Bob Corker Does Not Support The Troops

I was really angry when both of Tennessee’s Senators refused to vote for the Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012. I thought it was yet another classic case where our Republican representatives showed themselves to be blinded by ideology. It was more important that they give Democrats a fail right before the election then helping people who have served our country. Despite mouthing all of their BS about supporting the troops, it was party before people, once again. So as I often do when I’m pissed off, I sent both senators an e-mail.

Sen. Corker’s response is below and it’s just too good not to share:

Like you, I understand how difficult it can be for our service members to find employment following their service to our country. While there have been several bills introduced in Congress with the goal of increasing employment of veterans, I believe that the best way to help them is to get our economy back on track. I could not support S. 3457, the Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012, because it duplicated existing programs, would have led to increased deficit spending, and failed to address the fundamental problems and offer solutions that will grow our economy and create jobs for all Americans. Furthermore, this bill violated the Constitution because any bill that includes a revenue provision must originate in the House of Representatives and as a result, this bill could never have become law.

We need to embrace tax reform that eliminates loopholes, permanently lowers individual and corporate rates, and broadens the base. We need to address reforms to Medicare and Social Security that are meaningful and ensure solvency. We also need to grow all forms of domestic energy production, and peel back unnecessary federal regulations that are hurting job creation.

I want to close by recognizing the tremendous service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. They are patriots, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude for their work to protect and provide security for our country. I believe that our service members, retirees and veterans should receive every benefit that America has promised them, and that we should ensure that their legacy is honored and protected.

Oh, so in other words, tax cuts and deregulation. Same as it ever was.

Y’all have any new ideas over there, maybe? Anything? No? Didn’t think so. But nice little bit of pandering at the end there. Hey, veterans, welcome home from Afghanistan. Now, you have our utmost respect and gratitude but as for those jobs, well, you’ll just have to wait for the magic fairy dust of tax cuts and deregulation to work their miracle. I know, we’ve been saying this for 30 years but … it’s coming! We promise!

What a fucking idiot. And this is the “moderate Republican” that we’re supposed to be so fired up about? Please.

The only thing that makes me angrier is knowing there is nobody on the Democratic side to vote for. Mark Clayton is a Tea Party stooge, and our state Dems were too lame to keep our nomination from being hijacked or to deal with it once it happened.

I just can’t believe it.

Cut A Deal, Dammit

I'm Getting That Sinking Feeling Again

Hey, GOP: my retirement savings is too high a price to pay for your political aspirations. Just sayin’.

Seriously, my bank account hasn’t even recovered from the last time you assholes destroyed the economy in 2007, and now you want to burn it down again? Just so one of your nutters can win the White House in 2012? How crazy is that?

I’m sick of Republicans’ craven political aspirations destroying my standard of living. Hey, we’re not all like Eric Cantor, investing in an ETF that shorts U.S. Treasury bonds.

Frankly, I’m pissed off. I called Sen. Corker’s office and asked what he was doing to solve this problem. The Clueless Intern™ told me last week Corker made a speech urging his colleagues to come to the bargaining table. Ooooh, was it one of those speeches I see on C-SPAN to an empty Senate chamber? Excuse me for being underwhelmed.

I then called Sen. Alexander’s office and asked his Clueless Intern™ what he was doing about this issue because I’m tired of seeing my retirement savings flushed down the toilet of political ambition. She told me Sen. Alexander hadn’t made any public statements yet as he was waiting to see a final deal.

This isn’t entirely true. He’s said plenty about the need to tie the vote to debt reduction, and he’s happy to show up at debt ceiling photo ops with his fellow Republicans.

But Mama always said to judge a man but what he does, not what he says. And both Corker and Alexander voted to increase the debt ceiling when there was a Republican in the White House, not just once but multiple times. In fact, there really wasn’t much fuss made about it save the last time, when Alexander voted no, hardly a ballsy move on his part since the measure required a simple majority and it easily passed, 53-42. So just to recap:

• September 2007, Corker votes yea, Alexander no.
• March 2006, both Corker and Alexander vote yes.
• November 2004, Alexander and Sen. Bill Frist vote yes.
• May 2003 Alexander and Sen. Bill Frist vote yes.

