Well, it's official. The proposed 700 billion dollar Federal bailout of Wall Street has gone down in flames. At the final call, the vote in the House of Representatives stood at 228 - 205.
To think, John McCain made the almost - sacrifice of not really suspending his campaign, not flying to Washington immediately, and not reading the original three-page bill crafted by Henry Paulson until three days had passed, all for nothing.
Of course, McCain did take decisive action: He milked the narrative like a Guernsey cow.
Proclaiming himself Cavalry, he planned to gallop into Washington, into the House of Representatives, and bring his fellow Republicans there to heel in service of country over party, getting a rescue bill passed come Hell or high water. He would provide some real leadership (cuckolding John Boehner in the process) and give cover from the assault by Republican voters back home for this deeply unpopular bailout.
Well, Very Old Ironsides shot nothing but blanks today as the House GOP rigidly refused to absorb any political heat for a new, more measured version of the bill, which would have given the people some measure of justice and control over the dispersal of the billions.
But it gets better - worse, I mean. The failure of the Right to clean up after their own messy orgy of greed is not the most interesting facet of this object lesson about the goose that lays the golden egg.
John Boehner himself now says that, despite the fact that Nancy Pelosi was able to cough up 140 Democratic votes for the bailout, and he himself produced an anemic 65 Republican votes, it was House Democrats playing politics - as - usual to the detriment of our great nation.
Don't blame our party just because they avoided this bill like the plague, he seems to be saying, blame the Democrats who voted for the legislation for its failure. This logic is more than absurd; it's Sarah Palin absurd.
Of course, the Right's pundits are out there spinning, spinning, spinning away at this monster of a failure on their own side. My prediction is: No way. It won't go over. The people are not that stupid. We have found the bottom of the Americans' credulity.
Democrats are not Liberals. If they were, I would become a Democrat. But today the Democratic party stepped forward and showed some cajones. 60% of them signed on to the proposed legislation, and girded themselves for the withering criticism of Main Street. Far fewer, less than 50% of Republicans showed that kind of courage.
Fortunately, the GOP has courage and audacity to spare. Sarah Palin has hunted big game before, and stared the Russkies down, to boot.
She'll know what to do.
See you Thursday, Governor.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Morning After. The GTL Apologizes. Good News For Reality.
Like Gregor Samsa, I awoke this morning from uneasy dreams, having gone to restless sleep after the first presidential debate last night.
I handed the first debate to John McCain for not seeming crazy and not getting angry. He managed to get in a few tried-and-true zingers to Obama's character which seemed to hit their mark. But amazingly, the people, for the first time in decades, did not warm to the angrier man, but to the better ideas.
CNN has some encouraging results, which indicate that the GTL may have to raise his expectations for the judgment of our wonderful nation and its registered voters.
Republicans have traditionally won elections through smears, mockery, naked contempt, and successful attacks on the character and manhood of their opponents. They have used dirty tricks like voter disenfranchisement in poor urban centers and jamming Democratic phones on election day.
Let's also never forget their successful thirty-year campaign to paint their carnal greed as the seemingly principled "philosophy" of deregulation and trickle-down economics, which the first president Bush rightly recognized as "voodoo" before he realized it just might fool enough of the people to bring about a serious redistribution of wealth to himself and his country-club cronies.
But mostly their triumph came due to mastery of the condescending sound-bite. To my amazement, these snippets of ridicule almost always seemed to meet their mark. A perfect example, and one which I refer to frequently, came in the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush:
Bush told the assembled audience, "My opponent has hired a consultant to tell him what kind of clothes to wear. Can you imagine? A grown man hiring someone to tell him what clothes he should wear?!"
I thought, "Oh, my God. He's going to win."
And I was right. In one sleazy and hypocritical put-down, Bush had erased in the minds of the public decades of public service by Al Gore and replaced them with an image of a hapless, clueless, scared sissy. It didn't matter that Bush had a phalanx of his own consultants and powerful spinmeisters creating the presidential W out of whole cloth.
With all this in mind, I watched the debate last night looking for McCain to stumble seriously, forget basic facts, or otherwise reveal his cognitive limitations. I was also hoping that Obama would skewer McCain with his own self-contradictory statements on abortion rights, the economy, the Bush tax cuts, and all the other things this so-called principled senator has flip-flopped on in his lust for the Big Chair.
But none of that happened. And McCain did get to follow the old formula created by Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and others on the Right.
So naturally it appeared to me that McCain had carried the debate, even as Obama held his own. As a frequent visitor to this page commented, "it was a tie, and a tie is a win for McCain."
Thank you, America. I apologize for underestimating you.
All my love,
The Gun-Toting Liberal.
Post-script: I have been asked to make my first political speech, in Lowell, Massachusetts, next week. I will be speaking briefly against Question One, a referendum to eliminate the state sales tax.
Wish me luck.
I handed the first debate to John McCain for not seeming crazy and not getting angry. He managed to get in a few tried-and-true zingers to Obama's character which seemed to hit their mark. But amazingly, the people, for the first time in decades, did not warm to the angrier man, but to the better ideas.
