I have been amassing justification on this blog for the past six or seven months designed to convince the voters and taxpayers in this country that it was imperative that we fire the entire Congress of the United States of America.  However, I felt it was necessary first, to convince myself that such drastic action was necessary for the continued well-being of this nation, and then to convince enough people that it was not only justifiable, but that it was the right thing to do. Finally, I had to sell my readers on the fact that such was possible, and that I knew how to do it. The former I did with my rather lengthy treatise Re-Forming a More Perfect Union, which appears in the Founding Document section of this blog.  The middle part has been a “work in progress” that I have augmented with a deluge of facts attesting to the incompetence of the congress from everyday news reports, related articles from well-known patriots with similar leanings as mine, video clips of congress-in-action, and other supportive nuggets that I have picked up here and there and threw into the mix, carefully adding them to the blog.  The last part was recently published on the blog in the section called simply Fire ‘Em All.

Admittedly, my tack has been to try and light a fire under the voters of this country and make them angry enough to attempt something daring, To make such a case I knew that it would take voters from both sides of the political spectrum, and in particular the independents from the middle to join in a common goal of removing a cancer from our government that, left unchecked, would take this great nation down in a plethora of certain self-destruction.  To feed this fire, I invoked the agony of the fictional movie hero Harry Beale, the beleaguered anchorman from the 1976 movie Network who, as you may recall was “mad as hell” and who “wasn’t going to take it anymore”.  I even dug up a You Tube video clip of that powerful, Academy Award-winning scene and installed it in Part II of a Three part Series within the Fire ‘Me All section. In fact, that scene was SO powerful and SO pertinent to today that I'll pull it up for you again.  JUST CLICK HERE.  Anyhow, I thought I was building a cogent case, but time has not been my friend.  As I write this, November 4^th looms.  I even stated that our goal for this election cycle might be for TOD to pick up ten House seats and perhaps one Senate seat, validating our concept of “voting for the TOD* (The Other Dude) and positioning us for 2010, a more realistic goal.

And then a miracle occurred!

 What we seem to have here is a perfect storm.

Who could possibly have anticipated the events of the past two weeks as it was suddenly sprung on us by the administration that our entire economic universe is on the verge of collapsing in on our heads?  And, oh by the way, they also needed to “borrow” a cool trillion dollars or so from the taxpayers to throw at the problem, and, oh yes, they needed it NOW……a most audacious demand. 

It has been frightening to watch as the whole debacle unfolded on television with the congressional leadership in total chaos trying to figure a way to cover their ass while trying to make it appear they were trying “to protect the interests of the American people”, and while each fast-breaking development only further exposed the causative fingerprints of the United States Congress that were all over the thing, and that clearly identified them as the culprits. 

Unknown to the masses, but well known to every member of congress, this entire disgusting scenario started several years ago with the politically correct illusion of the congressional left wing that stated that everyone, regardless of social status, income, education, contribution to society, or lack thereof, credit rating, job history or just plain character had the unalienable right to own a home.  We are not just talking any old house; we are talking upscale stuff, swimming pools, cul-de-sacs, and even gated community mini-mansions in some cases.  Then the democratic leadership, including Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL), Member of the Federal Finance and Management Committee and House Speaker nancy Pelosi., all having important oversight roles, looked the other way as the heads of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae lobbied up and lavished campaign contributions and other gifts on these leaders, as well as the banking and oversight committees of both the Senate and the House and over 300 other Members, to extract relaxed standards of our banking and lending laws so that such trash loans could go forward. Spurred on by Congressman Barney Frank, (D-Ma), the powerful Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who enlisted the banks to push these sub-prime food stamp based mortgages through to the waiting arms of Fannie and Freddie, who in turn sold them to the already-primed Wall Street brokerages, who then bundled these smelly loans with legitimate loans and sold them on the overseas markets.  High fees were extracted by all the participants at every juncture of the process.