Neither Alexander or Corker were in the Senate in June 2002, but Republicans Bill Frist and Fred Thompson voted yes. Republicans also voted for our unfunded wars and unfunded Medicare Part D benefit, which are two of the major reasons we have these debts to begin with. So they’re perfectly happy to run up a bill on the Chinese credit card but when the bill comes in the mail they won’t pay it. Instead they’d rather see people like me lose their retirement savings when the nation goes bankrupt to score a political point? And they think we won’t notice?

No. Cut a damn deal. Call your Senators and tell them to cut a damn deal. I’m sick of this crap. If the nation defaults over GOP refusal to negotiate and the economy tanks before it’s had a chance to recover from the last implosion, it will be devastating. And no, it will not be good news for Republicans.

Oh Canada! I Stand On Guard For Thee, v.2

It’s time to debunk some more cherished right-wing myths about Canadian healthcare. No, Canadian doctors are not flooding across the border to practice here, and no, Canadians are not flooding across the border to get their care here. In particular:

When I look at that tiny little sliver in the middle representing those who choose to come to the U.S. for their care or are forced to by an emergency, I just laugh my ass off. Yet it seems the conventional wisdom is that Canadian healthcare sucks. Even some doctors are repeating that lie, because they all “know someone who knows a doctor from Canada” who “couldn’t practice there” and was “forced to move here.” It’s like the old lie about hippies spitting on Vietnam War veterans: everyone claimed they knew someone who knew someone this happened to; no one could ever actually find “the someone” it happened to. Ah, zombie lies, they just won’t die.

The problem with Republicans is that they just make shit up and the problem with the Democrats and the “liberal media” is that they let them. Remember when Sen. Bob Corker claimed that Canadians were leeching off of America’s medical innovation? He actually used the word “parasites.” What an ass.

Robert Stein had a really good post up yesterday about this tendency for Republicans to just make shit up, be it making Paul Revere’s famed ride about gun rights and bell-ringing or making specious claims about Canada’s excellent healthcare system. It’s part of a general tendency towards dumbing down American politics, he says. Mainlining stupidity is a two-pronged process, he observes: first Republicans demonize knowledge and expertise or those with knowledge and expertise, then they replace it with misinformation. And then suddenly Republicans have one set of facts, Democrats have another, and nothing ever gets done because we can’t even agree on the problems let alone find solutions. Once upon a time we had the media to referee such conflicts and remind everyone what the facts were; today, though, the media is stuck in its “well, there’s two sides to every story!” rut. They’ve largely abrogated their responsibility to the American public and no one has stepped in to replace them.

This is a big problem for America today but I don’t see it changing any time soon. Far too many people are profiting far too much from keeping the populace dumb and divided.

Adding … Alex Bennett, who is not someone I normally listen to or even like, just made a really good point. He said the reason stories like Weinergate take off is that they’re easy for everyone to have an opinion about them. If you want to talk about healthcare (or Libya, which was the example Bennett used), you need to know something about these topics, you need to know who Qaddafi is, you need to know something about the Canadian healthcare system, whatever. But even people who know nothing about politics can have an opinion about Weinergate.

And I think this is just another component of the dumbing-down of America. We have more people who don’t know anything about important things, so the trivial stuff ends up dominating our discourse.

>Yet ANOTHER Reason To Regulate Carbon Emmissions

>Suck on this, Sen. Bob Corker:

“We found a link between post-menopausal breast cancer and exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a ‘marker’ for traffic-related air pollution,” says Dr. Goldberg. “Across Montreal, levels of NO2 varied between 5 ppb to over 30 ppb. We found that risk increased by about 25 per cent with every increase of NO2 of five parts per billion. Another way of saying this is that women living in the areas with the highest levels of pollution were almost twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those living in the least polluted areas.“

[...]

Dr. Labrèche adds “Some studies published in the US have also shown possible links between cancer and air pollution. At the moment, we are not in a position to say with assurance that air pollution causes breast cancer. However, we can say that the possible link merits serious investigation. From a public health standpoint, this possible link also argues for actions aimed at reducing traffic-related air pollution in residential areas.”

