Mood:
don't askTopic: world
The first of two video links below - from YouTube - is not pleasant watching. The interview on Democracy Now! suffers from lack of a willing contary view but even if half of author Naomi Klein's concerns are right, the USA and the world and the Obama presidency are in trouble in this last 2 months of the W Bush presidency. God have mercy.
Here's the link and the interview is long - about 25 minutes or more:
"Only a week ago [Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke] announced they wanted to use [the $700B bailout fund] to inject billions of dollars into banks instead of buying bad mortgage backed assets, which was their original pitch.
Democratic members of the House Financial Services Committee are irate about the change of plan.FEMALE CONGRESS MEMBER: The fact that you Mr Paulson, took it upon yourself to absolutely ignore the authority and the direction that this Congress had given you just amazes me.
MALE CONGRESS MEMBER: It seems to me the second largest bait and switch scheme that history has ever seen, second only to the reasons given us to vote for the invasion of Iraq."
For those who prefer more sunlight and wishful thinking then this is alot more uplifting, finally available on YouTube given the CBS website seemed overloaded for at least a day (apparently they had highest ratings for 9 years). Broadcast last Sunday 17 November USA time:
Some stand out moments of each item: In the first one Naomi Klein's capacity for a relentless narrative regarding corrupt special interest governance - $250B of good money after bad she argues. Klein makes quite a case for 'colonial style looting of the US Treasury by free market robber barons compared with the strict controls achieved by Gordon Brown in the UK. As we said - it's grim.
In the second Youtube is president elect Obama describing the dump of an apartment the he lived in even as a Senator, and the car he drove as younger man complete with a rusty hole in the floor. The experience of that side of life says so much to this writer about the fitness of the man for the challenge of the job ahead. The dismay in Michelle Obama's voice at her man's circumstances was also apparent. But then she didn't have a Phd anthropologist for a mom.
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Postscript 24 Nov 2008: Not really sure but it looks as if we might have broken the traffic counter with this post. At the least our traffic metric from our host server stops at Nov 19, 2008 as per this screenprint taken 24 Nov 2008, five days of zero traffic:
