Osama Bin Laden’s Dream of US Economic Collapse

[finity]

Supporters of the Bush administration like to say that there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, suggesting that President Bush has kept the country safe from terrorism. What they forget is that Osama Bin Laden clearly outlined his strategy for battling America, not by flying more planes into new buildings, but by driving the US into bankruptcy.
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The current economic collapse among US banks has cost taxpayers over $800 billion so far in federal bailouts. Add in the trillions spent off the budget in financing the occupation of Iraq and a maintenance mode war in Afghanistan, and it’s obvious that the yet uncaptured Bin Laden can declare “mission accomplished.”
In November 2004, CNN reported that Bin Laden released a video monologue to Al-Jazeera where the terror-savvy, extreme fundamentalist announced plans to continue a “policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” using similar tactics to those used when fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 80s, “guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.”

CNN.com - Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S. - Nov 1, 2004

“Easy to Provoke and Bait this Administration.”
Bin Laden bragged at the time that al Qaeda has found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.”
“And it all shows that the real loser is you,” Bin Laden said. “It is the American people and their economy.”
Bin Laden said of President Bush that “the darkness of black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America.”
In 2004, the US national debt was more than $7 trillion, but today it has grown to $9.6 trillion, roughly $31,640 of debt for every American citizen according to the U.S. National Debt Clock. The US is currently spending an astounding $12 billion per month in Iraq.

McCain Doesn’t Understand the Economic Crisis.
While Alan Greenspan called the current economic crisis “by far the worst financial crisis in a century,” John McCain has repeated over and over that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” even while the market tumbled and major financial institutions went on fire sale earlier this week.
McCain has failed to articulate any understanding of the economy or any interest in doing anything differently. His position has repeatedly been to follow the strategies of William ‘Phil’ Gramm, a Democrat turned Republican who sat in the House from 1978 to 1985, and then the Senate through 2002.
In the second half of the 90s, Gramm received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry during his five years on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. His wife sat on the board of Enron, and Gramm himself authored the “Enron loophole” in 2000, enabling the Enron scandal.
Gramm pushed to dismantle regulations enacted during the Depression to separate banking, insurance and brokerage activities, passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999. That legislation was key to enabling today’s mortgage crisis.
Gramm served as McCain’s campaign co-chair and his most senior economic adviser through July, when he famously downplayed the economic crisis by saying, “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” and, “we have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.” Gramm stepped down from his official role in the McCain campaign following those comments, but continues to advise McCain on economic policy.

ABC News: The Note: Fundamentally Unsound

Not Just a String of Bad Luck.
While some pundits have tried to spin blame for the current economic crisis everywhere but the “Gramm negative” economic policy of deregulation that has forced America to front hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the fraud and poor business decisions Gramm’s own deregulation policies enabled, the solution is quite obviously not more of the same.
The contributing problem of spending trillions to finance an occupation in Iraq based on false pretense while ignoring Bin Laden and enabling him to continue his efforts to bankrupt the US through guerrilla warfare should cause anyone who thinks that there is no difference between Barack Obama and McCain to wake up.
Obama plans to scale down the unwelcome operations in Iraq that are costing the nation absurd amounts of money while watering down the country’s military strength, provide a $1,000 tax break to the middle class, and stop the out of control profiteers that are devastating the economy as they take full advantage of Gramm’s catastrophic deregulation policies to manipulate the market and then promptly abandon any accountability and leave the taxpayer to pay for the damages.

Barack Obama Speaks With Educators

McCain Plays Depressing Hoover Tune.
McCain has continued to describe himself as “fundamentally a deregulator” and has repeatedly stated that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong,” echoing the lack of understanding voiced by President Herbert Hoover the day after the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday in October 1929, when he said, “The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.”
Despite Hoover’s comments, the market continued to fall. John D. Rockefeller repeated the same line of optimism days later, “Believing that fundamental conditions of the country are sound . . . my son and I have for some days been purchasing sound common stocks.” The market didn’t hit bottom until the middle of November.
Hoover promised a tax cut and voiced further optimism, but over the next year, things only got worse as the economy contracted, a thousand banks failed, and the nation experienced widespread poverty for years.
In a similar fashion, the McCain campaign has attempted to cloud reality by trotting out billionaire democrat and wife of a knight Lynn Forester de Rothschild to insist that McCain knows what he’s doing on the economy but that Obama is an “elitist,” while she also says she sees no political difference in social issues between Hillary Clinton and the McCain/Palin campaign.