The study was a collaborative effort by researchers from the Research Institute of the MUHC, McGill University and Université de Montreal. It was funded by a research grant from the Canadian Cancer Society and another one from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

So, scientists have linked traffic-related air pollution to breast cancer. Yes, there needs to be more study, blabbedy blah. But traffic-related air pollution has already been linked to a host of other diseases: from cancer and leukemia to asthma and other upper respiratory diseases. All the more reason why we should dump polluting internal combustion engines in favor of EVs, light rail, and other non-polluting transportation.

And why my dig at Bob Corker? Because this was a Canadian study, of course. I can’t forget how last year, during the height of the healthcare debate, Sen. Corker embarrassed not just Tennessee but all of America by chastising Canada’s former Health Minister for sponging off of American innovation, technology and scientific breakthroughs.

Totally, completely, ridiculously false.

>Tennessee Republicrites Visit Spring Hill

>File this one under “taking credit where it’s not due”: Senators Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander and Congressman Marsha Blackburn all went to Spring Hill today Friday to take credit for what the Democrats did:

The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker
Then: “This administration has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies….This is a major power grab.” – March 30, 2009.

Now: “At the end of the day we all have to feel good about what we did,” said Corker, who did attempt to negotiate the failed 2008 aid package. “I contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.”

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander
Then: “This is not the right direction: taxpayer money down the drain, and Washington politicians trying to run auto companies. The sooner the politicians get out of the way, the sooner auto jobs and taxpayer dollars will be secure.” – March 30, 2009.

Now: “The center of the auto industry is still moving to Tennessee and the mid-South,” Alexander told WSMV-TV.

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn
Then: “I certainly can’t think of the last time the federal government stepping into an industry caused that industry to be more successful, or more efficient. ” – December 2008.

Now: Blackburn attended, but no quotes from her have been reported. She has been busy with other issues, including a bill to overturn the upcoming ban on incandescent light bulbs.

Bob Corker, of course, voted yes on the bank bailout, no on the auto bailout. Lamar Alexander voted yes on the bank bailout, and missed the auto bailout vote because of surgery, but said he would have voted no. Corker tried to negotiate an alternate auto deal because, as he said at the time, the Big Three Bailout wouldn’t help the industry one bit:

“I mean you couldn’t make it almost more ineffective and more complicated,” said Corker about the White House plan.

Oops. Looks like you were way wrong on that one, buckaroo! And look who shows up expecting chocolates and roses when GM is back in the black and rehiring laid-off workers one year later?

File this one under assholes.

(h/t, ThinkProgress.)

>Quit Yer Whining Sen. Corker

>I’m trying to understand why Tennessee’s Sen. Bob Corker is blaming President Obama for his own failure to get the Republican Party on board with financial reform.

Just two months ago Corker was complaining about how his Republican colleagues refused to participate in the process:

GOP Senator Bob Corker was emphatic on Wednesday that Republicans missed a big opportunity to influence what is perhaps the most ambitious financial reform bill to pass through the Senate since the Great Depression.

Republicans declined to offer any amendments during Monday’s scheduled mark-up of the bill, choosing instead to vote against sending the legislation to the Senate floor strictly along party lines. It passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with 13 Democrats in favor and 10 Republicans opposed.

So, sorry, but exactly who is to blame for the lack of bipartisanship here?

I think it’s all theater. I think Corker got his hand slapped by the Republican Party for daring to speak the truth two months ago. I think Republicans are worried that this “party of no” stuff is starting to stick, so instead they hope that by screaming ever louder that there’s no bipartisanship, people won’t notice that they’re just sitting on their hands. Tennessee’s junior Senator may have voiced initial opposition to this obstructionist game, but now appears only too happy to play along. I wonder what happened?

In April Yglesias wrote:

Corker is exactly right about this. Chris Dodd’s bill, as written, would make bailouts less likely not more likely. But Corker is also correct that there are a lot of doubts as to exactly how much punch it really packs. This is a concern that responsible Senators should actually look at and try to address, rather than just fling around vaguely as a cover for the fact that they don’t want banks to be regulated at all. But will Corker stand his ground on this, or will he follow the lead of so many of his past colleagues and end up giving in to Rush/Fox/Tea Party pressure to simply obstruct?

Well I guess we have the answer to that question.

>Corker Looks Out For His Loan Shark Buddy

>Who’s looking out for you? Not Sen. Bob Corker, who is charged with using his position on the Senate Banking Committee to protect his good buddy W. Allan Jones, founder of Check Into Cash, one of those usurious payday lending chains that suck financially strapped people in with false promises, then keep them in debt forever by charging outrageous fees and interest rates as high as 400%.

