In my Septmber 20 post I wrote about the emergency financial powers that Bush wants,
Caving once again to Bush and the public perception that they might not be acting as quickly as they should. Didn’t we go down that road before with the AUMF (Authority to use Military Force) and Iraq.
September 22, 2008 Paul Krugman writes, Cash for Trash
Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.
There’s justice in the gibes. Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself — and for his successor — to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense.
Great minds think alike or the analogy has just been so obvious that it would be irresponsible not to see it. The Democrats are showing some backbone especially regards looking out for home owners, but I think, until proven otherwise that the Agonist is right about letting many of these banks go into bankruptcy and continue to operate thus eventually paying their own way out of trouble.
I’m being a little disingenuous by posting this snip from George Will since I could care less what he thinks, McCain Loses His Head
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
[ ]…Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
I’ll be generous and give Will credit for having the few seconds of political clarity it took to write those words. The rest of the piece is either the usual ideological mangling available from cheesy right-wing sites across the net or eligible for the We Really Need a New Crew of Pundits Award.
The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain’s party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?
Will speaks as though he has slept through the last fifty years. Whenever Republicans have controlled a branch of government and certainly the presidency, they have been pro corporate socialism. Will like many Republicans has learned to somehow do the mind trick required to listen to Conservative rhetoric and ignore their actions. Republicans have always used government to intercede in the free market, to tip the scale toward multinational corporation at the expense of consumers and frequently investors. Corruption has always walked hand in hand with that concept – that was what Reagan’s HUD scandal was all about, that is what Tom Delay’s K-Street was about and Bush’s Medicare overhaul that was a windfall for medical corporations and big pharma. Democrats wasted a lot of breath complaining about Bush taking the free market aspects out of the Medicare drug plan. The current financial crisis is not a one of. If Will has been truly paying attention and not filtering out loads of inconvenient truths he would know that this Paulson-Bush write me a check for 700 billion nonsense is just par for the course. If the left, which i assume he means liberals ( an unfortunate equation. I’m a liberal not a leftist) wanted to sneak socialism into our economic system, we’re rank amateurs in comparison to modern Republicans. Just looking at the two party’s track record Democrats come closer to being actual Republicans then today’s Right. One economist recently made the observation that today’s Republicans are not Conservative, they’re just illliberal.
Rush Limbaugh is an Evil Bastard
On the September 22 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that Sen. Barack Obama is “not black,” and went on to ask: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?” Limbaugh continued: “He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa. … [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.”
Fecke gives Mr. Limbaugh a much needed geography lesson. While Kenya has had Arab immigrants over the years it is distinctly not an Arab country. Though Jeff’s map has arrow pointing to Tanzania, Kenya is just above. Jack and Jill’s Politics thinks this is part of the Right’s ongoing lame efforst to “Otherize” Senator Obama. Limbaugh, the draft dodging drug addict serial monogamist who is responsible for an inordinate amount of the world’s hot gases is obviously distraught seeing the decay of the brand of Conservatism he helped shove down America’s throat.
Africa Capitals with Kenya. The full size is more legible.
Evangelical leader smacks McCain for lack of ‘principle’
Richard Cizik is one of the country’s most powerful and outspoken Christian evangelical leaders. He happens to be a Republican, and he has known the GOP’s presidential nominee for many years. “I thought John McCain was a principled person,” Cizik says. “But John McCain has backed off, not just on climate change but on torture and a sensible tax policy — in other words, he’s not the John McCain of 2000. … He seems to be waffling on issue after issue.
“It’s not illogical for someone to conclude that John McCain is going to be more like George Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000.”
At this point McSame has done such a good job of impersonating a George Bush on steroids I wonder if this hasn’t been the real McCain all along.
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. -John Stuart Mill
The Long Goodbye 