Normally I wouldn’t throw a whole transcript up here, but I heard this on XM while I was driving and it had me laughing so hard I almost had to pull over.
This is Neil Cavuto’s seven tips on how to get your share of the bailout money. And yes, I would pay good money to actually see someone try this in front of the congressional bailout circus. It’s refreshing to see someone who is angry at the whole debacle but can still come up with some humor in it as well.
What I’ve learned about these bailouts is there’s a certain trick to it…you have to frame it in a certain way in order to get some money. So, since the government’s spigot is now fully open, let me give you some free tips as you make your own case for rescue.
Step one: Look depressed — really depressed. Never smile. Remember, you’re too depressed to smile.
Step two: Wear a really cheap suit. If it isn’t ripped, please rip it. Tell folks it’s your last one — you left the others behind as blankets for your kids who are homeless.
Step three: Keep insisting it’s for those kids — not you, the kids. Even people who hate kids know their constituents love kids. Tell them yours are sleeping on the street. Bring pictures, if you can, of passersby kicking them on the street. That also creates rage — you want pity and rage.
Step four: When they take a break and offer you food, do not eat it. Wrap it up in a napkin and say you’re taking it back to aforementioned kids, freezing on aforementioned street, under aforementioned old suits of yours, getting aforementioned kicked by passersby.
Step five: Keep telling anyone who asks that your workers are really upset too and many have guns. Actually, for the hell of it, say most have guns and just leave it at that.
Step six: Don’t do the “me-too” thing. It’s obvious everyone’s getting rescued. Tell them your case is different. You truly are pathetic.
Step seven: Bring a bunch of pills with you to the hearing. I mean a lot of them — all sizes, different colors — and then keep taking them throughout the questioning. Say you’re “on the edge.” That’ll worry them. And have a twitch — twitch a lot. Nothing gets people more nervous than to be around a dude who’s twitching. For good measure, talk to yourself too.
There you go. I can’t say this will get you bailed out, but I can say it’ll make it a lot harder not to bail you out.
So go on out there, in your tattered suit, carrying your bottles of medication, twitching and talking to yourself all the way and go get ‘em! You’ll have a cherished tradition to continue.
Speaker “No-Grip-On-Reality” Pelosi and said that she is “Rejecting” those who are calling for the U.S. automakers to get themselves out of trouble by filing bankruptcy, the one plan that might actually work without edging the country further towards insolvency.
It’s so good to see our representatives abiding by the will of the people, the majority of whom do not want another congressional lobbyist-inspired bailout boondoggle.
Here’s is my open letter to congress on the subject. Feel free to copy it and send it along to your own representatives.
Members of the U.S. Congress,
I write you today as a voter and constituent in opposition to another ineffective and undeserved government bailout, this time of the automotive industry. I can sum it up to one word:
Don’t.
This latest proposed bailout, which is not only costly and wasteful but has no guarantees of doing anything but putting off the inevitable bankruptcy of the big three, which is the one thing that in the long term might actually solve the impossibly flawed business model that Detroit has been operating on for decades.
How many taxpayer dollars are members of congress resolved to waste by trying to save every major corporation that has run itself into the ground through its own lack of vision? What will you do when city and state governments finally make it to your door? How about the airlines, again? The retail sector? Is there really enough money to save everyone out there who gets themselves into trouble?
How about the foreign automakers with plants here in the U.S.? Japanese and German automakers are starting to announce drastic cuts in production, which could affect thousands of workers, dealers, suppliers, contractors and even charities right here in our country. Do we have billions to hand to them to save all those American jobs that they have created or do we only care about the UAW workers in the north because they have better lobbyists?
Members of congress appear to be determined to run this country and its economy into the ground. The majority of your constituents are opposed to these bailouts which you relentlessly pursue, which leads them to believe that special interests like the UAW are the ones actually running congress and that you represent that minority over the rest of your voters.
Most businesspeople and economists believe the first bailout has been a massive waste. The markets are in a free-fall, housing is still plummeting, unemployment is up, future economic indicators are down and all we hear on the news is how you ‘hope’ that what you have done, and what you are proposing to do, will work.
Well, we ‘hope’ that you will stop trying to help when you don’t know if you are making things better or worse. We ‘hope’ that you will begin restoring our freedoms instead of curtailing them. We ‘hope’ that you will allow us to keep the money that we work so hard for instead of taking it to give to people who haven’t earned it. We ‘hope’ that you will represent the interests of everyday Americans instead of corporations, unions and special interests.
