What to Do Now

Like everyone else, I have been wathcing this crisis unfold in slow motion. I was STUNNED when the bailout plan failed yesterday. In retrospect, I don't know why I was so surprised. It was no secret that no one liked it. On the right or the left. In the end that's why if failed. So, what to do now? this suggestion from the Working Families Party:Forget the right wing republicans and craft a plan that addresses ordinary Americans,
• Cover the $700 billion price tag with a "millionaire's tax" and a surcharge on financial transactions
• "Reregulate" Wall Street, including breaking up big banks
• Temporarily nationalize companies that need government help
• Require banks that get assistance to renegotiate mortgage terms for struggling homeowners
• Couple the bailout with an economic stimulus package
See more: Elizabeth Benjamin, The Daily Politics

Deal or No Deal update! Chaos! Pandemonium! Theater!

I have been watching cable news all day and I am more confused than ever.
John McCain thinks that the economy is in free-fall, and the situation is so serious that he has to “suspend his campaign.” Yet the Republican House members are holding up any kind of a deal. First, the congressional leaders met all day, and by 1pm, they said they had a deal. Then congressional leaders went over to the White House to meet with President Bush and the two presidential candidates, for "the meeting." Supposedly carefully staged, right? No. Angry words. "Chaos, pandemonium, theater," is how George Stephanopolous described it. The deal fell apart, McCain shrugged his shoulders, what can anyone do?
Apparently there is a trio of right wing Republicans holding this up. They are so far right that “after Dick Cheney appeared before House Republicans on Tuesday night to sell them on the proposal, lawmakers emerged howling about the "enslavement" of taxpayers and the "confiscation" of taxpayer money, and they likened the vice president's sales job to that of a used-car salesman or a shady realtor.”
"We may be looking at national bankruptcy and the road to socialism," said Jeb Hensarling, one of the ringleaders, after hearing from Treasury Secretary Paulson Tuesday morning.
So, is this a depression in the making? A potential calamity? If so, and John McCain is trying to show “leadership,” is he then going to lean on his Republican colleagues? Or should we just all forget about any kind of bailout? Maybe its not as imminently calamitous as John McCain and George Bush say.
Or maybe the House Republicans are just providing cover for McCain and refusing to settle on anything, so he can say that there is no deal and there should be no debate, and go home.
I think John McCain owes it to the American people to appear on the stage at Oxford Mississippi tomorrow night to explain.

"Numbingly Desperate" "Gamble" "Transparent"

McCain is so infuriating. He can’t even just run a campaign on the issues. It's all about his handlers, warmed-over Bush staffers, positioning him as this, or positioning him to look presidential, or authoritative. Who are these guys? Who thought up the stunt to refuse to participate in the debate? In my opinion this just makes McCain look like he doesn’t know what to say, has no plan, and knows that he will lose the debate.
So, here is a wrap-up of some commentators:

"McCain's proposal to suspend campaigning was dismissed as "erratic," grandstanding and even "somewhere on the stupidity scale between plain silly and numbingly desperate" by former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards (Okla.)
Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post

John McCain is a gambler by nature, and the bet he placed Wednesday may be among the biggest of his political life.
Dan Balz, Wash. Post

But Harold Meyerson, in the Washington Postwins the prize with McCain's ploy was transparent
Slipping in the polls? Concerned that Americans may be paying more attention to the declining economy -- and even supporting economic regulation again -- than to your own stellar leadership abilities?
What's a Republican presidential nominee to do?
If you're named John McCain, the answer became apparent yesterday afternoon -- make the solution to the economic crisis all about you. Suspend your campaign. Pull out of tomorrow's debate -- Change the terms of the nation's economic discussion from the course we should take, and the defects of the laissez-faire model that got us here, to the indispensability of John McCain, leader of leaders.

But the McCain plan for victory this November never counted on Americans picking McCain on the basis of the issues,
As his strategists saw it, they had to confine the discussion to a comparison of the character of the two candidates. Alas for McCain, reality intruded over the past week, distracting the public from McCain's stellar attributes as a decisive leader with news of an impending economic collapse. So the task for his managers has been to diminish this new story to just one chapter in the ongoing saga of John McCain, the man who rides to the rescue.

