I just received further evidence that the progs who created a dangerous cult of personality around Barack Obama are now starting to regret their Messianic mania. The following message comes from Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, one of the sites that originally inspired me to jump into these waters:

Treasury Secretary Geithner proposed a $1 trillion plan to help Wall Street make a killing buying "toxic assets" with our tax dollars and guarantees. And he proposed a complex regulatory scheme to keep huge financial institutions from wrecking our economy once again.

But there's a better and simpler solution: break up those huge financial institutions. If they're "too big to fail," then they're too big to exist.

Returning to the banks and insurance companies that existed before the Reagan era would not hurt our economy. As Paul Krugman writes, "that boring, primitive financial system serviced an economy that doubled living standards over the course of a generation."

Our friends at A New Way Forward have a plan:

NATIONALIZE: Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention - no more blank check taxpayer handouts.

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused.

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place - new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big for a free market to function.

On Saturday April 11, A New Way Forward will lead protests all across the country to demand these changes.

And if you're in New York City on Friday April 3, join the National March on Wall Street:

http://www.bailoutpeople.org/april3-4.shtml

I think that when progs focus only on Geithner, they demonstrate that they cannot yet bring themselves to admit that we were right about Obama all along. Poor Timmy must function as the scapegoat. But that transference won't last forever.

I reprint the above because I really like the formulation "If they're too big to fail, they're too big to exist." This axiom rebuts those free market fundamentalists who insist that a smidgen of socialism will turn the whole system blood red.

You've heard the argument: "If we ever allow gummint to butt into the affairs of free enterprise, even in one small instance, then where does it stop? Where do we draw the line? Do you want the gummint to run fast food restaurants and dog groomers?" We now know where the line should be drawn: If any enterprise is "too big to fail" -- AIG, for example -- then it should have been run all along by people accountable to elected officials. It should be a public trust, not a private for-profit concern.

So I support what Fertik has written here. But he has yet to take one important step:

APOLOGIZE.

Apologize for printing crap like this during the primaries:

The Last Hillary DLC-Straw

I have been silent about the neocon, Republican-Lite, Democratic “Leadership” Council (DLC), and their poster girl, Hillary, during the Primary season -- but enough is enough. Just like Joe LIEberman, Hillary is helping McCain to split the Democratic Party -- just as the DLC has been doing for over a decade.

Most egregious of all were the continual lies about the Clintons told by David Lindorff, who has a regular berth on Democrats.com. (Example here -- and hold your nose when you read it.)

Democrats.com is still publishing Lindorff and still publishing lies about Bill Clinton, the man whom all true progs still consider enemy #1.This is Lindorff's most recent foray into fake history:

Back in November 1999, Congress passed legislation pushed by then Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), rescinding the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. The measure, backed by the Clinton administration, and overwhelmingly passed by the Senate (90-8) and the House (362-57), opened the way for banks to merge with investment banks and insurance companies, and led directly to the current financial cataclysm.

"Backed by the Clinton administration."

Lying Lindorff wants you to think that the whole thing was Clinton's idea. Yet he exposes his own lie by revealing the extreme level of congressional support for Gramm's measure: The thing was going to pass by a veto-proof majority. I've discussed the 1999 business at great length in an earlier post.

Both the right and (especially) the left blame Bill Clinton for the current financial crisis, though for very different reasons. Of course, both progs and reactionaries blame Clinton for everything -- up to and including the Chernobyl disaster, the 1972 remake of Lost Horizon, Britney's "haircut moment" and your aching back.

Here's the part that the the progs won't tell you about: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed by a veto-proof majority in a Republican-controlled Congress.

In spite of that inconvenient fact of history, Brauer writes:

Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall.

See? This proves what I've said for months -- the difference between liberals (such as myself) and progressives is that progressives lie. Progressives cannot say "Hi!" without lying.

When forced to confront the inconvenient fact that I have just now put into boldfaced letters, the progs retreat to a more weasle-like position: "Yeah, well, Bill Clinton did nothing to fight it." Anglachel digs up contemporary reports to demonstrate that, in fact, he did. Here's the bottom line:

So what do we see in this contemporaneous report? That the White House had been pushing back on this act for months. That certain Congressional Dems, Dodd and Schumer foremost, explicitly wanted to kill Glass-Steagall. That the White House fought them as well as Gramm on this issue. That the White House rallied Democrats to present a solid front to the measure, requiring that the CRA be protected, which some Congressional Dems were just as happy to toss out along with all other protections.

"CRA" stands for Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 law which helped minorities get home loans. Clinton fought to get the best deal that he could, but gale-force political winds were against him.

Yes, you can blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall on Democrats -- not all of them, perhaps not the majority of 'em, but a good number of 'em. But you can't blame Bill Clinton. Blaming Bill Clinton is like blaming Raoul Wallenberg for not defeating the Wehrmacht single-handed.

Yet Democrats.com continues to publish Lindorff -- to publish the lie.

APOLOGIZE, Bob Fertik.

Apologize and choose sides. You can join the Clinton wing of the Democratic party or you can be part of the anti-Clinton, pro-Obama wing. You cannot finesse your way between the two. You cannot have one from column A and one from column B. We will never allow that. You must choose.

Do not think for one second that you possess the words that will bring reconciliation. Even if you had the eloquence of a Shakespeare, your rhetoric still would not suffice. The wounds inflicted in 2008 were deep -- far deeper than you realize. And the only salve for those wounds will come when the Obots lose face. Complete, total, merciless loss of face: Nothing else will do.

No, we will never "get over" the primaries of 2008, just I never "got over" the Florida vote theft of 2000. I will not forget being called a racist every single day. I will not forget the lies. I will not forget the death threats. I will not forget the astro-turf hate messages (many from the same ISP in Chicago) that flooded my blog every day. I will not forget the totalitarian imagery and the Mao-like cult created by the Obama camapign. I will not forget seeing my own (former) party embrace tactics that would have made Lee Atwater blush. I will not forget the election fraud in the caucus states. I will not forget the disgusting and unforgivable treatment of Hillary's delegates at the convention.

As Richard Pryor said at the end of his most famous routine: "Y'all probably done forgot about it. Yuk, yuk, yuk... But I ain't never gonna forget."