 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barrack Obama was also a heavy player in this scheme and along with Senator Dodd, is seen to be the two top receivers of campaign contributions, numbering in the millions of dollars from the Freddy and Fannie lobbyists. Even before entering the senate, Obama became a major player through his affiliation with the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now (ACORN) as a recruiter, trainer, and attorney for ACORN.  They were an early prime mover of these questionable loans that were forced on the banks and on to the guarantee of Freddie and Fannie.  ACORN also hit the news this week as being singularly responsible for thousands of blatantly illegal democratic voter registrations that have flooded a dozen swing states just weeks before the election.

 From about 2005 until the unraveling commenced earlier this year, Congressman Frank was the ringmaster of this circus, skipping through the financial halls of Washington sprinkling fairy dust from his magic wand on the increasingly absurd loans transiting the system and using the same fairy wand to beat the bankers over the head when their mortgage originators failed to make their quotas. As the unraveling continued at Freddy and Fannie because of the failure of all these food stamp backed mortgages congress stepped in and committed $200 Billion of taxpayer tax money to guarantee the $3 Trillion in loan guarantees Freddie and Fannie had on these worthless loans that they had sold to Wall Street.  Thus, the firewall that existed because Freddie and Fannie were privately held enterprises owned by their investor stockholders evaporated, putting the American taxpayers on the hook for the $3 Trillion guarantee, and congress saw to it that the American taxpayer paid $200 Billion for the privilege!!  This only occurred a few weeks ago when congress was still trying to cover their tracks.  I might also mention here that the democratic congress did not do this in a vacuum.  The republican side of the aisle voted for it and the president signed it.  Oh, yes.  Guess where the CEOs and other heavies at Fannie and Freddie are who were ousted when everything hit the fan?  Well, there’s no need to look in jail.  They are all on Barack Obama’s campaign committee as advisors, and they will undoubtedly show up on his cabinet and other places of power if the American people are stupid or naive enough to elect him as our next president.

If all this was not enough to absorb, in between our frantic phone calls to our congressmen and senators ,our being the operative word, imploring them not to even think about supporting the administration’s demand for almost a trillion dollars to bail out the banks and Wall Street, we watched in disbelief, for the second time in as many weeks as the congress again caved and handed over the full amount of the administrations request, enhanced, of course by the $100,000,000.00 in “pork” that the bill picked up in its two-day trip through the senate. Is there no end to the audacity of the self interest of this bunch of outright charlatans, who supposedly serve at our pleasure?  I think not.

The Perfect Storm

Given a totally inept and incompetent congress steeped in political correctness systematically dismantling fiscal safeguards put in place after the Great Depression to prevent any reoccurrence of that horrific period in our history, incentivised by millions of dollars in political contributions and other kickbacks, and aided by a financial market most adept at exploiting cracks in the regulations to generate obscene profits for their investors and hundreds of millions in salaries and bonuses for their management, and unimpeded by the regulators who were either on the take or just asleep at the switch, and obscured by cyber-age, computer-generated fiscal instrumentation such as derivatives, hedge funds and other unregulated scams beyond even the understanding of their Wall Street creators, and you have a “perfect storm”. 

Even a Perfect Storm Has A Silver Lining

Congress has finally succeeded in doing something that I have not quite been able to do as the Editor of www.voteforTOD.org.  With the audacity of a cat burglar, congress has succeeded in making the rage exhibited by poor old Harry Beale in the movie Network, just before he blew his brains out on national TV, seem like a mere snit, so enraged are the American people, as well they should be.

As I have painstakingly explained elsewhere in this blog, the entire Congress of the United States has done an incredibly devious job of insulating themselves from the possibility of being unseated from their job, having close to a 98% re-election rate. However, I have also pointed out, and I will reiterate again here, every Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and roughly a third of the Members of the U.S. Senate are totally vulnerable for one day every two years. 

That day is November 4, 2008,  only three weeks from now as I write this.

