Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General This Quote Says Everything About The GOP's Shutdown Stand

And I've heard it coming from a great many different places.
My mistake was not grabbing a notepad or my tablet and writing down where I heard it.

Not idle chatter, not gossip, I was hearing the results of research. I didn't just make it up off the top of my head.
In fact, my head jerked around and my mouth said something like, "you have GOT to be kidding me."

I suddenly realized that, as Rick also says, it made perfect sense. A lot of banksters on Wall Street have been doing it for years.
Eric Cantor IS a multimillionaire. Ted, it might surprise you to learn that MOST of these guys are.
This is how some of them BECAME multimillionaires, the banksters on Wall Street are their friends, role models and mentors.

Why am I supposed to just take your word on faith that you "doubt very seriously that a large majority of the Tea Party faithful in Congress are invested in such contrary funds"?

You doubt that I can prove it? Fair enough, give me some more time. I might just surprise you, because if I've heard it once, I've heard it a dozen times and, each time I heard it, I shook my head in disbelief and then I realized that it makes perfect sense.

Wealthy crooks with a sense of hubris enabled self righteousness and a religious profile that speaks of "God's Bankers bringing Jesus back before the final grand transfer of end times wealth" are probably the kind of people who think nothing of betting on a national debt default, just as Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints think nothing of signing twelve wives and seventy one kids on welfare to "bleed the beast".

It's unbelievable, but it makes perfect sense, once you get over the initial shock.
It may take me a while but I promise you, I am going to track down the rest of the folks who are invested in credit default swaps on the national debt.

Thank you, Doubting Ted.
Like Doubting Thomas, you have inspired me.

And I applaud your well thought out and lucid counterargument, all except the "witch hunt" part.

I am not on some witch hunt and I am not even all that heavily invested in "being right".

In fact, I am well and truly chastened by your response, but I am still going to tell you that this did not come from me, it is something which blew me clean out of the water first time I heard it and each time thereafter.

And I am kicking myself for not jotting it down for later use.

But as I said, give me time.

Well played, Mr. Remington

ROFL!

I do my research as quickly and as lazily as I can while still trying to ensure that I am right. The laundry list was a cut and paste from a site that keeps track of such things. And I forgot to cite to it. Mea culpa. Doug's gonna castrate me!

And i did not mean that you personally were on a witch hunt. But the article that started all this was, at least in my opinion.

I'll get back i a few minutes with a citation to the source of that laundry list.

No Ted, I am perfectly alright with it as is.
I am the one who is caught up short in all of this.
As I said, my jaw hit the floor first time I learned of it but
after regaining my composure the absolute elegance of the logic
became as crystal clear as a diamond blade slashing my jugular.

A great many of these people are religious extremists who buy into
all those whacky end times scenarios, a great many of them believe
that it is their God given right AND duty, to enrich themselves for
the coming tribulations ahead and a great many of them wish to dispense
with this tiresome two party democracy experiment which, in their minds,
has led us down the path of liberal tyranny.

So this is their shining moment in the sun where they can emerge from
the wreckage as the wealthy new "priests and kings". (taken from an actual sermon by Pastor Joyner on Morningstar Ministries Television the other day when he called for an armed coup)

What better way than to quietly invest in a credit default swap that skyrockets once
the national debt goes into default?

I want the rational members of Congress to DRAFT a formal declaration of war.
I am not in favor of some "citizen uprising", we're already seeing enough of that now.

I am asking for a formal congressional declaration of war unless the Tea Party stops threatening the security of this nation. I want the legal experts in Congress to research into the possibility of formal charges.

I honestly do not believe that there is any longer a legal standing that protects the Tea Party members who are spearheading these actions, because they have no clear stated objective.

If they did, they would state it and stick with it. Instead, it is a moving target, a constantly changing set of false and irrational straw man arguments which have no basis in reality, thus it is just a cover for their attempt at terrorizing the country. One member even said it "was his idea of FUN."

David Schweikert's idea of FUN

Time for the rest of Congress to declare war, that's OUR idea of fun.

Well, that was enlightening.
This is the web site to which the article above refers.

If you click on the 2009 "profile" as put together by OpenSecrets you will find the list I reproduced above.

And if you look at the profiles for the following years, 2010 and 2011, you will also find the shares listed.

Just below the profiles on that page, though, you find "Images", which cite to PDF files of Cantor's disclosure statements. The 2009 one shows the ProShares, as do the 2010 and 2011 disclosure forms. The 2009 form reveals that the asset was purchased during that calendar year.

But the 2012 form, filed May 15, 2013 reveals that those shares have now been sold. The date of sale, which would have been during CY 2012, is not disclosed, but since the stock was in steady decline over the years of his ownership you can rest assured it was at a loss.

So, really, the whole thing is moot as far as Cantor goes.

Did you check OpenSecrets for anyone else yet?
That's on my to do list.

WHOA! It ain't my fact, Jeff.

See above:

"I do my research as quickly and as lazily as I can while still trying to ensure that I am right."

As to checking opensecrets.org, Cantor had 125 or so investments. Someone had to look awfully hard to find that one (IF it is only one) contrarian fund in Cantor's portfolio. Had I looked at the list I would have had no idea that particular stock was a contrarian holding. Someone else shot that bear.

There are what, about 40 or 50 members of the core that holds the GOP House hostage? If each one has 100 different investments that's four to five thousand line items to check, who knows how many of which fit into the doomsday sort of scenario under discussion.

I have difficulty when someone presents such a controversial and damning "fact" without any proof. Hearing something over and over does not make that something true. If it did, Obama really would have been born in Africa, the 9-11 hijackers would all have been CIA employees, it would have been a missile rather than a planeload of people that hit the Pentagon, etc., etc. Oh yeah, and Ted Cruz would be an American citizen.

I just asked if you had, and said it was on my to do list Ted...

Jeff --
Hell, man, that's an almost impossible task! That's the point I was trying to make, somewhat awkwardly.