TPM reports:

Lately, Congress has been mulling how to structure a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), so as to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis. And reform advocates have argued that increased regulation of pay-day lenders is an essential piece of the puzzle. But after lobbying by an industry group that Jones helped establish, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) acted to thwart the new agency’s ability to effectively monitor Jones’s industry.

[...]

There, Corker reportedly has weakened the section of the major financial regulatory reform bill that deals with pay-day lenders. Thanks to Corker, who sits on the Senate Banking committee, the new CFPA will have to get permission from a body of regulators in order to enforce rules against payday lenders and other non-bank financial companies — a step that consumer groups say will significantly hamstring the agency’s ability to crack down on predatory lending practices.

Corker’s intervention came after intense lobbying from the Community Financial Services Association (CFSA), a trade group of pay-day lenders created in 1999 by Jones and others in the industry. In the last three months of 2009, CFSA spent $500,000 lobbying Congress on the financial regulatory reform and other issues affecting regulation of the pay-day loan industry, according to disclosure records examined by TPMmuckraker. (One of the top Washington lobbyists hired by CFSA, Wright Andrews of Butera & Andrews, was also the prime lobbyist for the sub-prime mortgage industry earlier this decade.)

Jones is a longtime backer of Corker — as well as of several other lawmakers, from both parties, on the Banking committee. Since 2001, Jones, his relatives, and his employees, have contributed $31,000 to the campaigns of Corker, a former Chattanooga mayor, according to the New York Times.

For shame, Bob Corker. For shame.

These payday lenders are the worst sorts of vampires, preying on those in crisis situations who are least equipped to understand the pitfalls they face. Many of them, sadly, are our military personnel:

A study by Professors Chris Peterson of the University of Florida and Steven Graves of California State University, Northridge showed geographic evidence that payday lenders aggressively target military personnel. Payday lenders target service members because they are often young, financially inexperienced and strapped for cash, especially at the time of deployment. A December 2004 New York Times study revealed that 25 percent of military households have used payday lenders. The prevalence of high-cost borrowing among service members led the Department of Defense to list predatory lending as one of the top 10 threats to members of the military.

In 2006 the bipartisan Talent-Nelson Amendment was added to the Defense Appropriations Bill to protect military personnel from such predatory lenders. It was signed into law and went into effect in October 2007.

Now, how about the rest of us? Just once I’d like our Republican Senators to think about the people of this state who sent them to Washington, not the industries that send them campaign cash.

Oh Canada! I Stand On Guard For Thee

One of the most arrogant pieces of ass-hattery coming from the right wing anti-healthcare reform crowd is the allegation that there have been no great medical innovations in countries Not America. It’s our innovation, sparked by the Glorious Free Hand Of The Market, you see, which saves lives.

Whatever.

Today Sen. Bob Corker took that particularly noxious “America! Fuck Yeah!” myth and brought it to new heights of arrogance with today’s WTF moment:

During a hearing of the Special Committee on Aging, the Tennessee Republican told Canada’s former Public Health Minister, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, that her country is “living off of us” because they set lower prices for health care and “all the innovation, all the technology breakthroughs just about take place in our country and we have to pay for it.”

“It is not really our country so much is the problem, it’s sort of the parasitic relationship that Canada, and France, and other countries have towards us,” Corker said. “…You benefit from us, and we pay for that. And I resent that, and I want to figure out a way to solve that.”

Excuse me? France and Canada are parasites on us? Because they’re just sucking off our technological breakthroughs? And you told this to the former Canadian public health minister?

Did she laugh in your face? Or did she show more manners than you did with your little outburst? Just wondering.