CNN has some encouraging results, which indicate that the GTL may have to raise his expectations for the judgment of our wonderful nation and its registered voters.
Republicans have traditionally won elections through smears, mockery, naked contempt, and successful attacks on the character and manhood of their opponents. They have used dirty tricks like voter disenfranchisement in poor urban centers and jamming Democratic phones on election day.
Let's also never forget their successful thirty-year campaign to paint their carnal greed as the seemingly principled "philosophy" of deregulation and trickle-down economics, which the first president Bush rightly recognized as "voodoo" before he realized it just might fool enough of the people to bring about a serious redistribution of wealth to himself and his country-club cronies.
But mostly their triumph came due to mastery of the condescending sound-bite. To my amazement, these snippets of ridicule almost always seemed to meet their mark. A perfect example, and one which I refer to frequently, came in the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush:
Bush told the assembled audience, "My opponent has hired a consultant to tell him what kind of clothes to wear. Can you imagine? A grown man hiring someone to tell him what clothes he should wear?!"
I thought, "Oh, my God. He's going to win."
And I was right. In one sleazy and hypocritical put-down, Bush had erased in the minds of the public decades of public service by Al Gore and replaced them with an image of a hapless, clueless, scared sissy. It didn't matter that Bush had a phalanx of his own consultants and powerful spinmeisters creating the presidential W out of whole cloth.
With all this in mind, I watched the debate last night looking for McCain to stumble seriously, forget basic facts, or otherwise reveal his cognitive limitations. I was also hoping that Obama would skewer McCain with his own self-contradictory statements on abortion rights, the economy, the Bush tax cuts, and all the other things this so-called principled senator has flip-flopped on in his lust for the Big Chair.
But none of that happened. And McCain did get to follow the old formula created by Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and others on the Right.
So naturally it appeared to me that McCain had carried the debate, even as Obama held his own. As a frequent visitor to this page commented, "it was a tie, and a tie is a win for McCain."
Thank you, America. I apologize for underestimating you.
All my love,
The Gun-Toting Liberal.
Post-script: I have been asked to make my first political speech, in Lowell, Massachusetts, next week. I will be speaking briefly against Question One, a referendum to eliminate the state sales tax.
Wish me luck.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Live Blogging the Debate
Twenty-five minutes into the first debate and I am struck by the bloodlessness of Jim Lehrer's questioning. "Where do you stand on the bailout package?" is not a good start.
For one, no one knows what is IN the bailout package.
Second, all of Washington is saying that the injection of presidential politics into the bailout planning is unhelpful and in fact disruptive to the delicate process going on now in Washington.
Jim Lehrer seems to be asking question as if he were sitting in his own living room and indulging his own curiosity. It appears that he wrote them all this afternoon.
Neither candidate is particularly impressive here.
9:33 PM Another question about the current crisis and how each man will govern in light of it.
We're bogged down in question 99% of Americans don't understand. And the slogging is slow.
To my mind, McCain is restraining himself and actually seems more on his game than Obama.
Round one goes to McCain.
Jim Lehrer has got to broaden the questioning. How we got to the current financial calamity in Washington is what he should be focusing on.
9:38 Ah. Obama scores a hit: "John, your president is responsible for the out-of-control spending etc.... you supported him 90% of the time..."
9:39 We're talking about Iraq now. Maybne the worm will turn.
UPDATE
9:50 The people can judge. Obama stresses the folly of the Iraq war. McCain stresses the success of the surge. Let's hope the people keep their eyes on the ball.
McCain continues to do better than I expected, Obama less so.
9:53 McCain is in his element when he talks about war. Americans will listen to his take on troop levels. He accuses Obama of wanting to attack Pakistan. Makes Obama seem unstable.
For one, no one knows what is IN the bailout package.
Second, all of Washington is saying that the injection of presidential politics into the bailout planning is unhelpful and in fact disruptive to the delicate process going on now in Washington.
Jim Lehrer seems to be asking question as if he were sitting in his own living room and indulging his own curiosity. It appears that he wrote them all this afternoon.
Neither candidate is particularly impressive here.
9:33 PM Another question about the current crisis and how each man will govern in light of it.
We're bogged down in question 99% of Americans don't understand. And the slogging is slow.
To my mind, McCain is restraining himself and actually seems more on his game than Obama.
Round one goes to McCain.
Jim Lehrer has got to broaden the questioning. How we got to the current financial calamity in Washington is what he should be focusing on.
9:38 Ah. Obama scores a hit: "John, your president is responsible for the out-of-control spending etc.... you supported him 90% of the time..."
9:39 We're talking about Iraq now. Maybne the worm will turn.
UPDATE
9:50 The people can judge. Obama stresses the folly of the Iraq war. McCain stresses the success of the surge. Let's hope the people keep their eyes on the ball.
McCain continues to do better than I expected, Obama less so.
9:53 McCain is in his element when he talks about war. Americans will listen to his take on troop levels. He accuses Obama of wanting to attack Pakistan. Makes Obama seem unstable.
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