Way back on April 23, 2009 we published this Weber County Forum article, which featured a quite remarkable YouTube video, within which one of our favorite cable financial news channel reporters, CNBC's Rick Santelli, rallied the traders on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and called for the formation of a New Boston Tea Party, in the wake of another round of 2009 financial industry bailouts:
Well lo and behold, a lot has happened in the intervening twelve months; and the American Tea Party Movement has grown a quite muscular set of legs. Looks like Rick Santelli was definitely onto something, alright. Tea Parties are not just confined to the City of Boston any longer.
On 4/20/10 Gentle reader offered this comment: "Sen. Bob Bennett is in serious trouble," and provided this link:
• Bennett On Track to Get Bounced at ConventionAnd now in yesterday's Newsmax online edition we find this exceedingly confident headline statement. Some might even dub it a manifesto:
• Utah Tea Party: We've Taken Over the State GOPYesiree, folks; we do believe the Utah GOP 5/8/10 Convention will be a fascinating event to watch.
Keep in mind, WCF readers, that while Bennett was voting for the bailouts, he was not only a member of the Senate Banking Committee, but also one of the top recipients of financial industry contributions in the entire U.S. Senate.
So what about it, gentle readers? Is there anyone among us who believes that Senator Bennett has a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the upcoming Utah GOP Convention? And amongst the long list of GOP U.S. Senate candidates, who has the best shot at winning the hearts and minds of this new pack of steely-eyed, constitutionally-minded GOP delegates... and winning the 2010 Utah GOP U.S. Senate nomination nod?
Plenty to talk about here on Weber County Forum, even on this otherwise tediously slow news day, we believe.
Don't let the cat get your tongues, O Gentle Ones.
21 comments:
I'm not sure whether any of the "non-Bennett" GOP Senate candidates "light my fire."
One thing's clear however. Bennett needs to go.
I will not cast a vote for Bennett at the convention under any circumstance.
Has Bennett hinted at running as an Independent? That would make for the most interesting Utah race since J. Bracken Lee's independent bid for governor.
No right minded Utahnwo State Delegate should even consider voting for Bennett
He's a Banker's Whore, and a Traitor to America.
the sad cold truth of the matter as it relates to the Republican Party - Nationally, State Wide and locally - is that there is not one single statesman in the whole bunch. The party has dissolved into a squabbling bunch of petty little power manipulators and the only common threads that hold them all together is their arrogance, dishonesty and unchecked greed.
By the way, I was not reelected this year as a GOP delegate! I finally gave up on the GOP and dropped out.
In the 1960's the hippies took over the democrat party.
In the 2010's the retarded rednecks (teabaggers) took over the republican party!
Ozboy-
I think Huntsman was the closest thing we had. Oh well, guess that's why he got sent to the other side of the world.
Nonsense GLWT;
I view the Tea-partiers as a VERY good thing for the GOP. After 30 years of neoCON contamination in the Grand Old Party, the Tea Partiers are finally throwing the BIG Government lefty neoCON infiltrators out.
Bob Bennett:
Kiss your political ass goodbye.
Bob Bennett is without a doubt the most arrogant elected "aristocrat" in our federal legislative delegation.
He needs to go not only because he's bought and paid for by corrupt banking interests, but just because, plain and simple, he's a giant a-hole.
I think Bennett will squeak by the convention, maybe in second place, and then win pretty big in the primary. Once you get by the rabble inherent in the delegate process the broader base of sheeple in the GOP will go with the comfort zone that good old Bob provides. All his opponents are mealy mouthed Hannity echo chambers. None of them have a lick of charisma, charm, intellect of gravitas to be a Yoonited States Senator.
Certainly the voters of Utah would not sent a buffoon back to the ivory halls of power in DC to represent us - would we? I mean we do have some shred of pride - don't we?
The Bennett people were first hoping to get him nominated without a primary.
Now they just want him to get in the top two, so if there is a primary he will at least be in it.
If the Republicans go with Bennett, they are committing suicide.
He is about as bad as it gets.
Interesting that no one posting so far seems to have noticed that the bank bailout seems to have worked.
1] The banking system did not collapse. We did not have 450 plus banks fail as happened after the crash of '29, and --- since deposits up to 250K are federally insured, the taxpayers did not have to pony up trillions in insured assets. We didn't have 450 plus banks fail because as the crisis hit this time, the Federal government stepped in to avert worse. In 1929 it didn't. I like the results this time better.