Sen. Corker, you have officially embarrassed me with your ignorance and your hubris. So let me give you a little schooling on some Canadian medical breakthroughs (mine is an abbreviated list, but the complete list is at the link):

• 1912 First surgical treatment of tuberculosis. (McGill University Health Centre Research Institute — Montreal, Quebec)


• 1922 First clinical use of insulin for diabetes in human patients. (University Health Network — Toronto, Ontario)

• 1950 Introduction of lumpectomy for treatment of breast cancer. Lumpectomy is a surgical procedure designed to remove a discrete lump (usually a tumour, benign or otherwise) from an affected woman or man’s breast. (University Health Network — Toronto, Ontario)


• 1951 First “cobalt bomb” in the world used to deliver radiation therapy to cancer patients. (Lawson Health Research Institute — London, Ontario)

• 1952 First use of a device that determines whether or not a patient’s thyroid is cancerous through the use of radioactive iodine. (Saskatoon Health Region — Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)

• 1958 World first surgical treatment on cerebral aneurysms. (Lawson Health Research Institute — London, Ontario)

Wow. Major innovations in cancer treatment in a country that did not invent the pink ribbon? I cannot believe it.

Want some more? Okie dokie:

• 1960 Implementation of genetic screening programs for hereditary metabolic diseases in newborns. (McGill University Health Centre Research Institute — Montreal, Quebec)


• 1961 Discovery of blood-forming stem cells enabling bone marrow transplants. (University Health Network — Toronto, Ontario)


• 1983 Successful single lung transplant. Lung transplants extend life expectancy and enhance the quality of life for end-stage pulmonary patients. (University Health Network — Toronto, Ontario)

• 1983 The Department of Nuclear Medicine becomes first to use a special imaging agent to diagnose Parkinson’s disease. Called [18] F6-fluorodopa PET, the chemical was produced by Hamilton Health Sciences and is now used worldwide. (Hamilton Health Sciences/McMaster University – Hamilton, Ontario)

• 1988 World’s first successful liver/small bowel transplant is performed. (Lawson Health Research Institute — London, Ontario)

• 1993 Discovery of a novel gene associated with Lou-Gehrig’s disease. (McGill University Health Centre Research Institute — Montreal, Quebec)

• 1995 First physical map of the human genome created. (McGill University Health Centre Research Institute — Montreal, Quebec)

• 1996 Identification of a gene that causes colon cancer. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among Canadians. (Hospital for Sick Children — Toronto, Ontario)

I could go on … and on … and on … Frankly, the recent medical breakthroughs are far too technical for me to understand fully, but do go to the link and check it out.

I’ll tackle the issue of France later. Right now, I’m too disgusted with our Republicans in Congress, and my own Senator in particular, and need to cool off.

>More GOP Hypocrisy, Message Manipulation Division

>Gosh the Republicans sure do like to control the message don’t they? Apparently the RNC is planning to spin rebut an upcoming ABC special on healthcare reform with their own lies and distortions:

In a Wednesday memo to media and scheduling contacts for the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, the RNC offered GOP legislators the use of its TV studio on June 24, the scheduled air date of ABC’s planned health care reform special, so the lawmakers could discuss their own health care views in satellite interviews with their congressional districts’ ABC affiliates.

The RNC has offered to pay for satellite time and set up the interviews with the affiliates.

National legislators from the Chattanooga region don’t yet have plans to participate.

“We don’t know all the details of this special, but we do hope that as the media covers this important issue they will present all sides,” said Todd Womack, chief of staff for Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.

I don’t know why Republicans have their boxers in a knot over this. No one clamored to “present all sides” when NBC ran Rick “Medicare Fraud” Scott’s 30-minute infomercial on May 31 that questioned “the effectiveness of government-run health care.”

Rick Scott is a criminal who by all rights should have been sent to jail. Instead he cut a deal and Janet Reno let him off the hook. Big mistake.

Bob Corker is my Senator and his participation in more lies and message manipulation about healthcare will be a huge FAIL in my book.

Look, I wasn’t going to blog about this today but here goes. Every argument I’ve heard against a public healthcare option seems to say it will be too successful, too efficient, too affordable. Yeah, that’s a horrible problem to have. Why on earth would we want that? Those poor, endangered insurance companies. If only they were as cute and cuddly as, say, marsh mice.

At the same time we’re supposed to feel sorry for insurance companies and worry about unfair competition from the government, the Republicans and some Democrats are giving us the hilarious talking point about the government inserting a “bureaucrat” between me and my doctor.

Look, I already have a team of bureaucrats between me and my doctor, the only difference being they work for BlueCross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, not the government.

