As to point #10, remaining and becoming rich, I say "Nuts!":

Thomas Wolfe: "Shed no tears for the Masters of the Universe, however, not that your correspondent actually thought you might. Most of the young Masters already have their own personal nut free and clear. “Nut” is the term for the amount of money you need salted away in weather-proof investments in order to generate enough interest to live comfortably in Greenwich on Round Hill Road, Pecksland Road or Field Point Road in a house built before the First World War in an enchanting European style, preferably made of stone featuring the odd turret, with a minimum of five acres around it and big enough to be called a manor. Every Master of the Universe knows the number."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28wolfe.html

Again Wolfe: "It may dash your hopes for that nice warm feeling called Schadenfreude, but the Masters of the Universe are smarter than the people they left behind at the investment banks. Their hedge funds have blown up here and there, but unlike the investment banks, they are still very much in business. They have hurriedly pulled themselves into defensive positions inside their shells, like turtles. Their Armageddon, if any, will not come for two more days, which is to say, Tuesday, Sept. 30."

That's tomorrow. Why did we need this bill immediately? Oh The Master's Armageddon, like Putin's head in Alaska's airspace, is upon them (us).

Katie Couric: "So Mr. Pearlstein what news papers (WP included) do you actually read that help shape your world view?"

It's somewhat telling that Pearlstein considers the only bloggers even smart enough to question him, though totally ignorant on this, are from the left. I guess having Bush, Palin, McCain, and Michelle Bachman as your Right side "thinkers" is enough to not even consider that his questioners are none other than "Elitist Over Educated Lefty Socialists".

Roger Ailes: "We here in Real American use the acronym RUSH for our Republican Uber Shit Head and chief propagandist. So take that you whiny librul bitches!"

If it's been said already great but still bears repeating:

This guy, IMO, was in the middle of it all:

It is now obvious that the impetus for suspension of constitutional protections and broad executive power emanated from the office of the vice president, and the OVP counsel, David Addington. From a recent article about Jack Goldsmith:

[ Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. "If you rule that way," Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."]

Thus it is clear that anyone within the administration who had the spine to challenge the Cheney/Addington/Gonzales constitutional suspensions was threatened with the familiar refrain of "if you oppose these powers, you will enable terrorists."

Not invective but a respectful debate with a very reasonable legal mind (unelected I might add).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/5/8535/23203

Remembering too Addington's sneering at Congressman King that King had "outed" Addington to al quida. War criminal.

Okay, reading tea leaves, tossing the stones, picin' a rune and gazing into my navel, this is my stab at tinfoil hat prognosticating: Obama will make his bones by kicking most of the progressive/liberal gang that made him to the curb. Surrounded by Wall Street's "Best and Brightest" (thanks a lot, geniuses, what else you gonna' pull out of that hat Copperfield?) he's going to play the game by the rules they read to him. I'm not a political strategist nor do I play one on the teevee but it doesn't take a lot of smarts to see that the Blue State creature Obama sculpted in this election the one that looks like it's about to eat red meat Middle, land lotsa land, America just might get heartburn if in 2 years Obama isn't stuck with this hidden depression Bush and Obama's adviser's destructed. I can imagine Wall Streets warnings: "Unless you want just one term then you'll do as we tell you. Sure we'll give a little just to keep the illusion but if you step out of line we'll put Bloomberg up against you in '12 as an Independant and he'll eat the butt right out of your Blue State New England success." Obama sadly will go along because he can't imagine a Sarah Palin Presidency. We (progressive left) will be lucky to get 1/2 of what we hope for.

It's a disease that permeates the top that includes politicians, pundits, and the press. The blogger Tanta (RIP) said it about those who wrote analysis on financial pages and I think the same can be said here:

"The rest of the time, Tanta liked to chew on the follies of regulators, the idiocies of lenders and — a particular favorite — clueless reporters, which according to her was just about all of them. She did not approve, she once wrote, of “parading one’s ignorance about mortgages in an article full of high-minded tut-tutting over ignorance about mortgages.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/01tanta.html?_r=1

The wagons circle and the Villager's cower behind the carcasses of their dead ideas while their gushing sycophants in the press shoot back at the DFH savages who are attacking with slings and arrows (and the pen).