Josh Marshall at TalkingPoints Memo asks a good question:

Why did President Bush ruin this country?

“Because he’s stupid” is a wrong answer. It’s wrong because it would take hundreds of politicians and officials and bureaucrats and millions of voters to be just as stupid to achieve the monumental failures of this administration.

He’s not the victim of circumstance because he CHOSE to go to war in Iraq, he DECIDED on his tax and spending policies and priorities, and he APPOINTED folks like Mike “Brownie” Brown (Oklahoma’s own) to FEMA and other government agencies.

Now, even smart people can make mistakes. All of us get some things wrong some of the time. That doesn’t explain how one president can get so many things so wrong so consistently.

Rich people can’t want this. Rich people get richer when the economy is good. Poor people didn’t have much say in the matter. I don’t think it’s a matter of economic class or race.

I’ll have to say it does seem rather deliberate, but what’s the motive? Armagheddon and the Eschaton?

By the way, and check my math please, there are 100,000,000 taxpayers making under $250,000 per year. If you sent us all a check for $7,000 so we could pay our mortgages and credit cards and send our kids to school or whatever, that’s $700 billion and all that “bad paper” clogging the financial markets would be worth something and the economy would roar in an inflation fueled riot. Just sayin’.

P.S. You do know, don’t you, that interest rates are going to double after this bailout to “tamp down” inflation?

blogblah