Republicans and Democrats who are putting up roadblocks to a public option need to get a fucking clue. If it’s going to be so horrible, then no one will want it and private insurers can relax. If it’s going to be too good, then private insurers are basically proving our argument that they are parasites on the healthcare system. I suspect that is what they are afraid of.

Oh, and quit picking on the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, postal service and other government operations, Republicans. Those scare tactics just don’t work. I can’t remember the last time I went to the DMV, I do all of my business online or at the County Clerk’s satellite office in Green Hills. Today I renewed my car tags, at lunchtime no less. Door to door, including the emissions test at the Craighead station, then schlepping to Green Hills to the county clerk’s office, then actually putting the stickers on my car took 25 minutes. There were no lines, anywhere. Pretty efficient.

The postal service is pretty awesome, too. And you know what? Our military, public utilities, power grid, highway system and other “public” stuff works pretty well most of the time, too. They work better when they have the funds to keep stuff like bridges and roads maintained, but that’s another issue that involves mentioning people who want to shrink the government to the size where you can drown it in the bathtub.

Look, these “scary government” buzz words aren’t working for me. I don’t want the government running everything but neither do I want someone making an obscene profit off of things like my trip to the doctor, my hospital stay, or my monthly prescriptions. I don’t want the need for obscene profits to be used as a barrier preventing tens of millions of people from accessing the healthcare they need. That’s not right.

The healthcare industry is all in favor of reform so long as it brings them those 45 million uninsureds and nothing more. They want Congress to bring them 45 million new customers, but they aren’t willing to do anything to actually make healthcare affordable. They still want to charge obscene amounts of money for stuff that costs a fraction of what we pay elsewhere. They just want to charge this whole new pool of people. That’s dishonest.

Here’s the thing. Our healthcare system is majorly messed up. It will not be fixed by tax credits, health savings accounts, and other “market” solutions. And by the way: my health is not your marketplace.

(h/t, Kleinheider.)

>Marching In Lockstep With Blinders On

>Today, I open the morning newspaper and this is what I see:

But the competing bills now reflect substantially different approaches. The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees. The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday.

The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.

Are you people idiots?

How is this not a repeat of the exact same failed policies of the past eight years?

Who are these Republican “moderates” and spineless Democrats and why have they not learned a thing from the past administration? Who are these people who insist on doing the same thing but expecting different results?

Jon at C&L reminds us of the Republican Party’s own $1.4 trillion economic stimulus of 2001. On Friday I reminded everyone of the Republican’s last great economic stimulus idea of 2008.

It didn’t work. We’re worse off now than we were then. Every person got a check for $600 and we’re still in the toilet.

Look, people can’t eat tax cuts. They can’t pay their rent with them. People don’t need just one check in their bank account: they need a regular paycheck, every two weeks, month after month, year after year.

I can’t imagine what these people are thinking. Last week Paul Krugman wrote:

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

Look, this is no little “slump,” this is a fucking disaster and I don’t think Bob Corker and Olympia Snow and the rest of them understand that.

Here’s my Sen. Bob Corker, repeating the GOP line on the Senate floor like the good Republibot he is:

Again, I appreciate those folks who are trying to work together to make this bill, which is a disaster in my opinion, slightly better. But, I wonder if it wouldn’t make more sense for us as a country to just wait for a week or two to hear the rest of the administration’s plans as it relates to solving this problem. I think for us to rush out and put forth $1 trillion in spending on top of a projected $1 trillion deficit without fully understanding the other issues that our country and the way that the administration plans to deal with these other issues is incredibly imprudent.

You want to wait? You want to do “more research”? Are you fucking nuts?

In January another 600,000 Americans were out of work. This is what happens when you “wait a week or two” to “study it some more.” People lose their jobs.

It’s hard to put a face on a number like that, but I’m thinking we’re going to have to. We’re going to have to hit the streets. We’re going to have to follow the example of the people of Iceland, banging pots and pans in protest until the government crumbled.

They are not listening to us. The did not listen to the November election. They are insulated and isolated. They think it’s okay to tell union workers how much they should earn, but they don’t want restrictions on what Wall Street bankers on the government dole should get. In short: they are not on our side.

This is crazy and I am very angry. People are hurting out there. The government has to step in and do something big to stop this train from running off the tracks or we’re going to have a second revolution in this country.

We need to take it to their doorstep. I’m ready to put my marching boots on. What about you?