 These betrayers of the public trust can scurry like the rats that they are, but on the day of the General Election they can not hide!  This blog, dedicated to firing them all on this day because of their heretofore deplorable approval rating of 7% can only re-dedicate itself to this quest as that approval rating must now certainly be bumping zero.

We Are The Jury

All 435 House Representatives are up for re-election, and all are facing an opponent, i.e. “the other dude”.  Thirty-four sitting senators are also standing for re-election on that day, and they, too, all have opponents. As the jury, we have all reviewed the evidence as we have watched the drama unfold.  Even the highly biased mainstream media has not been able to suppress the evidence as our life and retirement savings disappear into the dark hole along with our home values and equities and other major assets, all aided and abetted by the United States Congress. 

…….and we are the judge

Even given the fact that some of the 535 elected officials that comprise the United States Congress are more guilty than others, there is ample guilt on both sides of the congress to go around.  Even more relevant to the situation at hand is the fact that, as Americans, we cannot afford to just roll over and watch our great nation  descend into the abyss with the remainder of the world economies.  Americans don’t just roll over.  We mustered up the resolve to come back from the Great Depression of the 1930s; we mustered the resolve to come back from Pearl Harbor; and we mustered the resolve to come back from 9/11.  One of America’s most treacherous enemies may have recognized this trait of the American people with the most impeccable intuit.  The Japanese Admiral who led the attack against Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said immediately following the attack in 1941 that almost ended World War II before it even got started, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”. 

Well, this sleeping giant, the American people, is now fully awake to the antics of this congress, and, boy are we pissed!  However, we are also astute enough to recognize that we need superlative leadership that is not even close to being available from our current congress. Our government is structured such that the hands-on leadership MUST come from the congress, and the sitting congress has proven without a shadow of a doubt that they are neither adequately trustworthy nor competent enough to see us through this crisis.  Accordingly, our judgment is that the entire House of Representatives and the thirty-four members of Congress ALL be taken out by the American people with the vote on November 4, 2008.  This action will not only clear the ranks of those who have betrayed us all in favor of their own personal gain, but it will also usher in a new breed of elected leadership to pick up the ball and start the drive back to American solvency, the restoration of our personal fortunes and retirement funds, and our collective dominance in the world economics.  If any of these surrogates, all of who can all be in place in early January 2009, fall short for one reason or another during our recovery, we have the organization and the resources of TOD™ in place to repeat the sequence in 2010 when we take down another third of the senate

……and the executioners

Between now and November 4, 2008 we will muster the entire voting citizenry of this country by internet, by public gathering, by word-of-mouth, and by bipartisan political activism to go to the polls on November 4^th and by early voting and absentee ballot where allowed and where appropriate to collectively exercise this most important unalienable right, THE VOTE, and by casting our vote for the non-incumbent candidate in every race in the entire country.  This blog is up and running.  It is registered with many political directories and it has attracted the notice of several search engines.  What it needs are HITS and MORE HITs to get it going nationwide.  It needs the attraction of outlets such as Fox News Network and others who can move it to every registered voter in this country.

To put these scoundrels on the street requires very little from you.  There’s nothing to join, no fees to pay, even very little thought.  Just walk into your polling place and vote AGAINST every incumbent on the national ticket.  It’s easy, it’s fast, and you will be doing something, extracting a toll from those who just stole your retirement savings and who will take the shirt off your back if you allow it.

We should remember while at the polls that we also have one other important duty and that is to elect a new president.  Between now and election day we should look carefully at the two candidates and devote ourselves to answering two questions:

Who is on record as having tried to avert the worst financial meltdown in the history of not only this country, but of the entire world, and who is on the record for having profited from it and who has attempted to position himself favorably in the aftermath?

Which one of the two candidates is on the record for having given ALL to this country, and which one of the candidates is on the record for having given NOTHING to this country?

Then go and execute your duty and your right, and vote.

Jim Jacobs, Editor

theconn@voteforTOD.org