Republican Con Job May Succeed

President George W. Bush is responsible for bailing out the banks and Wall Street. He was also responsible for the economic meltdown because of a laissez faire ideology that got out of hand during the real estate bubble. Fraud was being committed and Bush looked the other way. This is a fact and it's quite obvious that everyday Republicans aren't much interested in the facts these days. Hence, the economic crisis of the last three years (actually five, if we go back to Hurricane Katrina) is somehow being blamed on Obama. The same business types who created the crisis and cheered the laissez faire policies of Bush are handing hundreds of million dollars to Republican candidates who claim Obama handed billions of dollars to Wall Street and somehow caused our economic troubles.

Let's put it another way: Republican hypocrites who are railing against Wall Street are in fact being financed by Wall Street. Cute game, and Republicans may get away with it for the simple reason that millions of Americans can't be bothered by facts these days.

Here's another reality check: Obama might have pulled us out of the recession a bit faster if he had behaved more like a Democrat and less like a Republican. The idea that Obama is a socialist is essentially laughable. The healthcare reform bill, as an example, fell far short of what a proper healthcare program should do. In the meantime, Republicans kid themselves that health insurance companies actually care about the American people. Many executives of the big insurance companies have the equivalent of monopolies in their states and are not shy about milking Americans for the same type of fat corporate paychecks that both rank and file Democrats and Republicans complain about in reference to Wall Street. It doesn't matter where the insurance companies are located. They are Wall Street, listed by the brokers on Wall Street and are in cahoots with the ethically challenged individuals who seem to dominate Wall Street.

And Republicans are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from, you guessed it, Wall Street.