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DEL.ICIO.USRiffing on a cow patty: Paul Broun’s phraseology takes off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun of Athens may have coined the metaphor heard ‘round the world.
“This is a huge cow patty with a piece of marshmellow stuck in the middle of it, and I am not going to eat that cow patty,” the Republican vowed from the House floor on Monday, before he and 227 other members of Congress sent the $700 bailout bill down to defeat.
The imagery has been irresistible: “In a related story, don’t have dinner at Congressman Paul Broun’s house,” cracked Conan O’Brien last night. In Atlanta, WSB (750AM) has incorporated Broun’s remarks into a promo.
On its web site, Time magazine has a more serious take. Here’s a synopsis:
There’s just one problem, Congressman Cow Patty: A lot of us did eat it, including many of your constituents. The $1.2 trillion — let’s spell that out as $1,200,000,000,000 — that disappeared from the stock market on Monday didn’t go down a black hole in lower Manhattan. It came out of America’s 401(k)s, mutual funds, pension funds and personal portfolios….
Some of the homeowners who are losing wealth reside in Clarke County, Ga., Congressman Broun’s home turf, which also had $1.9 billion in deposits in financial institutions in 2006, according to the University of Georgia. That ain’t chicken feed. And speaking of which, the fourth largest employer in the region, poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride, is now struggling with financing because credit markets have seized. There are 1,500 jobs in the balance if, say, Pilgrim’s Pride can’t make payroll because it doesn’t have access to funds….
Broun is resolute that taxpayer money won’t be used “to give a golden parachute to Wall Street that our grandchildren may still be paying for many decades from now.” But Wall Street is all of us, including the Congressman from the 10th District in Georgia. We are all going to eat the cow patty. The only question is, how big will it be?
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Comments
By Will Jones
October 1, 2008 3:14 PM | Link to this
There was no bailout in the offing for the trillions of dollars lost when Bush’s faction intentionally tanked the Dot Com Boom, a legitimate economic revolution by which the American Middle Class was profiting.
His Rockefeller Fifth Column, feeling the “pinch” on Wall Street now, off-shored our I.T. jobs to destroy the corner we then had on the Internet Revolution, and made sure plenty of work visas were made available to gut the salaries of programmers and engineers.
Big Oil’s fascist plutocracy did the same to destroy equity values benefiting Americans who bought into the dreams of Edison and Tesla, a hundred years ago.
The American taxpayer should bail them out now?
Let the market correct itself. Wall Street’s gambling on the Fed “House of Card” shouldn’t be a fixed “Big Money always wins,” “stick the losses on the little guy” proposition. The People are sovereign…we better act like it.
Let them suck it up the millions of us did when they ripped us off. They did this to themselves
By Lincoln County Voter
October 1, 2008 3:21 PM | Link to this
Congressman Broun is an embarrassement.
He is a tool and a moron.
It is a shame that Barry Fleming did not beat him in July. Fleming would have been a much better, albeit smarter, congressman than Broun.
By gafarmer
October 1, 2008 4:31 PM | Link to this
Having an intimate knowledge of cow patties and chicken poop, I suggest that “you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken poop no matter how much pickles and mayonaise you add” would be a better comparison to whats been happening inside the beltway recently. That little dot of white ain’t a marshmellow.
From a bygone era when we had statesmen instead of politicians in Washington, ” the greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself”. We have faced and endured worse situations before and we will endure and overcome this fiasco.
By howard
October 1, 2008 5:48 PM | Link to this
the man is an idiot. an embarrassment to our entire state.
By Dan Matthews
October 2, 2008 9:38 AM | Link to this
Time to vote for Oconee County native and Jackson County resident Maj. Bobby Saxon for the 10th district of Georgia’s Congressional seat, he is someone we can all be proud of to support and not be made a laughing stock out of like Dr. Broun.
By Swing Voter
October 2, 2008 6:23 PM | Link to this
Who is Bobby Saxon?
As a swing voter…I need to know who is running to make a decision.
I get my information from television. Lots of television.
The guy obviously can’t run a campaign. He obviously can not run a congressional office.