2] The major banks, including Citibank, have already, or are now, paying back the money they got from the taxpayers to see them through the crisis, and the assets they had to give the taxpayers for the money are being sold. At a profit to the US government [and taxpayers]. Current estimate is the taxpayers will come out ahead between 11 and 14 billion when the buy back and sales are done.
3] And the NY Times reported today that the Fed has just forked over to the Treasury [aka taxpayers] about a half a trillion in "profit" from its managing the fiscal crisis.
Have to keep wondering what the Tea Baggers would have preferred? That Citicorp and Chase and all the rest had gone under, plunging the nation into a second Great Depression with 25% unemployment?
4] And the stock market has risen now about 11K over it's post-crash low, and posted steady gains recently.
That Bennett is in the pocket of Big Banking I certainly won't dispute. Evidence of that is he, and his party, opposing the banking regulations reform bill [particularly mandating risk to assets ratios, and forcing derivatives to be sold on an open market like the stock market] to prevent make another meltdown less likely. Bennett's back to repeating the Republican line of "no regulation," claiming that avoiding new regulations and letting the big banks do as they please, will prevent another melt down. Sure it will. Just like it did in 1929 and in 2008.
Bennett is a stooge for the major banks. But sometimes --- not always, but sometimes --- what's good for the nation also happens to be what's good for the banks. One of those cases was the "bailout" bill the Bush Administration passed in its waning months to deal with the national banking crisis its laissez faire approach to financial regulation helped create. It was an easy vote for Bennett for his vote served the nation, and his banking contributors, well.
But I suppose, if you're a tea party zealot, pitching the nation into a new depression with 25% unemployment rates and huge new federal debt to pay off insured deposits [which would not have been paid back] is a small price to pay for maintaining ideological purity.
I hold no brief for Bennett, who is way too far right to ever get a vote from me. But on the bail out, he voted as he had to in the face of a serious national crisis.
Moroni:
Bennett cannot run as an independent. Utah law won't permit a candidate who has filed for nomination by one of the parties to, after the filing deadline closes, run as an independent. In short, he cannot pull a Lieberman in Utah. The law won't permit it.
Uh, hey Curm,
The Fed bought 1.2 trillion in mortgages. They make interest on that. That's what they paid the gummint with.
Problem is, those mortgages have lost billions in value, and will lose billions more if interest rates rise.
If you think that was a good deal, how much do you have invested in mortgages?
All in all the gummint poured about 3 trillion into the US alone. If you looked past the liberal news media, you'd know it accomplished little and was mostly wasted propping up a crony capitalist system.
Notice the US federal debt lately?
New home sales are still at record lows.
And as far as things getting better, try telling that to actual businessmen - not the crony network that got bailed out.
Small Business Survey
(Read the Summary at least.)
People should take note of how messed up we are when a hard core liberal like you takes comfort in massive, corrupt businesses and their sleazy, incompetent leaders being bailed out by taxpayers while unemployment hangs at 10%.
You libs put most of the country on welfare. Now, million dollar bonuses to fat cats are paid by gummint money. Public money is now used for anything.
When this stinking mess folds this time it will take your precious gummint with it. People like you will be wandering the streets after all. Only then will some of you see the light.
And Bennett? He voted the way he always does - where he is paid to vote. He also voted for amnesty for aliens, and for countless other idiocies. That's why he is a political corpse, if not yet an actual one.
. . . and it was $47.4 billion in mortgage interest the Fed gave the gummint, not half a trillion as you said.
You missed it by one order of magnitude.
But we forgive you. After all, what's that much, to a liberal?
It looks like Florida might be in for a great race with if Crist bolts and runs as an Independent. A shame Utah won't allow the same three-ring circus.
Danny:
Sorry about the number. You're right. Close to 50 billion, not 500 billion. Working from memory, which is never a good idea.
As for the rest, I repeat, the bank bailout seems to have worked, achieved its major purpose, which was to prevent a collapse of the banking system and going over the edge into depression again.
I think that should the Republicans dump Bennett, then He has no loyalties to the republican party and should come out and endorse Sam Gran ado for the senate, Would that be saying,
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Racist-Homophobe-Anti-Personal-Liberty politicians take over the Utah GOP?
NOOOO!
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