Once Upon A Time in October - TIME

Palin Drone Says the Same Thing Backwards.
McCain’s running mate is even further out of touch with reality in economic matters. As mayor, Palin was able to hire John Cramer as a full time city manager to do her job so she could focus on turning Wasilla into a town modeled on the evangelical teachings of the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Alaska is swimming in oil money, so most of the town’s infrastructure and planning was subsidized and managed by Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a regional govenment.
A Salon article quoted Michelle Church, a member of the borough, as saying Palin was “unprepared to be mayor — it was John Cramer who actually ran the city,” and noting that, “the borough takes care of most of the planning, the fire, the ambulance, collecting the property taxes. And on top of that she brought in a city manager to actually run the city day to day. So what executive experience did she have as mayor?”
Still, Palin managed to leave behind massive debt after building a sports complex so far out of town that kids couldn’t ride their bikes there, and an unnecessary and duplicative new emergency dispatch center. Both as mayor and as the governor of Alaska, Palin has requested massive earmarks for Federal dollars, despite the fact that local residents pay nearly nothing in taxes due to Alaska’s oil wealth.
In her acceptance speech and repeatedly afterward, Palin has come out as being against earmarks and wasteful spending, claiming to have said “thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere,” to Congress, then admitting that she accepted the money after the earmark was canceled by Congress, and then returning to her line about “thanks but no thanks” in subsequent recitations of her speech.
What Palin seems to fail to understand is that earmarks are the mechanism Congress uses to ensure that funding is spent on a specific project. There is nothing wrong with earmarks themselves, as they can be used to ensure that Federal money isn’t just spent frivolously with nothing to show for it. The real problem is wasteful spending and requesting funding for unnecessary projects.
In the case of Palin’s bridge to nowhere, while Congress removed the earmark, Palin took the money anyway and spent it at her own discretion. By presenting herself as a champion of “ending earmarks,” Palin reveals that she is either grossly ignorant of how things work, or simply a disingenuously hypocritical liar.
In neither case is Palin qualified to help sort out economic policy for McCain, who has admitted that economic matters are not his strong point and who is surrounded by lobbyists and career politicians who have served the needs of those lobbyists in removing the economic regulations that were originally put in place to prevent the Depression from occurring again. Neither McCain nor Palin can offer real change, just more of the same as things get worse.

Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor
Sarah Palin’s wasteful ways

We Don’t Need Not Another Hoover.
America has to fight to take the nation back from the profiteers who have been cashing in at the trough of deregulation just like speculators in the 20s, who bought stock on margins hoping to make a quick profit. That worked well until everyone began selling at once. Today, bad home loans and speculative investments have resulted in a similar crisis, and are setting up a domino effect of future disasters.
On top of this, the nation has taken on a fantastically expensive war on multiple fronts, playing right into the hand of Bin Laden’s attempts to bankrupt us. McCain and Palin not only plan to stay in Iraq indefinitely, but threaten to start new wars in Iran, Syria, and between Georgia and Russia. This is ridiculous.
And for all my rich readers who fear Fox New’s propaganda that Obama will redistribute their wealth, remember that the market has always performed better under a Democrat for president. According to Ned Davis Research cited by MarketWatch, “the Dow Jones Industrial Average produced an annualized return of 7.21% during Democratic presidents, in contrast to an average of 3.6% during Republican presidents,” and when accounting for inflation, “2.5% annualized during Democratic presidencies, versus 1.7% during Republican presidencies.”
If those making more than a quarter million a year are afraid of Obama repealing parts of the Bush tax reductions that overwhelmingly favored them above the majority of Americans, imagine the consequences of more deregulation and another century in Iraq at $12 billion per month. Your taxes will eventually have to pay for that too. Stop deluding yourselves with Depression era Hooverism and wake up to the real threat: Bin Laden Bankruptcy.

Osama Bin Laden’s Dream of US Economic Collapse — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

Theres always another side to every story.

[Justus]

Wow, finity...perfect example of lame liberal spin.

"Baaa....I better vote for Obama cuz McCain and Palin are too stupid
and only Obama can keep us from falling for OBL's trickery....Baaaa."

[Mr.Hoppes]

People , Let's not kid ourselves here. Politicians are politicians. Even if (insert candidate here) was to come into office, he or she would have little chance to actually do what they wanted to, right or wrong. The power of the president of this country has been stripped. Rendered worthless, in that nothing can get done, again right or wrong, without opposition at every step along the way and appeals at every other turn. Our government has been over thrown by it's own greed and false need to please the masses. Often times a leader needs to do things not popular in the general opinion to make the whole better in the long run. In today’s political arena the greater good is on the surface, but the under lining need to stay popular so as to get reelected is more important. The president used to be a respected position, and today that just isn’t the case. So let us not get caught up in the who but lets focus on the what. And which ever one gets elected let us support him/her and hold him/her accountable for their actions both positive and the negative. This nation needs Respect restored. Restored for all Citizens, White Black Rich Poor Male or Female. Whatever our personal views maybe, if this Country & it’s Governing body doesn’t heal and grow in integrity, we will fall. I think to many people have come to believe that this country is it’s governing body.

