SPITZER'S DOWNFALL: NO COINCIDENCE

I don't have permission to re-publish this. It is so important I am taking the risk of blogger wrath. If you think Eliot Spitzer's downfall is just something that "happened", think again. It happened because of the Bush regime and their committment to making sure that the rich get richer, and no pesky, do-gooder politicians mess up the scam.

And people, please. It is the 21st Century. Sex happens. Men pay for it. Often. Many of them. Men that you personally know. Deal with it.

And as for politicians getting in trouble for soliciting prostitutes, please read the last paragraph of this transcript.

TOODLE ON!!!

Eliot’s Mess
Posted By Greg Palast On March 14, 2008 @ 6:45 am In Articles, Podcasts No Comments
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
By Greg PalastReporting for Air America Radio’s Clout
March 14th, 2008
[To hear it, click on the link below…]

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.

Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’

Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.

‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.

But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”

What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinning’s, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).

When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.

But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, “Take him down today!” Naw, that’s not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press – one was “Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer” - made clear to Bush’s enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn’t Bin Laden.

It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”

Bush, Spitzer said right in the headline, was the “Predator Lenders’ Partner in Crime.” The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.

Spitzer wrote, “When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.”

But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story – of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all – now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun.
A note on “Prosecutorial Indiscretion.”

Back in the day when I was an investigator of racketeers for government, the federal prosecutor I was assisting was deciding whether to launch a case based on his negotiations for airtime with 60 Minutes. I’m not allowed to tell you the prosecutor’s name, but I want to mention he was recently seen shouting, “Florida is Rudi country! Florida is Rudi country!”

Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It’s up to something called “prosecutorial discretion.”

Funny thing, this ‘discretion.’ For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer – rarely done in these cases - was made at the ‘discretion’ of Bush’s Justice Department.
Or maybe we should say, ‘indiscretion.’

************Greg Palast, former investigator of financial fraud, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers [1] Armed Madhouse and [2] The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Hear The Palast Report weekly on [3] Air America Radio’s Clout.
And next Wednesday March 19, join Palast and Clout host Richard Greene on a dinner cruise on the Potomac River. For more information click [4] here.
And this Sunday, at noon, on WABC-TV New York, catch Amy Goodman, Les Payne and Greg Palast on Like It Is with Gil Noble. Tag: [5] Podcasts[6] Podcasts
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GEORGE W. BUSH'S PERSONALITY DISORDER

Below is psychiatrist Dr. Paul Minot's evaulation of Dubya that was emailed to me. It really explains alot.

It does not, however, explain WHY KARL ROVE HAS NOT BEEN SUBPOENAED YET!!!

Anyhow, read on....

A Psychiatrist's Analysis of George W. Bush

George Bush's "irrational"consideration of a "surge" in the wake of the Iraq Study Group report -- which apparently defies all credible counsel -- has begun to generate speculation regarding his sanity.

References to Bush's "delusions" have appeared in the mainstream media and throughout the blogosphere. As a psychiatrist, I understandably get concerned when I see clinical terminology bandied about in

political discourse, and thought it might be of interest to share a professional perspective on this question. I have a distinct clinical impression that I think explains much of Mr. Bush's visible

pathology.

First and foremost, George W. Bush has a Narcississtic Personality Disorder. What this means, is that he has rather desperate insecurities about himself, and compensates by constructing a grandiose self-image. Most of his relationships are ei ther mirroring relationships people who flatter him and reinforce his grandiosity -- or idealized self-objects -- people that he himself thinks a lot of, and hence feels flattered by his association with them. Some likely perform both functions. Hence his weakness for sycophants like Harriet Miers, and powerful personalities like Dick Cheney. Even as a narcississt, Bush knows he isn't a great intellect, and compensates by dismissing the value of intellect altogether. Hence his disses of Gore's bookishness, and any other intellectual who isn't flattering him. Bush knows

that his greatest personal strength is projecting personal affability, and tries to utilize it even in the most inappropriate settings. That's why he gives impromptu backrubs to the German

Chancellor in a diplomatic meeting -- he's insecure intellectually, and tries to make everyone into a "buddy" so he can feel more secure.

The most disturbing aspect about narcississts, however, is their pathological inability to empathize with others, with the exception of those who either mirror them, or whom they idealize. Hence Bush's

horrifying insensitivity to the Katrina victims, his callous jokes when visiting grievously injured soldiers, and numerous other instances. He simply has no capacity to feel for others in that way.

When LBJ was losing Vietnam, he developed a haunted expression that anybody could recognize as indicative of underlying anguish. For all his faults, you just knew he was losing sleep over it.