Also see Meyerson's insightful
Wall Street's Just Deserts
During the late, lamented Wall Street boom, America's leading investment institutions were plenty bullish on China's economy, on exotic financial devices built atop millions of bad loans, and, above all -- judging by the unprecedented amount of wealth they showered on the Street -- on themselves. The last thing our financial community was bullish on was America -- that is, the America where the vast majority of Americans live and work.

McCain's Free Lunch

Sam Stein on Huff Post
McCain, in his 26 years in Congress has been a strict champion of deregulation. As [Stein's colleague] Nico Pitney reported: Back in October 1999, when Senate Republicans led by Phil Gramm were deep in negotiations on key legislation to deregulate the banking industry, McCain was at a primary debate in New Hampshire touting the benefits of such a measure.
"There's a number of reasons why we are experiencing this almost unprecedented prosperity," McCain said back then. "Among them are a lack of regulation, free trade, and most importantly, we are going through a revolution the likes of which the world has seldom seen."

Chicken!!!

The latest in McCain’s flip-flopping, now he wants to back out of the debate, because he’s chicken- he knows he will lose, he can’t hack it. What a fluff.

Family Feud!

Legislators File Suit
I just can’t believe that we get such good theater- the Republicans falling out with each other and fighting in public, its like a family fight at a restaurant. In front of God and Everyone
Here is the story in the NYT, (don’t you just love getting to read about our family feuds in the national papers?) Lawsuit Is Filed to Halt Alaska DismissalInquirey
I thought that it was Sarah’s Republican enemies who had gotten the whole Troopergate thing going, like her good buddy Lyda Greene, but maybe I am reading it wrong. Now, apparently she has some of her most conservative friends running defense for her. Represented by one of those conservative legal outfits: Liberty Legal Institute, which is based in Texas and which has a history of taking up conservative causes. House speaker John Harris actually supported the investigation, but has now changed his mind, and now wants to derail it. Wonder what kind of appeals to reason the McCain heavies are throwing down on the table?
Don’t forget the legislative Council, 8 republicans snd 4 democrats approved the investigation unanimously. Now, ADN/AP reports, Harris says, in a letter, that what "started as a bipartisan and impartial effort is becoming overshadowed by public comments from individuals at both ends of the political spectrum” I mean, what did he think would happen? No comments? No politics?

Celtic Diva has a rundown of who the group is who is suing to stop the investigatin, including arch conservative Rep. Mike Kelly, from Fairbanks, as well as Rep. Wes Keller, Rep. Bob Lynn, Sen. Fred Dyson, and Sen. Tom Wagoner

Both Diva and Progressive Alaska believe this all may have something to do with Moneghan’s pro-active work to deal with Alaska’s high rate of sexual assault and domestic violence.

see also the Alaska Politics Blog at Anchorage Daily News.
It will be interesting to see if the MSM really get the inside story- word is that there are 7 folks from ABC on the ground. what a circus!

Can’t stop reading About Sarah

Is there a cure for this addiction?
One of the amazing think about the last few weeks has been the onslaught of national news and network journalists into the intimate spaces of the Alaska we call home. I cannot remember this ever happening before. Sure a few famous people came up on vacation and wrote about Denali, or a fishing lodge, or a cruise vacation. But now they are buying lattes at the drive in espresso places, hanging out in Wasilla City Hall, secret service agents reportedly renting bicycles, and the coast guard patrolling Lake Lucille.
There was Charlie Gibson strolling with Sarah on the grounds of Wedgewood Manor, and anchoring from Downtown Fairbanks, in front of the new state courthouse. And te next night there they were in front of the pipeline at Fox. Too bad they didn't pan around to John Reeves' junk heaap across the road. It was truly extraordinary.
Now the MSM is finally getting beyond the hype with which Alaska was always able to sell itself, from the Chamber of Commerce, the petroleum drill now alliance, and the visitor industry. Alaska was free to tell any story it wanted about itself, because no one was there to challenge. Now the news people are challenging the image of Sarah that she has created for herself. Alaskans have to realize that a bear skin rug with the head still on, or a cozy living room full of hunting trophies is not just an everyday decorating choice, and that not everyone celebrates Alaska’s culture of guns and rugged individualism. Sarah challenges the men where they live: in the individualistic space of the wilderness and hunting privilege. In particular she challenges the conservative men who still uphold these values as markers of masculinity, while the liberal city dwellers have long since given this up. She upholds the conservative views of gender roles, even while running for vice president. I mean, you didn’t see Cheney running on his ability to hunt and fish. But Sarah can precisely because she is a woman.
Even Maureen Dowd was in Alaska, and who else could equal Sarah for snark? “Our new Napoleon in bunny boots (not the Pamela Anderson kind, but the knock-offs of the U.S. Army Extreme Cold Weather Vapor Barrier Boots) is ready to face down the Russkies and start a land war over Georgia,” she writes.”Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.
I have to disagree here: I think the new image is a bit more up to date babe in camo with M-16 along with that bible.
Although its hard to picture Maureen getting too far from the Marriott in Downtown Anchorage, she did somehow find out about bunnyboots.
And did anyone catch Saturday night live?
Careful listeners, such as myself, noted that “Palin” announced that she was the “Mayor of the crystal meth capital of Alaska!” Guess all those network sniffer dogs finally found the true Alaska.

