SHRUB AND MCCAIN MAKE SENATE SEE SENSE, SAVE USA!

Apart from the somewhat surreal idea of Henry Paulson on his knees begging (and the extreme unlikelyhood that anyone said 'get up off your knees and give us something more substantial than a blowjob') the most interesting things about the White House crisis meeting was the reaction of John McCain and some of the Republican right.

The latter are against the bailout for the simple reason that, particularly if taxpayers actually get the equity position the Congressional proposal included, it's SOCIALISM. In fairness, Senator Jim Bunning (pictured above) also believes any bailout would be creeping communism, and appears to be the kind of true believer who is willing to follow the baloney about free markets all the way to the crash, while ignoring the government handouts that made big business big. Unless you believe guys like him are just holding out so they can tell their constitutents that they fought til the end, got dragged into the plan by the democrats but fought to get them whatever benefits may accrue. It's like they've been pushed out of a plane and refuse to open a parachute because they believe the law of gravity doesn't exist. Which, since many of them are creationists, they may not. Gravity, like financial markets, is not self-correcting.

The other funny thing was John McCain insisting on skipping campaigning to sit in on the meetings and then keeping shtum throughout, and to the press afterwards, to the point where even Joe Lieberman couldn't speak for him. (BTW: Is Lieberman angling for Secretary of State, or National Security Advisor in a McCain cabinet?). Anyone who might suggest that Schmidt and Rove have the Manchurian Candidate positioned to make some political and debate hay out of the crisis would surely be 'haters', as the straight talking expresso wouldn't tonight try to claim that he found the middle ground, or protected Americans, or brought everyone together, especially when no one could contradict him except with facts and not until after the debate. When you argue facts during a debate, you just seem churlish, which Goebbelsian style Rove surely learned watching Nixon. In a way, I'm glad I can't see the debate: I keep hearing fiddles and smelling smoke.

YOU HAVE EVERYTHING TO FEAR, SO FEAR ITSELF

One thing our crypto-fascist teacher, Mr Squibb, taught us in our American government classes at Milford Academy was that the Great Depression was brought on by panic. (He also taught us that FDR was a Russian communist socialist agent, but even at 16 I knew better.) Which makes the smirking chimp's performance in his address last night even more despicable.

What President Shrub was out to do was scare the population into demanding their legislators pass the $700 billion bailout the merchant bankers need, to reward them for doing exactly what the regulations passed in the FDR years, and repealed under a Republican congress and a 'third-way' Democratic president with a merchant banker Treasury Secretary (Robert Rubin, lest we forget) only 12 years ago, used to stop them from doing. This will come as news to John McCain, who has just discovered those greedy bad apples, decades after he tried to bail out his wife's business partner Charles Keating (note too that a major beneficiary of the Keating bailout was the third of the three Bush brothers, Neil, the one too dumb to even go into politics, who escaped with a reprimand and a 'stiff fine' of $50,000 after letting his buddies loot $330 mill from Silverado Savings & Loan) when the newly-deregulated savings-and-loan banks were doing the same sort of thing on a lesser scale, and somehow escaped Senate censure.

Twelve years was all it took for the supposedly 'self-regulating' markets to self-destruct, and the main reason Bush is now trying to fan the flames of financial fear is to stampede Congress into passing the bailout, which might well be the best course of action, but isn't the only alternative (see James K. Galbraith in the Washington Post, linked here). Plus, the Bush package comes without any commenurate protection for the future. He and his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, another merchant banker(and isn't it funny how, when they want to make these guys seem like humans they give them nicknames, now he's 'Hank' Paulson, a la 'Ken' Starr, just regular guys), don't want Congress demanding an equity position in the banks the taxpayer bails out. They don't want a return to the days of strict oversight that might prevent such a meltdown in the future. They don't want controls on excess rewards for bankers taking ridiculous risks with investors' money. And they certainly don't want any taxpayers' money going to help, uh, taxpayers themselves. They want to keep government off their backs until they need taxpayers' money, and they want to keep that money away from the people who worked for it. Note that Congress has already pushed aside the $50 billion economic stimulus package which included increased food stamps and state medicaid funds, in their hurry to toss cash at the guys in the gated communities.

