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!'