Republicans Plan Attack Against Hope

I heard this out of the edge of my brain the other day,
"Republicans attack Hope" catchy- eh?
I mean how can you run a campaign against hope?
turns out you have to turn to fear, fear of hope,
New Group Won't Attack Obama But Will Target "Hope" and Push Fear Leadership for America's Future was formally created on Thursday by a Sacramento, Calif.-based attorney, Thomas Hiltachk, according to a form registering the so-called 527 group with the Internal Revenue Service.

The organization's slick Web site includes a 30-second video that shows images of war and misery around the world as an announcer gravely warns of the dangers of putting America in untested hands.

"It's not always the world we dream of. It can be belligerent and unpredictable, where an unsure response can have lasting consequences for generations," the announcer says over a montage that includes a plane crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and video of an American flag fluttering at the gutted site after the terrorist attacks. "No matter how eloquently spoken, hoping for change won't change the world. Only the strength of experience can do that."

But wasn't Roosevelt's message to the nation at the height of the last major depression
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?
keep it in mind

Cintra’s Way with Words

OK, its mean, and a bit snarky, but Sarah herself started with the snarky tone in her acceptance speech. Cintra here on Salon is one of the better analysts of Palin as an anti-feminist feminist.
Women, it's time to get furious.
McCain's running mate is a Christian Stepford wife in a sexy librarian costume.

Sarah in Fairbanks, re-visited

I tried live-blogging Sarah in Fairbanks.
What I do not manage to get into live blogging is nuances.
Its ironic to hear the Fairbanks all-Republican crowd cheer about cleaning up the corruption in Juneau- they were the ones who were all supporting Murkowski, and Murkowski was the man who was in the Back Rooms with all the oil executives. Sarah is touting “no more closed door meetings”; her supporters were the ones who never ever complained about the closed door Republican caucuses where all the business in the State Senate was done for about 10 years. I want to know how many of them gave money to Vic Koring and the other corrupt politicians.

Drill Baby Drill

Giving new meaning to the phrase, the corruption at the Denver office of the Federal Mineral Management Service, where the employees are charged with marketing in-kind royalty oil A kind of privatized function according to on account I read.
A story in the Washington Post [and everywhere else] paints a picture of an agency run amok with employees boozing it up, toking it up, teeing it up and snorting it up with representatives from the big oil and energy companies, from which the Minerals Management Service collects billions of dollars in royalties annually.
Mary Ann Akers in the Post
One of the female employees had a business selling sex toys on the side. The same MMS Chick admitted to having intimate relationships with two oil industry employees, including a "one-night stand" with a Shell employee (which she told investigators she didn't consider to be inappropriate because one-night stands, in her opinion, are not personal relationships).
So we wonder when we'll see that lad mag cover blaring: MMS Chicks Bare All... Drill, Baby, Drill! Any bets?
The truly pathetic part is that, despite the reports allegations that the employees left millions of tax-payer dollars on the table in negations with the oil companies, the Justice Department has so far declined to prosecute!!! How can this be?


WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?
Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Jonathan Haid from the edge 9/22/07