disabuse anyone inclined to believe the Democrats are more people-friendly than the Republicans…
I think the NEO-conservatives were silent and even rooting for deficit spending because of their imperialism attitudes. Old right conservatives, many in the south, had been against excessive spending for a long time, but were ignored.
NEO-cons co-opted the growing resentment against govt spending by calling for the protests and instigating the taking to the streets. They did this because they were out of power.
I noticed that though there were alot of true libertarians out at the protests, most anytime they tried to call for real govt spending cuts or pull backs in the war on drugs, the empire, medicare, social security….they were silenced or booed. I know because I saw it happen.
The way I see it, neo-cons are hoping Obama somehow screws up big time so that they can get back into power. I’m not sure that’s going to happen anytime soon. Alot hinges on Obama’s decision on Afghanistan.
Obama is still a war mongering tyrant, just not as much as the neo-cons demand.
As I recall, the MSM was constantly pushing for these bailouts with the same 24/7 unified enthusiasm as they now promote the “let’s prosecute balloon boy’s family” line. The MSM constantly demonized the opponents of the bailouts with the same 24/7 unified enthusiasm as they demonized Limbaugh and Don Imus as racists.
Well – honestly, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the street protests either. Popular resentment is warranted, but some of it’s being fanned the wrong way. All the preoccupation with Obama’s birth certificate is beside the point. If it’s a big deal, it should have been investigated before he became a candidate. It’s amazing if it wasn’t.
At this point, it’s a waste of energy.
Which is why I’m a bit suspicious of this Taibbi video business.
In the PR industry, there’s a term for a certain phase of damage control – a “limited hang out”….