The Victorious Opposition

It seems more like a liberal whine-screed than a suicide note.  I can’t find any sympathy for this guy.  Not even a fucking hint.  He knows nothing of true suffering, and he still took the pussy way out.  There are so many people who have had it worse in life, and they still soldier on instead of raging about every single left-of-center meme in an emotastic blogasm.

Ohhh what a victim.  What a poor normal guy pushed too far.  The tragic story of the oppressed proletariat and his struggle against Big ________.

Bullshit. Pathetic. Call the waaaaaaahhhhmbulance. This guy isn’t evil, he’s just the paragon example of weak.  True inferiority in mind, body, and spirit. My only regret is that he didn’t off himself like this in his youth, before he actually got people to rely on him for support before riding the Failtrain to Bawwwwwhalla.

I’d shit on his grave, but this loser isn’t even worth the cost and time of forging a decent turd.

Gee, ryan. Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel…

There is a post by DrewM at Ace’s that is already highlighting the fact that poster’s at the daily Kos are referring to this as a “Teabag terrorist attack”...never short on deep thinker’s over there are they?

We expect that sort of thing from Kos’s minions.  The only critical thing I can see here that this guy had in common with the Tea Party is that he’s pissed at both sides.  It’s telling that Kos-suks think he’s a deranged right-ringer and Ryan thinks he’s a pussy liberal.

Well from that post at Ace’s he was more of a communist it seems…

They’re reading too much into the “to each according to his ability” quote.  Stacks was no Communist. He was an entrepreneur.

His final note shows that he was pissed off at the capitalist greed that had destroyed his livelihood and ability to retire, while the people who caused it were bailed out by a corrupt government.

At least this guy was an equal opportunity hater (IRS, the government, Wall street, car companies, drug companies, organized religion, unions, at least he didn’t have a beef with the police…....whew!!!!)

Reading this guy’s story and how he just got left feeling fucked over and had to do something drastic to settle the score was the heaviest experience I’ve had in months.  This paragraph really got me:

I gotta say, I’m very surprised at your sympathy for this guy. Literally millions of people are out of work, do all these people deserve to go on a rampage? You yourself was unemployed for awhile, did you ever harbor feelings of dynamiting your old employer’s headquarters, or bumping off your local Bank of America branch to pay the rent, knowing that all those rich people with bank accounts there needed to have their wealth redistributed?, No, of course not, because you are not a lunatic.

You are assuming that everything he wrote in his little bitch session of a manifesto is accurate and truthful. He whines about losing all his retirement money, unless you work for Enron and had every dime of your 401k money in company stock, how does this happen? Is he putting all his retirement money in Lebanese internet companies or platinum futures? Maybe he is a product of his own stupidity in his lack of diversification.

This guy struck my as not very bright and not very principled, in addition to being several sandwiches short of a picnic basket.  Maybe he had no business acumen and sucked at decision making, or maybe nothing at all was his fault, but circumstances screwed him over, like he is the only one that has had this happen to him, good reason to go schizoid and crash into a building.

This guy succumbed to a debilitating bout of depression which he could not recover from, and I feel sorry for him in that he could not find relief, but if he wants to check out, I would prefer he just drive his car off a cliff. Bringing further deaths into his little equation is the heart of narcissism, and removes any sympathy I would of had for him.

I gotta say, I’m very surprised at your sympathy for this guy.

I did not say that.

You yourself was unemployed for awhile, did you ever harbor feelings of dynamiting your old employer’s headquarters, or bumping off your local Bank of America branch to pay the rent, knowing that all those rich people with bank accounts there needed to have their wealth redistributed?

No, but I’m saying that I certainly understand being pissed off and feeling helpless and fucked over by greed and stupidity.  Last year, my family brought in $20,000 less per year than the year before.  I was unemployed for most of last year and I’ve been underemployed for the past 6 months and will probably remain so for anywhere from 1-3 years. 

This guy’s bitterness just really struck a chord with me.  Something definitely is wrong with our society if people like Stack are just going to wake up one day and decide that they’re not going to take it anymore.  Still, I don’t approve of his actions at all.  He should not be emulated, admired, or used to discredit political opposition.  On the other hand, the complaints he made should be examined.  Our tax system is inhumane.  Government protecting self-serving, greedy corporate assholes and undermining our economic system at the expense of the taxpayers is wrong.

Maybe he is a product of his own stupidity in his lack of diversification.

He didn’t get a bailout for taking his risks.  Why should GM or banks that gave home loans for $800,000 to lettuce-picking illegal aliens?  Stack got wiped out and still has to pay the IRS to cover the bill for these bailouts.  He probably burned down the house because it was about to be seized.

This guy succumbed to a debilitating bout of depression which he could not recover from, and I feel sorry for him in that he could not find relief, but if he wants to check out, I would prefer he just drive his car off a cliff.

Well, I would too but Stack made the point that nothing seems to get done until either lots of people get killed or the super-wealthy find it to be in their interests.  Stack didn’t simply want to die.  He wanted to make a statement.

One more thought: Stack was a terrorist.  After 9 years of this country dealing with foreign religious fanatics, there’s no question to me that men like Stack are far, far scarier (skerrier?).  Al-Qaeda will kill because they want to re-establish the caliphate and bring all the world under Islamic law.  Guys like Stack will kill because they want their 401k back.

Let’s hope this was an aberration.

I did not say that.

It sounded like your were sympathizing with his reasons for his attack.

Something definitely is wrong with our society if people like Stack are just going to wake up one day and decide that they’re not going to take it anymore

Take what anymore?, that life is hard, that you don’t always get what you want, that there is no guarantee in life (or in the Constitution) of anyone being happy? I am perplexed by this attitude. Our society proports to provide equal opportunity to everyone, not equal outcome. Because life is not fair and my neighbor has more money than me, a prettier wife (he doesn’t, BTW), a bigger house, more lavish vacations, because of these inequities, I should take it upon myself to lash out and blow something up?

Our tax system is inhumane

Yes, it is, and if everyone who felt that way took it upon himself to make a terrorist statement and blow something up to highlight its inherent unfairness, we would be living on a smoldering heap.

Government protecting self-serving, greedy corporate assholes and undermining our economic system at the expense of the taxpayers is wrong.

Lets examine this statement. TARP was formulated to rescue the financial system, and with it to save ten’s of thousands (maybe more) jobs in the process. The thinking (rightly or wrongly)was that without intervention, these companies would collapse, not only wrecking our own banking system but that of the world’s because of it’s dependence on the dollar and our own financial health. So in this respect the taxpayers (you and me) had to fit this bill. But rich people pay taxes too, so do foreign entities that do business here in America, the pain is being shared by everyone. And who are these “greedy corporate assholes” that you think the government is protecting? You don’t think the CEO’s of these failed institutions suffered? When you have a kazillion stock options in your companies stock and before it was worth 50 bucks a share,  now it’s worth a buck, yes, they have suffered. Taking this one step further, how about the shareholders? Allow me to give you an example. One of my larger holdings a few years back was Citicorp. Before this debacle it sat at about $46 a share. About 6 months ago it sat at a buck and change (now I believe it’s around $4) how many millions (yes millions) of shareholders suffered a huge financial loss because of the failings of this and other big money banks? Believe me, we are bitter, but this in no way gives me or anyone else license to spread my misery around and take it out in the form of snuff lives and damaged property. Without the risk/reward dynamic, we have no capitalist system. If this guy was so bad at handling his investments, he should of paid a professional to do it for him.

He didn’t get a bailout for taking his risks.

Neither did I, or anyone else who owned stocks in financial institutions. Again, risk/reward, if you remove the reward or the potential of reward then nobody will take any risks and we might as well move to Cuba.

  Stack got wiped out and still has to pay the IRS to cover the bill for these bailouts.

Says him, but I would like to know how he got “wiped out” if in fact he did. Last time I checked if you have no income then you don’t owe any taxes. He was belly aching about his situation yet still owned a plane. His claim of ,“Gee, I had this big nest egg and now it’s gone” rings suspicious to me. If he had all his money in Citi stock then yeah, he is a knuckle head for not diversifying, his own damn fault.

He wanted to make a statement

And I will you use rational that I used with dwex in his defense of those prop 8 antagonists that take the law into their own hands in vandalizing and threatening, it gets you no sympathy with me. If Stack would of written his exact same manifesto, then at the end said something like ,” I’ve reached the end of my rope and can’t take it anymore. To punctuate my dissatisfaction and to make a statement to the country that something has to change, I am going to take my own life. In one hour I will be at such and such a location and I am going to torch my car with me in it. I have notified the press because I want this event covered. Don’t try to intervene as I will just set the car ablaze early. I hope this gesture will bring to light the frustrations I am feeling and maybe something can be done so that no one else has to take this course”. I would be paying a whole lot more attention to him and his plight, and I would have sympathy for him, which I don’t now because of his cowardly and narcissistic act in crashing that building.

It sounded like your were sympathizing with his reasons for his attack

That’s better.

that life is hard, that you don’t always get what you want, that there is no guarantee in life (or in the Constitution) of anyone being happy?

It’s also not in the Constitution that the IRS can seize your property without due process or that the federal government can use taxpayer money to bolster failed businesses.

Yes, it is, and if everyone who felt that way took it upon himself to make a terrorist statement and blow something up to highlight its inherent unfairness, we would be living on a smoldering heap.

Actually, we’ve had guys like that in our history.  Strangely, they’re not considered to be lunatics.  Nothing causes unrest and violence while ultimately destroying the social order of a nation as certainly as an unjust tax system does.

Neither did I, or anyone else who owned stocks in financial institutions. Again, risk/reward, if you remove the reward or the potential of reward then nobody will take any risks and we might as well move to Cuba.

Individuals like you and Stack took all of the risk.  Nobody cleaned up after your mistakes like the banks and auto manufacturers had done for them.  Ann Coulter put out a great column on this recently:

If Obama plans to hold Wall Street accountable for its own bad decisions, it will be a first for the Democrats.

For the past two decades, Democrats have specialized in insulating financial giants from the consequences of their own high-risk bets. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs alone have been rescued from their risky bets by unwitting taxpayers four times in the last 15 years.

Bankers get all the profits, glory and bonuses when their flimflam bets pay off, but the taxpayers foot the bill when Wall Street firms’ bets go bad on—to name just three examples—Mexican bonds (1995), Thai, Indonesian and South Korean bonds (1997), and Russian bonds (1998).

...

Why shouldn’t Wall Street trust in suicidal loans no sane person would ever imagine could be paid back? Time after time, when their bets paid off, they pocketed huge fees; when their bets failed, they sent the bill to the taxpayers.

This is true.  The only risk involved here dealt with the investors that got wiped out and the rest of us who have to pay to keep businesses in business that need to be out of business.

Stack felt that the only thing he could do, the only thing that would bring some sort of relief; was a huge bloody, fiery spectacle.  It was, of course, the wrong thing to do but I can sympathize with his reasons—just not for him personally.

There are people calling him a “patriot” and “hero”. Go on Facebook and search for “Joseph Stack”. It’s pretty revolting. My new Facebook status:

People on Facebook creating groups to call Joseph Stack a “hero” or a “patriot” have not the slightest concept of what either word means. Joseph Stack is a plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill terrorist, and should be reviled.

Note: the FBI had gotten the original message on Stack’s website removed by the server (talk about feeding into the paranoia)

This appears to not be true.

It’s only more confusing:

That’s strange, considering what Melen told us last night: “The FBI did call me and ask that I take down the site,” Melen said. “I am not sure if you’d call it a request, recommendation, or suggestion, but that’s what happened.”

Today, he tells us the Austin, Texas FBI office told him to take the FBI reference down. “They didn’t necessarily force me to do it, they just asked,” Melen says. “I didn’t see any harm in removing the
FBI note from the home page, especially if it can stop all this crazy controversy that’s going around.”

As FBI spokesman Special Agent Eric Vasys in San Antonio told us yesterday, “the FBI does not request that sites remove language such as being reported to be authored by Mr. Stack. That’s not our area to do that.”

The FBI won’t tell you to remove material but they will tell you to remove material that says that they told you to remove material.

Got it?

There are people calling him a “patriot” and “hero”. Go on Facebook and search for “Joseph Stack”.

It’s happening on Twitter and even Craigslist too.  The situation is worse than I thought if he’s being lionized this fast.

Again, risk/reward, if you remove the reward or the potential of reward then nobody will take any risks and we might as well move to Cuba.

First off, this man was a terrorist. There isn’t any slicing or dicing it any other way.

No one is sympathizing with the actions, but there are a few things that don’t make sense out of what you wrote, rich. Let’s be honest here and say that for select corporations there is no risk/reward scenario, there is only reward/reward, and we’re paying the “loss” part of that with the money of our grandchildren.

Please, pray tell, explain to me how a situation engineered from every angle to corn fuck the American taxpayer…..not once, but twice (from the government subsidized home loan to the tax dollars going to bail the company out (not you) who lent you the money) should in any way be accepted as “a risk/reward scenario?”

In addition, when I redline like a coke head in Columbia spending money, at what stage can I tell the federal government to let me sit on Treasury notes until I decide I don’t want to anymore? It can’t be done, and that double standard has nothing to do with jealousy at the neighbor’s larger Mercedes. In fact, it’s not jealousy that’s the term at play here at all, it’s called injustice.

Now, on a macro level, this is somewhat right:

Lets examine this statement. TARP was formulated to rescue the financial system, and with it to save ten’s of thousands (maybe more) jobs in the process. The thinking (rightly or wrongly)was that without intervention, these companies would collapse, not only wrecking our own banking system but that of the world’s because of it’s dependence on the dollar and our own financial health. So in this respect the taxpayers (you and me) had to fit this bill. But rich people pay taxes too, so do foreign entities that do business here in America, the pain is being shared by everyone. And who are these “greedy corporate assholes” that you think the government is protecting?

But this undermines your very own definition of risk/reward. And it didn’t work, the money is slushing around on Wall Street right now falsely inflating the Dow and making the very crooks who engineered and festered this caper even wealthier. Rightly or wrongly, the only justice that would have been served is by not bailing out the companies at all.

Unemployment is still horrible, only government and taxes seem to be growing, and only a small and protected class of wealth gets the luxury to petition Washington when they fail in their endeavors and have the risk removed from their investments.

As with many decisions, there are collateral damages associated with them. One potentially fatal flaw in openly and blatantly catering to one specific class (or race, etc.) is that it can create opportunities for people to create the “grass is greener” scenarios, which is exactly what this guy did.

And who are these “greedy corporate assholes” that you think the government is protecting? You don’t think the CEO’s of these failed institutions suffered?

Funny you should ask.

Profits tumbled yesterday for the nation’s largest home mortgage firm - Countrywide Financial - even as its chief Angelo Mozilo was quietly cashing out a $118.2 million options windfall ahead of its new troubles.

The company reported a 33 percent drop in profits, and expects deep losses across the industry in the wake of housing’s thundering crash that’s sending cracks this summer throughout the financial services landscape.

Mozilo, the 68-year-old co-founder, told analysts the housing climate is so bad it will force the 10 giant mortgage firms like his to consolidate or perish.

There’s one shithead that knew exactly what they were up to, gave preferential treatment to our (then) soon to be president, and was given free reign to cook his books for years, all with the knowledge that he would not need to worry about a thing.

I’m sure I can google up some other sterling examples if you would like.

And I will you use rational that I used with dwex in his defense of those prop 8 antagonists that take the law into their own hands in vandalizing and threatening, it gets you no sympathy with me.

Thrill isn’t giving him any sympathy, he’s stating that with how popular this man’s dissatisfaction with government resonates with other people, it could be a more alarming trend than Islamic terrorism.

Exactly.  Thank you, MW.

Thrill isn’t giving him any sympathy, he’s stating that with how popular this man’s dissatisfaction with government resonates with other people, it could be a more alarming trend than Islamic terrorism.

This is a risk in my opinion, although citizen overreaction is a big risk as well.  Copycats are somewhat common with crazies, but some idiot got on TV and said this type of thing “isn’t rare”.  That was a joke, right?  Domestic terrorism happens, but it IS pretty rare.  One thing that this guy and all the others miss is that his death will not result in a single change other than additional burdens on those of us left behind.  What will never change is that you can never give in to terrorist “demands”.

From Kipling’s Danegeld:

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

We can be thankful that there was no useful insight in his creepy manifesto.  We can disregard it and hopefully send a message to all the other crazy people that terrorism will not result in sweeping changes to the tax code.

Thrill will immediately recognize that this comment does not exactly square with a paper i sent him on terrorism.  Just so you know, Thrill, I’m working on it ...

First off, this man was a terrorist. There isn’t any slicing or dicing it any other way.

My statement had to do with his claim that he lost his savings, what are you talking about and what does this have to do with what I was addressing?

Let’s be honest here and say that for select corporations there is no risk/reward scenario, there is only reward/reward, and we’re paying the “loss” part of that with the money of our grandchildren.