[Caleb]

hmm

[finity]

Originally Posted by Mr.Hoppes

People , Let's not kid ourselves here. Politicians are politicians. Even if (insert candidate here) was to come into office, he or she would have little chance to actually do what they wanted to, right or wrong. The power of the president of this country has been stripped. Rendered worthless, in that nothing can get done, again right or wrong, without opposition at every step along the way and appeals at every other turn. Our government has been over thrown by it's own greed and false need to please the masses. Often times a leader needs to do things not popular in the general opinion to make the whole better in the long run. In today’s political arena the greater good is on the surface, but the under lining need to stay popular so as to get reelected is more important. The president used to be a respected position, and today that just isn’t the case. So let us not get caught up in the who but lets focus on the what. And which ever one gets elected let us support him/her and hold him/her accountable for their actions both positive and the negative. This nation needs Respect restored. Restored for all Citizens, White Black Rich Poor Male or Female. Whatever our personal views maybe, if this Country & it’s Governing body doesn’t heal and grow in integrity, we will fall. I think to many people have come to believe that this country is it’s governing body.

Well Said.

[finity]

Originally Posted by Justus

Wow, finity...perfect example of lame liberal spin.

"Baaa....I better vote for Obama cuz McCain and Palin are too stupid
and only Obama can keep us from falling for OBL's trickery....Baaaa."

So if a conservative posts some lame conservative spin, well thats just got to be "the truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth, so help you God"?

Dude, I'm no sheep. I could say maybe you're just a ditto-head but where would that get us. Isn't that just another name for sheep (i.e. someone who can't think for themselves & follows along with the crowd). You don't think there are Republican/conservative sheep. You need to get out more.

I guess you can just bury your head in the sand & do as your told by only listening to other people who hold exactly the same views as you. If it makes your world feel more comfortable that way, then great go for it. Don't expect everyone to.

McCain & Palin aren't Gods chosen ones. We've been down that road for eight years now. They all suck. You just have to figure out which ones don't suck as bad. If you never hear the other side of the story you make uniformed choices.

I read every one of the anti-Obama posts here (& there are plenty). I take it in, process it & make up my own mind. Don't be afraid of alternative view points unless you are so insecure in your own views you can't stand to have them challenged.

[BloodEclipse]

Originally Posted by finity

Don't be afraid of alternative view points unless you are so insecure in your own views you can't stand to have them challenged.

I hope you practice what you preach.
Guess again who's to blame for U.S. mortgage meltdown
Analysts point not to greed, but to social activist politics

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75717

A New York Times article from Sept. 1999 states that Fannie Mae had been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and that the corporation loosened its lending requirements to comply.

A few years later, when Greg Mankiw, chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, voiced a warning about weakened underwriting standards, Congress rebuffed him as well.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., in 2003 as criticizing Greg Mankiw "because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than 'concern about housing.'"
Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, rejected a Bush administration and Congressional Republican plan for regulating the mortgage industry in 2003, saying, "These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis." According to a New York Times article, Frank added, "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

[Justus]

Relax finity....
You posted an article written by Daniel Dilger?

C'mon......the site is an Apple Ipod review site based in San Francisco
and the author has written about 3 political entries in his blog.


My first point is the article takes the topic of OBLs threat to topple
America's economy and spins it.
Basically says that a vote for McCain is a vote for an OBL victory.
It also states that OBL can declare "mission accomplished"
Do you really believe that?

IIRC, the OBL mission was to kick the infidels out of the Middle East.
BTW, the article says that OBL has clearly outlined his strategy,
do you know where I can find a copy of that?




2nd Point: if you believe the author's spin and vote for Obama
because of this reason ...you are a sheep.

An article can be a spin no matter what the content is or who wrote it.

You can assume want you want about me.

Rest assured I have looked at all of our options in this upcoming
election and I will NOT be voting for Obama.
And until November, I will be urging others not to vote for him.

[finity]

Yes, in fact, I do practice what I preach.

Last year, I was so anti-Bush & anti-Republican that I would have been excited to vote for Obama. I then started learning about Ron Paul. He had some views that I thought were a little extreme but overall I liked what I heard. We all know where that ended up.

Looking more recently at the candidates, I don't see anything on either side that gets me excited. Both have their weaknesses. Sometimes you have to be willing to change your mind when better information comes along.

Conservatives loved Bush because he was "resolute" when all it was was him being unwilling to look at facts & say "I was wrong". That's not a noble trait in my opinion.

[Mr.Hoppes]

Why is it one candidate is in one sides opinion "The Great Satin" and their candidate The Savior of humankind and the same said of the other side. Why does it have to always be sooo sooo black and white. I have no opinion as to which one is the better candidate, but I know neither of them will ever get anything done until we can see the positives in both and then decided to vote for which we think is best. Then when which ever is elected we stand behind them until an impeachable offense occurs and proceed accordingly. There is no perfect candidate, just two men, who want to be president. Until the bickering and backbiting which gets oh so dirty goes away no president will ever truly have the opportunity to change this country.