By the same token, we know just as well that Bush isn't losing any sleep over dead American soldiers, to say nothing of dead Iraqis.

He didn't exhibit any sign of significant concern until his own political popularity was sliding -- because THAT'S something he CAN feel. Which brings us to his recent "delusion." To be blunt, I don't see any

indication that Bush has any sort of psychotic disorder whatsoever. The lapses in reality-testing that he exhibits are the sort that can be readily explained by his characterological

insensitivity to the feelings and perceptions of others, due to his persistently self-centered frame of reference. Mr. Bush knows that things aren't going his way in Iraq, and he knows that this is

damaging him politically. He also sees that it is likely to get worse no matter what he does, and in fact it may be a lost cause. However, he recognizes that if he > > follows the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, Iraq will almost certainly evolve into a puppet state of Iran, and given his treatment of Iran he will completely lose control of the situation -- and he will be politically discredited for this

outcome. The ONLY chance that he has to avoid this political disaster, and save his political skin, is to hope against hope for "victory" in Iraq. Advancing the "surge" idea offers Bush two political advantages

over following the ISG recommendations. One is that if it is implemented, maybe, just maybe, he can pull out some sort of nominal "victory" out of the situation. The chances are exceedingly slim,

granted, but slim is better to him than the alternative -- none. Alternately, if the "surge" is politically rejected, he gains some political cover, so when things inevitably go bad, he can

say "I told you so" and blame the "surrender monkeys" for the outcome. Most people probably won't buy it, but some (his core base) will. Now, I know what many of you are thinking -- is George Bush willing to risk the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands more American soldiers, on an outside chance to save his political skin, in a half-baked plan that even he knows probably won't work at all? Yes, he is.

Because George Bush is that narcississtic, that desperate, and yes, that sociopathic as well.

Especially interesting about Mr. Bush, but quite common, Narcississtic Personality Disorder is frequently associated with alcoholism. The insufferable "holier than thou" attitude

associated with the "Dry Drunk" Syndrome" is indicative of underlying narcississm. Also, the way that Bush embraces Christianity is characteristically narcissistic. Rather than incorporating the

lessons of humility and empathy modeled by Jesus, Bush uses his Christian faith to reinforce his grandiosity. Jesus is his powerful ally, his idealized "buddy" who gives a rubber stamp to anything he thinks.

Finally -- and this will sound VERY familiar to many readers -- those persons with NPD are notoriously unable to say they're sorry. Admitting error is fundamentally incompatible with

their precarious efforts to maintain their sense of order. Anyone having this particular character flaw almost certainly has NPD.

TOODLE ON!!!

IS THERE A TEST TO DETERMINE IF BABIES WILL BE NEO-CONS?

"Neo-con" means "neo-conservative." People like Karl Rove, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice count on the support of neo-cons. Rush Limbaugh is their "leader" if that term can even be applied to him.

So, today, one of these morons (Southern Baptist "Reverend" Mohler) came out saying if it were determined that there was a biological basis for homosexuality then the fetus should be "treated" to reverse it.

Uh.... yeah, I'm sorry... isn't that, like, uh, going against God's order? I mean, wouldn't the logical progression (yes, "logical Baptist" does seem to be an oxymoron) of this proof either be that God obviously makes some people homosexual, and maybe if you believe in the Bible God you should shut up and quit questioning His Almighty decisions? Or, conversly, that there is a whole mess a' shit you don't know about God?

Limbaugh loves to say, whenever global warming or environmental issues come up, that since humans are part of nature, anything "we" do is natural. That does not, however, extend to anything that humans are that he doesn't approve of-- like homosexuality. (In fact, with Limbaugh I think it is safe to say that he only considers other neo-cons and their hosts to be humans.)

I am so sick of old, unhealthy, intolerant, self-righteouss, middle- class, white men telling everyone that we should be just like they say they are. Especially considering once a week they get caught with their dick in some schoolboy or schoolgirl, or crack whore, or doing crack, or embezzling money from the voters or big companies, or laundering money...

And my regular readers, I am sure, am well acquainted with my early years and how deeply familiar I am with "respectable" men and just how swiftly and guiltlessly they will take advantage of 13 year old runaway when no one is watching. Yeah, that includes "holy men", cops, and all of these other intolerant assholes.

You know, I was just talking to another blogger about how sick I get of ranting about politics on this blog, which is why my last post was personal. I'd meant to get back to that, but every day there is 15 things that just piss me off on the news.

The fact that Bush is still in office just proves that this nation of sonambulists deserves him. Where are the voters?

Toodle on...