the best they can do

Dick Morris, always a slime-bucket, has lately been living off of his unique role as the guy who keeps saying McCain can pull this off (not that I'm denying that possibility). Morris's latest blueprint includes the importance of getting the free market message out:

Under conservative, pro-capitalist Republican management, we can, presumably, trust these institutions to exercise their power benignly and to turn control over to the private sector as soon as possible. We can count on their taking a hands-off policy toward the investment of the banks and financial firms in which they acquire an equity position. Except to control abuses like subprime mortgages and making marginal loans, we can expect that these federal institutions will act in our interest.

I wanted to say something really profound about the dementia and pathological denial that characterizes contemporary conservatism. But this quote left me speechless. Nobody believes this anymore. Even Morris's tone carries a sense of "none of this is true, I realize, but we have to say it." Similarly, and less forgivable, is the following:

But if Obama's appointments take over the Treasury and the Fed, can we be as sure? McCain needs to point out that it was political meddling by liberals that led Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage subprime mortgage loans in the first place. Were it not for the pressure in the Clinton Administration to expand home ownership to poor people and minorities, Freddie and Fannie would not have relaxed their down payment policies and would not have been willing to guarantee mortgages without proof that the borrowers had sufficient income to repay the debts.

More reassertions of flat-out lies, as we've discussed before. I reiterate that it's really important to answer these lies whenever possible, and there is ample data with which to do so. The real repugnant thing is that they keep repeating these lies, after the lies are repeatedly refuted, because of their desperate need not only to explain away the failure of the market, but to do so in a way that negatively implicates poor people. This is the ideological corner the ruling class has painted itself into. And with all their money and power, the best they can offer is half-assed apologetics from second-rate intellects like Dick Morris. Or as Barry Grey recently wrote, "In the figure of George W. Bush, the semi-literate scion of a wealthy and politically well-connected family, one sees the political personification of the criminality that has come to characterize so much of the corporate-financial elite. But it is impossible to find figures of much greater intellectual or moral stature in any section of the American political establishment."

"Yeah, I'm really, really dumb and I make so much money! HAHAHAHA!"