for 24-Hours of Propaganda
"Just give me, Wall Street, and the US Government all of your money and you can trust us not to spend it on ourselves...I promise."
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for Americans to get behind attempts to salvage a $700 billion rescue plan for the financial sector.
Obama told a crowd at the University of Nevada at Reno that if Wall Street fails, ordinary people will be hurt, too. Harkening back to his days as the right-hand man for a slumlord, Obama urged the American public that it would be better to pay up now as opposed to him having to come back and ask again.
The Illinois Democrat warned that if Congress doesn't take action, people will find it tougher to get a mortgage for a home, a loan for college or a loan to buy a car. Fear mongering is obviously the way to trick American's into backing a measure that anyone with good sense would give the "smell test" and reject.
Obama is proposing that the limit on federal deposit insurance for bank accounts be raised from $100,000 to $250,000. Increasing that limit, he says, would help small-business owners and reassure nervous Americans as well as help shore up the economy. How exactly this would have a direct effect on small-business owners, or reassure nervous American's with less than $250,000, was not fully explained.
“It’s the American economy that needs this rescue plan,” Obama told the assembled score of students, explicitly hitching his ongoing argument about social change to the financial crisis, arguing that the nation must transcend its differences and unite behind the bailout.
“This country and the dream it represents are being tested in a way that we haven’t seen in nearly a century. And future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test,” he said. “Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? When we allowed our own petty differences and broken politics to plunge this country into a dark and painful recession? Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other’s success?”
By now, such rhetoric is familiar to the public: Obama’s knack for fusing the language of (progressive) movement organizing with (conservative) American exceptionalism. Today, he took a risk by wrapping it around a deeply unpopular and complex measure that is widely seen as a sop for reckless elites.
“I believe that this is one of those moments. I know that many of you are anxious about your future and the future of this country,” Obama continued. “Despite all of this, I ask you to believe – believe in this country and your ability to change it. I ask you what has been asked of the American people in times of trial and turmoil throughout our history – what was asked at the beginning of the greatest financial crisis this nation has ever endured. In his first fireside chat, Franklin Roosevelt told his fellow Americans that “..there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. Let us unite in banishing fear. Together, we cannot fail.”
Obama channeled The New Deal era — the fear of depression and the promise of a populist agenda — to recast the bailout as a working-class imperative:
“America, together, we cannot fail. Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save. Not when there are so many Americans without jobs and without homes. Not when there are families who can’t afford to see a doctor, or send their child to college, or pay their bills at the end of the month. Not when there is a generation that is counting on us to give them the same opportunities and the same chances that we had for ourselves...Now is the time to make them proud of what we did here. Let’s give our children the future they deserve, and let’s act with confidence and courage to show the world that at this moment, in this election, the United States of America is still the last, best hope of Earth.”
Obama and his mentor, the slumlord Antoin Rezko, who taught Obama everything he knows about pumping the poor for more money.