We know that hard times may be coming and we are ready for them. We ‘hope’ that you will not make them harder for us by wasting even more taxpayer funds.
So, you’ve got the CEO’s of the Big Three U.S. Automakers begging for cash, having flown to D.C. in their private jets at the cost of $20,000, you’ve got the UAW there as well, begging for cash but unwilling to budge an iota on demands to bailout their ridiculously overblown pension and health care funds. These are companies that are losing $66 million dollars a day because they can’t compete with more efficient automaker… and apparently they want 50 billion taxpayer dollars so they can continue to lose $66 million dollars a day.
The economy continues to backslide, to the point where many major indicators are plummeting. The fearless leaders in congress also continue to blather on about wanting to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus packages despite the fact that everything they’ve done thus far has only made the situation worse.
You’ve got a whole slew of illegal aliens who were released from custody and then went on to commit heinous crimes nationwide. One was actually released while being a suspect in a murder case and then went on to kill someone while driving drunk. You’ve even got two Iranians who are here illegally who happened to be selling restricted technology to make nuclear weapons back to the Iranian government…who had to be laughing their asses off at us.
Then there’s the United Nations spending $23 million on a mural for their lobby while they complain that there’s not enough money to keep their programs running.
Piracy is running rampant in the Indian Ocean, new legislative and executive branches of the government coming in with less common sense than any given head of lettuce and cities and states are going broke because they obviously can’t read a bank statement.
Meanwhile, the Natalie Holloway case is on the front page of every news web site, which is so hackneyed and trivial that it makes me want to vomit. I know! Let’s stick more of Britney Spears’ antics above the fact that the world is being led down the tube by a bunch of idiots, just for fun.
Yep, being cranky is about all I have left right now.
Barney Frank is an idiot.
I just wanted to get that off my chest.
Have you ever wanted to witness the complete economic destruction of a major country?
You may have lucked out. Our leaders right here in America are doing their best to be certain that you have a front row seat to the big show: the utter collapse of the United States economic system.
You may (or may not) have noticed a couple little articles posted on the internet that are estimating the costs of all the money the government is committing to the giant, bottomless hole that we’ve created by supporting the leaders, lobbyists, special interest organizations, unions and multinational companies that have been handing out the kool-aid for years.
Those estimates are in the realm of five trillion dollars. That’s right. Five. Trillion. Dollars. Five really big ones. That figure is inclusive of the bailouts, loans, giveaways, buy-ins, stimulus packages and outright handouts that you’ve heard about in the news…someone apparently sat down and did the math on them all and that’s what it all added up to.
I believe it adds up to utter madness.
Of course, there’s no way to stop the government from burning all that cash. As a matter of fact, the citizens of this country have done nothing but encouraged the leadership to do this by re-electing most of the incumbents in congress for another term. These freshly emboldened retards have plenty of cash for themselves and their spawn, so they have nothing to worry about.
Five trillion, on top of the ten trillion in debt that the country already has, plus the operating costs of all the government bureaucracies, plus whoever else may need a bailout in the next year (like the cities and states that are already wheedling for money) and a slowing economy…hmm…
Does anyone out there really believe that we’re going to see any tax cuts in the next decade? Or do you think that we may just have to come up with a way to pay for all this nonsense, and the best way to do that would be to (say it with me)…
That’s right, raise taxes.
I feel badly for the people who are in trouble. From the minimum wage worker who lost their job when the minimum wage went up because the small business couldn’t afford the hike, to the people who work for the small company that makes widgets for the currently destitute General Motors, it sucks to be on the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
But it’s going to be far worse for them and for all of us when the whole house of cards gets blown over, which is what we appear to be heading for.
It’s getting around to the time for everyone duck and cover. It won’t do any good, mind you, but our government hopes it will make you feel safer.
From the International Herald Tribune:
The Treasury Department is under siege by an army of hired guns for banks, savings and loan associations and insurers — as well as for improbable candidates like a Hispanic business group representing plumbing and home-heating specialists. That last group wants the Treasury to hire its members as contractors to take care of houses that the government may end up owning through buying distressed mortgages.
The lobbying frenzy worries many traditional bankers — the original targets of the rescue program — who fear that it could blur, or even undermine, the government’s effort to stabilize the financial system after its worst crisis since the 1930s.
It looks like the buzzards are circling the not-quite-perished vestiges of the U.S. economy, trying to get a bite of the still crawling body before the lions show up for the actual kill and feeding frenzy.
