AIG smokescreen: Beck & Shep Smith
Thank god. I’ve been saying this for a week and a half and never got a comment or a response. Not here, not twitter, not other forums, noplace.
UPDATE:This will make you scream if you’re a reasonable human being.
(h/t to Cassandra over at Villainous Company)
Tags: Politics
March 19th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
It’s not that I haven’t read you saying it. It’s that it falls under my genetic defect, which is the inability to understand very well anything financial or political. Unfortunately, I understand just enough for it to depress me.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
The issue really is that it’s not the issue.
It’s this tiny thing, both in dollar size and in meaning. They’re blowing smoke and foaming at the mouth about bonus contracts that were in place for some time. At any point in the past they could have said or done anything (including not have left an explicit loophole allowing this, but that aside…)
It’s a total straw man used to distract from the groundswell of disapproval in the Teleprompter of the US.
I’d be interested to see the amount of money in Congressional salaries (with staff) and news coverage on this issue over the last week and a half.
It’s so hard to pay attention to this stuff without steam coming out of my ears. But people not having paid attention is why we’re here.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
When I become rich, I’m going to hire you to be my translator for all these things.
:) Because the above explanation? I get that.
It’s still depressing, though.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Unfortunately the truth of Washington right now is nothing but depressing.
Being in NYC you might imagine what conversations “in the wild” are like for me.
Usually they end with people walking away from me in a red faced huff while I’m grinning.
Sometimes I get lucky and hear “wait, WHAT!?!” which all too often is immediately anteceded with “how come this isn’t in the news?”
People love to be seen as being kind and generous and helpful to their fellow man. It’s a nice badge. The Democratic party, under LBJ (perhaps earlier) realized that this was the heart of their new marketing campaign. To “be seen as good,” entirely independent of the truth. It capitalizes perfectly on the gross political negligence of the people at large.
The machinations that flow from that principle become horrifying very quickly. Consider that it requires there always be “someone to be nice to” AND that there always be “someone to be nicer than.”
Extrapolation is currently left to the reader (and, frankly, the historian.)
March 19th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
See, I don’t understand the complaining that money given to AIG ended up being given to other companies. AIG is an _insurance_company_. Part of what it did was to promise to pay on certain financial contracts — and now it is paying. We can talk about whether or not AIG needed to be saved (I have no idea), but obviously money given to AIG is going to end up going to other companies. AIG is an _insurance_company_.
{inw}
P.S. Beck is… extraordinary. Really.