Last week I watched something scary.  It was an interview Neil Cavuto of Fox News did with Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat, of New Jersey.  Senator Menendez is on both the senate’s banking committee and the senate’s budget committee but he clearly did not know the difference between a marginal income tax rate and a capital gains tax rate.

As Cavuto becomes more and more exasperated at the senator’s stupidity and refusal (or inability) to address the question, you might have an inclination to find the whole thing humorous.  It is not humorous.  This is the sort of person whose ignorance is responsible for the current financial debacle and whose ignorance is presiding over the government’s multi-trillion-dollar rescue attempt.  I’ve remarked before (Liberals and numbers, October 2, 2008) that I’ve noticed a strange inability of people on the left to process numbers and comprehend simple math.  It would be hard to find a better example than this interview.

Watch as it slowly dawns on Menendez that his carefully rehearsed talking point is off topic and he doesn’t have a clue what Cavuto is talking about, forcing him to keep giving the same answer over and over even though even he knows it isn’t relevant.

Watch Cavuto interviewing a moron.  (The video has since been removed from YouTube as so many videos embarrassing to Democrats mysteriously are, but you can read the transcript here.)

It’s scary that we have people this dumb running our country.

And if that isn’t scary enough, this weekend I learned that the $700 billion financial bailout is merely a diversion to keep the public’s attention away from the real raid on the Treasury.  Turns out Paulson, in the last couple of months, has loaned over two trillion dollars to financial institutions outside of the congressionally-approved package, strictly under his authority as Secretary of the Treasury, and he doesn’t have to share with anybody where that money went or what assets the government acquired in return.

Two trillion.

Oh, don’t worry silly gooses.  When the issue was presented to Representative Barney Frank, he assured the questioner that it was all safe and proper.  Yeah, Barney Frank, the same guy who spent the last ten years telling everybody that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were safe.  The same Barney Frank who, as chairman of the house’s banking committee, frantically resisted every attempt to rein in Fannie and Freddie.  You might remember him as the congressman who had a gay prostitution ring operating out of his apartment.

Yeah, that guy.  He says the two trillion is “safe.”  Yikes.


From Reno, Nevada, USA