Matching Acts of Piracy

Despite a setback or two that didn't result from rational thought, the Great Wall Street Bailout Hold-Up Plan cooked up by the GWBush Buccaneers is still very much alive, and tomorrow it could become a reality. The House of Representatives accidentally did the right thing by voting it down, though only by 12 votes. The Democrats, whom you would think would know better, generally voted in favor of it, while a majority of the Republicans, from whom nothing good can ever be expected, in this case voted "No."

An interesting and incomprehensible sidelight of this vote was that the McCain people, who are Repubs, nevertheless immediately blamed Democrat B. Obama for the failure to pass, saying the vote showed his lack of leadership, as if he was the leader of the Repubs who voted "No" and so sank the thing beneath the waters -- for a few days. I still don't understand that line of thinking!

But since then the Senate, which was always in favor of the travesty, called themselves "sweetening the pot," by attaching another 110 billion dollars of pork aimed directly at the House members in both parties who voted "No," and the optimism is great that tomorrow the bill will pass and the taxpayers will get yet another royal shaft shot at them by the ever felonious Congress.

Also in the interim, to call the scheme a "bailout" is now a big no-no, and it is instead a "rescue" plan. Using an expression that is wildly popular these days ever since B. Obama used it in another context, some have said that this change in terms, coupled with the pork, is like putting lipstick on a pig.

But the saddest thing is that so many figures who normally earn the greatest respect are urging the passage in the strongest terms, though with regrets. They call it a bad bill, yet see it as absolutely necessary if the economy is not to go to the dogs. They concede that the people who are responsible for the credit crunch that is threatening the economy so badly are going unpunished. They concede that the bailout very likely will exceed the obsolete 700 billion figure that is nevertheless still being used. They concede that the bulk of that money will go directly to the big Money Changers, the central banks here, there, and everywhere. And they concede that the taxpayers will not get much in return, except that the chance of the next Great Depression coming down on their heads soon will be lessened. But no one seems to be guaranteeing that that calamity won't happen anyway, as no preventive mechanisms have been set into place. Instead, the Seven Deadly Sins being what they are, there's every chance that the lenders will be emboldened to repeat the act, secure in the feeling that those in charge of extorting the public will become their saviors once again.

But in the light of all that, and since it is therefore such a bad bill, why be so united in the need to pass it? ...Unless these power figures in the more privileged echelons stand to gain from the gratitude of the Money Changers, in the continuing effort to keep as much money as possible always flowing from the many less privileged to the far less numerous and therefore more privileged citizens and their friends, the Money Changers?

And meanwhile a comparable act of piracy that is unfolding off the Somalia Coast is also hanging fire temporarily. The pirates are still aboard the freighter, the U.S. Navy ships are still surrounding it but otherwise not doing much of anything else except making sure the tanks and the ammo and the other stuff are not unloaded -- and that is important, as is just getting the pirates' nerves by their very presence, so that several of the pirates have been killed while fighting among themselves, because their demand for ransom has not been answered, and meanwhile the Russian frigate is still on its way, like the Russian fleet that sailed around half the globe back in 1903, on its way to fight the Japanese in the battle of Tsu-Shima. When the Russians arrived they were totally wiped out. But these modern Russians are expected to be a different quantity, and far less delicate in dealing with the pirates than are the American swabbies.

Maybe tomorrow or soon something decisive will happen there, too. That would be fitting, in this case of matching acts of piracy.

Update: With the recalcitrant lawmakers having received their bribes, though in the meantime the drawbacks of the case had not decreased in the least, the House approved the measure a few hours ago, today.