Little do they know that the tasty bits they rip off now will bring on the actual demise sooner…and none of it will save them later.
Bastards.
Paulson is on the idiot tube passing out more kool-aid to the masses. “The U.S. honors its commitments and investors can bank on it.”
The Dow dropped about a hundred points when that came out of his mouth.
Meanwhile, rumor on the street is that the United States is well on the road to losing it’s ‘AAA’ rating due to the enormous amount of debt accumulation…so much debt that economists are beginning to talk about a funding crisis. This presents the case that eventually investors won’t snap up U.S. T-bills and may very well start dumping them in favor of other, more stable investment instruments.
Despite this, Congress is still blathering about multiple bailouts, not only to the investment banks, but to the U.S. automakers, the airlines (didn’t we bail them out once already?) and even retail banks like American Express to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s in addition to a hundred billion dollar stimulus package that seems ridiculous even to me.
At the rate our leaders are throwing cash down the drain, there won’t be much of an economy left to stimulate.
Personally, I believe that no one knows what the hell is going on with the economy and anyone who says that they do is selling snake oil. Comparisons to previous recessions, various tried and true monetary theories, new ‘world economy’ strategies and trillions of taxpayer dollars have proven to be wrong. At this point, the Treasury Department would probably do just as well by sacrificing sheep and reading the entrails…or maybe we should all start sending them ‘Magic 8 Balls’ or something.
The U.S. economy is screwed. The government is trying to justify its power and even its existence by picking at the wound, making it bleed worse than it already is and not letting it heal on its own. Eventually it will get all infected and end up being a threat to our livelihoods and quite possibly our very lives.
The big question I hear a lot is, “Should I be worried?”
I’m no economist or financial guru, but I’m not sleeping very soundly these days. Mixing what’s left of our free market economy with a big-spending, lobbyist-led congress that keeps proving that it has little or no common sense whatsoever strikes me a very, very bad thing.
You know what I’m getting pretty tired of? People telling me how I should live.
Whether it’s ex-VP and global alarmist Al Gore telling me to trade in my pickup for a bicycle while he’s jetting around the globe in his private Gulfstream or PETA telling me that eating a 32 ounce ribeye is going to bring about the end of the world, I’m getting a little annoyed at them and all the others that think they know what’s best for me and are prepared to make those decisions for me.
Right here is where I’d generally tell them all to bite me, but since I seem to have done that a lot recently, I’ll save that particular barb for later.
And it’s almost like everything in the world is bad: Meat, eggs, white bread, caffeine, alcohol, milk, sugar, butter, anything fried or spicy, cooking anything on the grill, leather, plastic, microwave ovens, television, driving, guns, computers, cell phones, loud music, air travel, detergents, electrical wiring, using air conditioning, sleeping too much, not sleeping enough, going to strip clubs, having sex, using adult language, gambling, watching action films and being cranky have all been determined by someone, somewhere to be bad for you, the planet or more than likely both.
Quite frankly, if I can’t have the things listed on the list above I’d get suicidal faster than Michael Phelps swimming in the shark tank at Sea World. I imagine most people would, unless they are hanging out at a monastery or something.
And have you noticed the snotty, snide tone that the talking heads on the idiot tube use when they are revealing that eating a chili dog will make you grow a third ear and cause every bird to drop from the sky?
I’m sick of it. People should be able to do what they want to do with their lives as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. I mean that. If someone wants to listen to their iPod at jet-engine volume until their eardrums bleed, then they should be allowed to do so, no matter how stupid the rest of the world thinks they are. But no! Over in Europe they are talking about laws limiting the volume of all personal music players.
How long do you think it’ll be before they start doing that here in America? And what’s next after that, cell phones that only allow 2 minute calls? Bringing back the Volstead Act? Limiting how many children you can have? Rationing purchases of red meat? Limiting the use of air conditioning? Kicking in doors to confiscate guns?
Everyone thinks they know how to live my life better than I do, and I’m pretty sick of it. It’s my life, not yours and if you want to eat tofu, trade in your guns for incense, give your money to the homeless and travel everywhere via bicycle then good on you, that’s very admirable.
But don’t force me to do the same.
Congress seems to be dead-set on passing a second stimulus package, despite the growing number of economists that think it’s a pretty bad idea.
Personally, I’m trying to figure out how keeping people on welfare and food stamps for a longer period of time is going to do anything more than drain even more taxpayer funds than have already been wasted.
Does it sound like another government boondoggle to you? It sure smells that was to me.