Do you have any idea at all how much of that TARP money has been paid back, with interest? Strictly from a business standpoint it was a good deal all the way around so your grand children actually profited. Your argument is invalid.

Tell me, say the government decided that the entertainment industry was too big to fail and provided your company with some relief, aren’t you glad you still have your job? those in the financial sector are.

Please, pray tell, explain to me how a situation engineered from every angle to corn fuck the American taxpayer…..not once, but twice (from the government subsidized home loan to the tax dollars going to bail the company out (not you) who lent you the money) should in any way be accepted as “a risk/reward scenario?”

As I explained, this was a loan that has been paid back (or in the process now) so your crocodile tears not withstanding, it is not costing you anything. Regarding the mortgage bailouts, that is another kettle of fish all together but don’t confuse TARP money for mortgaged bailouts, it’s not the same thing.

Now, on a macro level, this is somewhat right:

Gee, thanks a lot.

But this undermines your very own definition of risk/reward. And it didn’t work

Sure it did, the loans are being paid back and many many people got to keep their jobs.

the money is slushing around on Wall Street right now falsely inflating the Dow and making the very crooks who engineered and festered this caper even wealthier.

Not even close. The money paid back went back into the treasury. Last week we were talking about the outrage invoked by Obama wanting to take that same money and use it for his new jobs bill when in fact the TARP stipulation was that it goes back into the treasury.

Funny you should ask.

Wow, spoken just like a whiny liberal indoctrinated in class warfare. Tell me, do you believe that their in only a finite amount of money in the world, so if your neighbor does well it somehow diminishes your piece of the pie? Were you equally outraged when Eisner walked away with about a billion dollars in compensation over his last four years while running his company into the ground? Oh, and your link is broke. Regarding Mozilo, the only people that should be pissed off is the stock holders (unless his company took TARP money)Over paid CEO’s is a fact of life, so lets get all indignant and try to blow something up.

I don’t get this animosity towards rich people, how about this, why not try to emulate them and become rich yourself, and when you do, it will not inhibit anybody from doing the same thing. Wealth is created everyday, go create some yourself.

he’s stating that with how popular this man’s dissatisfaction with government resonates with other people

OK, so what? You want to effect change, fine, do it properly, or move out. His dissatisfaction would of garnered more traction if he had not turned terrorist. Like a petulant child, he was not getting his way so he lashed out and tried to hurt (kill) other people, how brave.

I hope a further investigation reveals more about this guy’s fiances. It would not surprise me one bit if we come to find out that he brought all this on himself due to his own incompetence, either through poor investment decisions or lack of diversification, and all this other belly aching about the government, organized religion, unions, and the IRS was all window dressing, a diversion from his own stupidity. Well, it got you guys to “resonate” with him.

Do you have any idea at all how much of that TARP money has been paid back, with interest?

Sorry to jump in on this, but I was curious regarding the answer to your question.  I didn’t have much success finding recent articles but as of June, the total spent was $439B, and as of December, the total repaid was $116B.  Maybe I’m missing something, but that doesn’t seem like a profit.

Do you have any sources suggesting otherwise?

I’m not sure where you are coming from rich.  Everyone else seems to understand what Thrill is saying.  There is some risk that people will come to see this man as a martyr of sorts.  Thrill can understand how that might be even if he doesn’t condone what the man did.  Easy enough to parse.  This guy cracked under pressure that most of us can handle.  Everyone has that threshold and it is a variable.  It is part of what makes life unpredictable.

Thrill alluded to it above, but it is the target that matters.  If it had been a high school full of kids, well, we would be having a much different discussion.  As Thrill pointed out above, I don’t really understand why the target matters, but it does.  There is an element in society that things like this will appeal to.  Denying it doesn’t change it and its very existance is a threat.  Unlike foreign terrorists, these guys are right here blending into the population (this is why I will never support profiling in airports).

It sounds to me like Thrill was a bit spooked at resonating with the guys message.  Doesn’t mean he agrees with his actions.  I mean, this is Thrill we’re talking about ...

Do you have any idea at all how much of that TARP money has been paid back, with interest? Strictly from a business standpoint it was a good deal all the way around so your grand children actually profited. Your argument is invalid.

