Friday, October 21, 2011

'Toontime: American Spring III

[credit: Mike Keefe, Denver Post]
Wackydoodle sez, Put some cheese on it!
Demos want to capitalize on discontent expressed by the 99% movement--we dare call it the Peoples' Alliance--but do not want to endorse a genuine grass-roots protest that may harbor anti-capitalist sentiments: witness actor Alec Baldwin visiting the protesters in New York (For which office is he not running? Stop by anytime, Alec, for an explanation of capital flows. This country operated with a decentralized banking system for the first 2 centuries of its existence. The short answer is, with computerized accounting systems in place, the capital flows would adjust just fine. BATTABING!), but President Obama is coming nowhere close. That seems a little odd to US Person considering he is running for re-election and the crowd is bound to contain a few voters. Even 'Tricky' Dick Nixon visited anti-war protesters camped at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama is photographed campaigning at fire stations. Is the subtext property is more important than people? Or perhaps he is banking on killing enough foreign terrorists to be forgiven his mismanagement of the American economy [video @ 4:22] while presiding over as little real change as possible*. As the cartoon shows, the Repugnants certainly are not about to eat their peas.

*Barack Obama took an oath of office to uphold the laws of the United States before he occupied the White House. Countrywide Financial committed outright fraud as their own internal investigators found. The company cut and pasted appraisals in order to justify mortgage loans, and inflated credit scores and incomes to sell securitized mortgages.  The company Executive Vice President in charge of the internal investigation was fired after Bank of America took over the company. Such criminal activity was not limited to a single mortgage company or bank.  Yet only a single Wall Street banker, and a minor player at that, has been prosecuted for criminal fraud, not "immoral" or "inappropriate" business practices, that resulted in the Panic of 2008 which in turn crashed the US economy.  One thousand S&L insiders went to jail in the last massive bank fraud of the 1980's.  Citi Group is the latest Wall Street bank to get away with only a fine for fraudulent practices.