Mitch McConnell Understands Fire Safety Much Better Than the Economy
As Congress frantically struggles to craft a Wall Street bailout, it appears that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) got his situation briefing from Fire Marshall Bill.
How else to justify his asinine explanation of lawmakers' relief options?
"When there's a fire in your kitchen threatening to burn down your home, you don't want someone stopping the firefighters on the way and demanding they hand out smoke detectors first or lecturing you about the hazards of keeping paint in the basement," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a speech on the Senate floor.
"You want them to put out the fire before it burns down your home and everything you've saved for your whole life."
What a miserable metaphor! Let's see if we can wade through it to figure out what the Senator meant…
* "Fire in the kitchen" = worldwide credit crisis, plummeting stock markets, surge in oil prices, toppling investment banks
* "Firefighters" = taxpayers, Chinese creditors, Henry Paulson, Warren Buffet, anyone but Sarah Palin
* "Smoke detectors" = any kind of Wall Street regulation whatsoever
* "Paint in the basement" = sub-prime lending bonanzas, Phil Gramm's 2000 tax bill
* "Your home and everything you've saved for your whole life" = Your home and everything you've saved for your whole life
* "Lecturing you"= lecturing greed-ridden Wall Street traders, lecturing morally vapid bank executives, lecturing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Seems that metaphor is even more convoluted than the credit crisis itself!
Next time, McConnell should limit his figurative language to a topic he understands better than firefighting.
Thoroughbred racehorses, perhaps.
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Hank Paulson is still pleading with the Congress and the Administration for a quick, clean solution, using the need to "calm markets" as his main argument. Well, the DJIA closed only 1.47% lower today, and most of the losses to that index happened before the Lehman/AIG mess which precipitated the whole sky-is-falling mantra. Is this fear taking hold of the markets in a death-grip? Hardly. Where is the actual crisis?
Warren Buffet is stepping in to Goldman Sachs with a $5B investment. Why can't other super-rich-dudes step in and scoop up some deals, saving the taxpayer the trouble?
I don't see the crisis at the moment, and I don't see the sky falling, even if some of the banks fail. Note to Congress: take your time on this and get it right. You know what the old saying is: Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
McConnell is a joke! If John McCain wants to reform Washington, he should start by deporting McConnell.