TARP is only a small part of the equation, almost like saying “well, TARP wasn’t the only bail out, but it’s the one that was paid back so let’s just talk about that!”. In addition, I don’t think anyone on this blog knows what will be done with all of the banks toxic debt that is going to be flushed away in a sea of numbers, so I don’t think it wise to trumpet the banks effort.

In addition, TARP is a failure because it didn’t address the core problems in the banking industry that allowed the melt down to happen in the first place.

Tell me, say the government decided that the entertainment industry was too big to fail and provided your company with some relief, aren’t you glad you still have your job? those in the financial sector are.

Are you fucking kidding me, dude? My brother is in this industry and had to leave one of these TARPED industries, and was laid off form another.

Do you know who kept their jobs? I can tell you who kept their jobs, and it isn’t the can o’ pork n’ beans Joe Schmoe you are conjuring an image of. This isn’t some government institution with labor contracts and free reign to clog the court system over a Coke machine, this is the nitty gritty private industry where you have either (A.) the right to work or (B.) the right not to.

And to answer your question, no I would not approve of a bail out for my industry because it would not make my job any more or less stable. It’s as simple as that. The money would invariably be put into the hands of the higher ups and then they would have the final say as to how to run the business. Maybe I have a job or maybe not.

As I explained, this was a loan that has been paid back (or in the process now) so your crocodile tears not withstanding, it is not costing you anything. Regarding the mortgage bailouts, that is another kettle of fish all together but don’t confuse TARP money for mortgaged bailouts, it’s not the same thing.

I’m not confusing TARP with the mortgage bailouts, however, I’m not going to let you distinguish the TARP loans as the prime example of the candor of the financial sector. You’re just pointing out one loan program and saying “see, this got paid back” but disregarding the countless money funnels that have just been pissing money away.

Not even close. The money paid back went back into the treasury. Last week we were talking about the outrage invoked by Obama wanting to take that same money and use it for his new jobs bill when in fact the TARP stipulation was that it goes back into the treasury.

Really? If banks aren’t loaning money with interest (what banks do), where do they come up with the money to pay back TARP?

Thrill alluded to it above, but it is the target that matters

No, it doesn’t. Not one iota. This fucking idiot couldn’t deal with his life and what he was being dealt, and he crashed a plane into a building full of innocent people in protest. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a skerry brown terrist crashing a plane into the WTC or a middle-aged emo geek crashing a plane into an IRS building.

He’s a piece of trash terrorist who should be disdained by any and all, regardless of his grievance or his target.

He deserves zero consideration, zero respect, zero deification.

People putting him on a pedestal are pure scum. I don’t care their affiliation, their politics, their faith, their ideology. They are scum.

If he had lived, I’d want to see him tried, convicted and executed, just like McVeigh. But he took the coward’s way out, so we won’t even get that satisfaction.

Screw him, screw his message, and screw his supporters. There is no rationalizing one’s way out of this.

People putting him on a pedestal are pure scum.

Agreed.  Again that wasn’t the point.

He’s a piece of trash terrorist who should be disdained by any and all, regardless of his grievance or his target.

Yes, I agree.  He was a terrorist.  I made an entire post about it.  Just because he should be disdained by any all doesn’t mean he will be.

There is no rationalizing one’s way out of this.

Seriously, whos trying to rationalize anything?  This guy’s crazy rant will appeal to some people.  Are you really disputing that?

This guy’s crazy rant will appeal to some people.  Are you really disputing that?

No, but trying to explain it away, justify it away, pretend that there is any validity whatsoever to that point of view is highly suspect. The people to whom his crazy rant appeals are scum. Such people should be ridiculed, top to bottom; held up to scorn in every forum.

Oh, the target definitely matters.  Go back to the Prohibition era and look at the idolization of Bonnie and Clyde or John Dillinger by law-abiding people who probably didn’t exactly approve of robbery.  The reason?  They were robbing banks and there was a great deal of anger against those institutions at that time.  People were rooting for the crooks because the victims were seen as being worse.

It’s like I said: injustice breeds violence.  I’m not endorsing violence, just stating a fact.

McVeigh was tapping into a massive anti-government movement brought on by Waco and the like when he bombed the Murrah building.  However, his act completely destroyed the movement he thought he was supporting.

Why?  There was a daycare in that building and very, very few American terrorists are willing to kill children.  Even people who might have rooted for the destruction of an ATF office just weren’t going to be associated with massacring children.  That’s right when the militia movement fell apart.