Warren Buffet knows what's going on, and he bought into Goldman Sachs, in order to reap the harvest. As Buffet once said, 'If there's a class war going on in this country, my class is winning.' William Grieder in the Nation had the best solution for any buyout: If taxpayer money is used, we want the same deal Buffett got." Buffett's deal was preferred stock with 10 percent annual return and the right to convert to stock if the stock takes off after the bailout. Taxpayers should get the same deal.

Bush and Rove live in the Goebbelsian world of the Big Lie, where Fear is the best motivator. Remember FDR saying 'we've nothing to fear except fear itself'? Contrast that with Bush: 'FEAR!'

WHY I LOVE THE RYDER CUP

It isn't because the golf was pretty fantastic: my brother was watching it fanatically so I saw more of it than I usually would, and really admired the play. The Ryder Cup format reveals far more about a golfer's make-up than the usual tournament play...where you're usually out of the real running early, and rarely playing head to head for a title.

But my return to Britain reminded me that there's more truth in the agony of defeat than the joy of victory. Here's a typical reaction story in the English press:

Injection of needle after Poulter and Westwood accuse US of dirty tricks

There are few events that bring out the innate hypcrisy of our English cousins much better than the bi-annual fest of Euro-brotherhood and anti-Yankdom. Remember, that for 723 out of every 730 days, the English indulge in a festival of controlled xenophobia, couched behind their self-regarding faux-modesty, or not in the case of those with shaved heads, bulldog tattoos and union jack underpants. This includes a subtle dislike of all things French, WWII putdowns of all things German, and mildly racist condescension toward all things Mediterranean.

But then, like National Brotherhood Week, along comes the Ryder Cup and WE'RE ALL EUROPEANS NOW! Every London cabbie is pronouncing Jose-Maria Olazabal with a Castillian lisp. A few years ago, after another American choke-fest, I walked into my London post office and the Pakistani clerk chortled and said 'we beat you good!'. WE? I said. It was an ITALIAN who hit the winning shot. He didn't care. I don't know how Oswald Mosley was with a mashie niblick, but I suspect he would not have approved from the old-format Ryder Cup, which excluded the non-British or Irish.

Then there's the assault on America. The golfers are too agressive. Their Stepford wives are too, well, Stepford: though Will Buckley in the Guardian confessed his embarassingly intense love for one golfer's wife in a very funny column. But most importantly, they TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY. Their wives celebrate a winning shot before the other golfer has taken his shot. Their fans cheer misses. They make fun of Colin Montgomerie's excess avoirdupois. They just don't understand sportsmanship. Now, when European crowds stomp their feet on the aluminium bleachers at Valdarama, or cheer American misses that's something different.

But the best part of the Ryder Cup is that when the Americans win, the English fall back into the default mode of whingeing. It's very hard to feel sympathy for the Aussie point of view, but on this sort of occasion, one can see their point. The Yanks, who, when the Euros win, are accused of not taking the Ryder Cup seriously enoough, all of a sudden are taking it too seriously.

Anthony Kim actually BARGED past Ian Poulter, like he was a soccer player. Paul Azinger was actually encouraging the crowd to cheer, partisanly. (I have't yet heard a negative comment about Sergio Garcia's claiming a contorted stance was a normal one, in order to get a drop, as he would've got if it were, say, the British Open, but he's not an American, and for Ryder Cup purposes he got a pass on being a nasty cheating Spaniard and became an English gent.)

Here's the thing though. James Corrigan's article, whose headline appears above, suggests that Kim 'will be a target' at the next Ryder Cup, in Wales two years from now. My question is, if American behaviour is so damn unsporting and we fail to follow the gentlemanly behaviour of the English: WHO THE HELL IS GOING TO TARGET KIM? And with what?

There's losing and there's good losing and then there's English losing, and that's what the empire was all about!