MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell about the U.S. financial crisis--and he's not gonna take it anymore!
While convening a roundtable discussion on the market meltdown on his eponymous MSNBC show on Tuesday, Ratigan exploded.
"We've got a real problem!" an exasperated Ratigan shouted. "This is a mathematical fact! Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren't doing it, Republicans aren't doing it. An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid."
"I'm sorry to lose my temper," he continued. "But, I tell you what, I've been coming on TV for three years doing this, and the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted."
Later, on the show's website, Ratigan called it his "epic 'Network' moment."
The clip of the entire rant is worth watching, which you can (and should) do.
In his rant Tuesday, Ratigan blamed not only both houses of Congress but also the president for failing to address the root of the country's economic problem. He said of President Obama, according to an MSNBC transcript:
I would like him to go to the people of the United States of America and say, “People of the United States of America, your Congress is bought, your Congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade, or taxes because if they do it, they will lose their political funding and they won’t do it. But I’m the President of the United States, and I won’t have a country that is run by a bought Congress. So I’m not going to work with a bought Congress and try to be Mr. Big Guy ... I’m going to abandon the bought Congress like Teddy Roosevelt did, and I’m going to go to the people of the United States get rid of the bought Congress." ... Until a President says that’s the problem and says he’s going to fix it, there is no policy that I can possibly see no matter how brilliant your idea may be or your idea or my idea or her idea or your idea at home, is that idea will not happen as long as there’s a capacity to basically fire a politician who disagrees with me by taking funding away from him. Is that a fair assessment?
In conversations with The Huffington Post Tuesday night, Ratigan contextualized the comments, calling the rant his truest and most piercing and emotional expression of fact since he's been in broadcasting. He also said he hoped the president was up to the task of addressing the real economic issues.
"In a nutshell, Hope without Courage is Lost," he told HuffPost in an email correspondence Tuesday night. "And I don't mean the destructive cowboy bravado of the Republican Party either! I mean true courage to observe truth and work through it together."