Really? If banks aren’t loaning money with interest (what banks do), where do they come up with the money to pay back TARP?

And yet, presto chango, they have done just that, gee, they must be making loans after all, or finding other revenue streams. Even kevin’s link indicated that much more will be paid back (with interest) in 2010. but it is good to remember that much of TARP was spent with little hope of recouping the money, this “relief” was targeted at keeping people in their homes. You can argue about the wisdom of spending public money’s for this purpose, but that is the decision they made.

  Everyone else seems to understand what Thrill is saying

Who say’s I don’t understand what Thrill is saying? Where in my posts did you read ,“Gosh, Thrill, what you are saying?”. Because I believe this guy is a coward and a loser you somehow think I don’t understand the sympathy factor involved? I choose not to lionize him, his cause, or his motivations, and to tell you the truth, I think all you guys got scammed. He could not deal with life because life is hard, so he checked out, and he did it in the most despicable way, both by effecting other people’s lives, those that had nothing to do with his disaffection, and by wrapping up his big mess under the blanket of nobility, like he was some kind of champion for the little guy fighting big bad government.

Dude, banks aren’t lending money to anyone right now, no one is buying anything and yet they can still repay TARP back? The reason they can is that they took that TARP money and threw it into the stock market.

From your article:

These early returns are by no means a full accounting of the huge financial rescue undertaken by the federal government last year to stabilize teetering banks and other companies.

The government still faces potentially huge long-term losses from its bailouts of the insurance giant American International Group, the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the automakers General Motors and Chrysler. The Treasury Department could also take a hit from its guarantees on billions of dollars of toxic mortgages.

Thank you.

Even Nino Brown has weighed in.

Dude…

No longer his brother’s keeper, it would appear.

Thank you.

Did you bother to read what I wrote? I already covered the distinction. The question posted above was whether money was going to be recouped from the bank bail out portion of TARP, I have shown that the answer is yes. The portion of TARP used to keep people in their homes (mortgage bail out, fannie and freddie, even AIG to some extent because they dealt in life insurance policies and annuities to individuals)that money will never be recovered at full value.

One more claim I wanted to squash was your odious assertion about engaging in “class warfare”. Utter bullshit, and you above all people should know that, rich. I am as free market as they come, but I will call bullshit out when I see it. Just to clarify my position, both me and Ms. Manwhore are making well above six figures, with no children. I am well on my way (at 33) to being very comfortable. I’m not jealous about wealth in the slightest. In fact, I am almost there.

However, I’m still not going to defend an industry that cooked books for a decade and then (knowingly) ran to the Feds within fifty trades of a financial melt down for rescue. You’d be pretty hard pressed (and have failed) at telling me that choreographed effort had anything to do with a “free market” or “risk/reward” scenario. The reality is the same people who told their subordinates six months previous to sell toxic mortgages, were the same ones who laid those people off after receiving bail outs six months later.

How do I know this? I witnessed it first hand from family. And they’re still at it. I’m not poor by any definition of the word, and not envious of anyone. i just know injustice when I see it, and am not morally corrupt by the idea that just because someone has wealth, it means they got there fairly.

Then quit defending the little cry baby who would view you as the enemy.

What do you think this means?

  Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes…

Of course that is class warfare and you bit on it like a big fat carp.

I am happy for you that have the good sense to rub two nickels together to produce a third, but Stack could not even do that. Both you and he are crying me a river because there are inequities in the system, well, welcome to capitalism.

I am surprised that you can’t see how his rant is aimed pretty much at you because you are successful and he was not.

You may not be envious of anyone, but Stack sure was, and you picked up the mantle for him, empathizing his plight.

I wonder, say Stack had all his 401K money in the stock of the company you work for and he lost all his savings due to that clown you guys use to have as a CEO, and stack decided to fly his plane to Burbank and crash right into your building, would you still be engaging in that group hug of yours?

Wake up MW, Stack’s rant dripped of class warfare. Sure, he window dressed it up with complaints about the IRS, organized religion, unions (is that where the love affair started?)and all other forms of easily hated groups, so he could rally the troops, but the bottom line was that he failed and now his enemies are anyone that did not.

Both you and he are crying me a river because there are inequities in the system, well, welcome to capitalism.

It’s not really capitalism.

Of course that is class warfare and you bit on it like a big fat carp.

I don’t eat fish, but I am preparing a post to lay nuclear winter on this idea.